Just a thought...

OK, this is pretty obvious as most (all?) sims model near-perfect avionics. Add to that the fact that various kinds of clutter are nonexistent in your typical sim, and you have a recipe for hopelessly unrealistic radar use. (I switched all my D's to A's in FORMCOMP.DAT because I found super-radar no fun).

Anyway, Here is an interesting summary regarding actual performance of the Longbow radar and fire control system.

I was naively hoping there might be some way to reduce the radar effectiveness via WUT files or some such. I haven't found any practical way to do so yet. In a perfect world the radar should be picking up (quite a few) false positives, some misidentification, etc. There are probably low impact ways to do this (e.g. peppering the world with a non-rendering radar dummies), but they would take some doing. Anything more comprehensive sounds like a code change to me.

If anyone does delve into the avionics code, I suggest exposing weapon and sensor efficiency values in the WUT file so that they can be tuned to reflect real-world performance a bit better. (Even a simple "dud %" value for each weapon would be a start).

If someone with more modding experience than me has some ideas, I'd be happy to help out.

-Olds

Okaaay. Well for starters I modified GWUT1140.CSV and turned the Longbow's [RADAR] values waay down... to no apparent effect in the game. So either I'm not understanding what those [RADAR] values do or they don't do anything at all!

I'm not a coder (I mean, I do scripts but that's about it) but I'm tempted to dig around in the code to see what the heck is going on with the radar code (assuming I can make heads or tails of it)...

-Olds

Wow. That's a pretty good read, thanks for the link!

uhm... just one side note
we play EECH mainly solo, we do not have a flesh and blood co-pilot... so we can assume he is helping us de-clutter the radar returns
it is not a solution of course, but it helps the immersion :P

I agree with your excellent point Gr1m--strict realism is not always more realistic for a (consumer) sim. But it's still worth mentioning in the article above that trained 2-man Longbow crews found the FCR problematic in combat--not totally useless, but nothing like the all-seeing-eye-of-god we have in EECH.

Quoting article: "Half [of Longbow crews] 'disagreed' or 'strongly disagreed' with the statement that 'the fire control radar helped perform the mission.'"

But your point is well taken. Would you also find it more fun/challenging to play with realistic radar performance?

-Olds

Article on Hellfire hit rates during 'Desert Storm': 90% at the very best (and as low as 40%!). As with most sims--our hit rates are ridiculously high and basically science fiction.

Short of complex weapon modeling, I think a (user-accessible) dud percentage should be incorporated into every weapon system & ideally sensors as well (radar anyway). I'm investigating the extent to which this can be done without code, but my hunch is it's primarily code work.

I think relatively modest tweaks toward realism like this will make EECH even more fun... and frankly superior to most newer sims out there.

-Olds

It's all true what you write Olds,But the sad reality is that, now on EECH working only a few people and there is nobody to do.
A few good programmers within one month it could completely change the simulator, such is my opinion.

Olds, that's a interesting article/report, thanks for sharing it!
But, one must be extremelly carefull when reading something and then when modeling (or modding in this case) a sim based on such information.
Everyone must be aware that the Hellfire is an extremelly and precise weapon (the most precise of its class) and it has a precision of something like 99% against static (tank size) targets. In fact a skilled gunner can aim and shoot a Hellfire missile thru a window of a building (this shows how precise the Hellfire can be!).

Anyway, if you read carefully the report that you posted you'll see that the "lack of precision" or misses experienced with the Hellfire was mainly due to the so called "obscurants" (smoke, fog or dust) and also due to equipment malfunction (missile of helicopter wiring). Curiously the report mentions that the US Army Apache simulators didn't model "obscurants" (smoke, fog or dust) and I think it's correct to say that EECH (and most other commercial sims for that matter) doesn't model as well.

There is also an another reason why there were some Hellfire misses in the past (in combat or training) which doesn't seem to be described on that report which is the (over)reliance in the auto-track mode which from what I've read in the past trends to fail (stop following the target) sometimes.

So, in "normal" conditions the real Hellfire missile does have the same level of precision/effectiveness as seen in EECH and IMO is a mistake to reduce the Hellfire missile effectiveness in order to try to model things like "obscurants" may have in the Hellfire's precision.

Finally I just want to say that with my "experience" in reading official US documents, I find that the GAO (General Accouting Office) reports (such as the report you posted) trend to be overnegative while the DoD reports (Department of Defence) trends to be overpositive, so IMO the truth is always somewhere between what DoD and GAO "says".

Ric, I have to respectfully disagree with your assessment of the literature on this. But that's OK--in fact, that's kind of the point.

Regardless of where you come down, the point of adding and exposing reliability values is to allow you or I to tune them up or down as we see fit. And, equally important, as more data become available on the performance of a weapon, we can tune it towards realism in the future (without having to pray that someone will come along to hard code it every time).

And that's the point I hope we can agree on.

P.S. (Read the equally interesting FCR article in the first post if you missed it)

Let me be a bit more specific about what could be added (theoretical examples, I haven’t had time to look at the code at all yet… sorry):

Good:
1) Add a simple dud % to each weapon (e.g. a column in WUT.CSV)
2) Add false reading % to each radar
-chance/sweep that a new reading would be added or skipped incorrectly
3) Make the existing WUT radar ranges do something useful(?)

Better:
1) Modification factors to weapon dud %
-based on weather (EECH terms: is it raining)
-based on map (is it a “dusty” region)
-based on wind-speed (more dusty)
2) Modification factors to radar false reading
-distinguish false positives from false negatives
-different for static vs. moving targets
-different for weather conditions (again, rain or not)

Best:
???

Sorry but I didn't understand in what part you disagree with me? If you're disagreeing with me that the Hellfire missile sometimes fails mainly (and mostly) due to the "obscurants" than that's really odd since your article clearly says that and even more, that article says that the "obscurants" can easily be overcome by launching the Hellfire in LOAL (lock after launch) mode. If the Hellfire is fired in LOAL even with "obscurants" it's precision is extremelly high in those conditions. An you are forgetting an another issue:
- The Hellfire variant used during Desert Storm which is in what you're report is being based on was the AGM-114A (the initial Hellfire variant) while the variant used nowadays and in EECH is the much improved AGM-114K Hellfire II, which like I said is much improved over the AGM-114 and the AGM-114K improvement are in most part regading it's capability/precision when "obscurants" are present! I think you are forgetting this VERY IMPORTANT issue!

Of course a player can modify everything he/she wants, a player can even give the hellfire warhead a similar destructive power as a "nuclear bomb" but that doesn't mean that's realistic.
So and resuming, my point is that using a % of fail when using the Hellfire in bad weather condition is not realistic because:
-> Any precision level that the Hellfire may lose can be countered by launching the missile in LOAL mode.
-> The AGM-114K (Hellfire modeled in EECH) level of precision/reliability is much superior in bad weather conditions than the AGM-114A (used in Desert Storm).


Finally regarding the radar, I must admit that I haven't read you article about it (the radar) but as soon as I get some time to read I'll post my oppinion...

Well, let's not turn this into an OT flame war, so let me be succinct: no complex weapon system achieves 99-100% hit rates on the battlefield. Period. If you have after-action reports that say otherwise, please provide them, they would be very helpful. The best hit rate achieved in '91 was "about" 90%. As for the "L" model, most crews in 2006 basically did not use it's RF features because they were found to be unreliable.

A given weapon's hit accuracy is not the point at all here--let's not miss the forest for the trees. Right now we have an FCR-weapon system that behaves nothing like it does in the real-world. We could take steps (should Arneh or Firebird choose to do so) to incrementally make it better. Not a 100% perfect simulation of real-life, just better than it is now.

Let's put our thinking caps on and suggest ways to do that. My suggestion is that we start with dud% & a crude stab at radar complexity. If you feel differently, that's perfectly fine! What do you suggest we do?

No, no, there's no flame war (at least from my part). This is only a civilized discussion about the hellfire (and it's effectiveness) which could result in an improvement of EECH (at least I like to think that way).

The reasons why weapon systems don't achieves 99-100% hit rates could vary a lot and for modern weapons which are extremelly precise weapons (such as the Hellfire or Paveway laser-guided bombs) the reason why they fail are mostly due to "external factors" which aren't directly related with the weapon itself, these factors could be due to "obscurants" (smoke, dust or fog), jamming (by enemy forces) or simply an occasional malfunction and most of these factor are really hard if not impossible to model within a simulator and IMO making a roll dice (% of fail) may or could not be the best way to model these factors (at least most of them).
Besides I'm pretty sure that the most usual factor for those kind of weapons (such as the Hellfire) to miss in combat is due to some mistake by the weapon operator's which in combat situations and due to stress factors are certainly a common reason for a failure, for example: imagine that a Hellfire was fired against an enemy target and during that time the helicopter is being targeted by enemy forces, in this case the pilot will certainly make an evasive manouver which will cause the laser hellfire to miss.

Again and regarding your post (and link posted by you) you are still forgetting the following:
-> The Hellfire used in Desert Storm (in which your report is based on) is the AGM-114A (the "A" model) which was the first model of the Hellfire.
-> The laser Hellfire used in EECH is the AGM-114K (the "K" model) which is a second generation Hellfire (the complete name is: AGM-114K HellfireII) which was developed and built in order to improve and correct the faults of the AGM-114A (most of them covered in your report). Anyway, if you can read here:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/agm-114.htm
That the: "Hellfire II incorporates many improvements over the Interim Hellfire missile, including solving the laser obscurant/backscatter problem, the only shortcoming identified during Operation Desert Storm. Other improvements include electro-optical countermeasure hardening, improved target reacquisition capability"
In here you can see that the initial Hellfire variants (AGM-114A) could NOT reaquire its targets which is something that would make the missile miss in case the target would temporarily be obscured by some reason - again the HellfireII (AGM-114K) solves this.
-> Anyway, just as you even admited the AGM-114A (initial version of the Hellfire) had a precision/hit rate of 90% than imagine what would be the precision of the AGM-114K HellfireII (which is basically the Hellfire with it's "bugs" ironed out).





Again, I think you may be confusing things a bit and taking what you read "literally". The RF Hellfire (AGM-114L) was designed to be used against vehicles (tanks, IFVs/APCs, trucks, SPAAGs, etc...) and other kinds of "large and solid" targets (such as buildings) so and resuming: targets that can appear on a radar. These are NOT the kind of targets that you see in counter-insurgency conflicts such as Afghanistan and Iraq - Insurgents don't drive tanks or other kind of military vehicles - The only kind of target where the RF Hellfire could be used in Afghanistan or Iraq would be buildings but the Laser Hellfire is just as good or even better in hitting buildings. What I mean is that the AGM-114L RF Hellfire radar cannot detect infantry/insurgents (humans) or even small static weapons (such as Heavy machine guns or mortars) which is what insurgents use (in Afghanistan or Iraq) and this is the sole reason why the RF features (radar) of the AGM-114L is not used - it doesn't have anything to do with the radar's "reliability"!





What I fell and suggest is that the precision Hellfire missile (both AGM-114L (radar) and AGM-114K (laser)) is good and realistic as it is now and there's no point (IMO) in changing and making the Hellfire a less precise weapon (IMO, this is making the Hellfire unrealistic).



Err, sorry for my long post...