homepage Forums Read Only Forums Read Only Forums Typhoon (Read Only) Question on fixing the weapon problems...

The UK gaming press have slated Typhoon, on account of it being hyped as 'hard-core' but being arcade in reality.
So I guess the real issue here is one of disappointed expectations, not that the game is fundementally bad. Think of it as arcade, you won't feel let down.

The problem with that is that on the box is a quote that the flight model is one of the realistic you're going to get on a pc.

Things just don't add up.

Cheers,
Manteau

Joel

What I have been trying to say...probably not very well...is that I have not had significant problems with the A2G weapons.

Yes, they do miss...and it is a little irritating when I fly all attacks the same way so that I can compare results. But, this is not the norm. Most of my attacks are successful (by that I mean >50%). If my success rate were much higher than that, I would feel the game to be a bit too easy.

I don't know how others are employing their weapons. They may be flying brilliant tactics...or they may be completely buffooning it away. Since I don't know, I won't be critical of their technique. All I can say is that my experience with the game is that the weapons have a reasonable probability of hitting the target. It may take more than one hit to kill a given target. For something like a hovercraft, depending on weapon type, that is not unrealistic.

Andy

Hyped as hardcore?! What exactly has the UK press been reading? Now I know why the game is reviewed by some as it has, if they think the game has been hyped as hardcore. If anything the game has been hyped as NOT being hardcore from day one.

Anyhow Steve explained why certain choices were made with weapon ranges and effectiveness. And even though they still might needd to be tweaked a little, I agree with his reasoning. Making is easy would make the game a shooting match. Take a dozen Brimstones and just go nuts. Effective but not as fun overall

Destroying some targets is harder then it might be in real life, but it's NOT impossible. You have to work at and and accept that you probalby won't be alboe to take out every target on your run. Just go home and try again later.


[This message has been edited by Uroboros (edited 05-18-2001).]

Well i busted a gut on this all day yesterday,employing Brim's and ALARM's.
First of all i engaged at max range(just inside the bar) at about 5,000ft clear route to target. What i noticed was that some Brim's/ALARM's hit the target's *clearly* but they(target's) didn't explode!

nor were they incapacitated(which of course AA/SAM's would be!)

Then i engaged 2,000ft; about 1/4 from the bottom of the range bar CAPTOR zoomed full in -six rapid releases of Brimstone's, *all with lock-on*, on T-90's(non moving) and a couple of SA-##(can't remember)

One solitary explosion confirmed a kill

The rest probably hit as per above but the game decide's what target's are destroyed out of a group i think?!

I can live with the Air-to-Air missile's being spoofed -what with CHAFF and flare's *because* they are visual and fun!! Especialy when you see an ASRAAM homing in and taking a flare at the last second

Sorry as regard's the ground target's;
I clearly saw my weapon's hitting home and the AAA/SAM's continue to return fire!

The Air-to-ground is busted!!

You can go on about RL and PK but this is a joke concerning gameplay(of a lite sim which does not employ *real life* Radar launch parameter's other than a range bar!!!.

*If* this game was to concern RL and PK scenario's (as Andy goes on about)Then the MFD's would have contained pertanent data corresponding to it and would have allowed the user to set there launch parameter's up correctly!(and blame themselves for missing!)

The *fact* it contain's little more than a range bar with *no* RL reference's to range(as per EF2000)....indicate's that All this talk about Weapon's realism is absolute bull...

and trying to divert the user away from the main subject that the weapon's that *do* hit home (which you would obviously only be able to follow a couple launched with a few sec's spacing and rapidly switching view with the F7 key Phew!!!)are alway's fighting a losing battle and *never* going to win!

Steve has said that they have been dumbed down when i said in my earlier post about "more astute player's wiping the invader's off the island as soon as they landed" i thought as had many other's that this was the case.

Seve said: "The 2-3 hits per target was also a gameplay decision. We did have 1 shot kills with Brimstones, but the invasion was just to easy to stop - you could kill a whole group of tanks with 10 pulls of the trigger from 10nm away. There were 2 ways round this - 1 more tanks (game too slow) or more hits for a kill.

At least Steve has been honest and *admited* that it's nothing to do with "our weapon launch parameter's=read: Range bar!)...unlike Andy whom goes on about PK and Range parameter's etc......hmmm

The player may halt the Air Invasion(thankfully the bullet's can't be spoofed! but to keep the game in balance the ground unit's are more or less impervious to your weapon's(2-3 hit's to knock one out) *deliberately* so that the campaign continue's past day one....................................

I would still like the A/G weapon's/target's tweaked so that at least when i see a Brim strike home the vehicle is incapacitated and *doesn't* return fire.......even if we can kid on that it will be fixed by ground engineer's in our mind's..........yeh,yeh i know but what else can be done?

Thank's Steve for having the ball's to break this "sideswerved thread" and give us at least a reason why *one* Brim doesn't take out a target we need 2-3 Brim's to destroy *one* now It's a start for me!,although i would like a [i]slighty[/] slowed down/incapacitated vehicle effect as i mentioned above.

Before i was targeting individualy. Now i can concentrate on what? Six Brim's to 2-3 tank's???

I'll test this and suggest other's do to and see how we get on eh?

Tracer

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"Flying is the second hardest thing known to man.........the first is landing!"

I can beat that. Four thousand-pound GBU-10s can't take down a fishing trawler.

I can see the reason for some of the gameplay decisions on the weapons. And I give Mr. Hunt credit for admitting it was dummied down. But this is a little overboard. Tracer's hit it right on the nose.

In my opinion, there were better ways to protect the invasion force. Such as with their Navy, and the Russian equivalent of the SA-10 system. In Flanker 2.5, for example, if one sets up a beachhead mission with a couple cruisers standing offshore, incoming air has problems. Sure, you can fire ARMs at them and knock out the ships' radars. And the Kashtan systems on the ships-or the naval SA-10-might well shoot 'em down.

A lot of the problem with establishing and maintaining the beachhead comes from an early design decision: using those fast hovercraft (whatever they're called) alone, with no actual NAVY out there to cover them. A lot of long-time simmers warned about this very thing last year in the newsgroups. Mr. Hunt stated that the design was as it was, and that there'd be no actual naval task force out there, for various reasons.

The results of that decision have come home to roost. No wonder early versions of the game saw Typhoons with Brimstone wipe out the beachhead; there's not enough SAM and naval air cover to give the invasion force a shot at local air superiority without a gameplay fudge. Dummying down a2g weapon effectiveness like this made a basic design problem worse, in my opinion. It's translated across the board to results like the one I got, where a fishing smack is immune to multiple hits with Paveway bombs. If the game had been beta-tested adequately from jump by a decently-sized QA group drawn from the simming community, and not shrouded in top-secrecy this might have come to light far earlier in the design process.

Railing about design decisions taken three years past won't help us now. Mr. Hunt has taken the right attitude by not trying to cover up the FACT that a2g weapons were fudged from jump. They have a substantial investment here, and one of the best campaign systems on the market-I'm sure they'll work with gamers to find a workaround. Subsequent patches won't be able to remedy a basic design flaw. But kludging weapon effectiveness wasn't the best way to solve the problem.

What they CAN do to credibly fix this problem is first put more serious SAMs on the ground with the first wave and second increase the amount of air cover given to the invasion force, while third, decreasing the number of Allied ground forces. Do it with real numbers, not with a jury-rigged weapons model. I know Mr. Hunt is worried about overstressing low-spec machines with large numbers of ground units. There is a way around that: by giving the Russians greater local numerical superiority without increasing the total number of units game-wide. And alert the player AFTER the landing takes place and the beachhead is established. I can see Intel fumbling the ball like a big dog. That happens all the time in real time-it's why "Military Intelligence" is a classic oxymoron. Let Allied air power make up the difference. Yes, the Russkies'll die like flies. But there's waaaaay more of THEM than US. Which is how the REAL Russians always planned to win the war anyway. The Air Force would have you believe that's the key anyway.

Miao, Cat

[This message has been edited by Cat (edited 05-19-2001).]

Try the GBU-10 against the tanks, use a level bombing attack profile, fire and forget, you can pickle off 7 bombs for 7 kills in one pass against almost any target type.

I am also not too unhappy with my Brimstone results. I just don't understand the reports I'm seeing here.

Badboy



[This message has been edited by Badboy (edited 05-19-2001).]

Oops double post

[This message has been edited by Badboy (edited 05-19-2001).]

As I said in another post, I’m finding the GBU-10s to be very effective indeed! I’ve never seen them hit anything without destroying it. I’m really puzzled about this.

Badboy

Quote:"I am also not too unhappy with my Brimstone results. I just don't undertstand the reports I'm seeing here."

Well Badboy,
Steve said it on page one of this thread about the weapon's needing 2-3 hit's to knock a target out.
I maybe wrong here? but maybe you guy's are thinking that seeing an explosion of you Brim hitting a target equate's to it *being destroyed*?? Obviously you would have to fly *back* over the target to confirm this..as opposed to away(the natural reaction! So you generaly fly away after launch(and seeing big explosions on the hud where the target's are.......)
I can assure you that using Brim's i have hit more than i have missed *but* because of Steve admitting you need 2-3 hit's to destry a target everything has fallen into place...sort of if you look at Cat's post it sound's maybe more serious than was first suspected?
Maybe the game dictate's what target's can/can't be knocked out regardless of "how many hit's are achieved"??

By the way i will try the GBU's....i haven't even used them *once* and i'm late into day 2!

Cheers
Tracer

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"Flying is the second hardest thing known to man.........the first is landing!"

This's EXACTLY what we're getting at. Thousand-pounder bombs for tank-plinking? They were using GBU-12s for this in Saudi Arabia ten years ago-they're half the size of the GBU-10. There's no equivalent in power for taking down bigger targets.

It really irritates me that one has to use direct-fire ordnance against things like trawlers to have any hope of sinking them, and that dedicated antiship munitions like the Penguin won't even slow them down, forcing you into their AAA envelope. Standoff weapons were designed to prevent this very thing from happening. And I got at least one hit on one of the other trawlers with a Penguin in that mission and didn't even damage it. In the Falklands war, one Exocet sank a Type-42 destroyer.

Miao, Cat

Yep, two hits are required for the Brimstone, but not all of the weapons require multiple hits. As I said the GBU-10 is much more effective! I was referring more to the fact that folk seemed to be missing with it. Perhaps they have sometimes been mistaking the lack of a kill for a miss?




Good luck with that!!

Badboy



[This message has been edited by Badboy (edited 05-19-2001).]

Tracer

You don't need to fly back over a target to see if it is still in operation...usually the TI image will disappear if the target is dead. There seem to be some exceptions to this. I've noticed that it is possible to stop or disable tanks, AAA, or hovercraft and have them still remain in the TI.

Cat

Now, now...if I can't talk about RL and past conflicts, neither can you! Falklands was 19 years ago!



Aside from that , your point is right on the money. A Penguin should have a more significant effect. I don't know what the problem is with that situation.

This whole weapons thing is confusing for Leon and I. In general, we are not seeing many of the problems that other are reporting. It may be that some people are firing out of parameters, but that can't be the whole story. Whatever the answer is, we would like to find it.

Andy

Andy,
That's *one* target in your TI *not* six!

You surely don't fire one Brimstone then watch it hit home then fire another and watch it...........{get the picture?}......................you would be flying back and forwards until the cow's come home at that rate watching/confirming each impact!

So *one* or maybe 2 i can accept but not more cosidering the quotes bandying about here saying within 2-4 miles from target for optimum launch!?

still open for critcisim this debate?

Tracer

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"Flying is the second hardest thing known to man.........the first is landing!"

Tracer

>>You surely don't fire one Brimstone then watch it hit home then fire another and watch it<<

Yes. That is exactly what I'm doing. BUT...I'm not 'playing' the game. Instead, ever since these weapons questions came up, I'm doing weapons release tests to look for an answer to the problems you all are reporting. I try to fly a standard profile and then watch the missile's behavior to see what it does...and what the target does.

>>still open for critcisim this debate?<<

Sure. What are you being critical of? Me, the game, or both?

Andy

I'm doing the same thing-except I put the jet on autopilot and use the weapon-cam to follow the bomb in, to make sure it hits. Satisfying explosion, then zilch. I think it's because they've reduced weps effectiveness across the board. Some of the problem may be due to the fact that Andy and Leon aren't using the actual release version of the game-they're using a build that was released way before the game was. Twiddling with the numbers probably happened after they got their builds; that's why WE are seeing this and THEY are not.

Miao, Cat

I don't think so Cat, Andy and I were given copies of the Gold Master, that's the version the production copies that you have were made from.

I think the reason why Andy and I are seeing better results, has more to do with the application and knowledge of weapon parameters, attack profile and delivery techniques, than anything else. We hope to address that.

Badboy

That can't be right, Leon. How does delivery profile change anything when you can SEE the weapon hit dead-center, and fail to so much as damage the target?

It's totally arbitrary. I went back in and tried again, both with Penguin and GBU-10, and got 100% effectiveness-blew the trawlers to bits. And I didn't do ANYTHING different from the other two times where I got zippo.

This is coming from that weapon kludge, and not from poor delivery profile.

Miao, Cat

I assume we are still talking about the GBU-10 here, if so I have never seen it hit a target and fail to destroy it, let alone fail to damage it.



That’s what I’m seeing, with a very high degree of consistency! I think you must have missed it the first time. Also, since folk have been complaining about the Brimstone, I’ve loaded up and checked it out again, and I’m shocked… I just can’t see what the fuss is about. I’ve been hitting tanks with two weapons and getting 100% success!! Every tank took exactly two hits to kill with the Brimstone, and just one hit to kill with the GBU. None of the weapons missed.



In view of the fact that I seem to be doing rather well with these weapons, I can only assume that folk are doing something wrong. I'm sorry I can't be more helpful.

Badboy

If that's the case, then, the graphics are hopelessly snafued.

When I say I saw the bomb hit, I mean it hit dead center, exploded, and NOTHING happened. Four times. I didn't watch it on the TI. I watched it from immediately aft, in the F7 camera view, from the Dr. Strangelove position. Where the guy with the cowboy hat rode the nuke down.

If it missed (and hitting the midships hatch dead center isn't a miss, is it?) it was by inches, and the bomb still exploded with zero effect. No shock damage? You're saying here that a thousand pound bomb exploding that close to a fishing trawler won't even damage it? And why, when I did the exact same thing, in exactly the same way, today, did it work? Answer-the game's arbitrarily deciding who lives and who dies. We already know that's going on. All I've done here is confirm that it doesn't only apply to tanks and Brimstones.

As I said: This is resulting from that weapons kludge Mr. Hunt admitted to. Not from delivery profile problems. We're not making this stuff up, Leon, give us a little credit here. Most of the complainers are experienced simmers.

Miao, Cat