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Galm Fae
Eskola Ergonomics
511
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Posted - 2016.03.07 00:33:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm just going to stake my claim here in this thread for when I finally have a chance to respond later tonight. Trust me, I can tell you more about aircraft than you'd ever want to know and would love to help put our heads together to develop some sort of in-atmosphere aircraft.
Just to point something out right off the bat, to anyone that might say that in-atmosphere mechanics that react similarly to modern aircraft being used in DUST doesn't make sense given the existence of anti-gravity levitation... Yes and no. Yes, technically aircraft employed in DUST 514 could hypothetically not have to subscribe to modern aircraft conventions and resemble aircraft similar to the Dragonfly in EVE. Hell, the Valkyrie comic depicts a Wraith mk II diving in atmosphere to engage a target, so we know that spacecraft can operate in-atmosphere.
However canonically anti-gravity manipulation relies on fixed-particle physics like the balloon islands in Bioshock Infinite. Moving these particles through space-time, especially at warp, causes a significant amount of "drag" which is why ships in EVE move as if submerged in a liquid medium. So you can imagine that a dogfight in-atmosphere in a EVE-style spacecraft would be like trying to fly a puck on an air hockey table underwater. Maneuverability would be GOD awful, so it would make far more sense to build separate in-atmosphere aircraft for land battles. That also explains why dropships, which are made to be deployed from low-orbit, use conventional plasma engines instead of gravity wells.
I just felt the need to justify this thread before me continue any farther.
Rich Hipster With No Skill
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Galm Fae
Eskola Ergonomics
512
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Posted - 2016.03.07 06:19:00 -
[2] - Quote
So this post is going to be a bit of a tall order, but lets see if I can address everything that's been discussed so far and offer some of my initial input before I move on to the more intricate details.
Quote:I also do not know how I would feel about a fighter carrying lockon/target following munitions. Being a supposed game of skill, I do not support any fire and forget weapons, and the only thing that would even begin to sway me would be the addition of countermeasures for vehicles.
The idea of DUST 514 ever being a "game of skill" would be funny, if it wasn't so painful to hear. That's an opinion at best, and an opinion that can't be applied to this situation considering how radically different air combat is from conventional infantry combat. While I'm not saying that aircraft should be inherently overpowered (and they won't be for several reasons that I hope to discuss) the idea of removing precision guided munitions from aircraft will make them useless. By refusing to allow guided ordinance (which why would there not be in this distant future when the US has been following a trend of using guided weapons in conventional war since the Gulf War) you force them to rely on the current system of dumb-fire turrets. While I agree that any aircraft made should have the option of fitting a small turret in place of a traditional gun pod for survivability-sake, by limiting them to the currently existing turrets you've made objectively irrelevant.
Think about it, why would anyone spend the extra ISK to purchase a fixed wing aircraft that can only fit dumb fire munitions (especially in the case of your argument that would prevent any sort of VTOL capability to prevent engaging infantry) when it is more cost effective to purchase a tank. It sounds stupid at first, I know, but an armored vehicle would have the inherit advantage over a jet aircraft in its ability to hide behind cover, carry heavier armor, and is only suceptable to enemy fire from cardinal direction. Meanwhile the aircraft will have less armor, less armament, and is susceptible to enemy fire in all directions without the ability to take cover. Even an assault dropship, the bastard child of a troop transport, would have an inherent advantage over a fixed wing aircraft at this point. It's an odd parallelism to draw, but I hope it gives you the idea of how useless it would make these vehicles. Fixed wing aircraft require a tremendous amount of skill to operate effectively given the fact that the accelerate constantly along one vector at high speeds, carry relatively small amounts of ammo, etcetera etcetera. I could go on and on and create a whole shopping list of reasons why not having guided munitions on jets would be a horrible idea here. In fact:
I) Reliance on dumb-fire weaponry gives pilots the ability to engage ground targets, directly contradicting your whole point of preventing attacks to ground targets (reference issues dumb-fire swarm launchers had against infantry)
II) Gun-to-gun point blank dogfights, while seemingly thrilling, severely limits the ability for aircraft to engage dropships, VTOL gunships, and other aircraft at high speeds. (Would likely encourage ramming)
III) Turrets in their current iteration (extremely close range blasters, slow short range rockets, and single fire railguns with a spool-up time) would be next-to-useless on fastmovers
IV) Lock on ordinance, even if the lock on time is relatively slow, could ensure jets could only engage other aircraft or ground vehicles
V) Even if jet launched missiles are employed against armored targets (and they should) it's unlikely that it will be unbalanced as tanks possess a huge amount of hit points and can react accordingly in the time it takes jets to circle around (or gods forbid be forced to land and rearm.)
Again, I can go on and on and on on this one so trust me when I say that guided weaponry and a new turret system or class all-together is a must.
Quote:Again, glancing at RL, all currently combat proven VTOL aircraft are not (to my knowledge) air superiority craft but ground attack craft
Technically yes. That having been said, you're still wrong. VTOL, contrary to what Hollywood and Modern Warfare 2 would have you believe is not and has never been used to engage ground targets. VTOL exists, as the title suggest, to limit the amount of space required for take-off which is essential in branches like the Navy or the Marines where space on a flight-deck is limited. These organizations are also typically expeditionary agencies that are forced into tactical combat roles close to the front lines where large runways and airfields might not be available, as in the case on an underdeveloped Null-Sec colony. The reason why these aircraft are traditionally attacker aircraft has nothing to do with their VTOL capability, but because the branches whose operational needs facilitate the development of VTOL almost always are charged with tactical airstrikes against ground targets.
This is a bit of a tough concept that a lot of civilians have a hard time wrapping their head around, but the Air Force (with the exception of the A10, which serves as a constant reminder of its breach of standard doctrine) focuses more on strategic bombardment of enemy infrastructure and the interdiction of troops before they have reached the front line. Meanwhile, the Marines and the Navy, due to a lot of reasons and differences that I can't be bothered to get into right now, focus on issues of close air support. Respectively, hovering above a target in landing mode is insanely stupid and the pure concussive force of whatever ordinance your dropping will ruin your aircraft beyond all repair if not knock you out of the sky outright. Even the F35 only has VTOL in the Marines variant while the F35B and the F35A opt for STOL and conventional gear respectively.
Rich Hipster With No Skill
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Galm Fae
Eskola Ergonomics
512
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Posted - 2016.03.07 07:11:00 -
[3] - Quote
Now, to conclude the above post, personally I believe that if you really are that concerned with VTOL ruining the balance of jets then I would either recommend a STOL system (which from a pilot perspective I would prefer as canonically it would save plenty of weight) or alternatively simply have the jet in throw up an alert before transitioning to navigation mode, which provides a certain amount of landing assistance (ie, displaying the topography of the terrain below you) but in exchange disables your weapons until you're at speed for conventional flight. Project Legion already indicated the existence of much more varied topography and the addition of flora, so that whole "DUST has mostly flat surfaces" don't really hold a lot of weight in the future anyone. Besides, for the historical reasons that I explained in regards to the Marines it is far more likely that a planetary marine force would deploy with VTOL / STOL aircraft on uncolonized and underdeveloped planets than the idea that there'd just happen to be two perfectly good airbases close to each other. In fact, assuming in the future we solve the issue of weight-versus lift then there's no reason why every aircraft WOULDN'T have VTOL or STOL.
Back to my rant, I hope I've address why precision guided AV weapons would be inherently more effective and make much more sense than dumb-fire high-altitude bombing... Or gods forbid dive-bombing, which hasn't been employed since the Korean War for reasons that should be obvious. Rather, I would recommend that the system of Light, Medium, and Heavy aircraft be broken into three different "classes."
Dropships
This role will simply be a continuation of the current iteration of dropships, with the reintroduction of the logistics dropship and the continuation of the assault dropship. These will be the only aircraft built specifically to survive reentry, and as a result will be slow, up armored troop transports. While the assault dropship would offer the option in enhanced survivabilty at the expense of carrying capacity, these ships will largely be limited to the roll of infiltration or extraction of troops from hotzones with limited offensive weaponry.
Gunships
This is an idea I've toyed with for a while. While the assault dropship has served its time as a decent sit-in for a dedicated ground-attack aircraft it simply doesn't fit the bill for a CAS platform. If anything, it's a retrofitted transport ship that's been adapted to serve a role desperately needed in DUST at the moment; an nimble ground-attack aircraft capable of attacking targets at low altitude. This got me thinking, what if we took the term 'close air support' literally. An extremely close range, highly maneuverable combat system loaded up with so much armament that defensive systems have been cut to make room for pure offensive power. Considering that these days the Army has taken to adopting helicopter gunships in place of fixed-wing platforms, I'd like to see a single or two-seater aircraft like the Apache capable of dealing out damage to ground targets but is vulnerable to AV damage and small arms fire. Reference the ATAC from the Killzone series and you should have a pretty good idea of what I have in mind.
Fastmovers
As you might imagine, these are the VTOL/STOL aircraft that we seem to be discussing most often. These are extremely fast and maneuverable air superiority fighters capable of locking on to enemy aircraft. I recognize many of the concerns people seem to have at the mention these jets, but I firmly believe that one of the best ways to combat these concerns to to limit the amount of ammo that each of these jets can carry. Rather than holding a seemingly limitless amount of missiles, these jets will only be capable of holding two - six at a time, and require a lock on period where the target remains in the forward radar range for a certain amount of time before firing. This also forces jets to dip into that navigation mode I had previously discussed where they are forced to activate their VTOL for landing and are incapable of using their primary weapons. This would be an insane risk on the front line, and encourages pilots to return to their primary headquarters to rearm rather than lowering down to an ammo depot while under enemy fire.
Which leaves me with the AV answer to these systems, taken directly from Templar One:
https://books.google.com/books?id=wGUcq68KDPIC&q=jaguar#v=snippet&q=missile&f=false
Visiam AV-11 'Block' Missile
Select the first snippet that contains the section on the Visiam AV-11 'Block' missile. Effectively, this missile could work like a piece of equipment that when launched remains on station for a certain amount of time orbiting a 500m circle around the launch position until a target enters its range. If the pilot has enough skill however, these rockets can be evaded (I'd imagine they'd move to fast to swing around again like swarm launcher rockets) or even shot down and destroyed before making contact. This would provide a temporary moment of substantial defense from air attacks for infantry, but you could only ever carry one rocket at a time. A system like this would be the final nail in the coffin for the 'air support has the potential to be overpowered' argument.
Rich Hipster With No Skill
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Galm Fae
Eskola Ergonomics
515
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Posted - 2016.03.08 06:03:00 -
[4] - Quote
Interestingly enough, a major concern that we face going into the future of air combat is that stealth technology and heat-dispersion will become so advanced in aircraft that active-radar missiles will be useless in a hypothetical sixth-generation conflict. Which is to say, close range heat seeking missiles and 'gun range' conflict might become more common between two aircraft. So the argument of defensive systems having outpaced offensive targeting systems actually holds merit, but I just can't get over the fact that it's due more in part to the technical limitations of this game than anything else.
I was never advocating for fire-and-forget weapons that shoot down beyond visual range. That having been said I've always found that the process of locking the enemy and outmaneuvering incoming IR missiles at high speeds has been far more exhilarating than the 1942-copy-pasted-reskinned-unrealistic-garbage that are the flight mechanics in Battlefield 4. No jet should ever move as if it's a WWII era messerschmitt, and I find the way that it portrays dogfights disgusting. Gameplay like that is a massive turn off for me, and makes aircraft feel utterly useless rather than a force multiplier. The only thing that has ever made aircraft in games moderately overpowered however is the traditional insistence on unlimited ammo in vehicles (which is a mold that DUST broke a long time ago) and a lack of dedicated air defense systems.
If I had it my way, fighters would pack at max two semi-active missile systems with the option to gain one or two per ammo bay expansion. Rather than rely on some sort of AWACS (which would have all air targets marked and placed for you on your map) you instead get a forward facing directional gravimetric scanner that detects aircraft by locking on to the gravitational force that an airborne target puts out. (Gravimetric scanners have been the basis of Caldari design for years now.) We can assume this is done to combat the need of sending out your own radar, which would break stealth if a module were capable of tracing the origin of the radar signal, or LADAR, which would break stealth by sending out a broad IR beam that would give away your position. This allows for complete stealth while still maintaining the ability to detect air targets even in adverse weather conditions. However these missiles would not operate like swarm launchers, which have a stupid amount of maneuverability and have a habit of swinging back around after they have been evaded. If one of these missiles are successfully evaded then they'll simply extend along the same vector until either reaching their max range or hitting the ground below.
As a clever way to avoid having to implement countermeasures for now, let's say that canonically it can be difficult or these missiles to discern the gravitational force of an enemy aircraft from the surrounding planet. Not only can these missiles ONLY lock on to aircraft because of this, but if a pilot dips down below a certain altitude the accuracy and maneuverability of these missiles are greatly reduced and there is a chance of the missile instead targeting the planet itself rather than the jet. This leaves us with a basis for long-range standoff missiles that:
I) Require skill to use effectively against enemy aircraft
II) Are heavily limited by the ammo capacity of your jet, which is largely left defenseless while landing to reload
III) Prevents locking on to ground targets
IV) Can be easily evaded by a pilot with enough skill to washboard over a planets surface
V) Mitigates the ability for the enemy to target air forces before they have a chance to take off from the ground
Rich Hipster With No Skill
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