7 replies to this topic

[Bad Karma 308]

I'm going to caveat this as I am a retired Electronic Warfare Officer for the USAF. So without going into too much depth I'd like to give the Devs a possible way to add scalability and adaptability into the MWo ECM concept.


Right now your ECM has two modes; essentially you have what is known in the Electronic warfare community as:

1.) Electronic Protect
Electronic Protection (EP) (previously known as electronic protective measures (EPM) or electronic counter countermeasures (ECCM)) involves actions taken to protect personnel, facilities, and equipment from any effects of friendly or enemy use of the electromagnetic spectrum that degrade, neutralize, or destroy friendly combat capability. Jamming is not part of EP, it is an EA measure.


2.) Electronic Attack
Electronic attack (EA) or electronic countermeasures (ECM) involves the use of electromagnetic energy, or counter-electromagnetic radiation weapons to attack personnel, facilities, or equipment with the intention of directly affecting, degrading, neutralizing, or destroying an enemy's combat capability (see Joint Publication [JP] 3-09, Joint Fire Support).


In today's EW world we bring EW equipment into the battle by what we are attempting to do. No one piece is an all inclusive. So we often outfit our EW equipment suites in a modular fashion. If I want to attack radar we'd bring a radar jammer, communications would see a comms jammer, data--would be a signals/data link jammer.


So here's where I'd like to offer you a different take on how you could better employ your EW module. Much like your module system, I suggest you break up the ECM module into configurable modular components.

Again, similar to how the module works, you'd buy access to the ECM module in the pilot tree. But then it would have a limited number of "slots" to drop components into.


IE I have a ECM with two slots, I could choose two of the following.

1.) Jam enemy radar

2.) Destroy the shared enemy target broadcast

3.) Friendly Cloaking

4.) False target Generators -gets the enemy to waste ammo like LRMs, but also can confound the enemy sorting between true and false targets.

5.) Break enemy target lock

6.) High energy blinding (think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_%28weapon%29)

7.) Communications jamming (text at this point, but could partially degrade voice comms in the future. ) It would have to be based on limiting single channels and mech lances.

8.) Spot jamming: Degrade a single mech's fire control systems,

10.) Small area Electromagnetic pulse. Shut's down all mechs (even friendly) in a limited area forcing them to override and restart the mech's. This could be a great way to buy time for friendly forces to arrive and defend a crippled friendly.

11.) You could also go the realistic route of adding drop in sensors for different mech's that pick up on enemy EW as well. Ie a data signal sensor. sensor to detect the EW capabilities of the enemy lance....The comm channel of the approaching enemy lance.......



And potentially many more. Most of those would fall under electronic Attack, but give me a bit more time and I could easily break out some components for electronic protect as well.

You could even have the ECM module have the ability to add extra component slots similar to the way mastering a mech does for modules at the moment.

As many of these are large consumers of energy you could also have many of them on a time based usage. once employed it runs for 10 to however many seconds before it needs to recycles. Or the energy consumption would be enough to limit other weapons use while it is on (like high energy weapons). It could also generate large amounts of heat just like it does in modern EW.


A look at the bigger picture of ECM in MWo could be to look at adding some level of team based EW control from the command chair. Based on what modules individual mechs are bringing into the fight, the commander could selectively employ the modules based on tactics and strategy or on how the battle is evolving. This would also have the added effect of broadening both your mech and pilot skill trees, and subsequently adding the need for a bit more strategic planning to the game. While I'm not 100% sure I also think that it would enforce players and commanders to have more situational awareness and adaptability of the battle as the battle-space evolves and or some of these "team assets" are taken out by mech destruction. They'd have to work with a potentially dwindling set of tools.

Either way you could make the ECM far more dynamic to the game play while at the same time also limiting the effect of having ECm being the end-all-be-all EW platform as it is now.

Most people don't realize it but most battlefield have a huge amount of EW occurring from both sides seeking to gain the upper hand. A lot of it occurs long before and well after the actual force engagement. You can't see it but the employment and strategy behind EW can be immense.

That would be my .02 based on my time in the EW community and my interest in having MWo not only succeed but for the community to thrive.

Edited by Bad Karma 308, 18 January 2013 - 10:57 AM.

[DocBach]

http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

[Bad Karma 308]

DocBach, on 18 January 2013 - 10:57 AM, said:

http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

I'm looking at actual EW employment and strategic thinking. Being part of Murphy and thereby prior military.... I'd assume that you'd have a little bit more understanding of actual warfare instead of just running back to TT. Which by the way, was written by people that knew very little about EW and it's general concepts.

Edited by Bad Karma 308, 18 January 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[DocBach]

The Iraqis really didn't seem to have a fun time when we spammed DUKE, CVRJ and Warlock everywhere we went. Maybe real life EW isn't as fun in a video game, but perhaps if you went through the thread you'd see that a lot of what you mentioned has been covered by the more advanced rule sets in the tabletop. Also, limiting ECM's ability to a system that's balanced it for the sake of balance and fun leaves abilities that other EW equipment like Beagle and NARC can fill.

Specifically the ECM should have three modes instead of the two that we have:

Disrupt, which fills the area with signal noise to disrupt electronics like Beagle and the such. However, for balance sake the missile defeat feature it has currently would be split off into something that both you and the table top rules covered, which I'll describe again below;

Counter, which does exactly what it does now, counters other ECM on a 1-for-1 basis;

Ghost Targets, generates false signals to confuse sensors. You might be locking on to and launching ordnance at sensor ghosts, or moving to contact against an enemy that isn't really at that location.

The three modes could only be used one at a time, so to use one of the three you'd sacrifice the other two features until you switched modes. Things like the Dazzler could be implemented into equipment like TAG or other lasers - if you get hit in the cockpit with a laser powerful enough to blow 'Mechs up, its probably doing a lot of damage to your eyes. Of course the game can say "all cockpit shields are polarized to protect the pilot from retinal damage from lasers."

Edited by DocBach, 18 January 2013 - 12:37 PM.

[Bad Karma 308]

Playing IED with the Iraqi's wasn't fun, I was part of the engineering team on two of the systems you mention plus a few others....... My squadron did all the original concept testing and further development of the IED sweepers. Once they could be proven effective we handed them off to the ground forces (EC-130Hs). We did most of the convoy and large area sweeps for several years. Sad part was that the Army took along time before they got around to acknowledging their effectiveness and began using the systems. USMC got behind the project almost as soon as they were briefed on it.

But as far as EW is concerned I'm talking more about running something akin to actual ALQ systems but adapted to MWo.

I understand that we have some overlapping thoughts on how it should work. But what I'm trying to get across is that 3 modes is far too simplistic. PGI can make it far more in depth and feature rich by expanding component options yet limiting the number of components used. You shouldn't be able to bring every aspect of EW in a single magic box to the game, regardless if you can only select one at a time. That way you get something far closer to an actual strategic yet tactical sense of EW.


As far as the dazzlers, it doesn't have to be high energy. Look up Canal Defense lights developed my Jasper Maskelyne during WII.

Edited by Bad Karma 308, 18 January 2013 - 01:53 PM.

[DocBach]

Well, thanks for your work on those systems. I had a couple of close calls that would have been direct hits had they been able to detonate when the initiators wanted them to. Murphy's Law also has an EC-130 pilot deployed to Afghanistan right now actually running jamming missions for some high-speed dudes.

" PGI can make it far more in depth and feature rich by expanding component options yet limiting the number of components used. You shouldn't be able to bring every aspect of EW in a single magic box to the game, regardless if you can only select one at a time. "

Instead of just the ECM getting all the play time, what if equipment like Beagle and Narc and the other stuff we never see taken get a piece of the pie as well? I also believe that the EMP effect will be given to the PPC as part of an effectiveness buff.

[Gremlich Johns]

Bad Karma 308, on 18 January 2013 - 09:53 AM, said:

I'm going to caveat this as I am a retired Electronic Warfare Officer for the USAF.

Finally, another voice with experience in the field!! PGI can bring this game and milieu out of the realm of tech fantasy if they would but ask for clarity.

I just do not like the idea of the ECM mech providing a cloak for the main force. They are affected too, and not in a positive way. Keep in mind the tech of BT. If the tech was based more on reality, then things would work differently.

AND I don't see any dazzlers on mechs. Ever.

Edited by Gremlich Johns, 18 January 2013 - 03:50 PM.

[Jale]

Bad Karma 308, on 18 January 2013 - 09:53 AM, said:

4.) False target Generators -gets the enemy to waste ammo like LRMs, but also can confound the enemy sorting between true and false targets.

Thats IFF jammer it wouldn't just affect LRMs.

Bad Karma 308, on 18 January 2013 - 09:53 AM, said:

6.) High energy blinding (think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_%28weapon%29)

That effect could be done by just overheating or overriding your mech and PPC´s special EMP effect if added in future. This is good idea too.

Bad Karma 308, on 18 January 2013 - 09:53 AM, said:

10.) Small area Electromagnetic pulse. Shut's down all mechs (even friendly) in a limited area forcing them to override and restart the mech's. This could be a great way to buy time for friendly forces to arrive and defend a crippled friendly.

You should add here that if you ( using this ability ) stepped out of that area which binds you to your enemy, effect would be denied for 20 sec from disruption or something

Edited by Jale, 18 January 2013 - 03:59 PM.