About Chaff/Flare Effectiveness Thread - Vector Thrust

How effective are they actually? 100% chance of spoofing missiles upon deployment (like YSFlight/HAWX/ACAH?, plz no), or semi-realistic where higher-grade missile requires more amount of dumped chaff/flare + hard break for a successful evasion, plus ability to 'redirect' back at you as a result of chaff/flare failure chance? But since the screenshots implies a plane can load up to 80-100 chaffs/flares at a time, I always thought of the latter.

Edited by: Nergal01

Currently I've only used flares to dodge STMs, because the AI doesn't like to use SPWEP in Skirmish Mode- those missiles you can almost always easily dodge without flares so their use is unsubstantial. QAAM, I dunno.

Is there a way to know what kind of missile is locked onto you? Sure you could look down at the radar but I doubt anyone's going to do that when things get really hectic.

As of my update, no. I have the GDC build on my computer but it appears that there's been an error in my issue because I can't start the game ):<

@ bornloser because of that there is a button that releases flares and chaffs at the same time.
but that is actually easy, if the missile was fired at long range it is probably a Radar guided, if it is close it is most likely a IR.

@ Nergal01 it is the latter. the missiles have their own soft kill HP, more modern missiles usually have higher HP, flares or chaff damage that HP when deployed, and jammers continuously drain the HP of all surrounding enemy missiles.

Also another detail, flares usually are more effective when the missile is already close and almost ineffective at long range.

Also for heatseakers, if the aircraft they are pursuing have afterburners on, they will recover their soft kill HP very quickly.

another point, if the projectile doesn't have configured theses values it means it is completely immune to countermeasures.

At this point I feel it need some message like "miss", "hit" or "destroyed" to appear when you deflect a lock. but I still not know what message to display.

This is probably a good material for a news post, but I think that the system need more tuning and balancing, so I will only post a news about this mechanic when I feel that is completely solid

timeSymmetry wrote:
At this point I feel it need some message like "miss", "hit" or "destroyed" to appear when you deflect a lock. but I still not know what message to display.

I think the alarm stopping does enough to tell me that the missile is no longer in pursuit. FreeSpace shows an EVADED message when countermeasures break lock, but I'm used to hearing constant chirps in both FreeSpace and Fighters Anthology that I know when I'm in immediate danger.

TimeSymmetry wrote: At this point I feel it need some message like "miss", "hit" or "destroyed" to appear when you deflect a lock. but I still not know what message to display.

"trashed"

Nergal01 wrote: How effective are they actually? 100% chance of spoofing missiles upon deployment (like YSFlight/HAWX/ACAH?, plz no), or semi-realistic where higher-grade missile requires more amount of dumped chaff/flare + hard break for a successful evasion, plus ability to 'redirect' back at you as a result of chaff/flare failure chance? But since the screenshots implies a plane can load up to 80-100 chaffs/flares at a time, I always thought of the latter.

timeSymmetry wrote: @ bornloser because of that there is a button that releases flares and chaffs at the same time.
but that is actually easy, if the missile was fired at long range it is probably a Radar guided, if it is close it is most likely a IR.

@ Nergal01 it is the latter. the missiles have their own soft kill HP, more modern missiles usually have higher HP, flares or chaff damage that HP when deployed, and jammers continuously drain the HP of all surrounding enemy missiles.

Also another detail, flares usually are more effective when the missile is already close and almost ineffective at long range.

Also for heatseakers, if the aircraft they are pursuing have afterburners on, they will recover their soft kill HP very quickly.

another point, if the projectile doesn't have configured theses values it means it is completely immune to countermeasures.

At this point I feel it need some message like "miss", "hit" or "destroyed" to appear when you deflect a lock. but I still not know what message to display.

This is probably a good material for a news post, but I think that the system need more tuning and balancing, so I will only post a news about this mechanic when I feel that is completely solid

The way most movies/shows/games display flares is pretty inaccurate, and I can't quite see TS' implementation being as accurate as the game could be - yeah, yeah, I know how you guys feel about realism, but, just bear with me for a moment:

The missile is tracking the plane about to deploy counter measures; at this point, regardless of whether or not flares or chaff being used, the results will be about the same when they're deployed: unless it's shot from a poor angle, it will not achieve a hit. The best example of a poor angle would be a SAM firing at a target which is flying perpendicular to it.

Suppose, however, the missile is shot from the air by something which is chasing the target from their approximate 6 o'clock (i.e., a good angle). The missile is fired, the target does not take any evasive action, yet deploys their flares and chaff: the missile might be slightly affected by the presence of the counter-measures, but not enough to try and chase one of the counter-measures: your target is still shot by the missile. Ace Combat/HAWX style of using your counter-measures to allow you to keep traveling in a straight line from being shot at from your six is... Pretty inauthentic.

Chaff appears to be less effective than flares in my experience with sims; generally when it appears effective to me is when the enemy's missile was likely to be a miss already, and the difference between an engine in afterburner and and engine not in afterburner isn't so drastic considering the seeker is searching for the contrast.

'Missile Defeated' is about the best way to say that; but, there's not going to be any part of the flight systems of a modern aircraft that can tell you that information. Indeed, IR seeker heads won't even provide a lock-on warning.

Boogie_Van wrote: your target is still shot by the missile. Ace Combat/HAWX style of using your counter-measures to allow you to keep traveling in a straight line from being shot at from your six is... Pretty inauthentic.

So how do large bombers and transports evade missiles?

Boogie_Van wrote:
The missile is tracking the plane about to deploy counter measures; at this point, regardless of whether or not flares or chaff being used, the results will be about the same when they're deployed: unless it's shot from a poor angle, it will not achieve a hit. The best example of a poor angle would be a SAM firing at a target which is flying perpendicular to it.

Suppose, however, the missile is shot from the air by something which is chasing the target from their approximate 6 o'clock (i.e., a good angle). The missile is fired, the target does not take any evasive action, yet deploys their flares and chaff: the missile might be slightly affected by the presence of the counter-measures, but not enough to try and chase one of the counter-measures: your target is still shot by the missile. Ace Combat/HAWX style of using your counter-measures to allow you to keep traveling in a straight line from being shot at from your six is... Pretty inauthentic.

Chaff appears to be less effective than flares in my experience with sims; generally when it appears effective to me is when the enemy's missile was likely to be a miss already, and the difference between an engine in afterburner and and engine not in afterburner isn't so drastic considering the seeker is searching for the contrast.

'Missile Defeated' is about the best way to say that; but, there's not going to be any part of the flight systems of a modern aircraft that can tell you that information. Indeed, IR seeker heads won't even provide a lock-on warning.

My experience with Jane's USAF says that as long as you can get away from the chaff/flare string quick enough (while keep constantly churning out chaff/flares like crazy), even if you're flying straight (assuming the missile wasn't launched directly ahead of you, otherwise might want to gain altitude a bit) you're basically safe from an incoming missile but that's a simcade we're talking about.

your target is still shot by the missile. Ace Combat/HAWX style of using your counter-measures to allow you to keep traveling in a straight line from being shot at from your six is... Pretty inauthentic.

But in ACAH/HAWX you usually only have less than 10 countermeasure uses thus logically a single deployment of countermeasure means insta-miss, so that's the difference.

Edited by: Nergal01