Update on MW Mod 6.0 development and poll! Thread - WIC: Modern Warfare Mod for World in Conflict

Update on MW Mod 6.0 development - week of June 8, 2020:

Update on ship:

- Ship (DDG-81) is now in the game as draft with all of its systems working and animated.

- Aegis Combat System module for AAW has been completed in game, and so far, only the RIM-162 ESSM has been integrated. The most particular challenge to the project was development of the SARH Scheduler (awsd/illuminator), which controls (and animates!) each SPG-62 illumination radar present on the ship. ESSM missiles use inertial navigation (with mid-course updates from ship CEC) and then homes in on illumination waveform directed by SPG-62 during terminal homing stage.

- We ran into a critical bug where presence of the ship caused the game to crash when people are playing over the network, due to a memory corruption caused by excessive number of shooters. After debugging and troubleshooting extensively, we identified the cause and fixed the issue by completely rewriting the way Mark41 VLS interacts with the game's Python ShooterBase module. This was particularly a difficult crash to reproduce and debug, and many thanks goes to Nukem for his valuable assistance in helping us debug the game.

What's next:

- Work continues on ESSM still. We're still working to improve the thrust vectoring control (TVC) maneuvering as the missile is leaving the Mk41 VLS, and we're working to improve the seeker acquisition function to enhance homing performance. Currently, beta testers have noted that the missile performance is worse than expected (sometimes it takes over a dozen shots to down a distant Su-27, even though it is within kinematics range of the missile).

- We will soon begin upgrading 3M55 Oniks/Yakhont supersonic cruise missile on REDFOR side to utilize the new FLINT 7 engine and enable anti-ship capability. This will require missile's launch maneuvering script to be completely rewritten from scratch, so not quite excited about the work that's ahead. New guidance algorithms and functions will be added to enable anti-ship attack capability for this cruise missile as well. When launched under anti-ship mode, the missile will travel in sea-skimming altitudes as it approaches the target, and will be able to lock on and home into the ship even when it is moving.

Beyond ESSM for the Aegis ship. We want your input!

So, our original plan was for the ship to have ESSM, SM-6 and SM-3 for air and missile defense roles. ESSM would provide close-in defense, SM-6 would provide map-wide area defense and sea-based terminal defense of short ranged ballistic missiles (SRBMs), allowing the ship to provide a more offensive air defense to compliment IBCS/Patriot network in the game. SM-3 would have minimum operating altitude at around 100km, which means it can only intercept MRBMs, which there aren't that many out there in the game today (only No Dongs).

The current discussion now is whether SM-3 development is even necessary and that it is way too overkill for a game world of limited size. SM-3 is a very complex missile to model, with 3 stages, exoatmospheric kill vehicle (EKV) deployment and TDACS modeling for divert acceleration. All of this makes it a huge package and a development hell.

An alternative suggestion is that we drop the SM-3 plan, and instead, plan on adding THAAD into the game, which can provide upper-tier protection against MRBMs in both naval and non-naval maps, making the unit way more useful across a wide variety of maps. With this plan, we would replace SM-3 with SM-2 Block IIIA, to compliment the SM-6. Poll is included with this post, let us know what you think!

Community Beta Test:

Lastly, to play the current community beta test build and provide input, join the Massgate.org Discord channel: Discordapp.com

We hope that you guys are staying safe and are enjoying MW Mod and World in Conflict online at Massgate.org. Adding complex systems like Aegis destroyer, counter-battery radar and missiles intercepting missiles have been long held dream amongst earliest modders of WiC since 2008; and in many ways, it is crazy to think that all of these have now become possible.

Edited by: blahdy