Will there be cruise missiles in the game?

[HuberK 1]

I´ve seen one in a preview video of CCGM...

How many will you be able to fire (per minute/hour)?

What about the cruising range?

Thank you very much!

[maddogx 13]

There is something called a Hammerhead missile in the game, which seems to be the only thing that fits the description of "cruise missile". As far as I am aware the specs are currently unknown, and the missilie is not available in the P&C beta for testing.

[Gazzareth 1]

According to the data in the game the Hammerhead has a 8 Kiloton Nuclear warhead and automatically targets the island Command Centre.

Just a personal preference, but I would rather see it able to destroy everything in an individual "base" but NOT the Command Centre - which is too heavily armoured - and make them damn expensive .. .. ..

G

[HuberK 1]

Thank you for the info. I think it would be great to choose the target by your own and they should be destroyable by AA-weapons - this would give you a lot strategic possibilities

[TaktiX 1]

From memory, in the original CC, the Hammerhead was a Surface to Surface Missile (SSM) with a sub-nuclear warhead (cold war politics much?). You would fire up a probe of sorts, which would relay TV data back to you so you could select a target and fire a HH at it. It had a limited range, in that you could only fire at things that you could see in the scope of the TV image. The "probe" would fire up and arc to the rear of the Carrier (much like a flare), giving you a look down view which lasted around 20 seconds. Once you selected a target using a cross-hair, the HH would fire (again, only to the rear of the Carrier) and hit the designated target. No in-flight target modification, however, you could fire several HH's in the time the probe was active. There was a reload time for the HH, but you could get 3-4 off before the probe expired.

The probe launcher and the HH launcher were sub-systems on the carrier that were susceptible to damage from enemy fire.

Similarly, there was a SSM that you could have as part of a load-out package on the WALRUS called the Harbinger (I used to call it the Harm Bringer...'cos I was illiterate). This missile could be guided after launch, whereby a PiP window would open up and you could "fly" the missile, lasting around 20 seconds. In fact, you could do a complete 360 and hit your own WALRUS (or unsuspecting men up the rear-admiral, if the CC:GM video is anything to go by).

Many have said it before, and I'll say it again now; this game was way, way, way ahead of it's time when it was originally released in 1988 on 48KB and 64KB RAM home computers.

Edited April 16, 2012 by TaktiX

[maturin 12]

Cruise missiles? Really?

A cruise missile is just a scripted explosion at a grid reference, because there is no way you are going to be launching cruise missiles from one end of tiny Lemnos to another.

[TaktiX 1]

Cruise missiles? Really?

A cruise missile is just a scripted explosion at a grid reference, because there is no way you are going to be launching cruise missiles from one end of tiny Lemnos to another.

I was thinking along similar lines maturin. What's the point in having a "point and click" kind of battle/war...where's the skill?

But there is some validity to having Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM) or Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) weapon types in the game. You could have a very long reload time, and/or high manufacture time/cost so they wouldn't be used like candy, and use these missiles from a distant, stand-off location to take out a "tough nut" target. You could also have them show up on ship or land based radar, and make your SAM or AAA able to target them to potentially shoot them down. This adds another layer of tactics in their use, in that you would stand a better chance of success if you recon the target before you find the best way/route to attack it with SLCM/TLAMs.

IMO you're wrong about a "scripted explosion at a grid reference" however. Even though real life missiles use GPS and Digital Scene Matching and Area Correlation (DSMAC) to find their targets, during Gulf War 1, a few Tomahawks were shot down enroute to their target, and this could also be the case in CC:GM.

[Mr. Charles 22]

Cruise missiles? Really?

A cruise missile is just a scripted explosion at a grid reference, because there is no way you are going to be launching cruise missiles from one end of tiny Lemnos to another.

This is Taurus, not Lemnos...

[maturin 12]

This is Taurus, not Lemnos...

Oh, lol. I clicked on this topic from the New Posts page and thought it was about ArmA 3.

[TaktiX 1]

...I think the word we're all looking for is "Whooops!" lol

[nww02 1]

Taking out the enemy carrier by 'backing up to it' and using tomahawks was my favourite 'win' tactic from the original :-) Being able to launch a limited-range subnuclear warhead from island-to-island would be great, so long as you can be actively involved with it...

e.g. You have to successfully land a manta with a 'homing pod' on the enemy island

or You have to have a walrus laser-designate the spot for the missile

or A walrus dispatches a 'squad' of marines who can infiltrate and use the walrus' long range comms pod to relay targetting back to the island...

or The carrier has to be in range of the island.

etc etc.

The interesting thing is that if the cruise missiles have a limited range, then you can use them to crack particularly hard nuts by making an island into a temporary bridgehead, but you cannot then sit a silo back on your stockpile island and rain destruction anywhere (a-la nuclear weps in Command&Conquer games).

[Malligant 1]

e.g. You have to successfully land a manta with a 'homing pod' on the enemy island

or You have to have a walrus laser-designate the spot for the missile

or A walrus dispatches a 'squad' of marines who can infiltrate and use the walrus' long range comms pod to relay targetting back to the island...

or The carrier has to be in range of the island.

etc etc.

How about getting a 30 second warning before the missile reaches its target area, then you guide it in manually? dodging AA and other delights as you do?.. its what i used th Comms pod manta for in the original game, and was highly enjoyable.

[nww02 1]

How about getting a 30 second warning before the missile reaches its target area, then you guide it in manually? dodging AA and other delights as you do?.. its what i used th Comms pod manta for in the original game, and was highly enjoyable.

Yeah, that'd be great! I'd just have a manta 'holding'. Once you see the cruise missile enter range, you could select it and tell the manta to 'defend' and let the AI sort it out, or try and do a little damage yourself :-)

For BVR, the chance to hit the command center could based on the distance from the island it was launched from, whether there's any friendly unit nearby, and increase the chance to hit if that unit is 'lasing' the target, perhaps using a secondary weapon which could be an ultra-low-power targeting laser.

Impact distance from chosen target = 0m if friendly is 'lasing' target i.e. happens to have a targeting pod;

RAND()%(distance of nearest friendly / 10m) if a friendly is nearby; (e.g. a walrus parked 1Km out to sea, will give a 100m hit radius).

otherwise RAND()%(100m+distance_between_islands/10m); (e.g. 10km = 100m+1000m = 1.1Km);

all these multiplied by a 'fuzz factor' if there's a jammer about :)

Perhaps you could even choose what kind of warheads to use? Incendiary (wide-effect, but low damage), high explosive (narrow effect, high damage) or armour piercing (pinpoint effect, but extreme damage - near to useless without a lased target). Maybe even 'cluster' bombs, or a well-timed EMP pulse to cover your Walrus's hack run :-)

In this way you could have two islands knocking lumps out of each other with a mix of incendiary and HE, but not necessarily doing a heck of a lot of damage, just softening the target for you, while you're off attacking or rearming elsewhere. Then you could shift the missile type to armour piercing, and then guide it in with a manta, as you suggested, doing huge damage to the CC, or alternatively dropping an EMP which stuns the island's defences long enough to get a walrus up the beach and hack something? :-)