Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread: C# Edition

[nuclearslurpee]

Decoys can be any size. A few, smaller decoys would give you more flexibility if want to lessen a strike rather than commit everything.

I think the confusing part is that there appears to be no reason, mechanically, to make decoy missiles that match the ship size, or in fact anything larger than the minimum decoy size. As far as I can tell, only the total mass/signature of decoys determines the fraction of missiles deflected, and cost scales linearly for both decoys and launchers.

Intuitively, I think players expect a decoy to "look like" the ship it's decoying from, i.e., to have the same signature. I can see why the actual mechanic is different, as its more flexible and less micromanage-y than requiring exact size matching (plus avoid issues with ship sizes that aren't nice, round numbers), but the fact that an infinite swarm of size-5 decoys is arguably optimal (same performance and cost as any other option, maximum flexibility) seems to eliminate what could/should be a gameplay decision point.

[Andrew]

One of the closest things to decoys used on modern ships is Chaff, which is a lot of very small things to confuse incoming missiles. So smaller decoys make a degree of sense. Aside from a small number of air launched drones I am not aware of any decoys which do try to match the signature of a real vehicle.

[Garfunkel]

Modern flares are mimicking the actual engine signature in wavelength, not just heat, to fool heat-seeking missiles as their homing heads have gotten increasingly sophisticated. And decoy drones, most of which specs are secret, are trying to mimic the sensor signatures of real planes or ships. Same with sonar and submarine-launched decoys.

[nuclearslurpee]

One of the closest things to decoys used on modern ships is Chaff, which is a lot of very small things to confuse incoming missiles. So smaller decoys make a degree of sense. Aside from a small number of air launched drones I am not aware of any decoys which do try to match the signature of a real vehicle.

Modern flares are mimicking the actual engine signature in wavelength, not just heat, to fool heat-seeking missiles as their homing heads have gotten increasingly sophisticated. And decoy drones, most of which specs are secret, are trying to mimic the sensor signatures of real planes or ships. Same with sonar and submarine-launched decoys.

Usually the real-world example I think of when I think of decoys is the AN/SLQ-25 Nixie (because all ECM components should have cute names!). However, even this doesn't try to exactly mimic the ship's "active signature", per se, but tries to draw off fire by mimicking ship noise or by reflecting the torpedo's pings back at it. Since missiles in Aurora usually home on the gravitational signature rather than noise, I think the former method is probably not applicable, but the idea of reflecting the active pings of the enemy sensors/MFCs to confuse incoming ordnance works fine, so if decoys do not have to (or cannot) match ship size I don't think it's a problem, even if it would be nice to support that for roleplay purposes.

One stills lacks a reason to use anything larger than the minimum size of decoys, however.

[serger]

One of the closest things to decoys used on modern ships is Chaff, which is a lot of very small things to confuse incoming missiles. So smaller decoys make a degree of sense. Aside from a small number of air launched drones I am not aware of any decoys which do try to match the signature of a real vehicle.

Not a Navy example, yet nearly half of the russian long range drones currently launching at Ukraine every day are Gerbera type, which are mostly decoys, mimiking the main long range strike drone type (Geran-2, the russian licensed copy of Iranian Shahed-136). Gerbera type radar signatures are artifically enlarged to match Geran-2.

[serger]

I'd suggest to make larger decoys significanty better, something like (size^2) factor for the probability of a missile hitting the decoy. The drawback is obvious, it would not be an unbalance the opposite way.