Workaround for link promotion bug?

[Sleepdoc]

Hi Gents. I'm verynew to the game (about one week) and have only played about 8 cooperative multiplyer games so far with my buddy. I am personally only up to about page 135 in the manual and I have only played coop games using the helicopter as a my platform.

After my buddy and I had beaten our heads against a wall for the last 3 nights concerning the promotion of links from the FFG to the Helicopter, we come to learn that the failed link promotion is a known bug (arrgg).

Just to be clear, when my buddy (who commands the FFG) promotes a contact to me via the link, it shows up on my map mode with the wrong contact number (it always shows up as contact 1000 ... the FFG is always contact 1001 in these scenarios). The info contained in the contact is completely missing except for the bearing. even active contacts are devoid of any info except for bearing.

Is there a work around for this bug (other than posting manual contacts each time a contact is promotoed by the FFG to the link?)

Thanks in advance,

Sleepdoc

[Molon Labe]

Hi Gents. I'm verynew to the game (about one week) and have only played about 8 cooperative multiplyer games so far with my buddy. I am personally only up to about page 135 in the manual and I have only played coop games using the helicopter as a my platform.

After my buddy and I had beaten our heads against a wall for the last 3 nights concerning the promotion of links from the FFG to the Helicopter, we come to learn that the failed link promotion is a known bug (arrgg).

Just to be clear, when my buddy (who commands the FFG) promotes a contact to me via the link, it shows up on my map mode with the wrong contact number (it always shows up as contact 1000 ... the FFG is always contact 1001 in these scenarios). The info contained in the contact is completely missing except for the bearing. even active contacts are devoid of any info except for bearing.

Is there a work around for this bug (other than posting manual contacts each time a contact is promotoed by the FFG to the link?)

Thanks in advance,

Sleepdoc
This sounds new to me, although I have to admit that it's rare for me to fly the helo around when there's a human back in my FFG. So, I might be wrong, but I have a guess... I think that this is occuring because a solution has not been entered for the contacts. Even an active sonar contact might not have an associated solution if nothing has been done with it at TMA, so that it's happening with active sonar contacts is not dispositive.

[Sleepdoc]

hmmm. Interesting answer, however a guy named Mahuja from these forums told me in an x-fire chat today that it was a known bug.

But your answer still deserves a question in return...

Why would an active contact (known range and bearing at a moment in time) require a TMA solution in order to promote the known contact info onto my link?

[fatty]

Why would an active contact (known range and bearing at a moment in time) require a TMA solution

Because it's precisely that: a snapshot of a moment in time. In order to extrapolate things like a target's course and speed, you need to gather and compare data from your sensors over a period of time. This is what TMA is for.

Since active sonar is only presenting you with a picture of the contact at one single moment (rather than OVER TIME as passive sonar would) your FFG friend will not be able to tell which way the contact is heading or how fast it's going. He can just say "oh, there's a contact 15 degrees to my starboard, five hundred yards away." In order to get the info you're looking for, he must make multiple active pings and compare the contact's location after each one.

I believe there is a known bug where an FFG's active sonar will not carry over the data to the TMA station. If you ping a contact in another platform a few times I think the TMA plot will automatically be updated with each bit of info obtained from the active station, but maybe I am wrong about that.

[kage]

This problem isn't exclusive to any platform, that I've noticed. On the other hand, I have seen the problem 'move' to another person when the only thing that changed was who was hosting.

Once, I received the 1000 links (always unknown/unknown with accompanying bearing lines) while he got proper links. Then we switched who was hosting, and the other person received them. And I think that was all that changed.


Even if it was a matter of no solution data (how would you add that in the airbornes anyway?) it shouldn't be giving '1000' for a contact ID.

[SeaQueen]

You could just have him tell you the range and mark that point.

[LuftWolf]

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS

Promote ONLY ***Manual*** contacts to the link, for both AI and human allies.

So, what you do, is create a new contact using the manual contact feature on the nav map directly over or pretty near to the track/solution/contact you want to promote to the link, classify and ID it correctly, (enter a solution if you wish), and then promote it to the link.

This is the only way to ensure that the link contact is promoted correctly.

Incidentially, you can use the manual promotion feature to promote low confidence unidentified targets to the link and classify them as submarines, and friendly helos and A/C's and other subhunters will often go to investigate the area (assuming they are not busy doing something else and you are using LWAMI). This is very handy for handing off faint tracks to friendly assets if you have something more pressing or of higher confidence to focus on.

Cheers,
David