FFG 7 Radar not working

[madcap30]

hello all.
My big issue is, that the Radar onboard the FFG isnt worth ****. I was in a multiplayer game yesterday, and had my radars on, both Surface & Air + the remro link from the Chopper, and it couldnt pick anything up! :nope: the only contacts i got was from the Helo, this cant be right, in real life the frigate can detect targets at a great range. but this hulk of junk, couldnt. it couldnt even detect incomming harpoons, which are easily detectable. :down: Dont get me wrong i love the FFG, but something has to be done about the Radars, some might say curvature of the earth, well,surely a radar mounted on top of a 30ft mast will be able to see more than 10 nm at best. so i really hope they do something about this issue in the next patch, they dont have to make them super detectors, but give them some better detection ranges.

keep it real
Madcap

[LoBlo]

Whoever told you that sea-skimming missiles could be picked up at great range? Television? Hollywood and reality are too different things.

Amizaur found a good sight to demonstrate the height vs range limitations of a radar system. http://radarproblems.com/calculators/horizon.htm

[madcap30]

i know seaskimming missiles are not that easy to pick up, but in this game they are, thats not the issue. the issue is that the radar is worthless, it couldnt find a snowball in a blizzard. i just used the calculater you gave me, and if the target in 2 meters of the surface and the radar is at 15 meters which it is, then i should be picking things up at close to 10-12 nm, but thats not happening. id be better off just switching them off, and use a flashlight to find targets.

sorry for being negative, but this issue among other things bothers me greatly.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki II]

That's the maximum theoretical range. In reality, radar tends to do poorly in picking up tiny objects out of surface clutter even if they are over the horizon. It is IIRC said that the Sheffield picked up those Exocets mere seconds before they were due to hit.

I understand LWAMI 4 will be extending ranges some, in any case.

[LuftWolf]

Well, there's nothing helpful in this thread.

Other than "ffg radar suxors."

Thanks, that's really helpful. NOT

If you are going to talk about sensor performance you HAVE to give specific details about what you were trying to pick up and in what circumstances. 75% of the time, the player is simply ignorant, 15% of the time the player has found some kind of boarderline case in which there are arguments both ways, and in 10% of the time, the player finds a legitament problem.

In general, I find the FFG radar adequate. Unless of course you are facing a seaskimming supersonic missile... in which case, they are designed to defeat you and if you don't have an AEGIS vessel around, you've got some big problems. ;)

After doing this for 10 months, I wish this forum had a "useless whining without any helpful details whatsoever" filter, and I wouldn't have read this thread. :cool:

Anyone who wants to provide some details to backup their comments, is more than welcome.

Cheers,
David

[LuftWolf]

madcap, my suggestion to you is to use the mission editor to setup a test scenario with various contacts at various ranges and see what you find using the FFG radar.

Cheers,
David

PS When I was learning the game, I played about half the time switching back and forth between Show Truth and Hide Truth... I really don't know how people learn the game without spending some time directly relating sensor performance with events in game reality.

[LuftWolf]

madcap, after further review... I think your MP game probably had a case of "missile lag," if I can piece the situation together from what you've said.

If there is a lot going on, and someone fires a few missiles with a connection not so great, sometimes you can die and have much warning.

That kinds of sucks, but you can limit this by playing scenarios that are suited for the connection and number of players.

Cheers,
David

[Kurushio]

Does anyone know if I can get the FFG to drift in a turn using those little motors? You know...like in Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift? Been trying it for hours now :88)

[LuftWolf]

LOL no... :rotfl:

That get's my "Most Creative Thing to Test" Award. :up:

Just for the record, those motors are really tiny... and would probably be heavily damaged if streamed like that in turn on a real FFG.

Cheers,
David

[Mau]

Luftwolf,

Continue your OUTSTANDING work!!
We are really greatful to you.

I am an related a lot in the Above Water thing in my Navy, and I think the radar limits of the game are correct. The SPS-55 and the SPS-49 are not the greatest radar as well in Real life so...

But I detected couple of sea skimmer at 16-20 (subsonic) I am pretty sure like in real life.
I will do some more testing as well.

The only thing that would help is that the supersonic (most of them0 are high divers. i know you are adressing it in your new Mod in some way.

Thanks Thanks and thanks again Luftwolf!

Mau

[LoBlo]

I have to admit that I've had strange experiences with the FFG radar as well. Once during SubGuru's RSR mission, the radar was refusing the pick up a plane a 5000 ft @ 16nm.... though I detected his wingmen easily. For some reason, even though my allied ships had him on their radar and put him on the link, I myself was not able to detect that one particular plane though all the others were showing up loud and clear.

There maybe some bugs at work here no doubt.

[LuftWolf]

Ok, so are we talking about bugs or the FFG radar not being strong enough? :)

Or do you consider that a bug unto itself? ;)

LoBlo, that's interesting... I've never seen that myself, although I have run into an interesting issue that is very similiar. It seems that if a helo on the link (in LWAMI 3.xx) reports a weapon launch like a torpedo, AI ships, although detecting the weapon, will not report it or take action because the helo keeps dropping the contact! (I have this fixed for LWAMI4)

There are definately some issues with the link... definately. Be sure to always link ***MANUAL*** contacts only, NOT sensor contacts. If you link the sensor contact, it will usually come across to other players and the AI as corrupted. So, if you have a sensor contact, make a duplicate manual contact with the same id and classification (and its confidence at medium or high if you want the AI link participants to engage if they are able).

I've never heard about a link issue effecting ownship sensors... then again, the FFG radar has an automatic autocrew, so that could have something to do with it, which would make it a little different than other sensors.

Thanks, I'll let Jamie know about that if the link issue ever comes up between SCS and the Beta testers again (and we know it will :) ).

Cheers,
David

[Furia]

I have used the FFG radar extensively and I have to say it works properly.
It detects contacts in appropiate ranges but sometimes it takes time to do so.
What you really have on DW is not a radar screen operator, what you get on the Wapons Coordinator Station is the already procesed radar signal that have been collected and "analized" on the Radar Station (not existing in Dangerous Waters FFG)
Radar retourns are not showed up automatically on the screen, it takes time, first to radiate enough to collect energy retourns and then some computers analyze those information and discriminate from others non relevant so actually what you can see in your "radar screen" is "old information", maybe 5 or even 10 seconds old.
Radar here does not work as a temporary "show true" but it is modelled the way it works on warships at some extend.
I have realized that the radar picks up very well missiles that fly high or that when launched they made a high trajectory but on the other hand if the skimmer has been all the way low, you will pick it up on surface radar when it is almost too late.
If you suspect Vampires imbound, activate the CIWS to Auto.
One of the most dificult choices of a FFG driver is when to go ENCOM or not, sometimes your radar will give you away and will give you no information in exchange, other times it will help you to win the match.
Experience and a good intel on the threat will tell you when to use it or not. :arrgh!:

[LoBlo]

I'll have to play though the scenario that I experienced the bug on to see if it is reproduceable. If its not, then it was probably a isolated glitch.

[Wildcat]

The best way to avoid sea skimmers is to set Auto Countermeasures crew to ON, and immediately go to countermeasures station when you hear vampires inbound. Launch ALL your flares and chaff to the opposite side of your evasive turn and make sure CIWS is on full auto. Consider firing SM2's at incoming missiles if you have time, as well as the cannon. Make sure to set CIWS to auto if you fire sm2's or your ciws will blow up your outbound missiles, and helicopters.

[LuftWolf]

Don't bother loading flares, any ASM's that are IR guided can easily be handled by the CIWS.

Your main threat are the fast radarguided ASM's.

IR guided ASM's tend to be slow and small, so load all chaff, unless you know you are facing off against a specific threat that uses IR missiles.

[LoBlo]

So I just finished playing through the scenario "Caper Focus" and their are diffenantly some intermitant bugs with the surface radar. One of the bugs that I noticed was that the radar sometimes refuses to update, or even acknowledge a contact.

I had a large frieghter on surface search radar at about 30nm. After the initial updates the contact refused to update for about 40mins despite the fact that the freighter was closing on an intercept course getting closer and closer. Curious, I dropped the contact expecting the radar to reset and reestablist the track. However, despite the freighter closing to within 3nm of my FFG, the surface search radar never picked the contact up...

The same problem occured with the Air Search radar. There's an air corridor in the mission that sends planes through the scenario at regular intervals, at identical altitudes and course. Sometimes the Air radar picked them up and sometimes it didn't...

Both sensors were really unreliable... though I doubt that its actually the sensors themselves, but rather the "autocrew" (meaning the game logic that updates tracks) seems to be unreliable and contacts mishandled.

[LoBlo]

I've replayed the mission once more. This time the both radar tracking worked pretty well.... except when they failed to detect even one of the three ASM missiles that were fired at my ship...
"We've been hit!"
Wha!!!???
Something fishy afoot.

[LuftWolf]

If you are using LWAMI 3.xx, and you have a helo in the air, then it's most definately my fault.

Sorry.

I have this fixed for LWAMI4. I didn't realize the bugs with the helo were so big. :oops:

Cheers,
David

PS Please confirm which version of the game you are using and whether you had a helo in the air.

[LoBlo]

I was using one of the LW&A versions yes, the latest I think, with the modified helo behavior. I haven't tried the misison with the stock yet.

But at the time where my radar was failing me I had already recovered my helo and put it back into the hanger (to protect it from SAMs).

What's also curious about this particular scenario was that the helo, once put back into its housing, kept trying ready itself.... this probably is a completely unrelated bug, but was a curiousity nonetheless. I would assign the helo to Alert 30, but after a while is would reassign *itself* to alert status 15 and then 5. Once put back at 30, it did it again and automatically readied itself to Alert 5...:o ...

To tell the truth, I don't know what's going on with this engine...

[LuftWolf]

Ah good to know, thanks.

Then it probably is completely unrelated.

For those of who are interested, the way the helo drops contacts that it loses on sonar (this has to be done manually in the doctrine for aircraft otherwise they track their contacts forever using truth data...) also can interfer sometimes with target detection for other AI platforms if the helo is closer at the time of detection... it's actually pretty rare, but needs to be addressed for situations where a helo is passive over a submarine that fires. For some reason, there is doctrine input from other platforms since a detection is shared instantly by AI platforms sharing the link.

SO... I'm glad the situation wasn't related, most likely... thanks.

The only reason I thought it might be related is because the FFG radar is a bit different than other ownship sensors, which really are completely unrelated to doctrines, so I'm glad to see there isn't spill-over there, because it would be a major exception to the rule.

Cheers,
David

[LuftWolf]

Incidentially, were you using the TMA Autocrew on the FFG when you had the radar problems?