Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

Hi! - Great game! some newbie questions!

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
U

unmerged(475725)

Private
Apr 13, 2012
13
0
Hi

First, let me say... Superb strategy game. I'll be recommending this title to all my gamer friends!

Now... onto some newbie questions...

1 - On the panel in bottom right of screen that shows the information on the currently selected unit or group, there are two icons, (labelled as "Radar" and "Sonar" when I mouse over them) Sometimes these icons are grey, sometimes they are yellow, and sometimes they are red... what are they? what are they indicating? and should I be worried?! :D

2 - During the latest mission I tried, I was informed that that Russian subs were attempting to break out of the gap, and I had to intercept. Naturally I sent out several ASW fix wing aircraft from a nearby base, and also sent to fighters to cover them. Using the tips from a post elsewhere I vectored my high flying AWACS to provide active radar coverage on there location, whilst the sub hunters and their escort remained on passive sensors only to try to avoid detection. The entire air wing and its escorts were shot down by invisible enemy jets that I never even had a contact for, let alone had chance to intercept. It was only when i vectored my reserve interceptor wing to the area that an unknown air contact appeared at extreme close range. Did I do something wrong? How come my AWACS didn't detect them, even after they fired multiple times at my jets? (they were well inside the AWACS radar coverage zone)

3 - On detection / identification in general... I still don't thin I have this part of the game figured out.. I feel like its more down to luck that I am finding and destroying targets. I either have an AWACS in the area that can see everything, or my AWACS are blind no matter what I do and I am getting missile strikes from nowhere incoming with no chance to retaliate.

4 - Not sure if this is a bug... When selecting an unidentified contact... if i manually change it to "foe" the game updates the contact to an identified status. EG - i have an unknown air contact... if i select it, and change it to "foe" status... it changs to SU27. Is this normal?

5 - Is it normal for a single enemy sub to take in excess of 15 torpedoes to destroy it? I had to call in a second ASW as the first ran out of torps!
 
Last edited:
1. Green should mean no emissions (EMCON), yellow dubious and red means you are radiating (or in case of sonar, making noise).

2. You were attacked my stealth planes, which you will normally only detect at short range. In that mission it is important to go very silent.

3. A radiating AWACS at altitude can see very far, except stealth fighters which can get within range. You need to keep non-radiating fighters patrolling the area to protect it as well. Yes, it's the most difficult part of the game.

4. When a target is Identified it will always be set to Foe/enemy (if it is indeed an enemy). If you set it to Enemy manually, that should not force it to be identified. When identified, you can also see its unit class.

5. It can happen. A bit of bad luck, but it is on the high side.
 
Ah, of course, its the emission state of the selected unit! doh! that makes sense!

Darn those Russians and their stealth fighters! I thought I had my ASW planes covered by close support interceptors. Both groups were "silent" and it was the AWACS that was radiating the area. I guess they weren't silent enough! So... when dealing with enemy stealth assets... is it generally just a case of "hope for the best" ?

A follow on question on identification... Active sensors are better at pinpointing contacts, while passives are better at identifying (i understand the concept in game, even if that doesn't make very much sense to me in terms of real mechanics... is there a real reason for this?) With this in mind... if I get an unknown contact using AWACS active radar... am I supposed to then switch back to passive mode to identify the target? because when I do this, the contacts generally tend to simply disappear... Should I instead be sending passive sensor assets to the location to ID instead?

Man I love this game, I haven't been this enthusiastic about a military sim for a long time!!!
 
Passive means listening to the signals that the target is creating itself. For sonar it means you hear the sound from its engines, for radar it means the signals made by its radar and telecommunications equipment. That makes it feasible to know what the target is, since each unit has its own signature.

Active means you are making a signal (sound ping for sonar, radio-wave for radar) that bounces off the target and returns to your sensor. Sound waves bouncing back from a sub hull is unlikely to identify it. For radar, they get a more detailed picture and make out what it is, but only when the signal is good.

Hope this helps! Very glad you enjoy it :)
 
JanH said:
1. Green should mean no emissions (EMCON), yellow dubious and red means you are radiating (or in case of sonar, making noise).
Click to expand...

Wait I am confused. I thought green means that the radar/sonar is active. Doesn't it become "detectable" more easily when you use it? I thought grey means "its closed" so you can't detect unless the passive system catches smthng, yellow is some sort of middle ground and green means you activated it and you are also visible. Can you help me here?

And another nooby question: I can see planes got flares, I just haven't found how to use them.
 
Ah, all make sense now, thank you.

I also found out a few "parked" Midas tanker planes in my base in the first Russian mission, still I have no idea how to use those for refueling. I tried to right click my other fighter plane, but this doesn't seem the way to go.
 
JanH said:
Passive means listening to the signals that the target is creating itself. For sonar it means you hear the sound from its engines, for radar it means the signals made by its radar and telecommunications equipment. That makes it feasible to know what the target is, since each unit has its own signature.
Click to expand...

In the sonar tutorial you are listening for contacts using a sub but the contacts are appearing well outside the range shown for the passive towed array which is the longest range sonar the sub has. Why is this? Is the range circle only an indication (based on worst case) and in good conditions you can hear much further or is it a bug?
 
Nats said:
In the sonar tutorial you are listening for contacts using a sub but the contacts are appearing well outside the range shown for the passive towed array which is the longest range sonar the sub has. Why is this? Is the range circle only an indication (based on worst case) and in good conditions you can hear much further or is it a bug?
Click to expand...
Right.

The range is the reference range, not the max range. It means how far away you can expect to detect a quiet target. The units you are detecting in that mission are mostly large, noisy surface ships.
 
JanH said:
Oops. Sorry it's the opposite, thank you for correcting me, Yannos.

Yes, green means silent, red means you are emitting and should be careful :) More or less

It's been a long (but fun) week :)
Click to expand...

Uh, did you get it the wrong way round again? GREEN means radar is ON (emitting), RED means radar is OFF (not emitting).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back