45 replies to this topic

[LordDeathStrike]

logistically at least, the right way is to tie in IFF to radar, if you go radar passive and null, you should not have any indicator of whether or not the mech under your reticle is friend or foe.

this ties in with my previous topic about friendly fire being on, and those who inflict damage on friendly mechs paying the repair bills (forced non optional automatically deducted from your account even if you dont have enough, you go negative and have no money until youve paid your debts off).

going radar passive in a close combat situation would be very bad for your team if you arent carefull as you would be shooting them potentially, which would also cost you dearly in terms of cbills and team losing the match potentially.

not to say you cant use passive too sneak around, but take MWLL for instance.

in said mod, you go passive, everyones passive unless they have lock on missiles, but those mechs dont get used alot because passive guass rifle and uac 2 boats and long toms are all that get used. they have IFF on even if radar is off, and every mech has zoom without having to install it as a module like mwo is doing.

hence the proper balance to fix such abuses, is to have IFF tied into radar, no active radar no IFF, friendly fire on, shooters pay for repairs mandatory, perfect!

[ResidentCrow]

I think tying IFF to radar would add more to the new 'information warfare' theme they are going for in mwo.

[Giftmacher]

Not a bad idea. Personally, at a minimum, I think active radar should make you easier to detect from further away, and passive should take a lot longer to provide a missile lock (if at all).

Edited by Giftmacher, 11 April 2012 - 11:40 AM.

[MaddMaxx]

Although no word on it yet, one assumes that with Radar Off there is no ability to lock Missiles either. Often close combat requires radar off to hamper enemies with Streaks from locking, where as LRM's have a min range element already.

I like the IFF and Radar linkage, still not a fan of "non-opt-out-able" FF damage payments though. A proper and heartfelt Sorry! works for me and my guys/gals.

[HereticTLL]

I hate the cheapness of the Passive/Active mechanisms used in MW4 and MWLL aka the "Press R and Win" mechanic...it's poor gameplay and should be re-worked completely, rather than rehashed from MW4.

On the tabletop, if you could see a 'mech then you got sensor information about that machine, where it was, what it was etc. Chameleon Shield (Stealth Armour) was developed later in the time-line to hide you from sight, and Null-Sig was invented to hide you from sensors; both of these pieces of tech require space and tonnage on the 'mech and while they impart big benefits they come with sacrifices attached.

Press-R-and-Win is available for everyone free of charge and works purely on range (which is why you get stupid things like detecting 'mechs through buildings and mountains in MW4, or not being able to target an Atlas standing on a hill-top 501m away....)...result: both MW4 and MWLL are obsessed with people thinking that they are ninjas running around and negating any realistic EW model that could be implemented.

If you are running passive then missile lock should be faster (as you are not jamming the opponents locking-on abilities) and ALL the missiles should hit in a salvo (they're not fighting their way through your EW emissions), you're targeting computer should still be able to recognise the Thor standing in front of you from silhouette and MagRes. Running active could make it easier for the enemy to see you through objects than passive...there's a 1001 ways of implementing an EW model without resorting to MW4s arcade style boring gameplay (yes, passive Ninjas are very boring gameplay).

Quite apart from the fact that Mechwarriors are Samurai or Knights and not Ninjas, LoS detection leads to strategy (approach via the river bed....get that scout on the hill-tops etc.)...Press-R-and-Win makes strategy less viable (why go all the way around to flank when I can just run right up to within short-range while running passive?); 'mech warfare is battleships, not submarines (that's what Chameleon and NullSig are for).

I'm all for strategy, so I really hope MW:O offers us more EW than the old worn-out Press-R-and-Win model..

[AlanEsh]

LordDeathStrike, on 11 April 2012 - 03:25 AM, said:

logistically at least, the right way is to tie in IFF to radar, if you go radar passive and null, you should not have any indicator of whether or not the mech under your reticle is friend or foe.

I disagree with this. YOUR mech should be the one with no IFF signal if you are running silent. You are now the "unknown" target for both teams. If you are in range of a mech who is running active radar, then you will see his IFF, because he is transmitting it.

Passive sensors should be severely nerfed so you have a hard time getting details on targets around you. You shouldn't see a dot on your sensor display, you should see a line indicating the direction from which you detected a target, just a straight line. You won't know how far away the target is with any accuracy, unless you have good seismic or magnetic sensors or whatnot.

Active sensors should be STRONG. If you're pinging around looking for 10 meter tall metal objects, you should be able to find them relatively easily, whether they are radiating or not. Do today's fighter jets rely on their targets' radar to find them? Generally not, they ether radiate with powerful forward arc radar, or they let and AWACS or similar bird do the active scanning for them. Targets are detected at long range and intercept is vectored.

Also consider how ECM comes in to play, making it harder to get a detailed picture of the scrambling mech's location, range, etc. And maybe even masking nearby friends' a bit as well.

Aaaand then there's ECCM to burn through the ECM ...

My point is, this can be a very intricate and fun part of the game, as long as it isn't neutered from the start. Develop this facet of the game to mirror reality, and see where it takes the game, I say.

[Kenyon Burguess]

i def dont want to deal with friendly fire its a griefing tool. also, going silent needs to be addressed for the commanders. traditionally if your set to passive your also not sending signals out to command. this would be incredibaly counter productive to the whole "working as a team" part of MWO as he wouldnt know where you are and couldnt talk to you.

[Leetskeet]

I don't care what they do as long as they make Passive Radar detrimental enough that you use it for a specific purpose, i.e. attempting to flank with the rest of your lance, but run the very high possibility of missing your target or being ambushed yourself. It needs to leave you blind, deaf, and dumb to the point that you're only using it if you have a damn good reason to.

Otherwise you end up like MWLL where everyone runs passive because there's no reason to run active if you don't have an ECM. Active Radar gets you spotted it and stomped by 5 people, passive radar lets you sit back and snipe undetected. Which ends up being camp fests on nearly every map where people sit there and snipe back and forth with missles and gauss.

[William Petersen]

Geist Null, on 11 April 2012 - 07:57 AM, said:

i def dont want to deal with friendly fire its a griefing tool. also, going silent needs to be addressed for the commanders. traditionally if your set to passive your also not sending signals out to command. this would be incredibaly counter productive to the whole "working as a team" part of MWO as he wouldnt know where you are and couldnt talk to you.

Friendly fire is turned on in World of Tanks and I don't find it a problem. I've done about 700 battles (this is offered as a sample size only) so far, and have had ~1% of them where intentional friendly fire was an issue. With the proper penalties applied, it's easy to harshly cut down the amount of grief-via friendly fire.

[Tekkiller]

LordDeathStrike, on 11 April 2012 - 03:25 AM, said:

logistically at least, the right way is to tie in IFF to radar, if you go radar passive and null, you should not have any indicator of whether or not the mech under your reticle is friend or foe.

this ties in with my previous topic about friendly fire being on, and those who inflict damage on friendly mechs paying the repair bills (forced non optional automatically deducted from your account even if you dont have enough, you go negative and have no money until youve paid your debts off).

going radar passive in a close combat situation would be very bad for your team if you arent carefull as you would be shooting them potentially, which would also cost you dearly in terms of cbills and team losing the match potentially.

not to say you cant use passive too sneak around, but take MWLL for instance.

in said mod, you go passive, everyones passive unless they have lock on missiles, but those mechs dont get used alot because passive guass rifle and uac 2 boats and long toms are all that get used. they have IFF on even if radar is off, and every mech has zoom without having to install it as a module like mwo is doing.

hence the proper balance to fix such abuses, is to have IFF tied into radar, no active radar no IFF, friendly fire on, shooters pay for repairs mandatory, perfect!

I like.

+1

[Virgil Caine]

Ideally you want to use Active Radar as little as possible, and you shouldn't need to use it to spot allies in any event, you should know where they are, because you've trained with them enough to know what to do beside them. You'll find that in more advanced military circles, less communication is necessary, because team integration training is very high. You don't need to communicate a lot of things, because you learn what your team members are already going to do... They've done it 100 times before...

Really, when your unit deploys for combat, you should already know where they are going and what they are doing. Shouldn't need to see them on your radar, you should just be covering the field of fire that you are supposed to be covering. If you're doing that there's little danger of friendly fire. Further, GPS positional information for friendlies would be communicated via coded comlink, not based on picking them up on your radar. Like, my GPS cellphone telling your GPS cellphone where I am. You'd know they were there because your comlink connection TELLS you they are there.

[$imon Osis]

Leetskeet, on 11 April 2012 - 07:58 AM, said:

I don't care what they do as long as they make Passive Radar detrimental enough that you use it for a specific purpose, i.e. attempting to flank with the rest of your lance, but run the very high possibility of missing your target or being ambushed yourself. It needs to leave you blind, deaf, and dumb to the point that you're only using it if you have a damn good reason to.

Otherwise you end up like MWLL where everyone runs passive because there's no reason to run active if you don't have an ECM. Active Radar gets you spotted it and stomped by 5 people, passive radar lets you sit back and snipe undetected. Which ends up being camp fests on nearly every map where people sit there and snipe back and forth with missles and gauss.

anyone who dislikes FF is a rookie, it takes skill an being awear of your suroundings to be hard core enuff to play with FF

[Famous]

I like your idea of removing IFF when going passive since it is a transmission, but I'm not sure it will be as much of a detriment as you're thinking. Going passive at close ranges provides very little benefit since even passive sensors would detect your 'Mech's movement and firing.

This is relying on passive sensors working like they should, picking up seismic vibration of a 'Mech's movement, the report from a weapon being fired, heat generation and the like. The bigger the 'Mech or weapon the further it should register on passive sensors

[Gigaton]

Going passive should only shield you from other people who are going passive, barring specialist gear (modules or traditionally mounted).

In short: "Hurr durr lance commander, no enemy sensor emissions detected. There is a reading of moving high power fusion reactor and an 8 meter tall radar blip, and the thermal camera shows what seems awfully lot like a giant running humanoid. No enemies detected, durr!"

If you want to be invisible to sensors without specialist gear, go into forest or similar place with hard cover, and shut down your reactor and active sensors. Mind you, a semi shut down state where you still keep passive sensors on with battery power would be cool (and powered up 'mechs could go passive themselves to avoid detection from powered down ambushers, but that would be the only real useage for passives).

Null signature system should perhaps enable more MW:4 style use for passive sensors. The dev blog describes it differently, but I don't really like that representation. If null sig enables MW:4 style passives, then there should still be a boot up period for active sensors to prevent players from quickly flipping them on and then off. Lets say actives need to be enabled for 10 seconds before you start getting any readings.

Edited by Gigaton, 11 April 2012 - 11:56 AM.

[Johannes Falkner]

When you talk about passive sensors you need to think through what sensors are available in the MW universe.

Radar:
Going passive turns off your active emissions. You should still be able to detect the emissions of mechs with active radar. I would only allow passive radar to identify the radar type in use by mechs using passive mode. So you know that an AWS-T6 Radar is in use, but not whether that radar is mounted on a Jagermech or an Atlas.

IR:
Thermal sensing is passive already. No impact.

Active IR:
Active IR uses an illuminator to guarantee sufficient illumination. The illuminator is basically a floodlight and would be visible as an active emission.

Magscan:
Another passive detection technology.

Seismic:
Passive already.

Your battle computer should be able to identify mechs at a reduced accuracy as more sensor data is collated. If I have a 14m tall mech with a certain IR signature, a given magscan reading and a seismic profile, I should be able to say it is an Atlas, though I would probably still be in the dark about which variant. It would be an interesting variation to add EM wash to gauss rifles and fire control radar to missiles, etc. that could be identified passively for information warfare purposes.

[Leetskeet]

Simon Osis, on 11 April 2012 - 11:01 AM, said:

anyone who dislikes FF is a rookie, it takes skill an being awear of your suroundings to be hard core enuff to play with FF

What the hell are you talking about? Did you quote the wrong post?

[Alizabeth Aijou]

Heheheh, I am soo going to hope they'll add some Solaris 7 arenas, particularly Ishiyama.
By the time you know where I am it'll be too late.

[AlanEsh]

Leetskeet, on 11 April 2012 - 11:40 AM, said:

Simon Osis, on 11 April 2012 - 11:01 AM, said:

anyone who dislikes FF is a rookie, it takes skill an being awear of your suroundings to be hard core enuff to play with FF

What the hell are you talking about? Did you quote the wrong post?

I think he confused FF (Focus Fire?) with IFF (ID Friend Foe).

[Nexus Trimean]

Angelicon, on 12 April 2012 - 06:50 AM, said:

I think he confused FF (Focus Fire?) with IFF (ID Friend Foe).

I believe he actually mean Friendly Fire.

Passive radar should give you a direction only, and after 10-15 seconds a Relative speed and direction as it gets multiple pings from various locations. as it picks up the same radar signature from different locatons. It should not give you distance, it should not give you size. There is no way to deduce those things from passive sensors. I'd imagine a clever mechwarrior will vary the output strength and frequency of his radar systems from battle to battle as to not leave a identfier for next time. not every atlas will be using radar on the 31.4735MHZ band, at .257 Megawatts.

Edited by Nexus Trimean, 12 April 2012 - 09:23 AM.

[Famous]

Nexus Trimean, on 12 April 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

I believe he actually mean Friendly Fire.

Passive radar should give you a direction only, and after 10-15 seconds a Relative speed and direction as it gets multiple pings from various locations. as it picks up the same radar signature from different locatons. It should not give you distance, it should not give you size. There is no way to deduce those things from passive sensors. I'd imagine a clever mechwarrior will vary the output strength and frequency of his radar systems from battle to battle as to not leave a identfier for next time. not every atlas will be using radar on the 31.4735MHZ band, at .257 Megawatts.

No they won't use the same frequency, but every Atlas is going to be above a certain weight, have the same stride length, and generate roughly the same seismic vibration from stepping. Beyond that the magnetic profile from an Atlas is going to be completely different from a Cat or Jenner.

I'd like to see a passive only read to give location, direction of travel, and weight class. At close enough ranges the BC should be able to give a guess of the 'Mech, but not the model. The BC's in canon are good at making educated guesses ie. the Mad Cat