With every update, more and more aircraft with advanced technologies come into the game. These technologies include modern targeting systems that are used to find, identify and track enemy vehicles. At least in real life. In the game, their usefulness is limited by one single game mechanic - spotting. You can only see enemy planes that are about 10-15 kilometers away from you or closer, or are spotted by your teammates (which in some cases doesn’t even work).
Now, in other gamemodes that would hardly be a problem, because there are either markers or the maps are small enough that the enemies are spotted all the time. But in Air Simulator Enduring Confrontation, many maps are as big as 16000 km², and there are no markers. If we imagine that there is a targeting pod that can rotate 360° and the enemies appear at a distance of 12.5 km, then we get a coverage of about 500 km². That’s a little more than 3% of the whole map. But that is obviously the perfect scenario, in reality the pilot would see about 15-30% of that, and only in front of the aircraft, having to look behind with own eyes.
Many aircraft rely on a targeting system as their only source of information, and countless, especially lower tier vehicles, on the sight of their pilots. But with such a low distance of render, they simply can not find enemy aircraft to attack or to defend from.
Extending the enemy spotting range to 35-50 kilometers should solve this problem while not creating any others. This would give players an opportunity to be prepared to engage in fights knowing what enemy they are facing and lower the meantime between them. This also would reduce dullness in lower tier battles, where, especially on the bigger maps, it is very hard to find an enemy which results in pointless waste of time trying to find a fight
+1 Absolutely needs to happen. Not only an increase but also a fix for enemies straight up despawning. I’m sick of chasing someone and then them just vanishing into thin air or being in a dogfight and the second they get past my canopy or are blocked by a post they cease to exist. It’s a joke.
My primary way to spot and IFF a target is to cheese the spotting system. Hostile dots visibly blink into and out of existence according to both your “keen vision” and “awareness” skills, as well as the skills of friendly aircraft. If a dark black dot suddenly appears in open sky, or is blinking into and out of existence near a steady (probably friendly) dot, then I know definitively that dot is hostile. Interestingly, in BVR, I can tell if an aircraft up high is hostile or not just by looking. Contrail with a dot at the front? Friendly. Contrail with no dot? Hostile. All you high altitude guys wondering why you keep getting whacked from below? That’s why.
I think there needs to be a fade-to-grey mechanic past the “Line-of-Sight Detection Range” for hostile players no matter what, but I have two separate ideas for how that might work. Either:
Eliminate the effects of “Keen Vision” and “Awareness” in sim. Have ALL aircraft rendered all the time under the same rules as both friendlies and enemy AI do currently: a barely visible grey speck at range, and gradually realizing into a dark black dot, with all aircraft fading in and out of visibility at the same rate. This is simple, and probably better for a sim environment, but also cuts out crew skills.
Keep the effects of “Keen Vision” and “Awareness” as they are. Simply implement a fade-to-grey mechanic past the “Line-of-Sight Detection Range”. Perhaps have the dot fade and fully disappear at twice the listed detection range?
Example: Say a crew has a Detection range of 3.8km. Past this point, the dot fades to grey, before fully disappearing at 7.6km. Another crew has a detection range of 7.6km. Past this point, the dot fades to grey, before fully disappearing at 15.2 km.