I noticed on the dev server that all Pulse radars got buffed, so they can work as look-down radars in most cases, for example the F-4E or F-4C can easily detect something below the horizon from 20km away, or the MiG-25 can shoot down an AI plane (flying at 1km) from 15km away while flying at 7km+ alt.
Is this a bug or an intended change?
Obviously I tested it with Realistic Battles settings.
It seems that there’s much less ground clutter for this kind of radars.
Edit.
After some testing it doesn’t seem that OP, you still need to be at quite similar altitude or below to make it work and they can’t really pick anything from more than 20-30km unless it’s a huge target
For example a MiG-25 will still struggle to pick someone hugging the ground or at around 300-400m alt and below that altitude you probably can forget about locking on something (I couldn’t lock on the F-4E flying at 300m and below while I was flying at 3-4km alt).
Then the older radars like in the MiG-21 or F-105 are still quite very limited, they struggle with detecting anything above 15km at low altitude.
The only reason why i was able to lock on the MiG-15 from the test flight so easily was because it flies at around 1km alt, in the normal battle conditions it won’t work against your average ground hugger unless you decide to hug the ground yourself.
Lets hope its a bug, not only does that completely defeat the point of PD radars, but pulse radars were strictly speaking over performing/ground clutter was too weak before (iirc, Mirage III radar wasnt usable below 5k ish ft, i dont think its that bad in-game)
So it needs to be reverted or SARH aircraft without PD need a BR increase.
it does not make PD radars pointless. You still can’t detect low flying radars at ranges that PD/MTI can.
I think this change is a bit too big but overall buff to non-PD radars would actually make them useful.
in SB for example people rarely fly above 500m on non-PD tiers because doing so means you look downwards and enemy look upwards - he sees you and you do not see him.
Reducing this handicap a bit might improve gameplay.
If it’s realistic? Not in current dev state. Perhaps it should go live half-way between live and dev
But it also nerfs aircraft without SARH, they may rely upon ground clutter to evade enemy contacts (such as ground attackers) or close to within WVR range. This is going to require a major increase in BR for a number of aircraft if this is too remain
nothing changes there - radar still can’t penetrate hills, etc
What will change is that maps will hills will be better vs now where flat maps are just easiest to play since all you have to do is stay below 500m to avoid BVR.
It will be different gameplay, not easier or harder.
Also, notching, chaffs and multipath will work as they do now.
Missiles for the most part as well the biggest difference will be SARH in cold aspect - basically missile like AIM-7 will be actually useful in cold aspect. Right now, they only work for very modern planes like F-18, etc. for everything else their effective range is limited to that of AIM9G really - maybe tiny bit higher.
People would have to learn to take chaff, would have to learn how to kinematically defeat missiles
It’s just my guess it’s not realistic but I agree.
I do not have concrete evidence to confirm or deny my feelings though.
but missiles are not buffed - just radars. Simple notch at low alt (even w/o chaffs) would work against all SARH missile at those BRs.
There will be problem with BR compression and fact that some planes do not have RWR but BR compression is problem as old as WT and it will keep returning every 3 months regardless what GJ changes. even w/o changes we have it.
if it’s realistic or not - that’s biggest concern if you ask me.
if it is - then it’s fine. if not, then it should not be done like this.
Other than that - people will adopt. They will start using terrain, they will learn how to defeat missiles, etc
I’ve played planes w/o RWR and CMs against planes that do have PD and SARHs and it can be done.
Against planes w/o PD, even after improvement - it would also be more than possible. It just won’t be simple case of “fly 60m over flat map” anymore
SARH are entirely guided by the launch aircraft, if the lock remains good enough, it will be guided
Notching works because it forces the radar to swtich from PD to SRC which is Susceptible to chaff. So actually, you could only defeat the radar by deploying chaff.
It likely is not. As it stands, I think ground clutter amount should have probably need to be increased to achieve true realism, not decreased.
That was/is people exploiting Multipathing, not ground clutter
that is fundamentally not true. they use onboard receivers. AC is only a transmitter.
also not true - for the same reason as above. you can have solid lock on target and missile will still miss or you can have lock on chaff and missile will still hit enemy plane.
it’s SARH/ARH 101 and I am sure there are plenty of resources on forum to read.
I think so too but it’s just my gut feeling. I can’t prove either side.
of course, but they do it because clutter is so strong they don’t have to use terrain to hide from radar. Simply flying in altitude that gives multipath effect works for that too.
Also - multipath on dev still works the same way I believe so you’d still be able to fly low and avoid missiles
I am extremely enthusiastic for more of my teammates to die to the 9.7 21-S after dying to the r3r 20 times and still not getting the memo of what to do
@Morvran - we did more testing with @RideR2 and it’s not as bad.
if you fly at 700-1000m the ground clutter does not work but at 100-200m it works as before.
basically ground clutter now works near the ground, it’s no longer sufficient to just be below enemy
He flew mig-25 (big target) at 100m and I flew F4E. I couldn’t detect him at more than 3-4km and couldn’t get a lock above 1000-1500m
his radar lost me from longer range as soon as I went below 200m
Basically, it’s still more than possible to avoid detection by flying low. The radars are simply better at detecting objects with clutter behind them if the source of the clutter is sufficiently far away. Basically distance discrimination between echoes was improved.
Great, so now, Mig-25 (and anything with a J-band radar, actually) will be able to catch even MORE people off-guard…
Like that plane wasn’t already cancerous enough
one more test - both F4E and Mig-25 down low, head on.
The shallower the angle the longer the detection range against low flying target.
It supports my theory that GJ improved distance discrimination or if you will distance gating for radars
In general I really do like to support realism - which however does not mean I can not make mistakes and wrong assumptions about realism (which I strongly suspect could well be the case in the topic you linked, haha!).
