- Yes
- No
The new PPI (Plan Position Indicator) for missile SPAA is a great addition and allows for effective control of the new Multi-Vehicle SPAA systems, it has a few key shortcomings though.
I propose a new section of the PPI screen to display some key information about your active launch vehicles, I will explain the layout, the information I feel is missing, and why it should be readily availible to view. I will also propose changes to the way the PPI displays some information to the player which I feel will add clarity.
this is a rough mockup of what the section would look like, I made it in MS paint so an in game rendition would of course be more consistent and polished. The overall layout of the section would consist of two subsections each displaying information about deployed launch vehicles.
The first area would display information about if the vehicle is damaged or on fire, currently this information is not able to be obtained without switching to the launch vehicle in question, which, while completely doable, leads to unnecessary downtime for the SPAA system, this area also displays whether or not the launch vehicle is blocked from firing by the player, this information is already availible in the PPI in the action bar at the bottom of the screen but I feel it would be nice to have displayed here as well. The next area would display the type of launcher as well as its current orientation in relation to the targeted plane (this would only apply to the SLAMRAAM as well as to single vehicle SPAA that can use the PPI for obvious reasons) my reasoning for including the type of launcher is as future-proofing for potential mutli-vehicle SPAAs that include multiple distinct launch systems such as the german SkyShield.
The third area would display information about the ammunition availible to each launcher, currently the only way to get information about remaining missiles in the PPI is the action bar at the bottom of the screen, which shows only the total remaining missiles in both launchers if accessed from the radar vehicle or about the remaining missiles in the controlled launcher if it is accessed while controling one of the launc vehicles, including this information in an easily accessible way would be very helpful for determining how to use ammo in each vehicle.
This image shows how the section would appear for the IRIS-T, displaying the 8 missiles but not showing orientation due to the vertical launch.
Additionally, the main PPI screen currently does not accurately display the location of the radar emitter and does not report the locations of launch vehicles at all.
this is what the PPI currently reports while in the test drive map
These are the actual locations of the vehicles that make up the multi-vehicle system, as you can see the PPI suggests that the emitter is in a significantly different location than it actually is, and does not display the locations of any of the vehicles.
This would be the ideal layout for the PPI, the screen should be centered on the radar vehicle to properly display how the search is being conducted, as well as displaying the actual locations of the launch vehicles that the missiles will originate from.
This is how the screen would look if there is some technical reason that the PPI must be centered on the map and not the vehicle, it is less than ideal but still displays the key information of the radar and launch vehicle locations. (ignore my terible pixel art for what the emitter symbol might look like)
I think that the PPI would greatly benefit from these improvments, I hope you will consder my suggestion.