To everyone saying that IFF exists, that ignores the fact that tiers with no radar exist, plane with no radar exist within tiers that do, radar sets with no IFF exist (off the top of my head, the F-5E is one and it’s not the only one). Subsonic attackers are a great example. I got booted off a session recently while using my Jaguar exactly because of this reason.
Radar also ruins a stealth attack. If the enemy gets a big RWR return nearby they are likely to start doing evasive maneuvers and dropping flares, ruining shots from early IR missiles.
The game shows you when an ally is nearby when they use a command like Follow me by changing the color of the text in the coordinates and altitude. If you see green numbers it means they’re close and it’s a priority to respond. It isn’t rocket science.
Other than that modern HMD’s and systems either filter out friendlies or specifically ID friendlies. Similar to that on the A-10C’s ground ID system.
But, I see the point of it. Because if an aircraft isn’t seen by ground controllers or AWACS and doesn’t have a scheduled flight in controlled airspace, they will be radio contacted when ID’d by radars of a plane, any plane that’s not responding or has their transponder off and in not in visual range will be considered a hostile force.
However there is a caveat driven by western doctrine. Which is; get close enough to ID the threat, and if it does indeed pose an immediate threat or doesn’t respond while the situation is escalating in an area that threatens lives, shoot it down.
Have you tried getting close first, and then, are you mis-identifying friendlies for enemies? If so, try using spotter cards to learn what the planes look like, if it works in real life for real Air Force’s, it will work for you.
I wish I could go back into the replay to show you, but apparently if you get booted you don’t show up what so ever.
It was a very very low flying aircraft coming from a suspicious direction, and a very high rate of speed, that refused to identify.
All I could see, because I’m a console user, and have no shaders or bs mods on that show me better what I’m looking at, what a tiny dot and an exhaust trail.
I know how to identify what aircraft is what. I play all sorts of naval games, in addition to having served in the military myself, I know a lot about foreign equipment.
But the argument is:
Your in an “active combat zone” assuming someone is a friendly could get you killed, assuming their enemy could save you but kill a friendly.
But someone’s radio not working is a very rare thing in aircraft
IN WT all tech is 100% functioning. Radio identify should just work.
Link16/Link22 should just work and you should see your allied aircraft on the map.
There are force on force doctrines that don’t exist because it’s a game. There is no mission pre-plan. You have 0 knowledge of who you are working with, what missions they are doing nor what areas they will perform them. You have no fighter wings and no allied markings. Next game you’ll be shooting those same markings.
Mechanics need to be in place to fill in these gaps.
I think this is generally speaking, a non-issue. I’ve maybe TK’d 5 times (on the high end) in the past year in sim. Worth noting that I’ve only played sim for slightly over a year at this point. If it’s a recurring issue, target identification should really be something you work on. If you’re not sure it’s a target, don’t fire :)
Worst case scenario, you maybe get into a dogfight or lose a potential kill. My gut feeling has pretty much always been right when it comes to attacking. Learn silhouettes and context clues, and maybe don’t blindly fire on targets just because they didn’t mark themselves.
Personally, I really dislike the “follow me” spam since people rely on it too heavily. It’s gotten to a point where I mute chat audio entirely from time to time. Haven’t had a single issue with TKs in the past 6 months despite the fact I really don’t mark or pay much attention to marks.
No, my answer is to be smart about who you’re attacking. I’m almost certain I have less experience in sim than you (considering the amount of threads you’ve posted about it). How is it that I have substantially less teamkills?
Genuinely, this comes down to target identification. If you want there to be player markers (or an easy identification equivalent), then it loses half the idea of sim.
And to answer your question, I would assume enemy (because who wouldn’t), but by the time I get into engagement range, I’d be able to see it’s a friendly and respond accordingly in chat.
And no, I don’t think most people assume everyone is an enemy. Anyone with any familiarity with sim would know that you have to (and say it with me) identify your targets before you shoot them.
The only things that exist are your teams vehicle list, objective list (to determine if AI is in a specific location) HMD IFF on the few planes that have it, and radar IFF on most planes above 11.7. Allied markers also show up if you are 0.9km away, but that’s too close for supersonic jet combat.
Apart from that, you are fully reliant on your team communicating.
I’ve had plenty of instances of blue on blue occur against me from friendlies with radar missiles with IFF.
The game treats the player as a villain when it could be the team mate who caused the error. Greedy people coming in to kill someone which costs you because you’ve already fired…
Also for the scenario, that pissed me off.
I was fleeing in a mig23, and was being chased by at least 1 aircraft, another aircraft to my 2-3o clock position appears, I marked on the map, I asked if friendly 1 time. No response, ask again, no response. (I can’t remember if I tried to ping him on radar, I likely did, but it likely didn’t work since MTI mode now is auto and tricky to get to work.) then I locked in irst mode to track him. And asked one last time. (All in the span of 5-8 secs) and he gave no response while nearly touching me, he’s flying directly at me on an intercept course. I fired my R-24T and 1.2~ secs later right as my R-24 is about to hit him I see his name pop up.
My previous tk that match was me trying to help an AMX who was fleeing from a Harrier or something, and my R-60 rode up the harrier, saw the flare pop from the AMX, tracked it, then rode up to the AMX, while in a 3:30 o clock position, so not exactly a side or rear shot, and I was very close, under 1.5 km.
But that is my fault that the glowing hot harrier was some how colder than a flare, which then let to me hitting the AMX.
Try doing that in a subsonic attacker that encounters a faster plane. There are many attackers that only have missile armament when stock, so they’re clearly intended to be playing as fighters, but don’t have the tools for proper identification of targets.
There are also many planes with similar shapes. Being forced to be overly cautious over ID concerns has gotten me killed before. “Is that straight wing attacker flying nearby who isn’t answering calls an enemy or… Never mind, I got AIM-9Ld in the face”.
And let’s not forget the copy-paste issue. You have to get extremely close to an enemy to see its camo pattern and roundels. Makes identification tricky when you have the same plane on four or five tech trees and there’s no consistency in which team they play.
A-10 an Su-25? They excel in their BR ranged because of how identifiable planes are from that era, because of how vastly different the designs are.
Yes, there are 5 million F-5’s, and a decent amount of F-4’s, but they should almost always be on teams opposite of each other aside from a few ‘Chinese’ planes.