Hello, I haven’t played for a long time and I noticed that Walley-type TV bombs do not want to track the target, in the past the target tracking occurred when we marked the target below 6 km from the target, now tracking is activated only below 2 km from the target, but this distance is pointless for TV bombs.
Is this a bug or an intentional change?
can only track moving targets usually bellow 2-3km, stationary target 5-10km
Ok, but previously they had a longer range, target tracking started below 6km.
Gajin placed an ahistorical nerf at some point without explaining why.
This is total nonsense, an F16 with missiles that has tracking from 2/3 km? It makes absolutely no sense
I am pretty sure I know what source was used to nerf it, but just in-case I won’t post it. You can look it up though: TO GR1F-16CJ-34-1-1, page 1-708 (724 in the pdf file).
AGM-65A (same seeker as walleye) requires the target minimum dimension to fill at least 1 mil of the tracking gate to get a track. In-game they calibrated this using the M60’s height , which gives about a 3.2km tracking range. Any target smaller than it, has a shorter tracking range, and vice versa.
Now I don’t know why they took the height however, because that rarely plays a role unless you’re launching from sealevel, if you’re launching from any other angle than that, you’re looking at width being the smallest target dimension usually. But I think right now it just takes height and uses that to calculate tracking range. At least this is what I think, because using M60 width, you get about a calculated 3.7km tracking range, but they explicityly said ~3km in the past when the changed it (and ~6km for 65B, whereas it would’ve been 7km if they took width).
But in current implementation, it’s not completely incorrect.
Some TV missiles can still lock in longer distances, you have to consider the weather as well. Usually the quality of the image and how good or bad you can see the target determines if it’s going to lock or not.
AGM-65B
Due to the very small size of the image transmitted from the missile’s camera to the pilot’s cabin, and the resulting need to get too close to the target, in 1975 an improved version of the guidance system was developed with a set of lenses that doubled the image resolution. Thanks to this, the missile’s range increased to 8-12 km. The new missile was designated AGM-65B Maverick, sometimes called Scene Magnification Maverick. In 1978, after producing over 35,000 missiles, the production of the AGM-65A and AGM-65B versions was discontinued.
I found this all AGM in this game have limited range tracking to less than 2.5km i check it.
Either you’re not pointing the seeker at the target properly (may be due to desync happening at long ranges, where rendered targets are nowhere close to where they actually are), or because some cloud (may not be visble client side) is in the way, though this would block a POINT lock as well.
Or your shooting at exceptionally small targets or something… I’ve definitely been able to get tracking locks beyond 2.5km with A2G TV munitions, especially the 65B. For the 65A, walleyes, etc this is about the expected range, in-game at least.
Check for yourself how these bombs and rockets work now, target tracking works below 3 km, we are talking about tracking, not blind marking.
Only infrared rockets have an increased range or, for example, the F16 with a targeting pod can fire rockets from a longer distance.
It wasn’t like that before, I have a lot of hours in A4 - Early which Walley has at my disposal and you could use them to track targets below 6km.
Similarly, Maverick missiles now track the target below 3 km - all you need to do is take a test drive and check it yourself. F16, Phantom A7D, everything must be so close to the battlefield that practically anything can destroy it, and dropping bombs or using rockets from a distance of more than 6 km is pointless without tracking the vehicle because the vehicle is usually no longer there.
It’s all about tracking the target, not just setting the point, because I can drop bombs even from a distance of 10KM where I mark them, but this is already a blind drop and the target will be destroyed only when it is not moving. The range that AGM TV bombs had for tracking the target was less than 6 km, then the target tracking function worked, now, for some unknown reason, it was reduced to 2-3 km. Needless to say, at this distance, dropping unguided bombs is a better idea and is more convenient than using rockets or bombs that had the advantage of Fire and Forget.
So it’s supposed to be about double what is right now if we were to attack from the side, or attack something larger than M60
It heavily depends on target size (and maybe aspect), perhaps you’re using it more against smaller targets and finding that the ranges are much shorter. But as far as I am concerned, TV bombs and the 65A always had ~3km, to less even, tracking range. It has been like this for years. 65B is just double what the 65A can do. Also again, one big reason why sometimes your tracking ranges may be higher vs shorter is where you point the exact center of your seeker, if you are closer tot he center of the actual target, it seems to lock on better, if you’re slightly off, it transfers to TRK later (closer). This may have to do with how targets are modelled as points in-game from the seeker pov or something.
TV bombs, 65A:
65B:
No, the minimum target dimension must fullfill the 1 mil (for 65A). So perfect side on, this will still be limited by the target height dimension. But then again, I don’t really know how in-game it is done. Maybe they already take into account aspect, and calculate the projected size on the plane you’re looking at , but idk. I think it may just take the height of the vehicle currently and based on that judge a vehicle’s size. I believe vehicle height is what determines the visiblity stat for arcade for quite some while already.
But yes if we attack something larger than an M60, tracking range should be longer. But this is already the case. You can track some of the larger SPAA from considerably longer distances for instance, or ships in the extreme case can be locked at maximum range.
The target tracking range has always been below 6 km, even though I specifically asked support about it.
I still want to track the target, because I can mark the target even from a distance of 10KM (in the case of GBU or AGM) and drop bombs, but the target will only be destroyed when it is not moving.
No matter what angle you are flying from, TRACKING a moving target starts only from a distance of 3km, and the exception is Maverick missiles with infrared.
You are flying F16 which has Maverick version B and tracking a moving target starts from 3km…
I want to emphasize once again that this is about tracking a moving target, not a static one
The last picture of the 65B was on a the moving BTR in the test flight. All of these are “TRACK” locks as well, meaning they will follow the target, otherwise they would say “POINT”.
If the argument is solely for attaining a “TRACK” lock on a moving vs stationary target, it makes no difference. In my own experience, I felt even that getting a track lock on a moving target could sometimes even lead to longer acquisition range, but I think it’s just placebo.
Anyways, here 65B against moving target of MBT size:
A TV bomb or 65A would do the same, but at ~3km from my own experience. Can you perhaps also take a video or something to show how it is on your end? Maybe it’s some weird client side bug, where verifying your files (or redowloading) may help… Or it’s indeed that you’re shooting at small targets or through clouds.
