RADAR

Mother's Day 2009. God Bless all the mothers out there and all you readers take care of your mom. I wish I could take care of mine.

Well, let's get at it, shall we? Been a while since I penned an article on Mechs, altho the last article I did had some mech stuff in it.

I have been thinking about this for some time and trying to come up with a good topic. I think I came up with one for the day, one that hasnt been covered much, but often draw lots of questions or “in-game chat”. My topic for today will be radar. Not the guy on MASH, but the radar you use or dont use in your battlemech.

Radar in Mercs is represented on your HUD by a circle at the bottom of the screen. You are in the center of the circle, friendly units will show up as blue dots if within range and enemies show as red dots when in range. Neutral targets shows as green items. The standard range of radar in this game is 1000 meters. The radar “circle” on your HUD shows the effective range of YOUR radar. If you select a target, it becomes a highlighted dot or a larger dot of its respective colour and if you have the target selector on, you will get a picture of the target on the left hand side of your HUD. IF you have the selector set to damage bars, then you get a bar and a name of the target.

Your radar can be modified in several different ways. I want to discuss my thoughts on the radar system in this game and I will a bit later, but for now I will go over the modifications and different ranges of the current system.

I used several different sources to gather info as well as just plain old game play. The “Goodies”folder on your Mercs disc offers a PDF version of the Manual and the Specs. Sybex had a book out called the Official Strategies & Secrets of MechWarrior4 Mercenaries. This book offers some good overall info about the game to.

All battlemechs in the game have standard radar capabilities. As I said earlier, radar has a 1000 meter radius range. This is the “basic” range without any modification. This can be increased by the use of Beagle Active Probe, BAP as we know it, to 1200 meters. It can be decreased to roughly 250 meters by running passive, also known as running with your radar off.

In normal situations, without BAP or Electronic Counter Measures (ECM), your radar not only allows you to see for 1000 meters, but it also gives away your location for 1000 meters to any enemy mech that may be running with Active radar (radar on). Those enemies running active and equipped with BAP will see you at 1200 meters.

Guardian ECM (this is what the book and the manuals call “our version” of ECM, but I think that if you ever read any of the books, Guardian was a bit different) can mask your visibility to others. Using ECM limits enemies ability to pick you up on radar until you are within roughly 450 meters if the enemy is running standard radar. If you run passive, with or without ECM you reduce your own radar signature to roughly 250 meters, again, if the enemy is running standard radar.

According to Sybex, and I have found this to be true, in addition to lowering the range at which enemy mechs “see” you, ECM also reduces the effects of a PPC blast. The “shakey” screen and blue “jizz” effects dont seem to last as long on a mech that is equipped with ECM. Another interesting fact that I found in the Sybex book is that BAP and/or ECM decrease the amount of time it takes for an enemy to get a missile lock on you. I am guessing that this is the “down” side of ECM, but I had never really noticed that before. Of course, I tend to run in mechs that have ECM and with the advent of Artemis Missile Systems, lock time has been reduced to almost the blink of an eye (in my opinion).

One more little tidbit I found out while scouring the Sybex book was that ECM was reduced IF you have an elevation advantage over your enemies battlemech. This reduction could be as much as 150 meters. This is something I never knew, but it does explain a lot of things. For all of those folks I screamed “Hacker” at over comms, my apologies to most of you. Some of you I still think are hackers, lol.

Let's gt back to BAP for a little bit. BAP increases your radar range out to 1200 meters while you are running active. BAP also changes your ability to pick up enemies running with ECM and even those bad guys running passive. Normally, a mech with ECM running active radar emits only roughly a 450 meter radar signature. A Mech equipped with BAP will “see” that signature at roughly 600 meters. It will also pick up passive mechs at roughly 400 meters instead of 250 meters. Another good thing about BAP is that it decreases the amount of time it takes for you to get a target lock while using missiles. The downside is that BAP attracts missiles like ants to a picnic and it makes you have a big radar signature. An enemy running active with BAP while you are active and running BAP will “see” you at 1200 meters as you will see him.

Basically, its fairly simple. Standard Radar lets you see and be seen for 1000 meters. If you run passive you can see and be seen at 250 meters. BAP lets you see for 1200 meters and be seen at 1000 meters unless the enemy has BAP, then you are seen at 1200 meters. With BAP you pick up ECM equipped active radar mechs at roughly 600 meters and passive ECM mechs at roughly 450 meters. BAP allows you to pick up passive mechs at roughly 450 meters also. ECM equipped mechs can see for 1000 meters and can be seen at 450 meters. BAP equipped mechs will pick up ECM active mechs at roughly 600 meters. A mech with BAP and ECM can see for 1200 meters but can be seen at only 450 meters unless the enemy also has BAP. These numbers are rough estimates and they do vary depending on elevation to and from the opposing targets, but this gives you a rough idea of how your radar signature is seen by others and what you see with the different equipment.

I would like to throw in a word or two about the Radar system in the game. From what I can surmise, the radar system we use must be a combined thermal image from a top down view. Our radar only shows things that have a heat signature and it has the ability to see through terrain and buildings. I am not a radar engineer, or any type of engineer for that matter, but I do understand a little of how radar works. It basically sends a signal out and that signal is reflected back to it. The size and speed of the reflected object can be measured (roughly speaking) based on the speed of the return signal.

The assumption here is that the radar is being shot from a satellite and it is using only sending pictures of items with a heat signature. From there the IFF codes determine whether the items show as red, blue or green in your HUD. We have all come to accept this and work with it as it is.

Simple Radar (as we know it today in our world) does not have the ability to “read” over terrain. If a building is between the radar and the target, you get the radar signature of the building back. Heat sinking radar DOES “see” through buildings, although hot spots such as power sources and transformers will show up, but items putting out heat will glow as “targets”. However, heat seeking radar will not see through terrain such as mountains. Maybe that is what is being represented in the game.

I would like to see radar in the game work more like radar in our world. Objects between the radar and the target could and will block the radar so the target may not show up, even if the target is only 100 meters away. This would make the game much more interesting, especially for those of you like me who are dependent on radar to seek and shoot targets. It would make it much harder to track down an enemy if you kept losing him on radar based on his ability to use terrain to avoid destruction.

To go along with “actual” radar, I would like to see a couple of other types of sensors introduced. One of them would be a seismic type of sensor that picked up seismic or “movements” of heavier items at a distance, similar to putting your ear down on the railroad track. I see it as working some thing like this. A mech would be equipped with a sensor that worked while the mech was stationary. The Sensor would then pick up seismic events, you know, mech footsteps, from an mech weighing over a certain tonnage, say over 35 tons, OR pick up the foot steps of any mech that was running. This would show on your HUD as red or blue and a location based on the event. To use it effectively, the members of a team would need to go passive and stop moving, while the Seismic Sensor mech, suggest using in tandem with ECM, goes active and “listens” for enemy movements. The footsteps would show up and the seismic sensor mech would get a rough idea of where the enemy was and which direction they were headed.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to see something like NetMech IV put in place. Heat signatures. The more heat a mech produces, the greater its heat signature. A sensor on a mech could detect this heat signature and gain tell you roughly where it was and whether it was friendly or enemy. If a mech used an energy weapon, was running, or especially if it was using jump jets, it would produce a large heat signature that sensors could pick up for 100o meters depending on how much heat was involved.

Now, a true “sensor” mech would have ECM, Heat Sensors, Seismic Sensors and BAP. This would be like a command mech that had an overall tactical view of the battlefield as it progresses through the mission at hand. That command mech may not have much in the way of weapons, or may sacrifice tons of armour to get a decent load of weapons, but it would be the eyes and ears of its team, much more than a BAP and ECM equipped mech are today. He could tell team mates when to move, when to stop, where the enemy is, roughly how big and how many there are. IF you put all this on a scout mech, say a Raven for example, it makes the light mechs so much more important in a mission and it would really drive you to get the feel of the way the game worked based on the books and the board game. Small mechs did recon and scouting, mediums did the dirty work, heavy and assaults did just that, assault something instead of everyone driving assaults with BAP or ECM or BAP and ECM.

I just think it would be very interesting. Maybe you have some ideas too. Post them and lets discuss them. Mostly, keep playing.