GECM+Passive stacking

[=KoS= Eldragon]

I see a lot of veteran players running passive in scout mechs too, especially in the early minutes of the map. Seems like when your whole team is running passive, you don't want to be the one guy running active. makes you a huge target.

Its also useful to run passive  and on Death Valley. A scout mech is an easy target for the Fbomb sulla. There is nowhere to hide, and running active is a giant "I'm Right HERE" sign.

Course, there are always going to be inexcusable tactics from newbies and veterans alike. Nothing quite as disappointing like leading an assault on a capture point, and 4 guys park outside the enemy base, waiting for the tank behind the wall to come out (Hint: The tank isn't moving).

But yes, scout mechs should run active. I like the Owens B's SSRMs just so I'm never tempted to do it.

[Spooky]

Maybe a loading screen quote that says: "Staying Radar active in a BAP/BHP and C3 equiped 'mech gains you money from each detected enemy while passing on your radar intel to active Radar team-mates!  It's always best to have at least one Scout on the field at all times to feed the entire team intel on the enemy!"?  Because I don't think that many of the new players understand this dynamic at all.

That might help a bit, probably .

[xDeityx]

...but nobody has actually tested this in a controlled environment?  Given the amount of misunderstanding and misinformation in this thread alone, I think taking for granted that numbers from .xml files will translate properly into the game while we're still in beta seems like bad beta testing.

We need to test this.  The following test is designed to answer the questions raised in this thread:
1.  At what range does a mech without electronics detect a mech with GECM while the latter is passive, and active?
2.  How do GECM and passive interact in regards to missile lock time?
3.  How does BHP change this?
4.  How does BAP change this?

Someone who has the time please perform these tests:
1.  Get two people (person A and person B), create your own server or join an empty.  Join opposite teams.
2.  Person A buys a mech with GECM, person B buys a LRM/ATM mech with no electronics.
3.  Record the distance at which an active B detects A while A is passive, and then while A is active.
4.  Record the distance at which a passive B detects A while A is passive, and then while A is active.
5.  Record the time it takes for B to establish a missile lock on A while passive, and then while active.
6.  Do it again except with person B in a mech with BHP.
7.  Do it again except with person B in a mech with BAP.
8.  Post the results in a new forum thread, and get +karma.

If you're feeling like an exemplary beta tester, you can do the tests with Battle Armor assets as well.

[Askis]

...but nobody has actually tested this in a controlled environment?

We need to test this.  The following test is designed to answer the questions raised in this thread:
1.  At what range does a mech without electronics detect a mech with GECM while the latter is passive, and active?

Since HAARP posted the actual numbers it's obvious that everything is working correctly, as I have tested detection to a Passive+GECM target with a non BAP/BHP equipped asset.
While it was in active, I could detect it at 500m, in passive at 250m.

[xDeityx]

...but nobody has actually tested this in a controlled environment?

We need to test this.  The following test is designed to answer the questions raised in this thread:
1.  At what range does a mech without electronics detect a mech with GECM while the latter is passive, and active?

Since HAARP posted the actual numbers it's obvious that everything is working correctly, as I have tested detection to a Passive+GECM target with a non BAP/BHP equipped asset.
While it was in active, I could detect it at 500m, in passive at 250m.

Incomplete tests are incomplete. Thanks for your work but if someone wants to truly test this they shouldn't just take your word for it, especially since you chose not to divulge your methods but rather to inform us of results only. Test the rest for meaningful data. A report of a test should go, "I did A B and C and X Y and Z happened. "

Also one thing I forgot to include was to test non-GECM passive mode for person A.

[Jayssoneer]

I tested this in a controlled environment with a friend of mine in 0.3.2. We used Osiris as the basic mech with no relevant equipment, Puma as the GECM mech, and Raven variants as BAP/BHP mech. Can't remember the exact procedure, and we had to redo some tests because of the C3-strangeness detailed below. This is how I believe it works(or worked, although the XML files seem to have no changes):

Base detection range is 1000m. Going passive lowers this range to 250m, while being active and having GECM lowers it to 500m. Curiously, being passive and having C3 is less effective than just being passive; with passive+C3 your detection range is lowered to 500m, which is the same as with active+GECM. This seems to mean that there is no reason to go passive if you have both C3 and GECM. This feature of C3 is reflected in the XML files, where C3Radar.xml has passiveRadarModifier = "-500", while Radar.xml has passiveRadarModifier = "-750". This seems to be the case with 0.4.3 XML files too.

Adding BAP/BHP to the mix is very straightforward, since they just seem to raise the final detection range by 200m/400m. For battle armor, the base detection range is 100m, and BAP/BHP raises that by 100m/200m.

Please make corrections if these results are wrong. I would also be very interested in getting some hard facts about AECM; we just couldn't get that to affect detection ranges in any way in our tests. The Atlas and the mech in it's field didn't seem to have any kind of ECM, because their base detection range was 1000m. I haven't tested this in 0.4.3 yet, but I stopped trusting the AECM fields completely in 0.3.2 after our tests.

EDIT: I'll just clarify that all the ranges above are for an active detecting asset. If you are passive, according to these test results you can only detect other active ECM-less assets at 300m, and BA at 100m. Everything else should be invisible.

[attachment deleted by admin]