Right now (v1.1) The fuel pod gains the extra magic persona of “ECM”. When fitting it to an aircraft, you get another 100 kg of fuel and some subtle detection effects. Fitted to an aircraft, you will be shown on operator radar screens 2km closer to an enemy than normal. When fitted to an aircraft with an AWACS, it generates a second contact that sort of shadows the first.

Both of these effects were fun to program, but they don’t seem to really have much of an impact on gameplay. The 2km detection range reduction only really amounts to about 20-25 seconds less warning of a manta approaching at full speed.

The above isn’t really a big deal breaker for the game, in PvP events it doesn’t make much difference to an attack and in PvE it doesn’t make any difference at all.

What attracted me to using the fuel tank for this extra option was two things.

1. You have to unlock, build and supply them
2. People didn’t really use them much

So, are there perhaps other ways to make this more fun/better?

Change how ECM is obtained and fitted

Right now you have to buy a fuel tank, ship it to your carrier and attach it. But I think I’d like to allow fuel tanks on other units, so I am considering these ideas to return the fuel tank to it’s normal status.

• Use another attachment like the “fixed camera”
  • This means the fuel tank can get it’s own normal name back
  • These are not supply limited, there would be no economic cost to fitting ECM
• Pair the ECM effect with some other “buildable” attachment instead
  • AWACS could auto gain ECM?

I think I’m going to go with using the “fixed camera” as the ECM, you wont’ have to purchase them but they will consume a hardpoint.

Change the ECM effect

The ECM effect in 1.1 isn’t powerful enough to make you want to prioritise building them (or capturing an island that can). So maybe if we changed the effect of ECM to make it more appealing.

• Hide nearby friendly aircraft
• Spoof IFF and show as red AI aircraft
• Give the ECM an ELINT effect

ELINT

ELINT is information derived primarily from electronic signals that do not contain speech or text

NSA ELINT

I’ve been thinking about this on and off, mainly from watching GR videos where Cap and the others periodically call out “spike” and “nails” while flying in stealth aircraft.

ELINT means sensing electronic emissions that give away the enemy. In CC2, We only really have RADAR sets for this, we could perhaps do something about tracking vehicle radio transmissions back to carriers or islands one day, but for now I’m only going to think about RADAR detection.

An AWACS has a nominal detection radius of 10km. In sort of real-world terms this means that the RADAR emits enough radiation to bounce off a target at 10km and make it all the way back to the RADAR set. So signals must be able to travel at least 20km assuming the target is a perfect 100% mirror.

So, we should be able to “hear” a RADAR at about 2x it’s detection range. At 10-20km we should be able to feel the RADAR signal when it reaches us and the origin RADAR wont see the reflection.

Aircraft (and ships) have had RWR (Radar Warning Receivers) for decades, they are nowhere near as complex as a RADAR and are entirely passive. The most primitive RWR can say “I hear a RADAR somewhere”, while more advanced and sensitive systems can make use of multiple detectors on an aircraft to give some indication of distance and potentially range.

The game already has a short of RWR, where you get the red “!” symbol, this means your unit is “visible” to a hostile unit. In games we tend to call this “nails” too.

Right now, CC2 gives you the “visible” hint when you are in detection range of a RADAR or have been tagged by a unit gun/pod camera. Revolution extends the range this happens the same way it extends RADAR detection.

The dilemma here is not whether I can get the game to do it, it is how to visualise it in-game without being alien to everything else and be fairly easy to understand

Above, our RWR equipped aircraft can feel 4 RADARs, three are ships and the 4th is some contact to the North that we’ve not directly seen yet. The triangles I think could all be fixed size, and perhaps for gameplay simplicity I’d limit the RWR to sensing the nearest 3 or 4 enabled RADARs up to a range of maybe 20km.

Actually, drawing gradients in CC2 is a bit of a faff, let alone gradient triangles at particular angles, So maybe just lines?

The lines don’t look quite right to me.

Flat low opacity triangles look more “normal” in the game. But maybe there needs to be more consistent distance?

The above gives a cone out to 16km, which feels Ok, I think 20km would be too far for the gameplay to be enjoyable.

Jammers vs Stealth?

Jamming doesn’t really make sense now, at least not with the limited tools we have in the game. Plus in the real world there are such things as “home on jam” missiles. You’d need a pretty sophisticated jammer to fully hide yourself from a RADAR.

So, what about stealth? I’m looking at a Manta, it has a fairly low aspect itself, but shoving rocket pods and a huge camera on the front makes it feel almost unbelievable that it could even fly.

What about if we reduced the RADAR visibility of a manta if it was carrying fewer things? Or magnified it with rocket pods, fuel tanks or torps etc?

Perhaps a totally clean manta with only an RWR could be argued to be in “stealth”. If we only mounted missiles on the inner pylons too?

And maybe a manta carrying huge rocket pods or the camera could be seen earlier?