Talk:Small Radar System
Radar ranges -- highly anamalous
Well, I started doing some testing of what the actual range of each radar system is, and it's extremely strange. A Small Radar system (the initial base's default) detected UFOs as far as 1300 nautical miles away. (I measured on a globe, using points corresponding to what was displayed on the Geoscape.)
Once detected, UFOs could be tracked as far as 2000-2500 nautical miles away, and with a Large Radar or Hyper-Wave Decoder, the tracking limit seemed to be 3000-3500 nautical miles. For all I know, the tracking limit may be the same as the detection limit, and I just didn't detect any UFOs while they were at the outer edge.
The detection range for ships (I only tested an Interceptor) seemed to be about 450-500 nautical miles.
It is safe to say radar ranges are nothing like what is described in the game.
--Ethereal Cereal 19:52, 31 May 2006 (PDT)
You did remember to vary the radar site positioning for testing? [The internal modeling is skewed by latitude...near equator and poles are not that distorted geometrically (near circle), but the range is hyper near the Arctic and Antarctic circles.]
--Zaimoni 11:18, 1 Jun 2006 (EDT)
Actually, I used Budapest as the base site each time. Not an equatorial latitude, but geometric distortion alone cannot account for ranges several times greater than 300 or 450 miles -- Interceptors alone had a detection range of about 500 miles, and bases much, much, further than that.
I'm not positive, but I got the sense that craft have a 100% detection rate when within range of a UFO.
On the basis of this, it's not clear what coverage strategy should be adopted -- although the existing strategy of one base per continent holds up well, especially once you've got Hyper-Wave Decoders.
--Ethereal Cereal 11:27, 1 June 2006 (PDT)
The radar ranges might be fixed for both detection, and retention, but you have to figure in that the UFO has 0-29 minutes of wandering about your territory before it can be spotted due to the infrequent detection interval, and this is combined with that on exit they can have left your radar range for up to 29 minutes as well before it notices and blinks them out makes it tough. Still you may be right about it only detecting at 2/3 or 3/4 of its tracking range as well, I certainly noticed that new hits seemed to be closer and thought it was just the above, but UFOs have enough wandering about laterally to my base once they are detected that you would think you would get the occasional further out contact.
One possibility is that the UFO size factors in here - anything smaller than a battleship might have a % factor that reduces their initial contact range for both short and long radars (and hyperwaves? hard to say), but once you have them you can follow even the small contacts back out up until you get to your hard cap. Sounds feasible? I guess to test you would want a save when you know a battleship is wandering about, you have one base, and repeat many times to see if you can get a longer range contact. If so this would suggest the stuff about the size affecting detection is accurate, and also explain why most are seen neared (especially on new start testing where mostly small UFOs are bumping around).
Probably not all that surprising but my base for most of the testing of a single site was in/near Budapest as well. Its likely that many bases will be around this latitude anyway, as a normal tactic would seem to be to have 3 northern/3 southern bases each on a different continent to get a good overall coverage of all the countries, and hence part of your cash supply. I might try single Equatorial and Polar bases and see if it makes any noticeable difference, but the numbers I put up are fairly rough anyway (as you have limited data points which you have to approximate, and then you are drawing a circle in Paint on a 2D representation of a sphere so you have to ensure the base is centralised to avoid you actually drawing some weird obloid shape when projected onto the globe, etc).
--Sfnhltb 19:36, 26 February 2007 (PST)
- Looking at my figures from months ago, I would wager that "tracking" range is simply 150% that of detection range:
Detect. Track Sm. Radar 1500 2000-2500 (150% = 2250) Lg. Radar 2250 3000-3500 (150% = 3375)
- Also of interest is this old Strategycore thread I came across yesterday. Separately, there's the question of craft radar range. If, like you theorize, re-detection is 100% and occurs at tracking range, then craft radar is probably about 300nm (and tracking 450nm). If their initial detection rate is 100%, then their detection range should be 500nm (and tracking 750nm).
- This should be easy enough to test: when do UFOs being chased by craft disappear again? At 500nm or 750nm?--Ethereal Cereal 01:24, 27 February 2007 (PST)
--Ethereal Cereal 01:24, 27 February 2007 (PST)
Well I'm not sure its easy to test, remember with the 30 min check interval its quite feasible for a craft you have turned back or was low fuel to manage to be 5000 miles from a fast UFO when the radar blip actually goes, if you turn back at the right time.
--Sfnhltb 02:38, 27 February 2007 (PST)