Question: USMC Drones

[scorpio_rocks]

First of all massive thanks for all the hard work to bring us a new patch!

Quick question on the new unit class #125:
The 3 USMC drones (units 254, 259 and 288) have lower ecm values than the 8 which seems the standard for other countries RPAS drones, this is reported in Mobhack as these having CIWS/VIRSS. I am guessing this is just a hangover in the Mobhack code and wont affect gameplay? Is it best to raise their ECM values to 8?

[Suhiir]

The USMC Unit Class#125 drones are -
#254 RQ2 Pioneer (available 1986)
#259 RQ11 Raven (available 1990)
#288 Skyraider (available 2016)

None of the above are state-of-the-art higher-end drones but rather what was available at the time cheap mass-use ones. Thus the lower EW ratings, and zero was seriously considered BUT their size and lack of significant radar/thermal signature make them pretty difficult for radar/thermal guided AA weapons to acquire, thus they have a low EW rating to represent this.

And as you point out their their EW rating is represented as CIWS/VIRSS. This is a game code "oops" that seems to have snuck in, and MOBHACK/Andy will have to address that (tho their EW rating could easily be changed to 5 to bypass the issue).

Thank you VERY much for pointing this out tho!

[Mobhack]

They were cloned off a ground unit of some sort that was only used 2 or 3 times - those were changed thus freeing up the class.

However no work was done to Mobhack to tell them they were now a helicopter type of unit - so will report EW values as if a ground unit. So just ignore any such warnings, I will update Mobahck for the next years release.

[scorpio_rocks]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

They were cloned off a ground unit of some sort that was only used 2 or 3 times - those were changed thus freeing up the class.

However no work was done to Mobhack to tell them they were now a helicopter type of unit - so will report EW values as if a ground unit. So just ignore any such warnings, I will update Mobahck for the next years release.

Just a quick FYI this also applies to the reporting within the Points calculator too

[DRG]

When the drone class was put in I checked all the OOB's for existing ones that were Light Helo class and changed them to the new Done class and none of them had an EW between 1-4 so the VRRS/CIWS message didn't appear. We did not have the new USMC OOB at that time but we had given Suhiir the heads-up to the UC change but this was something else I didn't double-check when the OOB arrived because the problem had not revealed itself for any other Drone unit I changed over and nobody realized it could until yesterday.

[Suhiir]

Another known (and probably unfixable) issue you'll note with the new minidrones is that since they are a "vehicle" class unit they cannot be loaded aboard most transports. Thus given their generally lower (compared to most vehicles) speed they'll get left behind during the early "get into position" turns of most battles.
They're fast enough to catch up fairly soon tho. Just consider this this the "deployment time"

[Mobhack]

Yep, it fell through the cracks regarding the support programmes