Breaking line of sight and radar doesn't stop ARH tracking

[violet dew]

Active radar missiles, or at the very least Scythes, can track their target with no line of sight or radar detection. I made a quick test scenario in which a missile is launched at the player right at the start, while the player's jet is going for cover. Not only the player gets no ARH warning, when they get out of cover the missile is only ~3 km away, making it impossible to evade in most cases.

Still unsure if this is a bug, but it does make flying low, the most basic counterplay, actually work for the attacker. Other types of missiles, including SARH, don't do this as far as I'm aware.

Here is the scenario : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3601391253

I reported this on the steam forums before I was aware there was a bug report section here. Here is some more discussion about it : https://steamcommunity.com/app/2168680/discussions/0/670600125430805150/

[storm vector]

Did you fly in a straight path ?
I was not able to recreate it at slightest, missile was still going for my last known position only re-acquiring after I left the mountain and very often not able to turn in time to hit

Only time arh is able to hit me if I just fly without any maneuvering after I lost line of sight with it, I guess ARH same as SARH has a feature where it tries to "predict" where jet will be if its lost line of sight based on vector and speed

And Ifrit has inbuild radar btw, enemy ifrit is acting as a "spotter" for missile to fly to its intended target relying basically on datalink for a brief moment
While yes there is sometimes no ARH warning, but its probably because it was not spotted before you hide and there is some delay when active target turns into "?"

[violet dew]

Just pull up 3 seconds after starting the scenario. I don't know how the missile manages to hit you if you don't maneuver, since you should be going straight towards the ground when you start.

neither the missile nor the ifrit has line of sight when you get behind cover after about 1 second, hence the tracking through terrain

and I don't think ARH missiles "predict" where the target is going to be when they lose sight of it, nothing in the game has that ability

[storm vector]

#general message
Yeah, whatever
I was not able to get hit with ARH in your scenario if not only just going straight after I level behind cover, and while I spectate from the missile it was clearly that it did lose its intended target behind cover and relied on datalink to track its target last known position
https://youtu.be/w3HwtVV4Wbo
https://youtu.be/0Y_qErALL3Y

And if you didnt notice there is some delay before targets goes from "spotted" to "unknown"
So yeah, its not really a bug but more of "unintuitive" feature of the game that ARH missiles relies on datalink guidance before activating its own radar (or when target cant be seen by its own radar)

[prime light]

aircraft optical target detectors only search every 4 seconds, so if it was out of los and happened to be on the tail end of the delay it could have gained decent distance in that time

the scythe can use datalink and ins guidance like most modern missiles and will not appear on rwr if it is following you behind terrain if your own aircraft sensors have not detected it

unlike SARH, IR and ARH missiles only show warnings once detected at least one time by your own sensors, not only by allies - this reflects irl limitations of figuring out what an enemy missile is targeting until it starts emitting

tldr not a bug

[violet dew]

I think gameplay is more important than what real missiles are like in this case, in this game they can hit my jet when I have been hugging the ground the whole time, except the one instant a missile happened to be somewhere in my area after it was launched 10 seconds ago

it does not make for interesting gameplay in my opinion