Tutorial #13 Radar - PART 1 Mechanics | NEBULOUS: Fleet Command

A tutorial that goes through the Radar mechanic within the game, how it is calculated and the varying in game components. The demonstration mentioned in this video will be included as a supplement in the next few days due to video length and because I forgot to unmute the microphone when recording it.
At the bottom are some pieces of material used to inform this tutorial.
Timestamps below:
00:00 Intro
00:13 Radar in Game
00:49 Disclaimer
01:14 Radar Calculation overview
01:57 Radar Calculation - Radiated Power
02:36 Radar Calculation - Gain
03:53 Radar Calculation - Transmitted Power
04:22 Radar Calculation - Radar Cross Section (RCS)
06:24 RCS visualisation
06:54 RCS visualisation - Corvette (Sprinter)
07:27 RCS visualisation - Frigate (Raines)
07:52 RCS visualisation - Destroyer (Keystone)
08:11 RCS visualisation - Light Cruiser (Vauxhall)
08:33 RCS visualisation - Heavy Cruiser (Axford)
08:50 RCS visualisation - Battleship (Solomon)
09:09 Radar Calculation - Returning Power
09:27 Radar Calculation - Antenna Aperture
10:00 Detected or not?
10:22 Radar Calculation - Noise
10:55 Radar Calculation - Radar sensitivity
12:22 Tracks & Sensor Network
14:38 Components Overview
18:17 The Radars
22:05 Modifiers
25:32 How to avoid detection
26:40 Outro
N:FC Wiki RCS Visualisation charts - nebfltcom.wikidot.com/hull:list
Antenna Gain - antennatestlab.com/antenna-ed...
Radar Cross section - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_c...
Radar basics - www.tutorialspoint.com/radar_...
The radar calculation - www.radartutorial.eu/01.basic...
dBm further - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm
Noise - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise_(...)
Signal to Noise Ratio - www.electronics-notes.com/art...
Radar sensitivity / noise - www.phys.hawaii.edu/~anita/ne...
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Nebulous Fleet Command Discord: / discord
Official game music by Lauren Pham open.spotify.com/album/3mlqKl...

[@iamfishhead]

I think you're not quite correct at 4:20 in the video. I'm pretty sure that radio waves degrade with the inverse square of distance, which is not exponential.

[@JDeeGaming]

You are correct. Thanks for the sharp eyes. Pinning this comment.

[@liesdamnlies3372]

It's exponential. "Exponential" just means it's relating to an exponent (usually used in-context as opposed to linear growth or decline).

[@LtPulsar]

@@liesdamnlies3372 An inverse square relation is plain and simply, not an exponential one. I don't know what you think exponential means, but I have only ever seen it used to mean an equation of the form y = A^Bx where A and B are arbitrary constants. I would suggest that expanding the definition of "exponential" to include everything relating to an exponent anywhere creates an ambiguity that severely undermines the usefulness of the word.

[@dannythomson5239]

big thanks for your instructional videos JDee, i would have given up trying to learn the game without your help through these videos.

[@JDeeGaming]

Glad I can help!

[@TheIke444]

Oh snap can't wait for the next tutorial, jamming. I love using it and it's wonderful to see the detection mark go away but I'm just clicking on a ship or in space and running it, curious to see exactly how the mechanics work.

[@thebulletkin8393]

when a part 13 has a part 1 you know it's going to get serious

[@angelgarcia4848]

5:38 I appreciate you not editing that out and hanging in there. It gave me a good chuckle.

[@hughbrown1531]

Been waiting for this one JDee, ty!

[@razorback8300]

Thanks for this tutorials , it helps a lot . Keep up with this amazing work !

[@razorback8300]

Love your tutorials . I think it would be interesting for your next video to be about basic tactics you can apply in game

[@JDeeGaming]

Noted! Not a bad idea.

[@thegreenishcrab]

Hell yes thank you

[@zydrate3539]

Hey buddy, just wanted to say: thank you for taking time to give us in depth tutorials for this crazy advanced game. Could you possibly update your previous videos? The audio on the previous were very quiet. Thank you again.

[@JDeeGaming]

At some point I will go back and update the early videos but it will be a re-record due to settings/equipment now being a bit better.

[@shukariYT]

Really good video

[@JDeeGaming]

Thanks!

[@tuftyindigo]

3:56 radio waves don't degrade exponentially with distance, but quadratically. That is, double the distance means a quarter of the power.

[@tuftyindigo]

Sorry, I did look for an existing comment saying this before posting, but I didn't see that you pinned iamfishhead's comment

[@JDeeGaming]

All good I appreciate the info.

[@shaunwu3910]

Thanks for the showcase of the wiki! Do you mind if I add links to your videos in the wiki? Also note, I found something called deviation curve for radar that no-one has talked about. I've yet to actually figure out how it works, so it might be something you might be interested in when I get that data published.

[@JDeeGaming]

Absolutely! Centralising information is always best. Very keen to hear about the deviation curve when you know more about it.

[@henryhamilton4087]

At 23:58 shouldn't the radar sensitivity floor get closer to the noise floor with the ARR?

[@rafale1981]

Really good and understandable! My questions are: 1) are floodlights/spotlights worth anything w regards to spotting? Or are they solely useful for semi-active missile guidance and anti-jamming? 2) does combining radars on one ship type assist with overcoming jamming? My guess is not, based previous experience.

[@JDeeGaming]

Hey! I believe they do, as they help raise the returning power level however I dont believe it is that much better nor worth the investment in power/points. Additional radars dont stack. Only one radar is used at a time and it's the best radar for the job.

[@mluby7828]

@@JDeeGaming Do you mean multiple radars don't stack in the game or they don't in real life too? My hunch is that IRL sensor accuracy increases (with diminishing returns) the more separate sensors you have and the wider the angle between sensors WRT the target. Did you come across anything like that in your research? Is it something the devs discussed, intentionally excluding or deferring for some reason (maybe just lack of time)? Top-notch explanations in the video, great work and thanks for sharing!

[@tomduke1297]

im wondering if the positional error is linear or logarithmic correlated with range. also the track correlators are percentage-based, i did put a spyglass with a few correlators on my BB and it obliterates everything at long range, no lock required. ;) im not playing multiplayer, just for fun against bots, so this might not be meta. lol

[@JDeeGaming]

It should be linear as the buff towards the positional and velocity errors is consistent regardless of range.

[@kpat3803]

How does the isotropic radar power exceed the resources? 3500kW output from 2000kW input in the specs?

[@shiden239]

When you're talking about noise, what is the difference between what a radar can 'hear' and what it can 'see'?

[@ParoXyzmm]

Any idea what scale the game uses for gain? It doesn't seem to match up with the real scale, if the radars in game use FOV (in degrees/radians) instead of gain for their field of view calculations I'm going to cry as I've spent the last hour trying to figure this out.

[@JDeeGaming]

Im not 100% sure sorry. Its a question I didnt ask Mazer when working on this tutorial.

[@ParoXyzmm]

@@JDeeGaming All good, I'll have to try and find out another way

[@KyranFindlater]

@@ParoXyzmm I think JDee is wrong where he says the gain is related to the Field of View. I have never seen gain used in that way, the cone or view angle etc is always a separate, unrelated value.

[@user-zw5kt8ik2g]

So, there's no such thing as "terrain" reflections as well as moving target select/pulse Doppler modes to counter that?

[@JDeeGaming]

No there isnt.

[@user-zw5kt8ik2g]

@@JDeeGaming Also no TWS?

[@jasonkarsten7372]

Jeeeeeezuz

[@dteachout147]

The parallax seems to be easily jammed

[@Optii87]

Love the tutorials, but something is confusing me here, when you first discuss RCS , you show 2d images of ships front and sides, and note that RCS is higher (worse) when the ship is showing it's side, but then on the 3D model examples it seems most ships actually have lower RCS on the sides?

[@JDeeGaming]

I could have made a mistake with the Corvette. Probably should have demonstrated with a BB.

[@ceruleanskies1414]

What exactly is a radar sweep in Nebulous?

[@JDeeGaming]

A burn-through sweep or the radar update cycle?

[@ceruleanskies1414]

@@JDeeGaming I think you just answered the question. A sweep refers to both.

[@E23443]

Is one bullseye enough on front of a battleship, or would it be better to add on the sides as well?

[@JDeeGaming]

Generally one on the front is enough. It is also then in the best spot. Players sometimes also take a parallax radar as a backup as it can also lock targets yet is less reliable due to jamming.

[@andrewshoaf1842]

You should do an update on this.

[@JDeeGaming]

Which part is in need of an update? I havent seen too many changes to Radar in the last patch notes.

[@basedeltazero714]

Hm. Based on some very quick research, -36dBm seems to be a trash garbage sensitivity. Typical civilian radars have a sensitivity in the range of -100dBm, I think? This is unsurprising given how ridiculously short ranged radar is in this game.