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Questions about the Challenger 2


PrevalentGroove

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So I purchased Steel Beasts recently and am currently working through the tutorials for the various vehicles. I've been having some difficulties with the Challenger 2 and I'm sure you guys could help me figure out whether I'm encountering a bug, operator error, or just misunderstanding the instructions.

 

I've noticed that the TOGS has a tendency to jump from side to side when I'm attempting to acquire a target. This only occurs when I'm firing through the TOGS (not the GPS) and when in Normal mode (not when in Emergency). After identifying a target, I try to finesse my sight onto the target by applying consistent movement in one direction, but the sight likes to bounce backwards and forwards with and against my intended movement. Is this meant to happen? Or am I misunderstanding something? Here's a video demonstrating what I mean.

 

 

The effect becomes much more pronounced when firing HESH rounds. Here's another video showing what I'm talking about. The side-to-side jerking isn't a result of my input and it makes target acquisition pretty difficult, especially with moving targets.

 

 

When firing through the TOGS in Emergency mode, there is no issue. Given the difference, it seems like I would want to use Emergency mode over Normal mode (anytime I'm engaging stationary targets, anyway) which I know isn't right. Here's another video showing how much easier it is to engage these targets with the same amount of input from me.

 

 

Thoughts? Am I doing something wrong? And additionally, I had another question about engaging targets at long distances with HESH rounds. As you can see in the video, I attempted to engage a tank at ~2300 meters with a HESH round and, after lasing, my reticle disappeared off the sight entirely. How am I supposed to hit a target like that? Or was that outside the effective range of a HESH round? Thanks all.

Edited by PrevalentGroove
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Welcome,

 

Re HESH you need to trust the FCS.

 

It is applying the elevation required to hit the target and due to the placement of the sight on the manlet, that moves the sight.

 

The CR2 is not like the Leo or M1 where the sight is located independently of the gun and you can keep the graticule on the target.

 

A read of this may help:

 

http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=Challenger_2#Thermal_Observation_and_Gunnery_Sight_.28TOGS.29

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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1 hour ago, PrevalentGroove said:

I've noticed that the TOGS has a tendency to jump from side to side when I'm attempting to acquire a target. This only occurs when I'm firing through the TOGS (not the GPS) and when in Normal mode (not when in Emergency). After identifying a target, I try to finesse my sight onto the target by applying consistent movement in one direction, but the sight likes to bounce backwards and forwards with and against my intended movement. Is this meant to happen? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Between engagements you should "dump the lead".

The fire control system builds a moving average of the last 1.5 seconds or so when trying to figure out the lead angle offset between the GPS and the gun position (in azimuth). So, if you switch from one target to the next and move the turret rapidly (as you should), you're adding a "spike" of fast lateral movement. This gets immediately added to the lead angle. 1.5 seconds later, as you're on the target and trying to fine-tune your aim, that "spike" signal falls out of the sample history, so the lead angle gets reduced accordingly. Since the TOGS is mounted on the gun mantlet and since it's only electronically stabilized in the vertical axis, it cannot compensate for the turret wiggle (like the GPS can do). So you're seeing this as a wiggle of the reticule.

The only way to prevent this behavior is to cancel the automatic lead calculation after the first engagement (press P, the middle mouse button, or joystick button #3 (I think)). This clears the sample queue and restarts it only after you used the laser range finder, signalling to the fire control system that a new engagement cycle has started. At that point the Null values in the smple history will be replaced with the data from your actual tracking movement, which is either zero (in case of a static-static engagement), or relatively small (unless you have a particularly slow round loaded (like HESH), which requires proportionally much larger lead angles (than fin)).

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15 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

Between engagements you should "dump the lead".

The fire control system builds a moving average of the last 1.5 seconds or so when trying to figure out the lead angle offset between the GPS and the gun position (in azimuth). So, if you switch from one target to the next and move the turret rapidly (as you should), you're adding a "spike" of fast lateral movement. This gets immediately added to the lead angle. 1.5 seconds later, as you're on the target and trying to fine-tune your aim, that "spike" signal falls out of the sample history, so the lead angle gets reduced accordingly. Since the TOGS is mounted on the gun mantlet and since it's only electronically stabilized in the vertical axis, it cannot compensate for the turret wiggle (like the GPS can do). So you're seeing this as a wiggle of the reticule.

The only way to prevent this behavior is to cancel the automatic lead calculation after the first engagement (press P, the middle mouse button, or joystick button #3 (I think)). This clears the sample queue and restarts it only after you used the laser range finder, signalling to the fire control system that a new engagement cycle has started. At that point the Null values in the smple history will be replaced with the data from your actual tracking movement, which is either zero (in case of a static-static engagement), or relatively small (unless you have a particularly slow round loaded (like HESH), which requires proportionally much larger lead angles (than fin)).

This makes much more sense! I'm used to the Abrams where the time average used to determine the lead offset must be a lot shorter, I didn't realize it was a second and a half on the Crusader. Thank you for pointing this out. After retrying the engagements I had much more success, although for some reason my MMB binding isn't working. I can hear the "clack" and see that the lead has been dumped when I press P, but pressing the MMB does nothing for me. I checked the binding, set MMB as the primary binding, but it doesn't appear to work. It's a bit of a pain having to move from N to P to N each time I engage a target but at least I can destroy them, even if it takes an extra moment or two.

 

Did you happen to see my second question? When lazing a target at 2000+ meters the reticle ends up falling out the bottom of the sight entirely when engaging with HESH rounds and I'm wondering if you can even use those rounds past that range for this reason. Thanks again!

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2 minutes ago, PrevalentGroove said:

Did you happen to see my second question? When lazing a target at 2000+ meters the reticle ends up falling out the bottom of the sight entirely when engaging with HESH rounds and I'm wondering if you can even use those rounds past that range for this reason. Thanks again!

 

Did you happen to see my answer - posted about an hour ago? :)

 

Edited by Gibsonm
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sorry kind of unrelated,  

 

 

just to clarify  Challenger 2's TIS,  TOGS ? is it the same TOGS that was in use on the Cheiftan mk11 and Challenger 1 or is this a gen 2  version that was put into the Challenger 2? 

Edited by Kev2go
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14 hours ago, PrevalentGroove said:

I had another question about engaging targets at long distances with HESH rounds. As you can see in the video, I attempted to engage a tank at ~2300 meters with a HESH round and, after lasing, my reticle disappeared off the sight entirely. How am I supposed to hit a target like that? Or was that outside the effective range of a HESH round? Thanks all.

 

13 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

Re HESH you need to trust the FCS.

 

It is applying the elevation required to hit the target and due to the placement of the sight on the manlet, that moves the sight.

 

The CR2 is not like the Leo or M1 where the sight is located independently of the gun and you can keep the graticule on the target.

 

A read of this may help:

 

http://www.steelbeasts.com/sbwiki/index.php?title=Challenger_2#Thermal_Observation_and_Gunnery_Sight_.28TOGS.29

 

Welcome to SB, hope to see you online for some Multiplayer sometime

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 15/01/2019 at 1:43 AM, Kev2go said:

sorry kind of unrelated,  

 

 

just to clarify  Challenger 2's TIS,  TOGS ? is it the same TOGS that was in use on the Cheiftan mk11 and Challenger 1 or is this a gen 2  version that was put into the Challenger 2? 

I'd say a Gen 2 system as there is no British vehicle using the Gen 1 era system currently implemented in SB

(The Chieftain is a Mk5)

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