Basic Concepts

ACRE 2 Basic Concepts

Radios and Classes

Radio Name	Radio Classname	Strength	City Range	Perfect Range
AN/PRC-343	ACRE_PRC343	100mW	400m	850m
AN/PRC-148	ACRE_PRC148	5W	3-5km	5-7km
AN/PRC-152(c)	ACRE_PRC152	5W	3-5km	5-7km
AN/PRC-117F	ACRE_PRC117F	20W	10-20km	Horizon
AN/PRC-77	ACRE_PRC77	4W	1-3km	3-5km

Half-duplex radios

All the radios currently included in ACRE 2 are what is commonly known as half-duplex radios. This means that they can only transmit or receive at any given time. In practice, this means that if you are transmitting on a radio, you cannot hear anyone else.

If there are multiple speakers on the same frequency, they will interfere with eachother in such a way that you will only receive the strongest (usually closest) speaker.

Half-duplex limitations can be turned off in missions by using the difficulty module or the setFullDuplex and setInterference API functions.

Terrain and object interference

ACRE 2 realistically traces a signal path from the transmitting radio to any potential receivers. At the frequencies used on the currently available radios (VHF to UHF, 30 to 3000 megahertz), the radio waves act mostly like light, in the sense that they are blocked or attenuated by objects and the ground.

Unlike light these radio waves can still penetrate things like walls to some extent, but they will lose power and the range of the radio will be reduced. This might not affect a speaker if he is in a lone building in otherwise open terrain, but it will reduce signal strength and range inside a city or built-up area.

Terrain will outright block VHF and UHF signals. Some waves can bleed through via scattering and reflection, but generally radios on these bands are considered to be Line of Sight (LOS) radios as far as terrain is concerned.

The amount the signal is attenuated by objects and terrain can be reduced or removed using the difficulty module or the setLossModelScale API function.