Radio Transmission - Degradation: How to solve?

[Mistermann]

I am trying to up my mission making skills and change from a SOUND TO ALL approach to one where players have to tune to the proper radio channel.  The video from @Sedlo below really inspired me to try this.

For some reason, I simply can't get around what appears to be significant radio degradation with this approach.  I am pretty sure I have this setup properly.  I have a zone established and connected to my test plane:

I also have Radio Transmission triggers established as below:

There are a series of radio transmissions that happen when a Bogey is a certain distance from players (30mi, 25mi, 20mi, 15mi, 8mi).  The 30 mile range is shown above.  It should be noted that I couldn't get this to work with a Power setting of 100 as shown by Sedlo.  I also had to remove clouds from the mission as the cloud layer appeared to impact the radio quality significantly.

When testing the mission I get radio transmission that are clear and exactly what I expect.  Others are mostly squelched almost completely.

Can anyone suggest a way around this?  I know Sedlo is a master at this and likely has an answer.  I am tagging a few more campaign wizards to see if they might have an answer.  I know ED just released the subtitle element of this trigger and figure you campaign guys would have encountered this already if it was a real issue.  Question is ... what am I doing wrong?

I am happy to upload the mission if anyone wants to see it.  Its in a WIP state so it ain't pretty under the covers.

Below is a video of what I am experiencing in game. 

Thanks to anyone for the assist here!

@Reflected @Badger633 @ChillNG 

[Mistermann]

I've had some folks contact me directly with thoughts - thank you.  

I am at a bit of a loss here, if I'm being honest.  This works perfectly for some transmissions and not at all for others (like the video above).  Strangely, the ones that are degraded are NOT always the same ones.  The first transmission has yet to fail.

Practicing what I preach, this is a MOD FREE mission and I have ZERO mods loaded in my DCS environment.  Hopefully Sedlo or any other campaign creator using the RADIO TRANSMISSION approach can weigh in here on how they avoid the issue of degradation to the degree that I'm seeing.  Candidly, if this is the base product, I don't know how anyone uses with any degree of confidence.

I'm about to kick this idea to the curb and go back to SOUND TO *** triggers and accept the immersion loss.

Tagging a couple more campaign creators that likely use the Radio Transmission approach.

@baltic_dragon @Sandman Simulations @SorelRo

Thanks all!

Edited 18 hours ago by Mistermann

[ChillNG]

1 hour ago, Mistermann said:

I've had some folks contact me directly with thoughts - thank you.  

I am at a bit of a loss here, if I'm being honest.  This works perfectly for some transmissions and not at all for others (like the video above).  Strangely, the ones that are degraded are NOT always the same ones.  The first transmission has yet to fail.

Practicing what I preach, this is a MOD FREE mission and I have ZERO mods loaded in my DCS environment.  Hopefully Sedlo or any other campaign creator using the RADIO TRANSMISSION approach can weigh in here on how they avoid the issue of degradation to the degree that I'm seeing.  Candidly, if this is the base product, I don't know how anyone uses with any degree of confidence.

I'm about to kick this idea to the curb and go back to SOUND TO *** triggers and accept the immersion loss.

Tagging a couple more campaign creators that likely use the Radio Transmission approach.

@baltic_dragon @Sandman Simulations @SorelRo

Thanks all!

Two main factors can be at play I believe with radio transmissions - Line of Sight and Range.  LOS is not usually a problem, just have a unit at high altitude send the transmission and you'll rarely have a problem.  Range is a bigger issue once ED introduced the degradation of comms, so I usually just move units closer until I get the desired effect.  If that's not an option then one solution is to just have the comms transmitted by the player and then you'll never get any degredation, but you'll have to make sure that the transmission is only played if the player is on the correct frequency so there is a little more work involved.

[Mistermann]

33 minutes ago, ChillNG said:

Two main factors can be at play I believe with radio transmissions - Line of Sight and Range.  LOS is not usually a problem, just have a unit at high altitude send the transmission and you'll rarely have a problem.  Range is a bigger issue once ED introduced the degradation of comms, so I usually just move units closer until I get the desired effect.  If that's not an option then one solution is to just have the comms transmitted by the player and then you'll never get any degredation, but you'll have to make sure that the transmission is only played if the player is on the correct frequency so there is a little more work involved.

Thanks!  My zone is attached to the player so LOS and distance shouldn't be an issue.  I may play around with the zone and move it off the player just in case there's some bug in there somewhere.

[Reflected]

“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” - ED has considerably overdone the degradation despite our protest

 

Just tie the zone to the player and make sure the center of the zone is within a mile. Also, set the power to 10000W. That’s your best bet to circumvent the baked in degradation. IRL there should be none up to a 1000 miles

[Mistermann]

@Reflected your advice worked!  Thank you.

Here's what I did.  The "zone" for the radio transmission was linked to my player aircraft in the setup already.  My Unit name was the same as the group name, so I added a "-1" to the unit name to make it unique, just in case that was the issue.

The zone itself was tucked pretty far away over Iran and I assumed by linking the zone to the unit in the config, it automatically associated itself with the aircraft (like a moving zone).  I dragged the zone directly over the aircraft (like Sedlo did in the video above) as your advice was to place it a mile from the aircraft.  I thought this was odd, but figured "what the heck can it hurt".  Moving the zone over the player's plane did the trick and all transmissions came through loud and clear (was already using a power setting of 10000 on the Radio Transmission trigger).

A few additional questions:

1 - Does the "Overlord_Radio" zone travel with the player's plane for the entire mission?  Does the zone mimic a moving zone once its placed no more than a mile from the link unit on the ME map?

2 - Where do I sign the petition to ED to fix this radio degradation?  Its pretty bad.

Overall, I knew I had to be doing something wrong in the setup.  Thanks for the assist, Reflected!! 

Edited 4 hours ago by Mistermann

[Sedlo]

Quote

1 - Does the "Overlord_Radio" zone travel with the player's plane for the entire mission?  Does the zone mimic a moving zone once its placed no more than a mile from the link unit on the ME map?

It will follow the plane around the mission and each time you initiate a transmission from the zone, it will start playing near the player.   But be aware, it will begin at the point defined as the centre of the zone in relation to the player, but it will remain there until that transmission is over.   This is not an issue for most things, but say if you have a 10 minute audio file, it will start to degrade as the player flies away from the origin of the transmission.