Fog of War and Reconnaissance

Fog of War and Reconnaissance

In 414Ret your intelligence picture is deliberately incomplete. The enemy laydown is not handed to you fully revealed at the start of a turn, and post-strike battle-damage assessment (BDA) lags until something actually goes and looks. This page explains the recon model, the tools that fill in the picture (TARPS photo recon and the TARS film-and-debrief engine), the "approximate target area" precision mode, the hiding of mobile SAMs from the datalink, and the overview toggle that reveals ground truth when you want to plan or just check the real picture.

The whole point: reconnaissance is a thing you fly, not a free fact you read off the map.

What you know, and what stays hidden

Intel fog is applied only to the human (BLUE) map and dialogs. The AI planner and all threat math always use ground truth, so the enemy never gets dumber because you are fogged.

Two rules drive the player-facing picture:

Rule	What it does
Recon intel-fog	A newly appeared enemy site shows on the map as a targetable marker — you see its position, category, and allegiance — but its composition and threat/detection rings stay hidden until you attack, scout, or destroy it. Until then the intel panel reads "Not yet scouted — composition unknown."
BDA damage lag	When you strike an enemy site, its units keep showing as alive until a recon pass confirms the kill. You do not get an instant, accurate kill count just for dropping bombs.

Discovery is sticky: once a site is scouted or attacked, it stays revealed. Both rules are governed by the recon_intel_fog setting (Campaign Doctrine page, default ON). Older saves are migrated to fully revealed, so the fog is felt mainly on new campaigns.

A third, related gate hides enemy command posts entirely from your map for the SCAR commander-capture feature — see SCAR and the scar_command_post_intel setting.

Lifting the fog: TARPS photo recon

The clean way to resolve both rules above is to fly a TARPS photo-recon pass: a player F-14 overflies the site, and what it photographs comes back at the landing debrief as confirmed intelligence — clearing the BDA lag and revealing a freshly-discovered site's composition. The auto-planner can also append a TARPS sortie to Strike/DEAD packages automatically (auto_add_tarps_recon, default ON), so BDA mostly takes care of itself on packages you already fly.

TARPS and its TARS film-and-debrief engine have their own page:

→ TARPS Reconnaissance for the aircraft and pod, how to fly the pass, the auto-planned follow-up, and how TARS turns photos into confirmed BDA.

Approximate target area — making you find it

The target location precision setting (EXACT vs APPROXIMATE) changes how much help your steerpoints and kneeboards give you. In Approximate mode:

• Player target steerpoints are offset to a randomized area 1–3 NM from the real target, and the waypoint is renamed TARGET AREA. You fly to the area and visually acquire — AI attack logic is unaffected.
• DEAD and SEAD flights drop their per-emitter target points and fly a single fuzzed target-area waypoint instead (mobile SAMs relocate between intel updates, so an exact per-launcher fix would defeat the "go find it" intent).
• Objective F10 map marks are suppressed even if marks are otherwise on.
• Strike/SEAD/DEAD kneeboard pages omit exact coordinates. The SEAD/DEAD page shows one consolidated cue: a rough bullseye for the center of the site (about 1 NM accurate) plus the single target-area steerpoint, then a description/ALIC table of the site's emitters.

Strike is deliberately exempt — its targets are fixed installations (buildings, bunkers, bridges) with reliable coordinates, so Strike always gets exact per-unit points regardless of the setting.

Mobile SAMs hidden from the datalink

Short-range and mobile air-defense units (SHORAD, AAA, MANPADS) are hidden from the MFD datalink picture, including escort SAMs riding inside armor or missile groups. Standalone medium- and long-range SAMs stay visible so SEAD can plan against them. The intent: you do not get a free, perfect datalink fix on every pop-up MANPAD.

Reveal fog of war (overview)

When you want to plan against the real laydown — sketching a campaign, double-checking what is actually out there, or running a debrief — tick Reveal fog of war in the map's layer panel (top-right, in the "Enemy intel" group; see Map Layers and Interface). It forces every player-facing fog rule to resolve to ground truth for whoever is looking: enemy composition, threat and detection rings, post-strike kills, and even hidden command posts all appear at once. Unticking re-hides everything.

This toggle is transient by design: it is never saved. A campaign file can never carry a god-view, and a shared campaign can never leak one. It always defaults off and is the only map layer choice the panel deliberately does not remember between sessions.

Settings reference

Setting	Default	Effect
recon_intel_fog	ON	Master switch for recon intel-fog + BDA damage lag
auto_add_tarps_recon	—	Auto-append a TARPS sortie to Strike/DEAD packages when a TARPS squadron is available
Target location precision	EXACT / APPROXIMATE	Offsets steerpoints, hides marks/coords, consolidates DEAD bullseye kneeboards
TARS plugin	ON	In-mission film/overfly/debrief engine that confirms BDA
Reveal fog of war (map toggle)	OFF, never saved	Short-circuits all fog to ground truth

Limitations and caveats

• The TARPS→BDA bridge has been verified in-game; the satellite-imagery recon kneeboard pages remain gated off because marker overlays do not reliably line up with the tiles (a known, separate geometry bug).
• Fog is BLUE-only on purpose; red always plays against the truth.

See also

• TARPS Reconnaissance
• Map Layers and Interface
• Mission planning
• Air Defense and the Air War
• SCAR
• SOF and Commander Capture