How do you use radio location

[Shirakami_Kon]

In my opinion RL can be good on radar cruisers. Besides the immediate benefit of if you pay attention to it and maintain good positioning you can't be ambushed 1v1, and detect random flanking maneuvers etc.

 

I find it can be really useful in maximazing radar efectiveness, at the very least on your part, because one of the reasonings of many radar cruisers is that their detectability range is below or very near radar range to the point where if you're behind cover from most of ghe enemy and something spots you it's almost guaranteed you'll catch the DD lighting you in your radar range.

 

Without RL you might have been shooting or looking somewhere else, so while you catch the DD in radar range, you'd need to turn your guns to it, possibly giving the DD time to react to the radar and maybe even flee from range of it, leaving you with just a wasted radar use. But with RL you'd know something is closing on you, and from which direction and be waiting for it to spot you to make sure catch him on radar range and be ready to target it immediately with no time wasted because you got your guns ready in the direction already. Also depending of the situation of course if you can stay covered by terrain from the rest of the enemy team you can even just corner a pesky DD in a forced 1v1 by you instead of letting it have an intended flank on you or your team too.

 

Sure, I also understand usual cruiser builds that go for full DPM, or stuff like more consumables like heals, hidros, radars and such, which can definitely be helpful in floating toolboxes like Worcesters and such, but there's a lot of cases where the value of the info of RL, specially in early game I think, where you get an idea of which caps the enemy DDs aim for at the very start and preventing them from flanking you by surprise is such and advantage you wouldn't have with anything else.

[COPlUM]

It's useful on many ships, you can make an argument for it even on cruisers without radar, if you have no other way to deal with a flanking torpedo-demon, RPF at least lets you know how to angle against the incoming torps so you don't eat more than 1 on the nose. Also applies to when you need to proximity spot a smoked up DD in a pinch. There's 2 point skills that increase your HE fire chance by 1% and people argue the usefulness of RPF...

[ItsEyeJasper]

Please can some one correct me if i am wrong. But i have been informed that  RPF does not point directly to the nearest ship more so to the Center of the Cell that the nearest ship occupies which is why you often experience ships appearing slightly off bearing. I always thought it was Aimed directly infront or the rear depending if he is moving forwards or backwards of the  ship so that you could tell direction of travel. 

 

[HMS_Kilinowski]

First of all I would not say RPF is useful or useless. These kinds of absolute statements are not suited for a skill that is dependent on play style. I'd say RPF can be quite useful for some players, and when I say useful, I mean worth the points. Ofc every skill is useful, but not necessarily given the alternatives.

 

RPF has some pronounced downsides. It costs points, that otherwise you'd invest into dpm buffs. I rather use it on cruisers like ITA-CA or RN-CL, that don't need HE or AP buffs and have the spare points lying around. Especially the ITA-CA is well suited, since it usually is quite fast and RPF can only get you so far when you want to chase a DD. You also need the speed to catch up, since he sees you coming.

 

For DDs I personally find little use. I tried it after Flamu made a big fuzz about it. Pretty much like Priority Target, it becomes a skill telling you, what you should already know. If someone is spotted in a strange position, you usually know a DD is going wide. Sometimes I use islands just to test when I break line of sight. I by now get pretty good at pinpointing the position from where I was kept spotted. Also one already gets a lot of info just looking at the enemy team line-up. What ships are spotted? What DD / sub is in division with what spotted ship? You start making assumptions. The more experience you get, the better your assumptions become eventually.

The other point is that RPF usually tells me the position of some ship that overextends or goes on some goose chase. These are not the greatest threats to begin with. The hardest enemies I encounter are very skilled gunboats. To even survive these encounters, I usually need every bit of hp and dpm I can get.

 

When it comes to torpboats, I find I give away too much information, when using RPF. If I could turn it on and off, that would be helpful. Sometimes you give away more information when you use RPF than when you are RPFed. You can triangulate the direction even when not in a division, as long as you can make a reasonable assumption, what ship the RPF is jumping to. With three ships in some situations you can even triangulate the distance of the RPF user, tho that is pretty purple stuff. But even without that, looking at the team line-up you often can even tell what ship uses RPF. So while the RPF tells its user the direction of the nearest target, but not the identity, by triangulating the RPF user and correctly narrowing down the ship class, you know more about them than they know about you.

Sometimes, tho not frequently, I can even use the enemies RPF to fake pointing at a ship behind me, while using it to catch the enemy off-guard.

[OldschoolGaming_YouTube]

On 5/9/2022 at 11:53 PM, Alchemist79 said:

I just grinded and reached the Des Moines. My captain 17 points has 3 available points and i intent to give radio location a try when when i get another. I dont yet know if i will like it, but i think i should at least try it i can restat later. 
But while giving it a try, it would be good to first hear some advice on how to use it to the best effect. Of course good reasoning why i should or should not use it is welcome to, but i intent to give it a try anyway.

my logic sais it is for finding DDs and getting information to better know when to radar as well as knowing where the torps will come from. Please expand my understanding and tell me all your little tricks how you use RL.

If you know how to use it its one of the most OP skills in the game. Dont know how many kills I gotten for free by using it and even game won because I know where to go to kill a flanking DD. Have it on all my DD killers like Des Moines, Wooster, Annapolis, Daring etc Will put it on Sherman when I get that ship.

On all my stealthy Ninja torp boats I have it to control the engagement with other enemy DDs with worse concealment. 

 

Had so many free kills because I pre-torped using the skill. also killed DDs contesting caps since I know where they sit, also be able to angle against his torps. In cruisers you know when someone is either flanking by the map border or what direction a ship is moving behind some islands.

Pretty useless on long range cruisers like Henri and Hinden and all BBs.

[Shirakami_Kon]

2 hours ago, ItsEyeJasper said:

Please can some one correct me if i am wrong. But i have been informed that  RPF does not point directly to the nearest ship more so to the Center of the Cell that the nearest ship occupies which is why you often experience ships appearing slightly off bearing. I always thought it was Aimed directly infront or the rear depending if he is moving forwards or backwards of the  ship so that you could tell direction of travel. 

 

Correct. It points the map coordinate in which the closest enemy ship is. Still that hardly makes it an issue.

[COPlUM]

3 hours ago, HMS_Kilinowski said:

First of all I would not say RPF is useful or useless. These kinds of absolute statements are not suited for a skill that is dependent on play style.

It's also just personal like do you feel like you need it? How much use do you feel you get out of it? You can't do a poll on this, go with the majority and assume you are or aren't missing out. Like priority target for battleships, until a year ago when it was one point people said "haha you don't have priority target, NOOB" - now it's two points and people say "Haha you have priority target, NOOB" - Just build your captains the way you're comfy with.

He should try RPF, keep it if he likes it, ditch it if he doesn't.

[ItsEyeJasper]

12 hours ago, Shirakami_Kon said:

Correct. It points the map coordinate in which the closest enemy ship is. Still that hardly makes it an issue.

Well yes and no, because it actually allows you to determine distance more accurate if you understand how it works vs a player that just assumes it points at the ship. Thank you for confirming though

[Estaca_de_Bares]

I currently only use it on radar CLs, be them RN or USN (don't touch the latter that much, though), and Des Moines for the anti-DD role. I do understand why others like @COPlUM would use it on certain gunboats (the most fearsome to me in ranked were Kitakazes after all) that can be specced as torpboat hunters and might do it myself by resetting some of the captains of those.

I also understand the logic of the skill for torpboats (self-protection and blind torping) although it doesn't fit to my playstyle: I'm not confident enough in using it for blind torping in spite of doing so relatively often at the initial stages, but that's because of knowing the main choke points, the usual behaviour of other players and approximate timing; OTOH, I trust my gunnery and kiting to get me out of a rough spot if needed, so my IJN torpboats are actually hybrids in a sense, pretty much as @HMS_Kilinowski says as a caveat for the skill:

21 hours ago, HMS_Kilinowski said:

[...] It costs points, that otherwise you'd invest into dpm buffs.[...]

What I do a lot as a torpboat is paying attention to being radiolocated at the beginning and if its status changes, so I can make educated guesses (once again due to average player behaviour) about which ship(s) I may/may not be facing near the cap I'm sailing to, and roughly where the RF ship is thanks to triangulation. The last point @tocqueville8 mentioned...

On 5/10/2022 at 1:38 AM, tocqueville8 said:

6) In Ranked, RPF might tell you two important things: A) at least one enemy is going middle instead of either cap, B) all enemies are doing a lemming train to the other flank, so you're free to push, maybe take "their" cap, and set up a crossfire. Otherwise, in a Des Moines, you'd probably play it safe in order to avoid their Schlieffen/Napoli, but now you know you don't have to: in fact you must hurry to help your teammates!

 ..., the going middle part (for maps like Islands of Ice) in particular although it works in many other cases (e.g., going to the other team's natural side as a scout in Shards), I've used it from time to time as a mind game against the reds: firstly, my sole presence there negates the usefulness of the skill for a large chunk of the map; secondly, because the usual answer to RF pointing towards there is due to a torpboat, it forces them to divert someone to keep the threat in check and the enemy big ships must also keep an eye to their side and can't bow-tank leisurely.

 

Salute.

[HMS_Kilinowski]

8 minutes ago, Estaca_de_Bares said:

I also understand the logic of the skill for torpboats (self-protection and blind torping) although it doesn't fit to my playstyle: I'm not confident enough in using it for blind torping in spite of doing so relatively often at the initial stages, but that's because of knowing the main choke points, the usual behaviour of other players and approximate timing; OTOH, I trust my gunnery and kiting to get me out of a rough spot if needed, so my IJN torpboats are actually hybrids in a sense, pretty much as @HMS_Kilinowski says as a caveat for the skill:

 

Yes. In a way it is a skill that compensates for lack of team play and communication. For a week now I am using this new mod that shows when a team mate is spotted. This could well be an information that an aware team mate would share in chat, even more so if this means something fishy in terms of where an enemy could be. However, often I make guesses out of this extra information that I could never make otherwise, since my team mates are so lazy and casual, they don't even comprehend what the fact means that they are spotted in a place where they shouldn't be spotted.

RPF would backfire in many cases, if the team could be bothered to just share information. I remember that famous situation where I was RPFed by a fleeing DD with a radar cruiser behind me. At some point I wasn't RPFed anymore, which led me to assume he had switched the flank and another ship on that other flank was now his nearest target. It turned out that the RPF went to that radar cruiser behind me and he never found that fishy, he never shared that info and least of all, thought about maybe using his radar. To no surprise he caught 5 IJN torps into his flat broadside with zero reaction time. All this would have been obvious, if just would have bothered to just comment in chat on being RPFed.

 

So, I don't want to offend anybody, RPF is imo a bit of a newb skill. Not that it wasn't useful, but just that this information in so many situations could be collected by a team playing as such, that the 4pt investment is imo too much for a DD. I don't need to guess an enemy DDs position if I have a CV that doesn't burn his rocket planes on a nose-in BB, but spots the DD on their approach. I don't need RPF to tell me a DD is going wide, if a player tells his team when he's spotted in a position conclusive with a DD in some unexpected spot.

 

In a way, RPF is team skill. Not every ship needs it. One ship with RPF per flank is more than enough. If I was a cruiser, I'd rather have RPF and free up a DD-players skill set to invest into survivability, since his survival is my spotting.

[Hirohito]

On 5/10/2022 at 9:04 AM, Panocek said:

 

Keep in mind, RPF can be used against you by competent players, as skill shows warning you're radio located. When this warning switches between division mates and this fact is not lost to them, you can triangulate rough location of RPF user.

Not as much of a problem in a cruiser though, as your position is more predictable to begin with.

Sure they can triangulate that you sit behind the common radar spot, but you would often sit there anyway and a good DD player would already anticipate that.

And the times where good players can use this information effectively is very rare in the common random/ranked game.

Heck, even when I play with competent players, this information is often lost on us as we're busy with other things.

 

In fact, having RPF might throw the target off and falsely lead them to believe that a DD is close by, when in fact it's a radar cruiser.

For instance, a Khaba usually doesnt pick RPF, but a Småland does.

But when no DDs have been spotted, the enemy DD being located will kind of have to assume that it's the Småland that is close and locating him, and play accordingly and possibly choose an inferior approach to the situation.

Whereas if he knew for certain that he was facing a Khaba and desmo (and no Småland), he could afford to take map space more aggressively.

[SV_Kompresor]

22 hours ago, Shirakami_Kon said:

Correct. It points the map coordinate in which the closest enemy ship is. Still that hardly makes it an issue.

It actually doesn't. I thought so too until I was corrected. It actually points towards the closest segment around your ship in I think 22.5° chunks. (I have no idea how to properly explain it)

[Shirakami_Kon]

1 hour ago, SV_Kompresor said:

It actually doesn't. I thought so too until I was corrected. It actually points towards the closest segment around your ship in I think 22.5° chunks. (I have no idea how to properly explain it)

You mean that it points sectors or 22'5 degrees of angle towards your ship position instead of specific map sectors? Interesting. Thanks for the info. 

[Altsak]

It's a skill that requires brains to become extreme useful.

 

Just look at your WR - if it's under 50% you probably will not have any clue how to use it properly and to its fullest potential. So forget it.