In a real battle, the well established interaction between battle participants plays an important role. The participants receive intelligence and actively coordinate with allies themselves and actively coordinate with them by reporting their own position and data about any detected enemies.
During different wars the same units may have encountered each other on the same battlefield. It might have been captured vehicles in the WW 2 period and in modern warfare the vehicles could have been created based on a model which had been built by license or simply bought. For the crews of these vehicles it was an even more acute problem as they would receive damage from allies because of lack of information and interaction.
The interaction mechanics of the SB game mode often lacks the ability to identify the vehicles at long distance. But you have a radio operator on your vehicles, so it means that you should be able to contact your allies even at long distances - and this is exactly this possibility we plan to implement.
It will work very simply without overwhelming you with a need to do unnecessary things. It will be enough to point your sight crosshair at the vehicle so the crew will register a request regarding the location of allies at specified coordinates. The reporting will be displayed additionally within the sight: “Allies at coordinates” or “No allies at coordinates”. The main condition is that the target needs to be visible throughout the radio contact. If the target is lost in the process, the connection will be dropped. The mechanics will be available to helicopters in sight mode and for anti-aircraft guns after the target is locked by radar or by simply holding the target in the crosshair if there is no radar on the vehicle.
The mechanics will appear in the test mode from the 20th of March until the 23rd of March in combined SB battles (menu: events). Based on the test results and your feedback the possibility of adding this feature to regular SB mode for combined battles on a permanent basis will be considered.
The War Thunder Team