Disappearing ships

Hi, I'm a new player, about 3 weeks, and something I can't figure out is why reds keep disappearing. They fade out and nowhere to be seen sometimes for a few seconds, sometimes for half a minute. Some battles this doesn't happen but usually it does, and one time 4 of the 5 still active reds faded away.

I don't see any invisibility weapons in the shop (did I miss it?). I thought maybe these were cheaters that exit the app which hides their ship but I tried that and it seems your ship is still in battle because when I come back I'm dead. Also, this disappearing is so common there can't be that many cheaters.

I thought maybe the reds are only tracked within a range and not obstructed but I've seen them fade out right in front of me, I'm looking at the actual boat fade out.

To be clear, these are not destroyed boats. Waiting and scanning about I'll see them fade back in later.

So what's going on with this?

 

I have seen this to, not sure what it is some kind of glitch I'm guessing

 

This is fairly common in all MOBAs - there is a "fog of war" that obscures enemy locations outside of a specific range of your team's positions. So, most likely the enemy ships are just really far away, and are backing away from you at various times, into the "fog of war".

 

Idk whats happening. It normally happens at the end of a battle whn the ships of the losing side try to run for it and live for as long as possible.

 

Thanks for the replies but I must not have explained the problem well. So I played a couple games right now just to make sure I'm seeing what I'm seeing, and here's an example...

Start of battle, I'm in a speeder cautiously approaching and the first red appears. I reorient myself and lock onto him/her. At first there's a number like 11 under the lock and as I approach this number is counting down. I assume this number represents some distance unit beyond my canons range, so I need to get it to 0 or below wherein the number no longer shows and I'm in weapon range.

What happened though is as I'm approaching and the number is about to hit 0 the red faded away. It was just a couple waves away, I had a lock on it, but it just vanishes.

I saw it happen many times more in that battle, all of them of short duration. I'm not sure if it was the same ship every time and I didn't take note what happened with the lock when that first ship faded.

Really, I'm most disconcerted that you all don't know what I'm talking about, that means my problem is rare so finding a fix or understanding is possibly unlikely.

Thanks again, I hope someone can shed light on this because this is a great game but I just don't get what's happening here. I'll try to post a video later if I'm not explaining well.

 

Are you talking about the mini-map on the edge of the screen or the red circle around the ship? When its green, you can fire at the ship. Or, when you say red do you mean red ships? You need to clarify.

 

Ah, if you are getting closer and they disappear... that happens to me "a lot" too, when they go past obstacles or are otherwise blocked out from vision. My assumption is that we lose sight of them since we don't have direct vision without an ally at a good angle (and distance). My assumption was that this wasn't a bug, but idk then, if it ain't fog of war. Certainly not limited to a few players for me, so far. xD

 

It's the heads-up-display "tags" in 3D space, showing their name and health bar. I'll move the target circle towards one of these and it snaps in place, you know, and then that circle stays centered on them with their name and health just above. But at the same time you can see the tags of all the other players around.

These tags follow the ship even when the ship is obscured in 3D space. I think this might be where I'm confused... I play another game where the tags are always visible no matter where the players are, as long as they are in range. Yet another game I recently dabbled in the tags would only show if the player was actually visible.

I was under the impression tags in Battle Bay worked like the first game but now I wonder if it's supposed to be a third mechanic, a 'fog of war'. The vast majority of times the tag will fade out when the ship is visually obscured. I do have a couple memories of having my eyes on the actual boat and seeing both the boat and it's tag fade out, but the memory is too vague, can't be certain it's real. Plus, as I've been more attentively watching for this I've only noticed them fade out when visually obscured.

They are visually obscured but well within range. I think this may be it and I've answered my question while writing this. It hadn't occurred to me the tags were unreliable on purpose, a fog of war. Haven't encountered such a system before but it makes sense, I see the appeal.

 

Thanks, I think that phrase fog of war somehow unlocked my mind. David Bonaparte also mentioned it but described it like the other game where the tags are always visible in range. This fog of war is different, they may or may not fade out when visually obscured even when in range.

Also, I usually play with a Rare Cannon, a standard plain cannon but it has the highest DPS of all my weapons. I'm not clear on why'd there be difference with different weapons.