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I've enjoyed going through the first four scenarios in Tides of War. All four have included ASEAN or allied satellite passes over hostile units. However, these satellites contain only visual cameras. I have never seen these satellites make any kind of enemy contact in all four scenarios, possibly because they can't see through the "Light high clouds 20-23 kft" that has persisted throughout the campaign.

In the first three scenarios, the absence of satellite intel wasn't all that critical. In Paracel Strike, however, satellites---including shared USA satellite intel---seem to be a primary way to get intel on what is located on Woody Island prior to a strike. In the example below using v1.10 b 1900.5 (with save), a KH-11 satellite passes close to PLA bases and probably ships without making any contacts. Are the satellites working as intended in Tides of War?

I do not whether it is WAD or not, but it is due to the clouds indeed.

You need a Synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) sat to overcome this limitation, like the MASINT Topaz series.

If you switch to Unit view, you will see the autodetectable installations on the island.


To see the not autodetectable before any strike, you may need to risk one of the Patmar or the Gulfstream AEW.

The ships around are detected and classified by those ACs without much risk.

The PLA satellites I have checked so far in Tides of War do have SAR, whereas the the ASEAN side has only visual cameras on their satellites. If "light" clouds are equivalent to a partial cloud cover, in theory the visual cameras may still have a reduced probability of making a detection; that may not be modeled in the current game engine. As it stands, the ASEAN satellites seem to make no contribution to at least the first four scenarios.

The difference in the sat sensors may be is due to balance, giving an advantage to the AI played side.