Ratten HUD | Nuclear Option

Combat HUD readouts for Nuclear Option.

The game already knows when a missile will hit you, which countermeasure defeats its seeker, whether the radar sweeping you has locked, and whether your shot is inside the envelope. It just does not always say so. Ratten HUD puts that on the glass.

It is the silent twin of Bitching Ratte: where that plugin speaks, this one draws. The two are designed to run together — nothing here duplicates a callout, and neither plugin depends on the other.

Threat readouts

Two threat readouts on the glass, drawn exactly like the fuel time and climb rate readouts: clones of a real HUD label, in the HUD font, sitting inside the projected HUD with the flight readouts rather than over the map. They replace the game's own missile lines over the minimap, which are hidden by default (Hide stock missile list) — only that text goes; the notch line on the map, the notch indicator and the alarm sound all stay.

Missile warnings are a red block centred just above the weapon hint (where SHOOT and OUT OF RANGE appear), because that is where you are looking when the answer matters. The block grows upwards: the soonest impact is always the fixed bottom line.

[ARH] 5.2km  NOTCH  9.4s
[IR] 2.0km  FLARE  2.3s

Radar warnings list in the right-hand flight column — the layout table pulls the altitude block up under the climb rate (Altitude:0,28), and the radar list takes the space that frees below it:

[MIG-29] LOCK
[RDR] x3

There are no Missile/Radar prefixes: the bracketed code and the tag already say it, and short lines read faster in combat. Both blocks move via the layout table, as Missiles and Threats respectively (e.g. Elements = Threats:100,-50).

Missile defeat hint and time to impact

One line per inbound missile, with the countermeasure that defeats the seeker and a live countdown:

Seeker	Hint
IR	FLARE
ARH / SARH	NOTCH
Optical	HIDE
ARAD	RADAR OFF

An unrecognised seeker type — a new game version, say — still gets a generic DEFEND rather than silently vanishing.

The closure maths behind the countdown is the same one the game's own AI pilot uses to decide when to break and dispense, so the number agrees with what the AI would do in your seat. It hides itself when nothing is actually gaining on you, rather than showing a fictional number for a missile that has already been defeated.

Radar warning tags

The stock RWR draws an undifferentiated arrow per emitter: something is painting you, but not what, and not how far along it is. This lists each emitter in the right-hand flight column, tagged by state and named by unit type:

Tag	Meaning
[RDR] x3	Sweeping you, no track — three pings recently.
[SAM] LOCK	You are the tracked target.
[FS-12] LOCK x2	Two FS-12s are tracking you.
[MIG-29] LAUNCH	A missile currently inbound was fired by this emitter.

Lines group by emitter type: two RDR stations hunting you are one fact, not two lines, so their pings pool into one tally. On a LOCK or LAUNCH line the count is units — how many of that type have you — and it is omitted when there is just one.

A radar that pings you once and never again is noise, so a single ping is not shown at all — the tally starts at x2 (pooled across stations of the type: two radars that each found you once add up to a line neither would earn alone). A lock or a launch shows immediately, however fresh the contact.

Pings count within a 20-second memory, long enough to hold two sweeps of a slow search radar; a sweep line stays up for 10 seconds after its last ping. A LOCK is only trusted for 4 seconds — a tracking radar paints its target continuously, so a lock that has gone quiet longer than that has in truth lost you, and the line falls back to the ping tally rather than claiming a track that is gone. Shooters sort first, then trackers, then everything merely sweeping.

The list is pinned by its right edge, just inside the throttle column, and grows leftwards — emitter codes vary in length, and a left-pinned line long enough would run off the edge of the glass, while the space towards the centre is empty sky.

HideStockRadarWarning suppresses the game's own directional wedges so the tagged list is the only radar warning display. It gates icon creation only — the sweep still runs, so the warning tone and the tags are untouched, unlike disabling the receiver outright.

Countermeasure state of charge

The stock indicator is green until the moment it runs dry, then grey — no warning while the load drains. This repaints it as a state of charge: green above half, amber, red below a fifth, and a flashing red when empty. Flares show a count, a jammer shows charge percent.

Full load is learned per airframe from the highest count seen, so it is correct on anything from a light fighter to a bomber.

Weapon readouts

In-range / SHOOT cue

The game computes Rmin, Rmax and the no-escape range every second, and decides whether every firing requirement is met — then only ever shows the SHOOT hint inside the no-escape zone:

hint.enabled = maxTargetDist < noEscapeRange;   // HUDMissileState.DisplayText

Between NEZ and Rmax you have a valid firing solution and no cue at all. Ratten HUD surfaces the state the game is already tracking:

Cue	Condition
SHOOT	All requirements met, inside the no-escape zone. The game's own cue, untouched.
IN RANGE	All requirements met, between NEZ and Rmax.

The cue lives in the game's own hint label beside the range ladder, in the stock style — the label's colour is never written, so every cue renders exactly as the game draws its own. The rejection reasons (OUT OF RANGE, TOO CLOSE, OUT OF ARC, TOO SLOW) are left exactly as they are.

Target data block

Extends the selected target readout from "who and how far" to what you need for an intercept:

Ratte
MIG-29
  12.4 km
  340 m/s closing
  HOT 22°
  ANGELS 8200 m

Aspect is measured from the target's nose to the reciprocal of the line of sight — HOT under 45°, BEAM through the middle, COLD past 135°.

It is deliberately one compact line at 70% of the surrounding text size. This readout is anchored to the target marker, so every extra line pushes it further across the glass — and with several targets selected there are several markers competing for the same space.

Contact readouts

Contact symbols

Ground units are told apart at a glance because their icons differ — a tank does not look like a radar. Every aircraft draws the same triangle, so a fighter, a bomber and the AWACS behind them are one shape repeated, and the only way to tell them apart is to select each in turn and read the target block.

This puts the number out of the type code inside the marker:

   /12\        /81\        /25\        /46\
   FS-12       SFB-81      EW-25       SAH-46

Numbers rather than letters, because the roster collides on its letters and not on its numbers: FS-12 and FS-20 are both F, SAH-46 and SFB-81 are both S, while 12, 20, 22, 25, 30, 46, 49, 67 and 81 are all distinct.

Key	Default	Effect
Aircraft type symbols	true	The symbols.
Symbols on friendly aircraft	true	Mark your own faction too.
Symbol size	0.2	Symbol size as a fraction of the marker.

Inside the icon it costs no space at all — the triangle was already there. This started as a label beside each marker, which is exactly the mistake it looks like once a dozen contacts are each trailing text.

Symbol size follows your HUD icon size and the marker's own distance shrink, so a far contact gets a smaller symbol and below five pixels gets none rather than a smudge. It is read every frame, so editing it while the game runs resizes the symbols as you save — no restart to find the size you want.

A fifth of the marker is already a readable symbol, because the marker's rect is a good deal larger than the triangle drawn inside it. How much larger is a property of a sprite this plugin cannot measure, so the first symbol of each session logs what it worked from:

[Info   :Ratten HUD] ContactGlyphs: marker rect=1.0 x scale=37.5 = 37.5, glyph=8 at GlyphScale=0.20, HUD text=40

Symbols inherit their marker's colour and dim with a stale track and flicker under jamming exactly as the icon does. The selected target gets none, because the game already prints its full code on that marker. Nothing here reveals a contact the game had decided not to draw: the marker was on the glass either way, and the number is the same definition.code the target block shows.

Flight readouts

Fuel time

An estimated remaining fuel time in minutes, (42m), under the fuel gauge reading. The estimate comes from the fuel actually burned between samples, so it follows your current throttle setting rather than assuming a fixed rate — it will drop hard in afterburner and recover when you pull back.

Ported from MKMods, which has been retired in favour of the standalone plugins. The matching voice callouts ("fuel low", "bingo fuel") live in Bitching Ratte.

Declutter

Objective label

The objective overlay's name-and-range text is hidden by default, leaving just the circle, the dot and the off-screen pointer.

Objective label	Result
Hidden (default)	Circle only, no text.
DistanceOnly	Range, no objective name.
Full	Stock label.

Hidden markers

Hidden unit types is a comma-separated, case-insensitive list of units that get no HUD marker. They stay on the map — this filters CombatHUD.CreateMarker, and the map draws from DynamicMap instead.

Defaults to pilot, to keep downed pilots off the glass.

The game has no single class for a downed pilot — Pilot is not a Unit — so this matches on the unit's display name, type code and object name rather than on a type. If it catches too much or too little, check the unit's name on the map and adjust the list.

Layout

Element offsets and declutter

One config table controls offset, scale and visibility for the game's HUD elements:

Element layout = Climbrate:0,40;SpeedGauge:20,0,0.9;CountermeasureIndicator:0,0,1,false

Each entry is Name:xOffset,yOffset[,scale][,visible]. Positive Y is up, offsets are in 1080p reference pixels, and a trailing false hides the element outright. Deleting an entry restores the element to exactly what it was before this plugin touched it, rather than freezing the last value.

Elements with no rule are never written to at all. This hook runs against every HUD element on every settings refresh, so normalising unruled elements would flatten prefab scaling on gauges that ship scaled, re-show elements the game deliberately hid, and undo other plugins' positioning. scale multiplies the element's existing scale rather than replacing it, for the same reason.

Elements are named after the HUD component that drives them (Climbrate, CountermeasureIndicator, WeaponIndicator, …) rather than by GameObject name, because the component name is what the game's own code commits to. 28 of the game's 30 HUD elements can be placed this way; ArtificialHorizon and GearIndicator are the two exceptions, being the only elements that do not route through the shared settings refresh this hooks.

Some readouts exist in more than one flavour: projected on the glass, or fixed to the screen (HMD). The screen-fixed variants get a suffix, so Bearing is the heading on the glass and Bearing.HMD the boxed heading at the top of the screen — without the suffix a rule could only ever hit both at once.

This plugin's radar list registers as Threats and its missile warnings as Missiles; both move and scale like any game element. The other readouts live inside game elements — the hint label, the target block, the fuel gauge — so they move and scale with their hosts rather than having entries of their own.

The defaults

The table defaults to Climbrate:0,40;Altitude:0,28;Bearing.HMD:0,0,1,false;Altitude.HMD:0,0,1,false:

• Climbrate:0,40 is the old MKMods ClimbRateVerticalOffset, which now lives here — the stock climb rate readout sits low enough to collide with its neighbours. If you still run MKMods alongside this, set its ClimbRateVerticalOffset to 0 first, or the readout moves twice.
• Altitude:0,28 closes the gap that move opens, tucking the altitude block directly under the climb rate so the radar list fits below.
• Bearing.HMD:0,0,1,false hides the screen-fixed heading box at the top of the screen, which duplicates the heading already shown under the compass tape.
• Altitude.HMD:0,0,1,false hides the screen-fixed altitude box for the same reason: the altitude block on the glass already shows it.

Configuration

Every feature has its own switch in BepInEx/config/dev.sewerlabs.rattenhud.cfg, written on first run. Enable mod in 1. General is the master switch for everything at once.

Section	Key	Default
1. General	Enable mod	true
2. Threat warnings	Missile defeat hint	true
2. Threat warnings	Impact countdown	true
2. Threat warnings	Radar warning tags	true
2. Threat warnings	Hide stock radar arrows	false
2. Threat warnings	Hide stock missile list	true
2. Threat warnings	Countermeasure colours	true
3. Weapons	Extended shoot cue	true
3. Weapons	Target data block	true
4. Contacts	Aircraft type symbols	true
4. Contacts	Symbols on friendly aircraft	true
4. Contacts	Symbol size	0.2
5. Flight info	Fuel time readout	true
5. Flight info	Fuel check interval (seconds)	10
6. HUD layout	Enable custom layout	true
6. HUD layout	Element layout	Climbrate:0,40;Altitude:0,28;Bearing.HMD:0,0,1,false;Altitude.HMD:0,0,1,false
7. Declutter	Objective label	Hidden
7. Declutter	Hide chosen unit markers	true
7. Declutter	Hidden unit types	pilot

The layout table re-applies live when the config file changes, so you can nudge elements without restarting.

Nothing showing up?

The shoot cue and the countermeasure colours need the game's own Weapons HUD turned on (Settings → HUD → Weapons). Both ride on elements the game does not draw at all when it is off, so with HUDWeapons = 0 you get no IN RANGE, no countermeasure indicator and no flare count — from the game or from this plugin. PlayerSettings.hudWeapons is checked deliberately rather than forced, so the setting keeps meaning what it says.

How the readouts are drawn

Nothing floats over the screen on a canvas of this plugin's own. Every readout either extends text the game already wrote (the target block, the shoot hint) or is a clone of a real HUD label parented into the HUD canvas (the threat block, the fuel time under the fuel gauge). Cloning a live label inherits the HUD font, the player's HUD colour and text size, the material and the projection for free — which is why every readout sits on the glass like the game drew it.

The clone source is the climb rate label, taken from HUDApp.RefreshSettings: a plain single line of body text present on every airframe, so the copy is not styled as something outsized or pre-coloured for a warning. If a threat block ever goes missing, the plugin logs one diagnostic line the first time you are in a cockpit, naming every gate it can be stuck behind.

Readout text is deliberately ASCII only. The HUD font is the game's own and has no reason to carry an interpunct, an arrow or a multiplication sign, and a missing glyph on a missile warning is the worst possible place to discover that.

Building

Requires the .NET SDK and a local Nuclear Option install. The build copies the plugin straight into BepInEx/plugins/RattenHUD:

dotnet build -c Release

Override the game directory if yours is elsewhere:

dotnet build -c Release -p:GameDirectory="D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Nuclear Option"

Installation

Requires BepInEx 5. Drop the RattenHUD folder into BepInEx/plugins.

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