1. no minimap auto targets 2. cameras more range, sees inf 3. engi radar sees tanks 4. comm radar scans inf and vehicles in same range as current or smaller, and has a ping (comm controls) on 2-4 minute cooldown which identifies all enemy buildings in range for 15-30 seconds (battle radar ftw) 5. ??? 6. profit
That's not too far from what is being planned. But rather than the radar pinging, it'll give diamonds (faintly, like a camera) on infantry, not show infantry on the minimap, but show vehicles. Not sure about buildings yet. By radar, I mean the commander radar btw.
They'll stay as they are now. As in, the way they always have been. They mark on the minimap too, whereas the large radar will not.
Say the soldiers are equipped with bio/nanotech eyeballs which can visualise that part of the spectrum. Or be honest and say 'because it makes the game more fun', same reason you can bring people back from the dead with calculators.
If you do that you need to overhault the diamonds system, it's not very good, I would suggest something like the left4dead outlines but with conditional visibility, like you can't see them at a distance and they don't render through cover (should be as simple as unticking $ignorez or whatever in the VMT I think), but it outlines people close to you and who are in the open. Honestly I think the minimap system is better for the battlefield awareness aspect, it doesn't have to show exactly where people are, but showing up a blue or red blob on the map in the general location of enemies would be advisable, ideally you would render a single blob for a group of enemies and simply make it bigger the more stuff is in the area, reducing radar contacts to a simple 'big enemy force here' and whatnot, also reducing radar clutter and increasing readability.
I suppose we could do that, but the point I was getting at is when people join the game they will ask "what is that doing? why is that doing that?". If the answer doesn't make sense - being a fake reason or not - then people won't understand it very easily. Of course, I suppose if you could have a visual ping and just say the sensor equipment you've loaded out with could detect it, that's all the same really. I mean we have a bunch of other things on our HUD (when we're not actually wearing any HUD gear) that are just there.
i dont get why people need reason for every single shit there is in a video game. and its especially dramatic in empires where ppl can talk (and sometimes get answers) from the developers. i'm totaly happy with the 2nd explanation - because its useful/fun/whatever theres so many thing that are "unrealistic" or have a poor explanation, but they make the game playable. a guy from DICE when asked about battlefield2 once said, "we want realism to the extend that it doesnt interrupt gameplay". i think ArmA prooves him correct. ArmA tries to be more of a simulator then a FPS and it fails horribly - the gameplay is horrible, i cant play it, though i'd really would like to ...
My point isn't that it needs to be realistic at all, I wouldn't mind if a rainbow came out of it. My point is it needs to be understandable so that the infantry will know what it means and how to counteract it, when they see it happening. It's no use have a bunch of light beams coming out and then the newbies going "wtf was that?" and some other pubber saying "I dunno, it just does that from time to time". That's my point.
Generally people have watched enough scifi to know that when the big sensor dish thingy goes 'ping' and sends out a wave, and then a second later you hear a 'woomph' sound in your ears, it means you've been scanned by the magic 'detect everything' sensor. Even though it doesn't work like that in real life, you can usually communicate it easily enough with sound and visual effects. Throw a hint up when it happens the first time and players will get the point. Don't play the woomph sound if the player successfuly evades the scan so that people know when they aren't detected, and maybe have an icon that lights up if you are in the line of sight of a radar.
Well I was thinking the radar sends out a little wave from the top and a flash of light, then the game checks for everything within a certain distance that has LOS to the centre of the dish and plays some sort of electronic or distortion sound on anyone who gets hit by the ping. Basically the same graphics you get around radars in RTS games, a little expanding circle or concentric rings or whatever to indicate it's sending magic detecto-waves out.
Ah okay. When you say little wave from the top I envision only one direction - like out of a radar dish...err...except our radars aren't radar dishes so I must be LOSING MY MIND!
Well. I think that what ever the "Spot" distance(mini map marker), Standing gets you on the map at 100% distance, crouching at 75% and prone at 50%. Shooting at any one of these should add 50% to what ever position your in. So for example: Standing and firing within 150 feet gets you on the mini map while prone crawling closer will keep you off the map till 50FT. Scout hide still functions as Map marker immunity.
