[T:V] The sensor system

Plasma said:
Can I suggest that your new implementation sounds okay, but what concerns me is that you cant see red arrows above players when they are close to you (LoS) - this is irritating because I _HATE_ games that you cant tell if its a friend or foe right off the mark, its just annoying.

You should be able to (even when the sensor is down) see red arrows on players around you and in the distance a bit (once again, LoS).
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There are two ways that you will be able to tell whether it's friend or foe right off the bat:

1) Friendlies always have a green IFF, so if they don't have one, they are an enemy

2) The shapes of the different teams are rather distinct for this very reason. It wouldn't be like, for example, how BF is where you have to be close enough to read their name tag to tell if they're friendly or not.
 
You will be able to see your teammate's IFF constantly. That's great, in my opinion. At that, enemies and team mates will have completely different armour styles as the tribes really differ alot in that regard, so if you're sniping and can't see an IFF you can still recognize him from the model/skin. Edit: Arggh, posted too late to read the above

Random duels in the middle of a map or whatever should still be able to occur, since you will be able to see the person and recognize that he is a lacking an IFF, so being an enemy.

I really like the idea, but I'll have to see it in action to see if it really works out.
 
KP:

If the sensor is knocked out, is the entire IFF system knocked out with it? Red Triangles no longer show up, but is the same true for Green Triangles? If Green IFF's still appear it makes the lack of Red ones redundent. It wouldn't matter if there was no Red Triangle above a potential enemy, the lack of a green one makes his loyalty pretty obvious.

If the statement of 1 global sensor, I take it there will be no deployable sensors? Ok, that I can except.

The Flag Finder. I don't think the Flag Finder should be automatic and global at the same time even if the sensor is up. I think it should still be conditional. For example, I might suggest that if the Sensor is up and your flag is within a certain range (eg. 400m) the Flag Waypoint appears to all your team. However, if the Flag is out of range, the Icon will not automatically appear. It will only appear if a teammate finds the flag carrier (at which point the entire team is then informed). If the sensor is destroyed, none of the above occurs and the Flag Finder is disabled.
 
Green IFFs will always be there. You have to remember the fact that there's a radar / 'command screen' too, which will both no longer display enemies. That could be a big thing right there.

It might also limit snipers, who would have to look much more carefully for motion or small objects in the far distance as opposed to just looking for an IFF, zooming, and shooting.

I think I agree with the ideas there about the flag though, it sounds like a good way to have both the flag icon, and the need to put some effort into finding the capper.
 
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Also, if there are say, two sensors - would the sensor net go down if both sensors were destroyed? (Is this allowed for the game)?
 
Yeah, green IFFs are always there regardless, so you always know who's friend and who's foe.

As for influence during beta, if the majority of people said, "Wtf is this sensor system, I don't understand it and it sucks," then of course we'd re-visit it.

I'll emphasize again that this system is intended to make radars, sensors, IFFs and flag indicators more obviously strategic. If you don't want the other team to have sensor information about you, destroy their sensor. If you don't care that they have sensor information about you, don't worry about their sensor. Whether or not you care about them having sensor information about you at any given moment will change depending on your situation and the strategy you choose to employ.

And gaining an advantage by destroying the other team's sensor doesn't force teamwork any more than clearing a flag stand and distracting the defense to help your flag carrier,
KP
 
So let me get this straight... when your one sensor is up, you can see what the enemy is doing from all the way across the map. When it is down, you don't see the red Iffs or enemy positions at all, even if a teammate is right in the enemy base? So the idea of sensor range is being discarded entirely?
I don't like this at all.
I honestly don't see how paring down the sensor system to such an extreme degree could be seen as better. At least with the old system, you could still use the deployable sensors to keep your teammates aware of incoming dangers when the main sensors or generators were taken down.

This new system offers ony a binary "all or nothing" aspect to the gameplay. It strips away any strategy/subtlety from the sensor system while making the (single) sensors way too important. I just don't like it. Sorry KP.

Having said that, I'll still give it a chance in beta. You guys better be ready to swallow your pride and make some changes if it's a disaster though.
 
KineticPoet said:
I'll emphasize again that this system is intended to make radars, sensors, IFFs and flag indicators more obviously strategic. If you don't want the other team to have sensor information about you, destroy their sensor. If you don't care that they have sensor information about you, don't worry about their sensor. Whether or not you care about them having sensor information about you at any given moment will change depending on your situation and the strategy you choose to employ.
KP
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but destroying sensors was always strategic in the previous games. All you have done is focus all the strategy on to a single objective!

Perhaps it would be better if you could illustrate what you think was wrong with the previous game's sensor system so we can understand why you feel this drastic change is necessary?
 
After thinking about it thoroughly and running through scenarios in my mind, and realizing fully that green IFFs will still always be enabled... I retract my previous essay.

The absolute only area that the sensor will change a thing strategically will be with the flag carrier and flag chases.

I'm of the opinion though that in gametypes like arena, the senors should always be present off-map so telling friend from foe is easier. Your eyes are drawn to red more than they are the guy that has nothing over his head. In CTF however, it should be map dependant according to the map makers strategic plans.

It still bugs me about not having red IFFs if the sensors are down though... cause seriously, you do automatically run toward the guy in red before you would the guy without an IFF. It effects reaction time. But if the person doesn't have the flag, then reaction time is the absolute only thing that would be changed as you could still tell friend from foe. So maybe you shouldn't even take away IFFs from foes if the sensors are down as reaction time really isn't a big enough change to make any large strategic differences, and it should only affect the flag carrier.
 
Afex2win said:
when you say all enemies have indicators when the sensor is on, does that mean happy style (through buildings or very far) or normal t1 style (when you see them they have a triangle)
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Normal T1-style,
KP
 
exactly. Taking away the red IFFs for enemies when your sensor[strike]s[/strike] [strike]are[/strike] is down is like handing everyone on the other team a sensor jammer pack. It's just too extreme a penalty.
 
so long as the friendly IFF is always up, i won't mind if destroying the sensor means the players lose enemy IFF if they are like ~100meters away from a player. this would mean you could still see the red arrow when they are within 100 meters (dueling range) but if they are ~400 meters away, you won't see a red arrow skiing towards you saying....LOOK AT MY BIG RED ARROW, IT'S POINTING AT A HEADSHOT. this would make a sensor more valuable and prevent a wide open map from being a uber snipefest.
 
plainoler said:
so long as the friendly IFF is always up, i won't mind if destroying the sensor means the players lose enemy IFF if they are like ~100meters away from a player. this would mean you could still see the red arrow when they are within 100 meters (dueling range) but if they are ~400 meters away, you won't see a red arrow skiing towards you saying....LOOK AT MY BIG RED ARROW, IT'S POINTING AT A HEADSHOT. this would make a sensor more valuable and prevent a wide open map from being a uber snipefest.
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You are forgetting about when the sensor is up though. Snipers will be able to see you from all the way across the map. The idea of sensor range should not be discarded like this. All or nothing is not a good way to encourage depth in gameplay.
 
Neek said:
Perhaps it would be better if you could illustrate what you think was wrong with the previous game's sensor system so we can understand why you feel this drastic change is necessary?
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On nearly every single pub game that I've ever played, I was pretty much the only one who ever took time to destroy the enemy's sensors and repair ours consistently. Sure, occasionally someone else would realize their significance and show sensors some love. RealistiK loved sensors. But for the most part, even today, people underappreciate them.

This is either because lots of people cheat or lots of people don't appreciate the existing system. Being an optimist I assume the latter. And really, the existing system gives you an edge in competition, but in pub play, most people seem perfectly happy to run around playing without ever using their command screen. Most people seem equally happy defending flags against cappers who have red arrows as against cappers who don't. Most people don't get the sensor system, or if they do, they don't care.

Rather than removing the system entirely, this solution is intended to emphasize the significance of sensors, radars, the command screen and IFFs. It allows both extremes--lots of enemy sensor data and no enemy sensor data--and leaves it up to the players and mapmakers to decide when and if that information is important,
KP
 
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edit: just read KP's thing about LOS, so ignore the LOS stuff here :p


If the sensor is off, it doesn't matter that you can't see the enemy IFF, because you will still see your friendly IFF. A way to fix this, is to make friendly IFFs go away when the sensors are down. However, this would slow down the game because instead of going right to the action, you are trying to figure out who's friendly. So we want friendly IFFs on all the time. I don't really see a point of a sensor in this case. You can tell who is the enemy by who does not have an icon over their head. So I would have friendly and enemy IFFs on all the time (well, obviously you wouldn't see them through buildings, and you wouldn't see them if they aren't in your LOS).

As for the radar, I think having enemy AND friendly icons turn off when the sensor is down would be interesting. It would give a greater incentive to keep the sensor up. You can't coordinate caps very well if you can't see the positions of your other teammates. The slow down arguement in the first paragraph might apply here, but it might be something to try.

For the flag IFF: I can't stand having an icon over the flag all the time. As a compromise, I think the flag IFF should only be on the screen if the sensor is up. However, the icon will only show up if the enemy is in your LOS. The flag will show up on the radar if the sensor is up, it won't show up if the sensor is down. I know it seems kind of silly to have it show up on the radar and not show up when the enemy isn't in your LOS, but I also think it is silly to have an flag icon hovering in the
background when you are no where near the flag.

In CTF, there's a problem to adding another objective. You already have flags, generators, and turrets to take care of. With the smaller player sizes in the game (lets say 8-10 per team), can a team really defend everything in the base? Flag indicators are a huge part of the game, so are the generators, and of course the flag. How can teams possibly defend everything? In T1, it really didn't matter since most teams didn't use sensors effectively. So you only had to worry about the gens and flag. I don't really know how a team can defend everything with smaller teams.
 
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Neek said:
You are forgetting about when the sensor is up though. Snipers will be able to see you from all the way across the map. The idea of sensor range should not be discarded like this. All or nothing is not a good way to encourage depth in gameplay.
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if the sensor is up, the IFF should be like it normally is, where the player sees enemy or friendly anywhere they have LOS. but destroying the sensor should limit the LOS a bit but by no means should the player ever lose all enemy IFF. the big thing i'm going for is that without the sensor you won't see the enemy a long way off until the last minute unless you are actively looking (with zoom) instead of just moving the mouse left/right to see what red arrows pop up. the sensor should complement the player's own LOS IFF, not replace it
 
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As much as I liked using the CC for strategy in T2, with the size of these maps that we have seen so far a full waypoint system doesn't look like it would be very useful. Maybe with some of the larger maps we might get a feeling of it missing, we'll just have to see. However I would like there to still to be some basic command/order type function to the CC. Especially with the smaller team sizes it will be easier to manage then T2. Being able to visually tell a person or a group of people what to go do or bring emergency attention to something is a very powerful tool.

For instance your new sensor goes down and you can either type to your team that it needs repair or do a voice macro that it needs repair but does this really get your point across. With the CC you can target the sensor, issue a repair order and everyone will graphically see that it needs attention. It seems like you are doing a lot to make the game newbie friendly and with this they'll know where it is, that's very intuitive. Even vets can be absorbed in their current activities and need to see visually that something needs their attention. You can have very basic orders: attack, repair, defend. It doesn't have to be anywhere near T2 complexity, but I think having it does more for the game then not having it.

Part of the reason my team was successful in T2 was that command map, we used it for everything pratically. Yes it was complex and yes it was very challenging to use. Most teams outright ignored it because of these things but I think the same functionality can be preserved in t:v while at the same time streamlining it so your average player can handle it.
 
In all honesty, I like deployable sensors and sensors with limited ranges. This was a special type of equipment in T1/T2 and the players that knew how to take advantage of it had an edge. Unfortunately, not many people ever took advantage of the deployable sensors, despite their incredible usefullness (more important than turrets on many maps).

The Sensor Jammer Pack from T2 base++/classic has taught me that there is a surprisingly large number of people that simply cannot deal with enemies that do not have a red triangle over their head. Many players, even those on top teams, are incredibly near-sighted when their enemies don't have red triangles (even though they should know to shoot at anything that doesn't have a green triangle). Newbies are especially bad at not realizing they need to shoot at guys lacking red triangles.

In the end, I don't think removing IFF triangles from all enemies when the sensor goes is going to work. If a team wants the enemy sensor down, unless it's in a ridiculously easy position to defend, it will go down and stay down fairly consistenly. For many players, this is going to destroy their ability to play the game well and I don't think they'll like it. Newbies have a hard enough time dealing with base-rape; imagine being base-raped AND not seeing any red IFF triangles.

There must be some kind of 'minimum range' that causes a red triangle to appear above the enemy players regardless of any other map conditions. I would suggest having 2 ranges; a larger one for when the sensor is up and a shorter one for when the sensor is down.

Since I like deployable sensors, I would rather see no base sensors and just deployable sensors (again, with the mininum range). But, I suppose you can try the base sensor system and see if it is fun.

As far as flag indicators go, I'd leave them in at all times. Flag indicators help newbies figure out where to go and help eliminate guessing games during boring standoffs/turtles. This does make chasing a little bit easier, but it's a shortcut that I can live with to help new players participate in the flag game more.
 
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