Gradual stealth

Gradual stealth

Requests for features in the spring code.

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Gabba
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Joined: 08 Sep 2004, 22:59

Gradual stealth

Post by Gabba »

Hello people. From time to time I come out of lurking mode to propose a new idea or feature :-) .

:idea: This time it's about a more flexible system for stealth. Right now, stealth is an on/off thing: either a unit is stealthy and completely invisible to radar, or it's visible.

What I propose is adding a variable to each unit representing their level of stealth. Zero would be no stealth at all, of course.
Jammer units would just add a certain amout of stealth to units in their radius of effect.

Radars, on the other hand, would receive a number that represent their strength.

The resulting system would be very simple: a unit is visible to a specific radar if radar's strength > unit's stealth. If at least one radar can see the unit it appears on your map as a radar dot as usual.

Uses: :arrow: For example, we can make small units very stealthy, but not undetectable to advanced radars. I think you can see how modders can use this, for example to make infantry but not tanks undetectable to a basic radar (low strength). Then later you can build an IR sensor or whatever that can detect both (high strength).
:arrow: Another example is that we can allow a jammer to hide units up to a certain size, but prevent him from hiding a huge unit such as a Krogoth, which should have a massive radar signature.
:arrow: Also, if terrain can eventually add (or substract) stealth to units via the typemap, we can allow small units to hide (become stealthy enough to be invisible to basic radars) in some types of terrain.

A similar thing could be done for cloaking. All in all, it adds tactical options, and a new way to differentiate units.
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AF
AI Developer
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Post by AF »

lua

btw this isnt a new idea, IIRC you yourself started the original thread back in 2005/6, or you just took part in the thread.
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Gabba
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Post by Gabba »

AF wrote:lua

btw this isnt a new idea, IIRC you yourself started the original thread back in 2005/6, or you just took part in the thread.
Can lua really do that? Can you give some details? It seems to me that this proposal affects the LOS code deeply, and LOS code shouldn't be easily accessible by scripts, if we don't want people to cheat.

And yes this is a simplified version of my original proposal. But some people left and other joined us since 2005.
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AF
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Post by AF »

Lua synced scripts would be the scripts handling it, not user defined unsynced UI widgets.
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Gabba
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Post by Gabba »

AF wrote:Lua synced scripts would be the scripts handling it, not user defined unsynced UI widgets.
I see. Now, can you enlighten me as to why Lua seems to be all the magic these days? I suppose it's easier to code and less likely to mess with somebody else's code, but won't we see a massive performance hit if all new features are implemented in Lua?
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AF
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Post by AF »

Lua is underrated. Everybody underestimates tis speed.

For example, people blame supcoms slowness on lua, despite WC3 usng lua, and lua mainly being used in game engines for several years now.

As wit all languages its what you do with the language that determines the prformance hit. We already have a fancy cloaking shield that cloaks all inside the shield.

Go read the lua forum. Look at trepans fancy videos and screenshots.
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Gabba
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Post by Gabba »

AF wrote:Go read the lua forum. Look at trepans fancy videos and screenshots.
I will!

So now, back on topic, anybody has comments?
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

I'd like radar strength to determine the radar blip inaccuracy...
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MadRat
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Post by MadRat »

Ideally you could have radar granularity, stealth, jamming countermeasures, anti-jamming countermeasures, and reference accuracy all defined. Would be nice to see some units ignored by radars but detected by others based on a combination of both unit footprint and radar range. Would also be nifty if stealth for one radar didn't mean stealth for all. And electronic warfare was somewhat modelled more than a simple all or nothing.
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zwzsg
Kernel Panic Co-Developer
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Re: Gradual stealth

Post by zwzsg »

I don't like the idea. It makes the game confusing and hard to grasp, if you don't have clearly deliminated areas "Here I see", "Here I don't see". With Gabba system, we'll never known exactly how much we see.

Also, radar/stealth electronic warfare is very unfunny. I'd rather play with cute models than shoot cute shots than with the abstract concept of not seeing.
Warlord Zsinj
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

I agree with Gabba's relative sight system, but I think that complex cloaking systems like this would be counterintuitive and confusing.
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KDR_11k
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Post by KDR_11k »

I want at least multiple modder-defined radar types that a unit can be hidden or shown to so I can make detectors for whatever I please, be it orbital warfare, IR tracking, astralsight, aerospace surveillance, EM tracking, ...
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Pxtl
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Post by Pxtl »

KDR_11k wrote:I want at least multiple modder-defined radar types that a unit can be hidden or shown to so I can make detectors for whatever I please, be it orbital warfare, IR tracking, astralsight, aerospace surveillance, EM tracking, ...
Agreed. That way you can have all kinds of special detection ranges for units. Just have a flag on the detection-type defenition to see whether units are exposed as radar-dots (with controllable jitter), visible units, or seismic-blips.
Warlord Zsinj
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Post by Warlord Zsinj »

I also would like to see a more advanced radar system.

Does anyone remember this post a long time ago?
Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:11 pm Post subject: Advanced/Customiseable Radar System

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think it is important that Spring's radar system be abstracted to the level which weapons, and shields, and other things are. I think this would be simple to do and would allow a lot of versatility. Currently I feel it is quite limited, and doesn't allow players any leighweigh to have radar systems that vary from the standard OTA one.

Basically, what I am suggesting is an armor.txt style parser, for radars.

So, you would have a sensors.tdf file containing sensor[1], sensor[2], etc. You would then specify either the individual units (ie: unit1=corcom; unit2=armcom;), or designate entire unit classes (ie, for SWS: class1=infantry;). It is important to have both, so that you can have the ease of designating an entire class, and the precision to specify exact units.

For example (framework done by Gnome):
Code:

Code: Select all

[sensors] 
{ 
   [sensor0] //by default, radar. if a mod doesn't define this, have it behave as normal 
   { 
      [classes] //as defined by armor.txt 
      { 
         infantry=99; //number is irrelevant, like armor.txt 
         droids=99; 
      } 
      [units] //specific unitnames 
      { 
         impatst=99; 
         rebxwing=99; 
      } 
      [ignore] 
      { 
         imptief=99; 
         rebywing=99; 
      } 
      [deftags] 
      { 
         distance=Radardistance; 
         jam=Radardistancejam; 
         stealth=stealth; 
      } 
   } 
   [sensor1] //by default, sonar. Again, if mod lacks it, treat it as normal 
   { 
      [units] 
      { 
         armsubk=99; 
      } 
      [ignore] 
      { 
         armfib=99; 
      } 
      [deftags] 
      { 
         distance=Sonardistance; 
         jam=Sonardistancejam; 
         stealth=stealth; 
      } 
   } 
   [sensor2] //my own arbitrary sensor system. let's call it thermal detection, it doesn't matter 
   { 
      [classes] 
      { 
         droids=99; 
      } 
      [ignore] 
      { 
         infantry=99; 
      } 
      [deftags] 
      { 
         distance=Thermaldistance; //tags arbitrarily defined by this. The tags would be skipped if they aren't defined here 
         jam=Thermaldistancejam; 
         stealth=Thermalstealth; 
      } 
   } 
} 


(ignore would override any armourclass stuff, so that you could include "infantry" but ignore "stormtrooper". This would allow players to even allow everything, and remove certain units, etc)

(It might also be nice to tie this in with the new custom radar dots, so that you can specify which radars can detect only generic dots, and require LOS before the custom dot is presented, and you can have advanced radars which give you specific readings, that is, showing the custom dot without direct LOS. Useful for the 'representative LOS' system I talk about later)

Thus, we have the ability to set far more advanced radars, which can only detect certain types of units, etc. You can have large-air only radars, which don't detect ground units, and thus don't imbalance ground radars, etc

- This would be particularly helpful for Spring 1944, where they have had to make every unit stealth except aircraft, because they wanted to have aircraft specific radar. They can't have any other form of radar at all, because their long range radar would detect it, which would be extremely unbalanced, given the long ranges of artillery etc.
- It was also considered that small radars could be given to individual units to represent the distance at which they can "see" a unit (a radar dot appears), but can't quite make out what that unit is. Which means they know a unit is there, but can't quite make it out, can't fire on it accurately and can't accurately identify it. You couldn't do this with the current system, for example in 1944, because the air-radar would detect all the units at a long distance, which it isn't intended for. (this is the 'representative LOS system I mentioned earlier')
- For a mod Secure and a few of us are dabbling on privately, we considered having a 'predator' type side with an LOS system for units using the previous point's line of thought, where they have little to no actual LOS, but all have individual radars. This would only really be feasible with the more advanced radar systems, because of the limitations of the current system.

Thoughts?
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Fanger
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Post by Fanger »

I do and Ive wanted such a setup for a while now, however Im not sure what the requirements of such a system would be..
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MadRat
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Post by MadRat »

By using 0-1 to define radar value rather than just as yes/no and the same type of 0-1 ranges for both stealth and jamming values its pretty simple.

Example:

RadarVal = .8

A unit can detect any stealth or radarjammed unit with values of .8 or lower. But a stealth unit with more than .8 is stealth to that radar. Likewise a radarjammer unit value above .8 is able to disable the radar's visibility within its jammer radius.

In this way we have an almost limitless flexibility for radar jamming and stealth technology level to use in our mods. It makes you tech up radar technology along with improved stealth units and jammers. The same simple system could work for sonars, too.
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Gabba
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Post by Gabba »

MadRat wrote:By using 0-1 to define radar value rather than just as yes/no and the same type of 0-1 ranges for both stealth and jamming values its pretty simple.

Example:

RadarVal = .8

A unit can detect any stealth or radarjammed unit with values of .8 or lower. But a stealth unit with more than .8 is stealth to that radar. Likewise a radarjammer unit value above .8 is able to disable the radar's visibility within its jammer radius.

In this way we have an almost limitless flexibility for radar jamming and stealth technology level to use in our mods. It makes you tech up radar technology along with improved stealth units and jammers. The same simple system could work for sonars, too.
Yeah, that would be a good way of doing it. As long as you can use more granularity if needed, such as .85 and .82 instead of just .8 .
1.00 could be like the "omni-sensor" in SupCom, if some mod wants to incorporate that.

For jammers I think it'd be better if they increased the stealth value of adjacent units, instead of comparing their strenght with the radar. So you could have +0.1 jammers, +0.2 jammers, and so on.

And as you say for those who want the old system in their mod they can just use 0 or 1 instead of yes/no. That's perfect because we can leave the TA-based mods as-is if we want to, but we can think out of the box for new mods.

As Warlord Zsinj, Pxtl and KDR_11k are saying, it would also be a good time to set up a simple framework so modders can define what is a radar in their mod. This way, a radar and a sonar use the same code in the game, but they each detect only the set of units defined by the modders. I like the possibility of air-only radars, that would be a novelty.
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MadRat
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Post by MadRat »

I like your idea where radarjammers enhance stealth in their area. Some people might want it to be optional.
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Neddie
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Post by Neddie »

KDR_11k wrote:I'd like radar strength to determine the radar blip inaccuracy...
I'm with KDR to the hilt on this.
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