Sensors and Jammers

[Per]

This a restart of my work on ECM Jammers and improved sensor handling.

Description of what the latest series of patches are doing:

Visibility is split into two - vision and radar. (This is similar to how Pumpkin apparently planned it, based on left over source code.) Vision has a low, fixed range - within this radius you can see anything. Radar has a long range adjusted by upgrades and turret type - it can however be blocked by a jammer.

The jammer tower/turret is new. (Pumpkin was planning one, as evident from leftover data pieces.) It blocks radar in a long range, hiding units and structures, but cannot itself hide from radar - appearing as a radar blip, which allows the enemy to locate it (but not immediately target it). The number of sensors or jammers present in an area is irrelevant to visibility, only their coverage is important. (This is contrary to how Pumpkin had planned it - they gave both sensors and ECM a power that was reduced over range. For reasons of simplicity of use, and speed, that is not how I have implemented it.)

Jammers add a new tactical dimension to the game. They allow units to hide from artillery, and sneaking units up on turtle bases, as the defender has to come out to 'see' and destroy the jammer(s) before the defending structures can utilize their range properly.

It is also, in my opinion, extremely cool to suddenly see the vision bubble of your base suddenly start to shrink as an enemy jammer droid is approaching... All you see is a radar blip closing in on you, and you have no idea what other units it is bringing along with it...

[Per]

The first attached patch lays the groundwork for partial visibility. Through experimentation I added the feature that non-droid objects seen only by sat uplink will be only half lit, while droids seen only by sat uplink or counter batteries will only be shown as radar blips. I liked this feature so much that I did not remove it after testing. Let me know whether you like it, too.

[Kreuvf]

What exactly does that ECM Jammers stuff add to the game? Can units "cloak" themselves? Or are they just not visible to sensors (but visible to other units; don't units have, technically speaking, sensors as well?)? And how useful are sensors the moment ECM Jammers become available? How is the "cloak" status of a unit visualised for the player that owns that unit, for allies and for enemies?

[Per]

Good questions. ECM is meant as a counter-balance against artillery, and also a way to add more sneakiness and stealth to the game for players who want that. Exactly how it is to be implemented is still an open question. In the previous iteration of this work, I added "ECM Towers" that reduced the range of nearby sensors, including the sensors of droids. You could visualize this by pressing 'z' and see your sensor range shrinking. But I am sure we will come up with better ideas once this code becomes easier to experiment with.

[Per]

Add radar detector sensor to the game

[Per]

The above attachment adds a new type of sensor to the game called "Radar Detector". It is a passive sensor that will reveal and allow targeting of enemy sensors, somewhat similar to CB sensors. Currently VTOL sensors are hijacked for testing, new stats stuff is needed. Range is twice the enemy's sensor range, and does not depend on the sensor's own range, which should be low.

[Zarel]

Does it detect ECMs? That'd be nice.

[elio]

Interesting idea.. Question: which revision do you develop on? I get some patch conflicts with latest trunk.

[Zarel]

Probably an older version of trunk, then. See if you can fix those conflicts and upload a newer patch. :P

[elio]

The first patch is already commited in trunk http://developer.wz2100.net/changeset/6904

[Per]

New version of the radar detector patch with real game data

[Per]

(In [6955]) Add radar detector turret to the game. It will detect and target enemy sensors up to twice their range away. Both land and air droids can be assigned to it. See ticket #340 for more discussion.

[elio]

here, i hope you like it. otherwise tell me :) if it's that bad i'll create a new one. it has 161 vertices.. i can't get down any further without loosing significant detail. texture should be golden, would look nicer with specularity shaders of course ;)

[winsrp]

hmmm... i see the radar detector tower on 2.2.1, but i still do not see what it does. I have an idea of what it should do... but no.. not yet. How does exactly the radar detector detects a radar? does it show on the map or something, cus I've seen no change at all.

On the other hand the ECM, that one I'm definitely waiting for... my thought on this one, is that it should always put back the FOW on the enemy map, and it should reduce all viewing ranges by 50% when a unit viewing range matches the ECM hiding range.

[elio]

the radar detector works like a cb-tower, it attacks radar turrets with its assigned units or bunkers (mortar/artillery)

[Zarel]

In addition, it detects radar turrets nearby, which can be useful to find where exactly the sensor bombarding you with artillery is.

Oh, and, this really belongs in the forums, not in a bug ticket.

[anonymous]

well, going back to bug thing, units assigned to a mobile radar should not move if the radar is just moving, since all your arty units will try to follow, which moves all the long range units outside of any safe zone you might have for them. And so it kills the usefulness of mobile arty units assigned to mobile sensor since all move together, its better to send a constructor to build a sensor tower then, since your arty wont move out.

Another thing curious I've come to notice is the following:

You have a sensor tower near enemy base... and you build a sensor mobile unit and its sitting at your base. Then you have lots of arty units assigned to your mobile sensor, if you target with you mobile sensor something in range of the sensor tower, the mobile unit wont even move, it targets the enemy, and the arty assigned to the mobile sensor fires like if it where assigned to the sensor tower in range. Is this normal?

And another final thing, how come the radar detector only comes in crappy wooden tower? where is the hardened radar detector tower?

[Per]

ECM turret model

[Per]

ECM texture (both model and texture by Cathuria)

[Per]

ECM Jammers Round 2

[Per]

New version

[Per]

Fix targetting

[i-NoD]

Btw, what 'mi' in miecm.pie stands for? I do know that cy_ == cyborg, gn == gun and tr == turret in weapons directory...

I saw several mibnk* pies in wz. That huge HQ sensor is misensor.pie, while standard sensor 'gun' (in game's logic, but yea, I do know it's turret) is gnlsnsr1.pie ('gun light sensor 1' I guess).

Another issue is radarsensor.pie in *base* structs, which is *mp* 'gun', not building... I think it should better be some gn_radarsensor.pie in weapons (long name since we no longer need that 8.3 format).

I wonder if there any rules exist for model names? Some logical structure is still required, for 'official' models at least...

[Safety0ff]

In the bodies/propulsion folders, the components with the "mi" prefix seem to be for the interface ( the green models for the build screen.)

As for the structures, I haven't the pattern. :/

[i-NoD]

Oh, i got it.

mi == miscellaneous.

But there is a special 'misc' folder for them...

[Wibble199]

which version of warzzone is radardetector-model-1.wz for?

[Per]

Updated to last git master

[Per]

Screenshot of ECM in action

[Per]

Another screenshot, there is an invisible army in my base!

[Kreuvf]

Nice, but the vision of buildings can still be changed, right? Because, if I imagine I was a player not knowing about this I would probably file a bug saying "SYNCS GOT WORSE!!!!!!1111111" (or just: "PROBLEM!!! HELP FAST") since I'd expect anything to have a minimal vision and would be surprised by this.

[Wibble199]

So, is this available in the git version now then?

[Per]

@Kreuvf: Yes, also buildings. And how to visualize this so that players don't get confused is a big open question.

@Wibble199: Not yet.

[anonymouse]

"And how to visualize this so that players don't get confused is a big open question." Despite your mistrust of me, allow me to suggest a simple working method until someone thinks of a better one.

In skirmish, when you press shift-F12, you see a "ring" of unit weapon range and visibility represented by glowing orbs. One could visualize ECM in a variety of ways; one way is using glowing orbs that are tinted by player-color. Another way is to instead place a "wash" on the floor/ground/area within the affected radius that is tinted by player-color. For example, if Red is jamming with one ECM, one would see the affected area and beacon highlighting the ECM on the minimap. However, in addition one would also see the affected area *tinted* red on the minimap, and in the game world, the dark, foggy tiles would also have a red tint on the ground. To make it even clearer that it's an offensive maneuver, perhaps a small animated overlay could be used to fill the area. This overlay might consist of anything from garish stripes to "?" to small dots in random motion.

It's a rambling chunk of text above, but I am just trying to help!

Love, Dylan Hsu

[Per]

Yours units under ECM influence are now given a slight, pulsing alpha effects for visualization.

[JustLooking2]

I don't think visualization of ECM should be optional behind a hotkey, imho this is not optional information, but rather important one.

What floats around in my mind about the visuals is that snow storm picture you get on analog television sets when there's bad reception. Something like this for the fog of war, if this is even possible with the engine. It will likely need some tweaking to find a balance between clarity (ie. "What's happening?" think new players, it has to be clear it's intentional and not a bug) and annoyance/distraction from gameplay (ie. we're upset already there's someone hiding, no need to add insult to injury by making people suffer an epileptic shock).

Also I think it's important that it should not be possible to see which player is hiding, unless in LoS of a unit/building (command center probably can look further than a repair tower, but that's something else altogether).

I only glanced at the forum and hope I didn't miss a discussion there. I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents.

[Per]

Updated to latest master version. Vision is now at an offset from the ground. Radar detector no longer targets radars, but shows them as blips at a much larger distance.

[Per Inge Mathisen]

Add support for ECM jammers. ECM jammers will significantly shorten the range of vision of enemy units and buildings. Not enabled by default. This simplifies the vision code, merging terrain discovery and object vision, fixing ticket:2917 in the process. Closes ticket:340. Radar detector changed, no longer does targetting, but allows discovery over 5x longer range instead, and can discover ECM emissions.

• Changeset: 55a6259b121515b2d0ca9b2c580361dca970171d
• URL: ​https://github.com/Warzone2100/warzone2100/commit/55a6259b121515b2d0ca9b2c580361dca970171d

[cybersphinx]

Milestone 3.0 deleted