Differenciated Radar Blips and The General Approach to Intel

That's how it works in the real world.

Eh ... no. That's not how it works in the real world, at all.

Apart from sophisticated units which are supposed to go stealth, you can usually identify most unit types by radar signature from far away. Stuff like industry complexes? You can even see that from orbit with non-military grade equipment.

And if you managed to identify something once, about every halfway decent radar systems build past the 90s is capable of tracking radar signatures onwards as well.

There is much wrong with the oversimplified system PA has right now. (Not so) anonymous blips, lack of tracking, no ghosts when tracking was lost, lack of differentiation between different unit sizes in terms of intelligence gained. Just to name the basics.

The system we have right now is just a quick and dirty hack, you can see the loose ends dangling all over the place. They would have to rewrite parts of it either way to fix all the possible exploits opened by the previous short sights, and when they do, certain of the previously mentioned features (mostly "tracking" and "ghosts") come for free, or at least with only minor overhead.

I'm not sure why you think this is the case, that there is some link between their choice of intel system and the exploit you described. As I said before, the problem is simple (though not necessarily simple to fix): the server is sending too much info to the client. This is entirely independent of the actual intel system, and is not likely to help make the changes you want at all.

Look precisely at what they did.

These "blips" you are seeing, they are sending the actual unit. Not all events announced, but it's the full unit nonetheless, and they can't strip the blueprint from it either since they are sending it as "it's a unit". When you see (or track by radar) a unit for the first time, you get an unique handle for that unit as well as a reference to the spec used to create that unit. That means, if you try to use the actual unit as a "blip", you can not omit certain informations.

In order to make blips anonymous, they would need to do intelligence with proxy objects instanced for each player, where all information which is not supposed to be revealed (including unit ID, blueprint, elevation above ground, hitbox, etc.) is not even part of the PDU sent or could be derived from it. As soon as you have instanced proxies, it's trivial to detach them from the base unit as soon as you loose tracking, hence creating a ghost, or tracking inside the proxy whether the proxy owner has yet seen the tracked unit, hence enabling tracking of unit types. Destroying and recreating a proxy on the server upon re-encountering a unit also ensures that the unit can not be tracked automatically client side just based on blips, since the proxy ID can change, even though the proxied unit ID remained constant.

Yes

Yes!

YES!!!

Hey anyone want some clarification on this topic? You've got questions. I've got answers. Ask away!

Lots of votes.

hey well thank you!

Wait, this thread is now over 1 1/2 years old? (Yes, just this specific thread. The topic was around for about 2 years now.) And nothing has changed since?

While I do understand that Uber still has a long list of other features which need to be implemented, this is about the one topic (except the Unit Cannon and wreckages) which has been brought up the most, and has yet remained untouched for the longest time.

Even the AI works internally just that way, as it remembers "ghosts" of what it has seen in the past. Only the player is left to fight the interface. The Chronocam isn't a functional replacement in any way, just ask yourself: When did you last use the Chronocam to access past intel? Respectively, when did you ever actually have spare time to do that? Anything you haven't witnessed with your own eyes in terms of intelligence is currently simply lost as you can't effort to give up your focus for seeking manually in the history.

Building ghosts remain?

Only on the client, and they are missing essential stuff such as an attached strategical icon which notifies you that something had been found in the past, so you don't need to visually scan the entire planet surface just to find what your scout has seen. And if you didn't see your scout scouting the enemy, these ghosts are never created in the first place.

And then there are also major annoyances such as mobile units still turning back into anonymous blips (loosing the distinct strategic icons) even though had a gapless radar tacking on them.

Oh, and the exploits... Getting strategic icons and "vision" (except animation events) on all units covered solely by radar is still just a matter of toggling 2 bits in the memory of the client executable, since that stuff is already sent to the Client, just omitted.

first off lemme get this out of the way : Ahhhh! I sit here basked in heavenly light. As suddenly for a first in a long while one of my threads has been bumped. thank you.

second:

you'd be surprized.



google "scale megathread"

and also : https://forums.uberent.com/threads/5-1-audio.43918/ brought up recently (by me) in the current "Improving Sounds" thread.

do you ZOOM IN and CIRCLE AROUND THE MAP to check out each and every individual last ghost????!? DO YOU??!???

admit it, blips would be handy.

stop defending an unfinished state of the game. that's getting everyone nowhere fast.

Whoa there, no I totally agree. it just seemed like he was saying that there is no ghosting.

Though I'm wondering if it's unfinished or possibly intended... Have the devs said anything in this thread yet?

Don't be over dramatic Tatsu.

They avoided saying ANYTHING on this topic altogether, across all threads.

There was some feedback on LoS based vision, and there was some feedback on doing more complex stuff as a mod (mostly the usual "there is no way that this can work fast enough as a JS mod", while I still say it can if the API is designed carefully).

But feedback on whether this basic system is ever getting fully implemented? None.

I would assume that there were internal disagreements on how this system was supposed to work, and so nobody wanted to share his personal opinion, or possibly announce it as a feature while there are still other people in the office who consider it to be feature-complete. (Whereby most of them probably play the game solely with vision control cheat, so they don't really get to experience the shortcomings.)

Calling in @jables
Something went horribly wrong with communications on this topic.

Just 3 simple questions:

• Is the current intelligence system considered feature-complete?
• If not, has this been assigned to anyone, respectively is there even a task for this?
• Who made the server end of that system anyway? @metabolical appears to be the one who had to fiddle with the shaders on the client, but who was responsible for designing the mechanic and implementing it?

@jables @sorian @bgolus @mkrater

I would like normal blips as we have now for units, but larger blips for structures.

that's not really the point of this thread? look up icon mods on PAMM

so everybody wants this but no developer input?