Simulating lack of Radios

[Drozdov]

If you've read my thread in the Mission Ideas this won't be a new idea to you, but I think this needs wider coverage for me to get help on it.

What I want to do is find a way to simulate a squad having no radios. In my campaign you are a small militia squad which is very ill equipped, and therefore wouldn't have any fancy radios. Is there any way I could implement this, using a script or whatever other means? EnableRadio false only makes the radio inaudible rather than unusable. Essentially what I want to do is replace the radio commands with spoken commands. There would also have to be a maximum range over which units couldn't hear each other.

This sounds very difficult... has anyone else attempted anything like this?

[VipNatePimp]

I don't know if this will help you in anyway.. but I found out taht Cool Edit Pro and Colll Edit 2000 have very nice radio effect features that you can use. You could represent it my showing very old radio types... as those programs have serveral old radio options that you can choose from.  

[Drozdov]

Whassat? What're ye meanin'?

[Deepsmeg]

I prolly won't be of much help, but maybethis could help the others work out what you're trying to do.

Are you trying to turn off the people saying "10 OClock! Enemy BMP 500!"
"Oh No! 6 is down!"
etc

[VipNatePimp]

You said that you wanted very old radio sound things.. kinda i think lol And those programs above would be very usefull to use for a very realistic distorted radio.

[m21man]

He wants his men to speak the messages ( As in: "Oh No...Three Is Down.").

[m21man]

I really think that Drozdov wants no radios at all in some of his missions, not matter how old the radios are.

[Blanco]

You mean shouting in stead of radio?

[VipNatePimp]

Oh i think i see.. so like men shouting at each other for commands??

[Unnamed]

One problem is that every member of a group gets to know the same info as any other group member, regardless of the location. So it's like every guy having his own personnel radio.

You could have each AI Res character as an individual group if he moves away (out of voice range) from the officer and does not have his own radio, and return him to the group if he gets close enough?

Getting the AI to act on his own initiative when he is away from the officer will be the tricky bit. Perhaps you could use the mapclick event to pre-program orders for them?

The KnowsAbout command is handy for testing if one AI can see another AI character, it will return 0 if it cant get a line of sight.

There are some advance AI scripts around here, some of those could help?

[Drozdov]

You mean shouting instead of radio?

Yup.

[General Barron]

I'm working on a mission that sounds pretty much like what you want. In real life, most units (with the exception of special forces) don't really have individual radios for each member. In my mission, you can communicate via either hand signals or via shouting. Shouting will alert any enemies around you as to your presence, but hand signals have more limited range.

I work it like this: I (the player/leader) am the only one in my group. There are three groups of four men (fireteams) that follow me, and another group of one man who is my radio operator. Each group is in a custom formation, and the three groups follow me in a custom formation (either a column or a line). I can command the groups to spread out, or bring it back in.

I tried using the knowsabout command for the hand signals, but it isn't working out as I wanted. For one, you can't get the units to look around as they move, so if they are moving in formation, they can't see your hand signals unless they are right behind you. Also, bushes and trees have no effect on visibility, so if you are in the middle of a forest, and can't see your squad, they could still see you. Basically, I've given up on the idea of using knowsabout, and instead have just used a simple "is he 25 meters or less away" method.

I've only really begun to work on this, so I don't have very much to show for it yet. But what I have is very promising!

[Unnamed]

I'm not sure saying KnowsAbout will not work with trees and bushes, is 100% correct. The small sample mission I attached demonstrates why.

It's just sets an enemy unit to run behind a tree, and obscure himself from your LOS. The KnowsAbout value will slowly decrease until it's 0.

You can then work your way around the tree to spot the AI again.

You have to right click on the enemy at the start to activate the KnowsAbout command, and again if you move into a position that gives you LOS on him.

Not sure how this works with your own side, I did notice that you have some awareness of any other unit that's on the same side as you. If you want to see what I mean, use a detected by trigger for West detecting West, on an AI that's not part of your group, hidden by a hill and within the trigger radius.

It's harder to test KnowsABout with your own side, the value does change if a friendly group is obscured, but not by the same amount as an enemy AI. But I'm not sure if this is just down to it's change in position.

If you remove the waypoint and change the east AI to West, you will notice the KnowsAbout returns a value straight away without having to right click on the unit. Now move the west AI behind a tree, the KnowsAbout returns 0.

The distance from the observer and the target unit does make a difference, get close enough  (roughly 10 to 30 meters plus depending on skill e.t.c) and the value immediately increase to it's maximum of 4, even if it is obscured.

A better test mission is probably needed, it's just I've never had to use it on soldiers from my own side. For example it may work differently with the Forest object and bushes.

Now if we knew how the KnowsAbout value is calculated, we could start doing some really useful stuff with it.

[Drozdov]

Try using a GetDir command on the unit receiving the command and the unit giving the command. Work it out yourself... I've tried but it hurts my head. Maybe the receiving unit would have to have a direction within that of the sending unit +180. Or something like that. Use that combined with the distance thing. But if you can do all my work for me on the radio thing I'll be very grateful...

[General Barron]

Well, the testing I did with the knowsabout command was like so: I was in a forest on Ia Drang, and was looking at how much a friendly unit not in my group knew about me. In this situation, the forest didn't obscure his view of me (I read your comment in the command reference, and it confirms this), and he could only detect me when I was in front of him. Now, an interesting thing happened when I walked away from him after he had a knowsabout of 4 on me. I would walk a distance away, and his knowsabout value would slowly decrease and decrease, until it almost got to 0... then it would jump back up to 3+ again. I don't know how to explain this, and I didn't really test it much.

Now to bring the discussion back to the topic. I wanted to use the knowsabout with friendly units, to hopefully make it so if they were basically out of sight, then they couldn't see the hand signals. From what I have seen, I cannot do this with the knowsabout command.

And as for your idea Drozdov: I thought about this one too. The problem is that when a unit is running in front of you in formation, he will never be facing you. Therefore you couldn't signal them. I had in mind using knowsabout to check for line of sight, and using the dowatch command to have them look back as they move. Unfortunately, neither of those things are possible, as I found out, and by now I've given up on using either of those methods.

I haven't looked at your mission yet, but I think I will. Maybe a very scientific experiment should be conducted to crack this command. Or maybe we should just email BIS.