Streamlined Intelligence
This page mainly describes user interface (UI) changes intended to make information easier to keep track of
Last updated
This page mainly describes user interface (UI) changes intended to make information easier to keep track of
Last updated
This whole set of ideas is meant to improve the team's awareness of the situation by grouping the intel gathered into a convenient overview. However, it does NOT give away more information than in Ground Realistic Battles
First, we need to track the frontline to give an estimate of what parts of the map is under friendly control and what parts of the map is potentially under enemy control.
To achieve that, a second grid will be used, though it will not be displayed to the player but will be used in the background by both the server and the client for various purposes:
As you can see, while the server and client use the grid, the client draws an estimate of the frontline for the player to see. The goal being to make it look more natural, and more like, well, a frontline.
The conditions to "capture an area" are the following:
The area must be adjacent to a controlled area
There needs to be continuously at least 1 friendly vehicle in the area for 15 seconds
The area is considered captured if no hostile vehicles are seen within it during the above-mentioned 15 seconds
And this is where "Streamlined Intelligence" start to make sense, an area being marked as controlled does NOT mean there is no hostiles there.
Instead, it simply means "no hostile vehicle has been seen here while advancing and should be a low-risk area"
If an enemy tank was already there or pushed into that area without being seen, their position will not be given away, and the client won't change the frontline until they have been seen
The motive behind that is to reduce the amount of deaths from unawareness and lack of communication
In GRB, when an enemy gets into friendly lines and gets noticed by one teammate, they'll usually ping it on the map and then try to engage it. Though, that ally may get killed or distracted, enough to lose sight of them. In that case the information may be lost as not all other teammates necessarily have noticed because they simply can't do that much things at once.
In Frontline the frontline estimation will be re-calculated to stop showing that area as under friendly control. So regardless of what happens, the rest of the team knows that this is an area where hostile activity has been seen recently so they can keep an eye on it.
The lack of accuracy in the frontline drawing is deliberate , the whole point of drawing a frontline is to continuously give players a global picture of the battle, not a detailed omniscient view.
Still to give a global overview to the player, the amount of friendly units for each role is counted and conveniently listed, as well as the amount of seen and identified hostile units (units marked by a light tank with a high enough intel quality, or units that simply have been hit, be it machine guns or main guns)
Notice the ~ before any of the hostile units count, this is just to indicate what intel the team already knows but doesn't give away any more information than GRB
Basically, it should be read as partial data but that can be extrapolated like this for example:
"Ok so we've seen at least 6 hostile medium tanks, that's already a lot so they probably don't have much more on the field, only one light tank has been seen though, it's highly unlikely they have that few so there could be some hiding in our lines"
The displayed counts will decrease as each seen unit is confirmed to be destroyed.
For the friendly units intelligence, the count is increased once a player selects what vehicle they're spawning into, so before they actually spawn (to give an overview of how much units are deployed and/or in deployment)
