UAVs?

[mbtanker]

Bing West's book 'No True Glory' has some great accounts of UAVs in the battle for Fallujah. At the simplist level guys are flying these things around and either calling in their own strikes or getting on the radio to a particular unit and saying 'Hey you got X 400m north of your pos.'

UAVs should be modeled at least as some sort of sighting as one fellow mention. Although simply having pre-game sightings could be ok as well depending on what the total time a scenario represents turns out to be.

[Battlefront.com]

We are including UAVs but in a more or less abstracted form. If we required people to plot courses and altitudes that would be tedious at best. Better to just be able to use UAVs in the same way as other off map assets. Have a unit capable of calling in the asset, specifying the area of interest, then send it on its way. Information learned from the UAV will appear as spotted units to any friendly that has the propper connection.

The way things work now, as best I can figure, is that the UAV is launched and trained soldiers read the tea leaves, so to speak. They then plug the data into the network and it is the data, in icon form, that is sent off to all units. The video is not.

What I do know is that leaders, when possible, sit in on UAV missions so they can see things with their own eyes. Then they lead their units with that knowledge in mind. Things like good advance routes, potential ambush spots, obstacles, etc. Since you, the player, are floating over the battlefield you'll get a lot of this information anyway even without simulated UAVs.

Steve

[M1A1TC]

Steve, you are 100% correct.

[aka_tom_w]

Since you, the player, are floating over the battlefield you'll get a lot of this information anyway even without simulated UAVs.

Steve

I would say he is correct about this part too...

In CMx1 playing way back in WWII we all had the UAV that came with the game camera that flew all over the battle field, combine that with the old absolute spotting paradigm (one unit see's it and ALL units KNOW about it) and the WWII simulated UAV was alive and well and very effective.

Now in this case in CM:SF the one thing the UAV might give the player is some NEW spotting info not previously available as to where some opposing units and vehicles are, I guess. (maybe)

There should be a chance it could give the player false info as well, or at the least OLD info, even 10-15 minutes OLD would be enough to surprise some players who might count on the UAV spotting intel as the RealTime equivelant of actually seeing the opposing force that instant from the air.

This could be interesting.....

-tom w

[ November 08, 2005, 07:46 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[SgtMuhammed]

One thing that future leaders have to look out for is information overload. The whizkids want to give the average grunt a ton of new toys while forgetting that anything that draws his attention is likely to get him killed.

Heinlen said it best, "Load down an infantryman with a lot of dials and vectors he has to keep track of and someone will sneek up behind him an bash his head in with a rock." (or something like that)

[Peter Cairns]

The other side of overload is too much tactical information leading to people lower down the command chain making inappropriate decisions or second guessing their Co's.

initiative is all vert well but if veryone has full knowledge then people will start to take inappropriate actions.

Sometimes you order people to hold their position and give supporting fire,even whenyou know they are being out Flanked and put in danger because that's what you need them to do to get the job done.

But if they knew the danger, would they hold the way you want too, or put their own saftey first and either alter firing position to defend themselves or even fall back.

Sometimes too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing. look at FPS' a lot of the time people all share the same view and knowledge but rarely work as a team, because no one is in command.

There are real dangers in passing to much information to low down the command chain.

Peter.