Forums » Community Projects
Target Acquisition and Command System (TACS)
I posted this in the PCC-Lua forum a while back, but nobody even payed it enough notice to move it to the right place, so I'm reposting here, where it belongs.
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The nation wars and border wars so many years ago started me thinking about the current tactical environment in VO and what we can do to improve it. Let's face it, except for a few really good players, most large-scale battles devolve into a collection of hectic dog-fights, with the outnumbering side having the distinct advantage of a two to one in at least one dogfight.
Groups are nice, but they didn't really do much other than tell you how you were doing until SwitchTarget was created. Although I haven't been able to use it yet, this plug-in made me think that something I've wanted for a long time might just be possible.
Although group target coordination would be a large step, tools for coordinating multiple groups are completely inexistent. Not only would this allow well coordinated large-scale battles when the user-base expands, but in the short term it could also provide a means to incorporate bots more naturally.
I'm not sure how many of you have read Ender's game, but that's basically the inspiration for this. I'm not sure whether I read Ender's game or played VO first, but either way, they're very similar combat models.
Basically, the commander has a tactical view of the entire battle, and can speak only to his squad leaders. Each squad leader can then speak to their squad, their commander, and other squad leader in the vicinity. Squad members can speak only to other squad members or their squad leader. In the book, who you are speaking to is intuitively controlled by which direction your head is facing, (up to superior, down to subordinate, left and right to your equals), but this could be handled easily enough with key.
Commanders would assign his or her squad leader's locations or objectives. Squad leaders would assign their groups targets and control their engagement. Squad members would follow their squad leader's orders and look out for their own self-preservation.
The hardest part of this for the devs would probably be the commander's view, which in its final form will be nothing like the normal view the game offers. But a simple-er model might be temporarily devised using a modification of the current free-camera functionality. The basis for the squad level system already exists in the SwitchTarget plug-in, and unless someone else wants to implement this before then, I'll hopefully be able to finish the intra-squad control part of it over winter break. I'll be the first to admit that I'm at a complete loss when it comes to working with TeamSpeak to program the communications aspect of all this, so any help / pointers will be greatly appreciated.
If this sound like a good idea, and there're other people who want to help, we can set up a wiki page to work on it or something. For right now though, I just want to throw it out there for discussion so I don't waste my winter break on something no-one wants in the first place.
-Calder
[EDIT] I do have the basics of this in place, but nothing functional yet. [/EDIT]
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The nation wars and border wars so many years ago started me thinking about the current tactical environment in VO and what we can do to improve it. Let's face it, except for a few really good players, most large-scale battles devolve into a collection of hectic dog-fights, with the outnumbering side having the distinct advantage of a two to one in at least one dogfight.
Groups are nice, but they didn't really do much other than tell you how you were doing until SwitchTarget was created. Although I haven't been able to use it yet, this plug-in made me think that something I've wanted for a long time might just be possible.
Although group target coordination would be a large step, tools for coordinating multiple groups are completely inexistent. Not only would this allow well coordinated large-scale battles when the user-base expands, but in the short term it could also provide a means to incorporate bots more naturally.
I'm not sure how many of you have read Ender's game, but that's basically the inspiration for this. I'm not sure whether I read Ender's game or played VO first, but either way, they're very similar combat models.
Basically, the commander has a tactical view of the entire battle, and can speak only to his squad leaders. Each squad leader can then speak to their squad, their commander, and other squad leader in the vicinity. Squad members can speak only to other squad members or their squad leader. In the book, who you are speaking to is intuitively controlled by which direction your head is facing, (up to superior, down to subordinate, left and right to your equals), but this could be handled easily enough with key.
Commanders would assign his or her squad leader's locations or objectives. Squad leaders would assign their groups targets and control their engagement. Squad members would follow their squad leader's orders and look out for their own self-preservation.
The hardest part of this for the devs would probably be the commander's view, which in its final form will be nothing like the normal view the game offers. But a simple-er model might be temporarily devised using a modification of the current free-camera functionality. The basis for the squad level system already exists in the SwitchTarget plug-in, and unless someone else wants to implement this before then, I'll hopefully be able to finish the intra-squad control part of it over winter break. I'll be the first to admit that I'm at a complete loss when it comes to working with TeamSpeak to program the communications aspect of all this, so any help / pointers will be greatly appreciated.
If this sound like a good idea, and there're other people who want to help, we can set up a wiki page to work on it or something. For right now though, I just want to throw it out there for discussion so I don't waste my winter break on something no-one wants in the first place.
-Calder
[EDIT] I do have the basics of this in place, but nothing functional yet. [/EDIT]
Heh, wow, I totally didn't even see that post in Lua, otherwise I would have definitely responded!
As the person behind SwitchTarget, I have considered possible ways to expand the general principle to allow for arbitrarily large groups, but nothing as intricate as this, and I didn't even bother trying to think about getting the TS stuff working outside of the normal group. I'm not sure what if anything we could do with it, but I'll leave that aside for now.
I would definitely be interested in helping out with this. I have some ideas kicking around in my head from previous concepts that might help, and this would definitely be a great addition to the game. I'll try to catch you at some point in-game to talk about it, if I can.
Denji
As the person behind SwitchTarget, I have considered possible ways to expand the general principle to allow for arbitrarily large groups, but nothing as intricate as this, and I didn't even bother trying to think about getting the TS stuff working outside of the normal group. I'm not sure what if anything we could do with it, but I'll leave that aside for now.
I would definitely be interested in helping out with this. I have some ideas kicking around in my head from previous concepts that might help, and this would definitely be a great addition to the game. I'll try to catch you at some point in-game to talk about it, if I can.
Denji
Ok, cool! Glad you're interested!
[EDIT] BTW, my email is ccoal.mail AT gmail.com
Feel free to email me, as most of my precious little in-game time is spent fighting/pirating. ;-)[/EDIT]
[EDIT] BTW, my email is ccoal.mail AT gmail.com
Feel free to email me, as most of my precious little in-game time is spent fighting/pirating. ;-)[/EDIT]
Here are the descriptions of the basic commands/options. Sorry they've all got --'s before them, I kinda just copied and pasted it from the main.lua file.
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-- COMMANDER ORDERS
-- Defend: Targets closest enemy or the last person to attack subject for <GT> seconds
-- Attack: Targets subject
-- Move: Places beacon at order location
-- LEADER ORDERS
-- Defend: Targets the last person to hit a group member
-- Attack: Changes group target to leader's target
-- Disengage: Instructs group to disengage and targets closest
-- OPTION : DFLT : MEANING
-- Channel : rand : The channel through which commands will be sent
-- GrudgeTime : 10 : Number of seconds to keep grudge target
-- OrderTime : 30 : Number of seconds before order restores
-- LiveLeader : true : Assigns new leader when leader dies
-- LiveSquad : false : Players leave group when they die
-- LocalSquad : false : Players leave group if they leave the sector
-- Override : false : Allows squad leader to accept/reject orders
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-- COMMANDER ORDERS
-- Defend: Targets closest enemy or the last person to attack subject for <GT> seconds
-- Attack: Targets subject
-- Move: Places beacon at order location
-- LEADER ORDERS
-- Defend: Targets the last person to hit a group member
-- Attack: Changes group target to leader's target
-- Disengage: Instructs group to disengage and targets closest
-- OPTION : DFLT : MEANING
-- Channel : rand : The channel through which commands will be sent
-- GrudgeTime : 10 : Number of seconds to keep grudge target
-- OrderTime : 30 : Number of seconds before order restores
-- LiveLeader : true : Assigns new leader when leader dies
-- LiveSquad : false : Players leave group when they die
-- LocalSquad : false : Players leave group if they leave the sector
-- Override : false : Allows squad leader to accept/reject orders