Thread: Intelligence

Some of the other suggestion threads have hit apon the issue that in Traction Wars there arn't satellites. So intelligence isn't "realtime" in some areas. For example if we implimented photos for Scout planes/airships they would have to be time stamped as they would out of date seconds after being taken. Photos such as these would only be useful to commanders if they had the ability to zoom in and look in detail at areas of the photo. By doing this they could work out small details like, is that a sniper on the roof or just a spotter?

So if we need timestamps to help the interpretation of photos, we need a time system. Which would need to be in the HUD. I can see three options:

• "Game Clock":A seperate clock set on a per map basis which runs at normal speed from a preset start point - completely fictional[/*:m:3gvs3ceo]
• "Time of Day Clock": Based on the ingame time of day system of sunrise and sunset - can mean an accelerated time system[/*:m:3gvs3ceo]
• "Server Time": Says it all really, based on the time of the servers local area - makes it hard to play on different countries servers.[/*:m:3gvs3ceo]

Why not all three?

As that would be very confusing and would mean you have to have three seperate stamps on every image. I suggest we use a game time sytem on a per map basis, we can manually sync it to the Time of Day.

What other forms of intelligence can you think of?

Other forms? Maybe Stalker Birds that act as UAVs for the Green Storm; they could radio in squarks when they spot enemy activity.

UAVs are real-time intelligence, what about having the birds fly out from the command bunker fly to the location set and then fly back. When they get back they make the map display the locations of where the enemy troops where when they flew past.

Local time. Easy enough to do. - grabs the local time on every client, and serves them an appropriately stamped photo (or indeed just the commanders).

Oh, and as for the system: Commander can request a photo update up to every 2 mins - plane flies over upon requrest, photographing the battlefield from left to right.

Upon use, the other team would could get a warning "enemy spy-plane inbound: TAKE COVER" so that they could hide from the plane. (ie. get under a roof)

I was thinking of allowing player controlled scout planes to take pictures, but that's equally good if not better.

did they have that technology?

Cameras definitely, they even had motion cameras. The tricky but is sending the picture back by wireless, but as Zephy said in WWI they had a basic system. If we used Halfdark's idea we could have the photos available after the aircraft has gone off the map and "landed".