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Campaign: Red Tide '85 (discussion thread)


Volcano

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There is absolutely nothing wrong with being in the F8 observer position, and besides, it only helps if you call out targets you see for the guy who owns the tank (i.e. "tank, 3 o'clock of hull"). Besides, once all the vehicles are lost then you have to go somewhere, and observer view is that safe place. If someone doesn't like it, then so what.

I think it is really the case of having so many people; once the battle is getting down to a handful of people then all the others now without a vehicle must become spectators. Forcing everyone to form multi crew vehicles is probably going to make the commo situation worse unless someone specifically puts out a call that they want a gunner. Other than that, the excess people have to become F5 and F8 spectators.

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There is absolutely nothing wrong with being in the F8 observer position, and besides, it only helps if you call out targets you see for the guy who owns the tank (i.e. "tank, 3 o'clock of hull"). Besides, once all the vehicles are lost then you have to go somewhere, and observer view is that safe place. If someone doesn't like it, then so what.

I think it is really the case of having so many people; once the battle is getting down to a handful of people then all the others now without a vehicle must become spectators. Forcing everyone to form multi crew vehicles is probably going to make the commo situation worse unless someone specifically puts out a call that they want a gunner. Other than that, the excess people have to become F5 and F8 spectators.

:)

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I think you should make that clear.

Well from my point of view it is clear.

- Company commanders have the freedom to relocate "idle" people within their Company at will.

- If still "unemployed", people can go to another Company but not get "into" a vehicle without that Company commander's permission.

- If the Company commander asks for an "idle" person to fill a slot then there is no restriction.

That is the gist of what I told the Company Commanders in the PM, they pass it on to their people.

I have enough to do without PM'ing 30+ individuals and telling them all personally what the story is (and translating it into German for several of them).

That's what the chain of command is for.

If Company commanders don't pass stuff on then they have no one to blame but themselves if they lose control of vehicles.

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There is absolutely nothing wrong with being in the F8 observer position, and besides, it only helps if you call out targets you see for the guy who owns the tank (i.e. "tank, 3 o'clock of hull").

Exactly what Sean was doing for me in those woods: worked like a charm! :)

(Not that I'm calling Sean "charming," you understand!! :biggrin:

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Well from my point of view it is clear.

- Company commanders have the freedom to relocate "idle" people within their Company at will.

- If still "unemployed", people can go to another Company but not get "into" a vehicle without that Company commander's permission.

- If the Company commander asks for an "idle" person to fill a slot then there is no restriction.

That is the gist of what I told the Company Commanders in the PM, they pass it on to their people.

I have enough to do without PM'ing 30+ individuals and telling them all personally what the story is (and translating it into German for several of them).

That's what the chain of command is for.

If Company commanders don't pass stuff on then they have no one to blame but themselves if they lose control of vehicles.

You still don't get it? I was seeking clarification of whether the definition of INTO includes occupying the observers position. It is obvious from this thread that not everyones agrees on this subject.

Orders are useless if the terms used in them are not defined or understood in the same way by those receiving them.

Regardless of what Volcano has written, I'm sure no one will object if you make a temporary rule for BlueFor in this campaign that 'idle' players must not 'get into' other players' tanks without a specific request, but should not occupy the observer's position either.

Could you please do that - so we can clear this up once and for all?

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I already have.

"Into" is "into" (F6, F7 and F9)

How you can get "into" a vehicle while being several metres behind and above it, is beyond me.

Also the part about:

- If still "unemployed", people can go to another Company but not get "into" a vehicle without that Company commander's permission.

So I defined that they need to ask and said where they can go.

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"Into" is "into" (F6, F7 and F9)

How you can get "into" a vehicle while being several metres behind and above it, is beyond me.

We are getting there. :)

I agree with you 100% and so, apparently does Volcano. But it remains a fact - as you can see from earlier posts - that some players consider the observer's position to be 'in' the vehicle. Ergo shouts of 'Get the eff outa my tank' to anyone who occupies that (external) position. You have now made it completely clear that as far as you are concerned, it isn't.

Although a valid response to the above call would be 'I'm not in your effing tank *sshole' (not that a British gentleman would employ such language ;)), I still won't be hopping to any observers' positions to avoid any possible unpleasantness.

I think we have got there. :)

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I have no problem with people jumping into the observer position. That can be helpful to me in most cases, and sometimes it can be a good learning experience for the observer.

However, I do not tolerate people jumping into one of my vehicles and either gunning it, or moving it, without prior coordination. It's all bad. So far everyone has been good about not playing with other people's toys. Last night was an exception where one person was told to get into a vehicle and move it. They didn't do it by themselves, so I don't think we need to worry about it happening in the future. ;)

I should add that if you need a vehicle that I own, you're better off asking for it through TS, as I don't watch chat when things get busy.

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As far as I know, there's absolutely no effect on my ability to run and gun a vehicle with any number of people as observers. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Anyone can feel free to observe any of mine at any time.

That said, I don't really like the Observer position as it exists now. It's too gamey for my liking, allowing you to spot things you might otherwise not. I'd much rather see Esim move the observer down so it's more of a phantom TC with his head out than the behind and elevated position it takes now.

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Yes but when used in the "other role" (yes I know not everybody here uses the classroom version) it is useful for trainers to observe trainees and during AARs point out items that the trainee may not have seen (if only to highlight the blind spots in the other positions).

Pretty sure you can disable it in the Mission Editor if you want no one to have a "God view" option in a given scenario.

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I seem to recall something being mentioned about the F8 view being a compromise. I think the reason given was that, from the unbuttoned F7 view, there is virtually no peripheral vision and much less situational awareness than you would get "IRL". So the slightly elevated camera sort of makes up for that.

Please, correct me if I'm mistaken.

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Well the Command Chain on BLUEFOR was sent this as part of a PM on the 29th:

and

So they are the rules for BLUEFOR during Red Tide '85 until further notice.

Already send it to Marko who forwarded it to Tjay.

So he should be aware of the rules.

Other than that, can't wait for the next battle.

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I seem to recall something being mentioned about the F8 view being a compromise. I think the reason given was that, from the unbuttoned F7 view, there is virtually no peripheral vision and much less situational awareness than you would get "IRL". So the slightly elevated camera sort of makes up for that.

Please, correct me if I'm mistaken.

Well you can always go to F7 and then "stand up" (Q a couple of times).

But I think that exposes you to fire, whereas F8 is not targetable.

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Already send it to Marko who forwarded it to Tjay.

So he should be aware of the rules.

Other than that, can't wait for the next battle.

Yes, I am well aware of the rules and always was, thank you. And Gibson has now clarified that his order not to 'jump into' other players tanks unless invited does NOT apply apply to the observer position. Not that I'll be doing that anyway.

And I have NEVER, EVER occupied the gunner or driver positions of another player. Period.

Edited by Tjay
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So I can still jump into the observer position and watch a player in an M1 blaze away at the enemy. Right?

Just be prepared for an earful of abuse from those who claim it causes lag or who find it 'creepy' or just don't like it for whatever reason.

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I seem to recall something being mentioned about the F8 view being a compromise. I think the reason given was that, from the unbuttoned F7 view, there is virtually no peripheral vision and much less situational awareness than you would get "IRL". So the slightly elevated camera sort of makes up for that.

Please, correct me if I'm mistaken.

Funnily enough, I was discussing this with a member of the beta testing team the other day.

When I said that I had always considered F8 to be a bit gamey, he echoed your opinion that even in the raised F7 view you don't have the same situational awareness as you do in RL. So F8 is there to compensate for that drawback.

Very similar to the use of icons in flight sims to compensate for the fact that although you can identify another aircraft at 2 miles in RL, you can't on a computer screen. Of course, the macho 'full real' brigade disdain such measures. It's a perennial debate in all sims - but one I no longer take part in.

But I now use F8 regularly without any guilt about 'cheating'.

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Well that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.And it was something made aware to me by other people in the past which made me take notice and explain what I was seeing.In my case its only in certain circumstances,so when I see it happening ,I'll ask people to jump out.I would think its similiar too some having problems with arty being called, cause it laggs the game out as well.Maybe it should be treated as a courtesy.If someone has a problem with the observer view for any reason and makes the request...exit the tank.As for the other reasons stated...they are OTHER peoples point of view,I'm just passing them along.Some I agree with ,some not so much.On a last note ,a fifth reason for not using the observer view is tactical,some people don't want to reveal their tactics in manuvers...just sayin.

Edit: thinking about this(my) issue in terms of lagging...maybe we need more options in the video dept.There's practically nothing there to alleviate any performance issues.Look at most sims nowadays...theres tons of tweaks to be made in the interfaces or config files.For example,if I have issues similar to these in say ARMA or DCS...I can quickly fix them.I can run DCS nearly maxed out in settings and get consant 40 plus in frame rate because of it.

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Edit: thinking about this(my) issue in terms of lagging...maybe we need more options in the video dept.There's practically nothing there to alleviate any performance issues.

That's intentionally so. If the absence of a certain effect makes it easier for a human player to spot a certain target (or harder to do so), then this visual effect will have affect the play balance and chosen tactics. This in turn will only result in a trend to switch off everything that can be switched off by the group of "hypercompetitive" players.

It is okay to make all this stuff configurable for single player mode, but it is problematic for multiplayer situations.

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But its not the absence of the effect were taliking here..ie smoke obscuring vision..frame rate of a visual effect is not the same as the intention of said visual effect.Two very different things.What I'm going to try is reducing the texture of smoke manually from 256 to 128 to see if that helps.

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Ah ok, you mean lag in terms of sluggish graphics performance. Lag to me is sliding/warping tanks caused by network latency issues.

These campaign missions are very large, with lots of arty. Lots of los calculations going on and hundreds of objects to track.

If you have an older sound card that can't play enough simultaneous sounds at once, arty strikes could affect performance. Do things speed up when the sounds of the arty stop but the smoke is still visible?

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