Friendly IFF identification

[|TG|Beatnik]

My apologies if this has come up in other threads, but I searched and found no hits for "IFF".

I'm wondering if the delayed IFF notification of teammates in PR is by design, or an actual bug. It seems that the 2-3 second delay in seeing friendly tags is responsible for a) a lot of TKs in hectic firefights/chokepoints (which are very common in AAS) and b) people getting killed by an enemy thinking he might be a friendly and waiting for the IFF indicator to show his tag.

It seems that making the IFF friendly tags pop up sooner will resolve a lot of unnecessary spotting (to confirm/disconfirm that a tango is friend or foe) and make the action more fluid/realistic. In real life, I can reliably identify a friend or enemy almost instantaneously at 50 yards. This is not the case with the current IFF system in PR.

Thanks for reading this feedback, and for pushing to get a .5 server fix out. I'm overall very pleased with the mod, but would like to be able to play the game without Q-spotting every person more than 10m away.

[eggman]

we don't have any control over that to make it faster than it already is.

we do want "think before you shoot" dynamics.

[Wasteland]

How about an audio cue to accompany the "Check your fire!" text? Or centralize that text?

I too enjoy a think-before-you-shoot dynamic. But as you wouldn have had to hit the target for the warning to pop up, they would still be quite wounded.

[ender[fdn]]

I have a hard time understanding this issue whenever it comes up. Are people usually just firing at whatever moves? Are the uniforms too hard to distinguish? I usually go for days without having a TK. Maybe I am more cautious than other people? I feel like this is generally due to people trying to play the game in an arcade rather than realistic style. Do you agree or is there something I'm doing differently than most other people?

[TheOldDog]

I like the way it is myself but if I were to put on my devils advocate hat I would say that the system in place greatly benefits people with large hi-rez monitors (which in themselves are a great benefit). In a nutshell you cant judge a uniform if the number of pixels displaying it is too few. If you lower the game resolution to the venerable level of 1024x768 you could compensate somewhat by watching the mini map like a hawk for friendlies but at that rez you either take the risk and shoot first or you wait and are dead because of it if you guessed wrong.

In fact I would petition the developers to add some extra code on game entry for anyone running 1024x768 or less, an audio que that says... "ohhh shite.... I left my glasses in my bunk!"

[ender[fdn]]

Heh, then I must be at a disadvantage, I generally play at 800x600.

[|TG|Beatnik]

Thanks for the replies so far.

If it's not a variable that you have any control over, the topic is apparently moot.

That being said, of course "think before you shoot" should be a priority. However, I play at 1360x768 (on my LCD TV which is 8 ft away) with med. settings. I (and apparently others who TK people in my squads) have a very hard time distinguishing between uniforms. I'm now in a habit of Q-spotting everything, and sometimes (as I said in the original post) killed while Q-spotting or waiting for a friendly ID to pop up. I almost always prefer to defend what we have and let tangos approach my dug in squad, but even in those situations we're double/triplechecking people to make sure they are in fact enemies.

The situation gets much more hairy at chokepoints, where people are everywhere. But if there's no control over it, that's cool. It is annoying though to rely on Q spamming to tell friend from foe in those critical first seconds of contact.

Thanks again for the replies/feedback.

[fuzzhead]

Beatnik: try playing more cautiously, and try having a more tight knit squad. These things just simply dont come up if you play the game realistically.

Join my squad if you get a chance, Ill show you how to properly ID targets while working in an infantry squad.

[|TG|Beatnik]

Thanks, fuzz. I didn't mean to give the impression that I'm new to squad leading or to BF2 (although my PR hours are in the dozens, as opposed to thousands of Vanilla/POE2/Tac Mod hours). I generally SL very tight squads, but we are after all in a learning curve with new features of PR.

That being said, I'll happily join your squad (and invite you to join mine) any time I see you on a server.

[Nemises]

Visual ID is just one of those things in realistic settings...same challenges in Red Orchestra st front and Op Flash (and I guess ArmA when it's out).

I think it add's to the game personally, as you have to stop, think, maybe check in the map or Q-spot.

The player who is most confident and experienced will automatically know if it is a friendly or not in a given situation intuitively, given that they are probably sub conciously aware of friendly deployments from the get-go.

Audio cue's really can help too (not sure in PR so much yet, as I'm am new), as you can distinguish between the hardware someone is shooting by listenening and , generally,see the direction they are pointing it in which gives you a good estimate as to their disposition.

[{XG} non_compliance]

Has there been a change in the q-spot from .4 to .5? I've noticed that it says "NME UNITS SPOTTED" even when on friendlies.. I don't think it used to do that. There are a few responses... NME UNITS... NME INFANTRY... etc... it used to say the more general one on friendlies and the more specific on actual NMEs... now it seems to say them on both, making the q-spot less reliable.

I rarely have trouble IDing targets though.. unless at 200m or more.. I can usually make out the uniform.. and if I can't, I can make out the shape of the person as long as they're within draw distance of their 'accessories'.

For reference, I"m running a 22" LCD widescreen at 1024x768 all settings on high except lighting.

[Nephrmuus]

I had a REAL problem with killing my own team when I started playing PR about a month ago, but with time I have greatly reduced, but not eliminated, that problem . It takes time to learn to recognise both the colour differences and particularly sillouettes of hostiles when they are at range, though I'm still no good at recognising weapon sounds yet. Now I'm glad of the think-before-shooting style, but equally, I will always forgive non-griefing TKs on myself since I remember how hard it is when you start out used to magic-friend-and-foe-goggles.

The problem with monitor resolution is definitely a factor (I'm at 1280x960 with 4xAA, all settings maxed out, and still find it hard to recognise hostiles at times) but people with better gear always will have an advantage (as will players who, for example, turn off shadows in the options). I'm sure plenty of players have much better kit than me too and I just have to live with that slight disadvantage. I'd rather keep the system as it is though. I also probably have significantly slower reflexes than the 15 year olds...and that isn't about to get "evened out" either. Hehe!

Oh, and I actually use my binocs/SOFLAM for magnifying far-off infantry and to spot them so that my squad doesn't have to see them clearly enough to identify them to shoot them (I often play as squad leader/officer who has the magnificent SOFLAM device). I perform the same service when I am "manually" (using VOIP) spotting as a commander (I don't mind losing UAV, but I'd like to have commander spotting back, even if you can only do ?-spotting, not the auto-identify/auto-tracking spotting that regular soldiers can do, but that is another issue).

[Fritz_Fraghof]

Great thread. I have a hard time differentiating too, even coming from Red Orchestra. Some of the uniforms in PR look very similar - especially (is it?) the Brit and Chinese jungle ones. In different light conditions I am not good enough to recognize from profile who is who yet.. I rely on the minimap a lot. Although I must confess I like to pick up enemy weapons and then flank their position when they are engaged..so I guess I take advantage in my own way.

[Nemises]

Commander last night was using "move to here" waypoints to point out artystrike zone requests and other goodies, which worked fine, as he was also very vocal on the VOIP letting all the SL's know what they were for and why.

Not a bad idea to put in a "query" marker though..assuming it doesnt break the realism too much (ie. as a substitute for map co-ordinates or bullseye translation)

[Tykwertheterrible]

i play at 800X600 with low settings and it can suck a whole lot. even at medium range, all the details dont always materialize so you're looking at the base model which all look a good deal alike. most of the time, the problem seems to be one person thinking a friend is an enemy and the person who is thought to be the enemy knows the dude shooting is a friendly and the only thing the person getting shot at can do is spam "NO SIR" and hope they get the idea. i do keep an eye on the mini map and such, but some times you've got a friendly who is surrounded by baddies and so you see "hey, i got a friendly over there, ill hold my fire" and then a guy from that exact direction kills you.
too bad a player-controled "CEASE FIRE" command would be difficult to implement, at let im geussing so since you'd have to do it in the foreign languages and find a place to put it on the commo rose.

[ender[fdn]]

FF happens in real life when units aren't aware of the location of other units. I, personally, believe this is how it should be in the game as well.

Given that you have the minimap, it should be very easy to know if a unit is operating in the area you're looking at. If there's a friendly unit up there and you're too far to ID a uniform, don't shoot.

I, personally, would love to see the soldier locations removed from the minimap (but SL locations remain for commander). Then your SL would need to communicate with the commander, asking if there were any friendlies in the area, just as units must do in reality.

Witness the recent and tragic FF incident with a british convoy and a US A-10. The A-10 called repeatedly for confirmation of friendlies in the area and FC kept replying that there were no friendlies at that location. Finally, the A-10 attacks at which point the squad being attacked pops smoke and radios back to HQ, who contacts FC and the the A-10 is notified, finally, that they are friendlies.

I, personally, would like for there to be this kind of necessary communication between SLs and commanders. The commander's job should be to coordinate the battle and make sure squads know when they're operating near one another. I like the tension it brings where you're trying to decide if those guys on the ridge are friendly or not. I also like the concept of people having to go and confirm that what they shot was an enemy, and if it wasn't, the rush to get medics up there to try to save them. That kind of drama is what really draws me to PR. I'd prefer that kind of gameplay to the arcade-style provided by minimaps and nametags.

[|TG|Beatnik]

I'd respectfully disagree with that opinion. It's been my experience that the "arcade style" tags supplement the lack of real-world visual acuity that the BF2 engine unfortunately suffers from. Like I said in the OP (or maybe a subsequent reply), in RL I can tell friend from foe at about 50m. Not so in BF2. Hence, the need for tags to supplement/complement the flawed graphics/textures. Just because the game environment resembles real-world situations doesn't mean that it provides the same amount of situational awareness as RL (e.g. you can turn your head to look around for a ~180 degree view when flying a helicopter in RL).

Re: the Friendly Fire paragraph, I think it's great on paper, miserable in-game. For example, no less than 6 times last night on Hills of Hamgyong did I work extremely hard with my squad (using heavy smoke and cover fire) to battle up the Central hill to get in a position to stage an assault/cap the point, before being TKed because people (different people each time) TKed one or more of us.

My reaction was not one of amusement or pleasure with the "reality" of being TKed by friendly soldiers looking down their ironsights at us and not knowing that we were friendly.

[Wipeout]

eggman']we don't have any control over that to make it faster than it already is.

we do want "think before you shoot" dynamics.

And to add to eggman's post.. The popular think before you speak! If you don't do this you might get in trouble. Take my advice!

Back to topic. It isn't that hard really to identify friendlies. You look down the sights aim.. If you recieve fire you return it by reflex. Otherwise you wait for an name, don't see one after a few seconds open fire.

[ender[fdn]]

Beatnik, I think part of the issue is there is too little penalty for TKing. I have written a TK script that extends your spawn time based on various criteria having to do with TKing. I'm going to offer that up to the devs and see if it's something that they'd like to integrate.

The case you're talking about is that someone else is TKing you because they're not taking the necessary precautions.

[Biggaayal]

ender[fdn] Are the uniforms too hard to distinguish?

On a lot of maps ,my answer is definitely.