Project Reality Forums

I did a bit of digging looking for a hand held blue force tacking systems and could find none. The smallest i could find was a laptop sized machine. There are smaller versions resembling a radio, but they don't have a screen, and are just used to track the operators location. It's true a lot of people could get their hands on portable GPS units. But that would provide a map with ONLY their location.

If anyone can show me a link to something I'm missing then please do. I know the technology is there, but i just don't think it's being used in that way, yet.

Nevermind, I found one....

ta-dah !

Ok, I knew there'd probably something like that, but what model is it then and how often is it used, by what forces, etc... etc...

I'm still looking into that, but heres a couple paragraphs that kind of relate to what we've been discussing....

Although blue force tracking is touted as a way to prevent fratricide, Stepanski observes that devices such as D-DACT are only one element of the solution. “D-DACT is a situational awareness tool. Fratricide prevention consists of three elements: situational awareness; combat identification; and tactics, techniques and procedures. You need all three elements, and it’s misleading to indicate that a situational awareness tool can prevent fratricide,” he says.

Marines could see D-DACTs in the field as early as October 2004. After passing final tests, more than 500 devices will be distributed starting with the I Marine Expeditionary Force. Within a year, Capt. Davis says, distribution will be complete, and then upgrades will begin. Marines can report problems with the device or offer suggestions for improvements through the D-DACT Web site. In addition, D-DACT team members attend exercises to demonstrate the device and obtain users’ opinions. The configuration control board meets approximately four times a year to review this information.

It's a M-DACT or D-DACT system. D being the mobile version.
http://www.afcea.org/signal/articles/an ... .asp?a=187

D-DACT empowers platoon leaders in Iraq - Marine Corps Community for USMC Marine Veterans

This article has lots of references to giving this to platoon leaders. And says there were 400 of these units in Iraq, in 2006.

[quote=""BadMojo"]What I'm giving up is debating the whole 'noob players letting us down and ruining our game' argument. How can you ever increase the team work in a game, with that argument holding ground?[/quote]

There are plenty of ways to increase teamwork. I think the best is by joining special servers with special sets of rules. Servers like Chicago H, Texas Teamplayers, Tactical Gamer, and Tactics and Teamwork all require the player to join a squad and for the SL to name the squad accordingly. They also get rid of smacktards, lonewolves, make pilots get in 1 squad, etc.

Infact, if you think about it, the servers are just as important as what is implimented into the game to get the full experience because it is really the servers that weed out the idiot and noob players, not the actual game. You are never going to get rid of smacktard players because as long as this game has so much packed into it, which is a lot, there will always be idiots waiting to mess it up or try it out without care for others. Its really up to the community and servers to make sure the game is played correctly. Implimenting something ingame won't change behavior or anything because as with firebases, not everyone even sets those up etc.



[quote="Engineer""]Don't give up so easily...

Such a drastic move as removing all units from our map won't happen without a fight... The 'removal of minimap' was a hot topic for decades, till it finally got removed.[/quote]

I was against the minimap being removed at first as well. Of course I have changed my mind since then and think it was done for the right reasons. But this is different. When we lost the minimap, we had the backup pop-up minimap. If we lose that, then we have nothing for reference. IMO, there always needs to be a backup so when people's screw up or lose something ingame, they have another way of coming back to the fight.

Also a reason why I am against getting rid of rallies BTW. You lose your FOB, at least you have a rally to spawn at so you aren't walking from your main every 10 minutes.

Yes, I was looking at that, too.

I don't know, though. It seems like something fairly new, though, but otherwise I can't tell. Apparently it's also vehicles, the M version, so I was right in saying that. But is 400 that common a number? Considering there's roughly 400 000 Coalition troops in Iraq alone, that's only 1 unit per 1000 soldiers.

00SoldierofFortune00 wrote:There are plenty of ways to increase teamwork. I think the best is by joining special servers with special sets of rules. Servers like Chicago H, Texas Teamplayers, Tactical Gamer, and Tactics and Teamwork all require the player to join a squad and for the SL to name the squad accordingly. They also get rid of smacktards, lonewolves, make pilots get in 1 squad, etc.

Infact, if you think about it, the servers are just as important as what is implimented into the game to get the full experience because it is really the servers that weed out the idiot and noob players, not the actual game. You are never going to get rid of smacktard players because as long as this game has so much packed into it, which is a lot, there will always be idiots waiting to mess it up or try it out without care for others. Its really up to the community and servers to make sure the game is played correctly. Implimenting something ingame won't change behavior or anything because as with firebases, not everyone even sets those up etc.

What about 1 manning a tank? Good team-play says that you shouldn't do that. But if PR didn't make it ineffective, would it not be done more often? Sure, the servers I play on (those that you listed) would punish people for such behavior, but what about when there are no admin? Or they're on the other team? And should the players really be responsible for figuring out if someone who's kicking *** with a tank is alone or has a driver. Not when the game can easily be modified to prevent this.

I know it's a stretch to compare looking at a map to 1 manning a tank. But they're both unrealistic tactics that get reinforced in video games way too heavily. The reason they do is not necessity, it's effectiveness. Just look at the way people react to the thought of losing it. It's way too effective for every foot soldier to carry a zero delay, 100% reliable, tracking system. The same way it would be way too effective if you could have 6 1manned tanks with no warm up time, in a squad. Of course it would be better to have 12 people. But that's taking people out of infantry squads, who wants to drive, it's a boring job, involves verbal communication with other people, incompetent drivers ruin the game, yadda yadda.

McLuv wrote:Yes, I was looking at that, too.

I don't know, though. It seems like something fairly new, though, but otherwise I can't tell. Apparently it's also vehicles, the M version, so I was right in saying that. But is 400 that common a number? Considering there's roughly 400 000 Coalition troops in Iraq alone, that's only 1 unit per 1000 soldiers.

Yeah, it does seem like a new system. The hand held version anyway. I read that the marines use a mish mash of different communications equipment. And most of them don't work together. Something they are trying to fix with a software and hardware solution that will allow them to communicate with all earlier equipment. Supposed to arrive around 2010. As of right now, these DACT systems don't work with the Blue Force Tracking system they use in vehicles. So read the number 400 as there are that many hand-held models of these, while they still have a shitload of other equipment in use. And it was just for the I Marine Expeditionary Force, not the whole coalition. So it would be a bit better of a ratio then 1 per 1000 soldiers.

badmojo420 wrote:What about 1 manning a tank? Good team-play says that you shouldn't do that. But if PR didn't make it ineffective, would it not be done more often? Sure, the servers I play on (those that you listed) would punish people for such behavior, but what about when there are no admin? Or they're on the other team? And should the players really be responsible for figuring out if someone who's kicking *** with a tank is alone or has a driver. Not when the game can easily be modified to prevent this.

You can't modify everything to stop a player from doing it. You can put disadvantages with using it incorrectly, but people are still going to do it. I agree that there should be disadvantages put in place to stop player from using something incorrectly, but that is only going to be half of it. Most players still haven't figured out the disadvantages of having snipers in their squads etc.
But removing the minimap is completely different as it doesn't come with a positive, only disadvantages. You said "what about when there is no admin or if players should figure out if they are kicking their *** with a tank?" That is basically what the Commander's job would amount to with this change.

I know it's a stretch to compare looking at a map to 1 manning a tank. But they're both unrealistic tactics that get reinforced in video games way too heavily. The reason they do is not necessity, it's effectiveness. Just look at the way people react to the thought of losing it. It's way too effective for every foot soldier to carry a zero delay, 100% reliable, tracking system. The same way it would be way too effective if you could have 6 1manned tanks with no warm up time, in a squad. Of course it would be better to have 12 people. But that's taking people out of infantry squads, who wants to drive, it's a boring job, involves verbal communication with other people, incompetent drivers ruin the game, yadda yadda.

PR is half realism half gameplay oriented. Half of what is ingame is based on real life counterparts, but even then they aren't always realistic like the M16 (way to much kick and muzzle rise). The M16 is the way it is because of gameplay issues. Same with making the Auto Rifleman have a 5-10 minute respawn time. If this was real life, every squad would have at least 1 AutoRifleman at all times along with a Grenadier. But then the Grenadier could be abused. The minimap is one of those things that isn't realistic, but it needs to be there for gameplay issues and to balance out things.

I totally agree with that!

00SoldierofFortune00 wrote:You can't modify everything to stop a player from doing it. You can put disadvantages with using it incorrectly, but people are still going to do it. I agree that there should be disadvantages put in place to stop player from using something incorrectly, but that is only going to be half of it. Most players still haven't figured out the disadvantages of having snipers in their squads etc.
But removing the minimap is completely different as it doesn't come with a positive, only disadvantages. You said "what about when there is no admin or if players should figure out if they are kicking their *** with a tank?" That is basically what the Commander's job would amount to with this change.





PR is half realism half gameplay oriented. Half of what is ingame is based on real life counterparts, but even then they aren't always realistic like the M16 (way to much kick and muzzle rise). The M16 is the way it is because of gameplay issues. Same with making the Auto Rifleman have a 5-10 minute respawn time. If this was real life, every squad would have at least 1 AutoRifleman at all times along with a Grenadier. But then the Grenadier could be abused. The minimap is one of those things that isn't realistic, but it needs to be there for gameplay issues and to balance out things.

1 Manning tanks has its advantages. Not with the system they have now. But if it was like vbf2 where you could drive and gun, it would be a step backwards making 2 people do it. First of all driving and firing isn't exactly easy in bf2. And voip has a delay that makes it a pain to use. But, they still changed it. In favor of good game play. Not effective game play, but fun game play. You get more people involved in the actions of that one piece of armor. Instead of just one guy killing another, it's a team effort.

Now think about the map. You can pull it up in half a second and see the whole picture of the battlefield. Down to the smallest detail. Of course taking any of that information away would hurt a players effectiveness. But so does making another player drive your tank. What you would gain is sharing your expirence with other people in the game. Working as a team instead of just running together as a group of Rambos with common goals.

I value this type of team play, as it makes for a fun game. If you do not, then you will think this change is bad. As it hurts the player and computer relationship, and makes you rely more on other players.

badmojo420 wrote:1 Manning tanks has its advantages. Not with the system they have now. But if it was like vbf2 where you could drive and gun, it would be a step backwards making 2 people do it. First of all driving and firing isn't exactly easy in bf2. And voip has a delay that makes it a pain to use. But, they still changed it. In favor of good game play. Not effective game play, but fun game play. You get more people involved in the actions of that one piece of armor. Instead of just one guy killing another, it's a team effort.

Now think about the map. You can pull it up in half a second and see the whole picture of the battlefield. Down to the smallest detail. Of course taking any of that information away would hurt a players effectiveness. But so does making another player drive your tank. What you would gain is sharing your expirence with other people in the game. Working as a team instead of just running together as a group of Rambos with common goals.

I value this type of team play, as it makes for a fun game. If you do not, then you will think this change is bad. As it hurts the player and computer relationship, and makes you rely more on other players.

You can't compare 1 or 2 manning a tank to using a minimap.

-PR Tank has 2 people. They don't move whatsoever while in the tank and only 1 of them is firing at a time and only 1 of them is driving them at a time. The driver controls the actions primarily though.

-With a 6 man squad, you have 6 people moving to a location individually (by their controls) and firing individually. You cannot give them all orders individually as that is too time comsuming and the only time I have seen it work is when you are moving silently, not really in actual combat. Once you get ingaged, every individual troop has to do his own thing to keep you all alive. Of course you can give them orders like "cover fire", "flank", "suppressing fire", or "defend", but you don't tell each individual troop where to go all the time as that is too time consuming and you will get killed by the enemies very quickly if they move faster.


So how exactly are you gaining "sharing your experience" by taking away the minimap? If anything, it takes away from "sharing the experience" because if the SL does not tell you to look a certain direction, there maybe a squadmate being engaged without VOIP or who cannot use it fast enough who you won't see over the hill. With the minimap, you will see the squadmate just standing there, meaning something maybe wrong. This is even more true with defending because when you defend, you usually don't stay all in the same spot. Muttrah's Mosque for example.


Even as you said, there is a delay with VOIP, so why are you proposing that they be vulnerable for those few seconds when they could just pop up the minimap? This isn't America's Army or SWAT 4. BF2/PR moves way to quickly to depend upon VOIP alone as you have suggested.

I understand that 6 people will be doing different things. I wouldn't expect the SL to give everyone individual commands. What you and other people were complaining about is knowing what other squads are doing and where needs defending and where already has 2 squads on it. And that's a legitimate need. But, what you talked about, watching the green dots and reacting to them. Is exactly what i want PR to get away from with removing the map. I understand you have a different opinion on this topic. So i won't bother explaining my reasons anymore.

IF SL:s are given other SL:s locations and commander sees all and SM sees SL and SL/game markers I would see no reason to not implement this.
If we give drivers the map they have now they could prevent the possible problem that if CO would be the only one to get the current map and if CO was present.
This would also add more infantry debendancy on vehicles.

+More job to CO
+People would use grid coordinates more to tell where they are.
+People would stop yelling enemy at my location even those nobody knows where they are even with the map.
+Would bring more realistic troop movement ingame.
+People would have to rely on some chain of command.

-Confusion among new players
-Confusion among those without a Mic
-People would have to think
-People would "expoit" for example with yelling for medic to know where someone is for example.

If i would know where to attack and where i should go by looking my map im happy.

The biggest problem is simple....really which make the original idea mute. With out inter squad leader communication this doesn't work.

Capping flags would also be allot more confusing as people would not know how meny players there are in flag zone.

Well, can we atleast get rid of the medic magic ability to know who has died in other side of map?

Vege wrote:IF SL:s are given other SL:s locations and commander sees all and SM sees SL and SL/game markers I would see no reason to not implement this.

I thought about that, but the main problem with that is that you may go to that location only to find the SL alive and his squad wiped out and than get ambushed yourself or his squad maybe nowhere near him for some reason. With the current system, at least you know if other squads are in danger or not by how many of them are in an area. Pretty much inter-squad communication as much as PR can without intersquad-VOIP.

I`d like to say only this: in real life when u shoot with AK-47 your iron sight cover 1/3 of your visual sight. In PR0.8 is too small i think, must be much closer vhen you aim. In real iron sight on 100m cover the standing human.
THX

EDIT: User warned for posting a useless post