Project Reality Forums

[R-DEV]DankE_SPB wrote:Not being able to look around without moving whole body, not being able to point at direction, language barrier, the list goes on, are not realistic at all too and current compass helps to solve those problems pretty good. Remove it - your squad is now a helpless mob.

Current system is fine and work well.

fully agree

'[R-MOD wrote:Jigsaw;1407157']
No, that's not the point of PR. The objective is realistic gameplay on the BF2 engine, so this statement does not stand up at all. The only situation in which this change would become a benefit is in the application of indirect fire weaponry, in every other circumstance it is more difficult and cumbersome to use and therefore is a detriment to gameplay.

This is wrong on two levels. PR aims for realism on two levels - tactical realism and aesthetic realism which in turn filter down into immersive realism or "gameplay realism" as you call it.

Aesthetic realism is an obvious one - why do Devs painstakingly model and texture assets into the game, why are most of the reload animations the correct proceedure instead of the tacool and incorrect ones that other games use, why is PR using new kit geometries, why do different factions have aesthetically different but functionally identical sights? Aesthetic realism isn't a side thing in PR, it's pretty much what the game sells on, because the notions of tactical realism, as discussed in the next paragraph, are largely misnomers.

The second is tactical realism. Tactical realism is the idea that only realistic tactics should work in the game and therefore that watching a PR engagement should be like watching a real life engagement from the outside. The problem is that PR consistently aims to create tactical realism by sacrificing the realism of the parts that produce it. Infantry tactcs in PR are severely hampered by the unrealistic way infantry weapons work, for example. You never see suppression generated to allow a flanking attack because the mechnics to support it just aren't there. You're better off going on a silent flank and putting 30 rounds in a cone from 5 meters than acting realistically. Because the realistic components that force realistic tactics to emerge are absent, they don't form and a completely different metagame takes their place.

In this specific instance, we will NOT see realistic employment of Mortars, and will not see realistic employment of counter mortar tactics as a consequence. In reality, the first thing any good infantry force will do on realising they're taking mortar fire, if they aren't tied to a position, is move diagonally to the spotter. Will we see this in PR when adjusting rounds won't be used and corrections from a spotter won't have to be called? Unlikely.

Trying to create realistic tactics using unrealistic components is like trying to build a racecar out of bike parts. PR consistently tries to get around this by throwing a lick of racecar red paint over the top of extremely unrealistic tactics and gameplay to create the illusion of a racecar when it's really just a mish mash of bike parts. That lick of paint is the incredibly realistic aesthetics PR has going for it, which it then supplements with a few critical gameplay features that encourage readily accessible teamwork in unrealistic ways. It makes for a pretty fun experience, but these features actually detract from the realism of the game.

The change suggested is aethetically realistic, it also presents the possibility of the introduction of a broad range of realistic tactics and thus emergent tactical exchanges which produce realistic and satisfying gameplay experiences much better than the current mooted solutions.

It is deeply ironic, that PR's take on realism is so convergent with DICE's original one for BF2 - make it look realistic and cater to people's perceptions of realism, include some features to encourage teamwork and you have a winning mix!


I'll close with a quote:

Thats not what I said and the sarcasm isn't appreciated. In my view using mils would not improve the system, only make it more complex.

It would clearly improve it on two levels if implemented properly. That's what this post was fundamentally about.

what would those two levels be then?????

bassicly everyone knows how a compass works and using mils would just confuse people greatly. You might say oh its easy but saying where an enemy is should be simple. And i'm sure grids and mini grids will be enough to use indirect fire.

PR is already a fairly challenging game to get into, so adding unnecessary complexity is not a good thing. The compass is one of the most intuitive parts of the game, as everyone understand 360 degrees is a circle. Replacing that with mils would make it extremely un-intuitive, even for people with a fair amount of military knowledge

mills? Really? 6400 mills isnt that gonna complicate things? I mean maybe if we get the fob mortar but why would it be feasable?

because for a start 6400 isn't divisable by 360 so for anyone who doesn't exactly use or have even heard of mils before it'll be like... "WTF this is so stupid before i could say 65 degrees now i have to say like 2356 mils or whateva" also like i said before it'll be so accurate you won't be able to use it properly, even now with degress depending ons creen reolution it can be hard to get exact degress. Maybe if only applied to the mortor and the spotter kit then it'd be alright, but even then you don't need it because you have markers you just point the the mortor at the marker and shoot?

ITT: People who have never used Mils come up with reasons why mils are a bad system of measurement.

its not that its a bad system, its that not everyone in that plays PR has had any sort of experience with a map and compass like the military, if players have been in the cadets or scouts or joined a club and learned these things, great, but not every one has

i was in scouts and we didn't learn mils and even in cadets people prefere to use normal degrees because its annoying just to teach a bunch of poeple who already how to use a compass how to use a slightly different one.

killonsight95 wrote:i was in scouts and we didn't learn mils and even in cadets people prefere to use normal degrees because its annoying just to teach a bunch of poeple who already how to use a compass how to use a slightly different one.

exactly not even your cadets did it, i've been to both ACF and ATC and we only learned about Degrees.

I'm unclear as to what has to be relearned in order to use mils. For everything that you use degrees for in the game currently, it's exactly the same. Instead of shouting "Contact, 50meters, 180 degrees, low by the ditch." you'd shout "Contact, 50 meters 32 hundred mils, low by the ditch." The best bit is that you wouldn't even have to think about it, you'd still just be reading off the compass.

What adding mils would do (aside from enhancing realism) is add an extra feature to the compass namely that you could potentially use it to precisely adjust indirect fire, at the moment only from the gun end, but perhaps in a future version of PR at the observer end as well. If you put mils in the game for this purpose, a guide which would take not more than 10 minutes to learn would appear on the forums explaining how mils subtension works and how you can use it. Failing that, the internet is littered with information like that.

If this was actually put into the game, I'm sure you'd have to make the compass much much larger, in order to tell the difference between mils.

a tutorial isnt even needed since you just need to read the numbers in the screen
i heard about the mils system just now and i dont find it complicated at all you read the numbers the same way you would read a year in the english language 19-45 its fast, easy and really efficient its faster than the current 180 plus something and many people dont understand or cant find the mark ingame, this is much better.
and also if real military units use mils then by all means put it in, PR and authenticity go hand in hand.

I would support this idea as long it is used only for things, such as mortars, artillery, or, to minor extent, on deployable TOWs (just for more precise indirect fire on long ranges). I think that current compass has become a great and useful addition to PR and it shouldn't be fully compromised for something that is not as much convenient.

Truism wrote:It would clearly improve it on two levels if implemented properly. That's what this post was fundamentally about.

I'm sorry, all those words but you didn't actually explain what those two levels are.

Truism wrote:I'm unclear as to what has to be relearned in order to use mils. For everything that you use degrees for in the game currently, it's exactly the same. Instead of shouting "Contact, 50meters, 180 degrees, low by the ditch." you'd shout "Contact, 50 meters 32 hundred mils, low by the ditch." The best bit is that you wouldn't even have to think about it, you'd still just be reading off the compass.

What adding mils would do (aside from enhancing realism) is add an extra feature to the compass namely that you could potentially use it to precisely adjust indirect fire, at the moment only from the gun end, but perhaps in a future version of PR at the observer end as well. If you put mils in the game for this purpose, a guide which would take not more than 10 minutes to learn would appear on the forums explaining how mils subtension works and how you can use it. Failing that, the internet is littered with information like that.

But that's the whole point, I shouldn't have to go trolling through the internet as a new player looking for how to work out mils when I instinctively know about degrees. PR is demanding enough without changing one of the most intuitive and easy to use features.

My point about realistic gameplay was perhaps explained incorrectly, what I meant was realistic gameplay = realistic teamwork. Teamwork is the key objective of PR, but avoiding realism for realism's sake is another and that is what using mils is; adding an extra layer of complexity in an unnecessary feature simply to be "realistic". As i've said already, the only scenario in which mils could be seen as more useful than degrees is the application of indirect fire.

On a final note, i'd suggest that you wait to see how the mortars perform in-game before making assumptions about how they might operate.

I had a really long post. But I accidentally deleted it.

Basic gist: Teamwork isn't realistic in PR. It's dumbed down and made easy by the inclusion of unrealistic things like the Super Blue Force Tracker map, waaaay dumbed down comms and then conversely made less important by having a force density that is unrealistically low because of objectives too large for the forces on the ground and unrealistic mechanics like deviation rendering conventional tactics right down to the squad level unworkable and never used.

Second half: Mortars are a cool addition, everyone wants them, mad props to those who made them possible in game. The level of realism required to make them function properly isn't on par with what makes them work in real life. No one wants players to have to have gunnery tables and targetting computers/programs, but some kind of observer/tube relationship involving adjustments and mils feels like a bare necessity. Alternately it could be dumbed down just be a reverse deviation code on the tube so each shot fired reduces deviation, so there'd be a fake adjustment time on any target, but this wouldn't allow for realistic tactics like walking rounds and would be very hard to do properly with regards to things like danger close proceedures.

Will have to reserve judgement for now, they look potentially problematic but awesome.

Anyway, post is gone now it said all that much better :'( Got logged out in the process of posting this, but at least I copied it before hand this time, so it wasn't lost >.>

[R-MOD]Jigsaw wrote:
But that's the whole point, I shouldn't have to go trolling through the internet as a new player looking for how to work out mils when I instinctively know about degrees. PR is demanding enough without changing one of the most intuitive and easy to use features.

but that's the thing, there's nothing to learn. it would still be just saying this number and pointing yourself at that number, North on the compass will still be marked N south will still be S and etc. using mils and degrees is different only in the fact that there are more of them.

it's like drawing a graph you can divide the lines up by 10 (0,10,20,etc) having a less accurate graph, or you can make each line 1 (0,1,2,etc) making it more accurate. the great thing about mils is it greatly enhances your possibilities while having no negative effect on anyone who uses degrees. even on a real compass the way you use it remains the same, the only difference is you're reading off a different set of numbers.

yes it will take a short while to get used to, but there's no learning required

I remember playing a game, or mod, where there was a PR-like compass with mils system. It worked for me even though I had never heared of it. It took me a moment to figure where north was, but since then, it worked just fine for spotting things and giving movement directions.

It's certainly not an important addition, but it would not be hard to learn.

Because it could be improved.

Also because there isn't an army worth it's salt in the world who uses degrees. Even the russians use mils of some sort.