Recon question

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Command: Modern Operations series >> Mods and Scenarios >> Recon question

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Recon question - 2/15/2018 7:31:19 PM

rmunie0613

Posts: 202
Joined: 1/2/2018
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This may actually be LUA-related, but may not.

I am wondering if anyone knows a way to get the following situation in-game.

Timeline late 1970s-early 1980s.
A film-based recon, either by Satellite or an aircraft.
Assume for the example an aircraft-based.

A recon flight makes a speedy pass over an airbase or other ground installations to obtain more information on it... it must land, then have an analyst go over the film, something that could take some time depending on many variables, especially the distance it flew, etc.
At that point, it has a clear picture of what the intel was, but however long ago the picture was taken...so that its "new" intel may actually be out of date, but still gives a snapshot of what was real, as of x hours before.

I can sort of find a way to do this with giving "NOW" intel..by having a "spy" appear at the location filmed, after a specific time.
I also know though there must be a way to implement the "old" intel...because I n the one scenario I posted about some days back, when I saw "damaged" aircraft for the first time, when that Aardvark finally got home, it updated the BDA on the airfield it had hit, despite that update already being old also.

Anyway just playing with the IMINT idea some and really like where this is going, but wondering if anyone has thought of something I perhaps have not.
Thank you.

Post #: 1

RE: Recon question - 2/15/2018 8:15:29 PM

thewood1

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Joined: 11/27/2005
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I am not sure this helps or not. I have modeled film-based recon through switching sides/postures in events. You have a third side called recon. It is neutral to the blue side, but hostile to red. It does the flight and returns to an airbase. After X time, it switches sides to blue and its memory is now part of blue. There are a lot of derivatives for this with multiple sides, events, and/or lua.

(in reply to rmunie0613)

Post #: 2

RE: Recon question - 2/15/2018 8:57:58 PM

rmunie0613

Posts: 202
Joined: 1/2/2018
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That is a good idea...I do that some with IADS too on occasion. I will try that, thank you!

(in reply to thewood1)

Post #: 3

RE: Recon question - 2/15/2018 9:01:21 PM

Randomizer

Posts: 1473
Joined: 6/28/2008
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I have written events similar to those suggested by Thewood1 where the SOSUS net sends updates at 1200Z and 2400Z and the rest of the time provides no info to the Player. The documentation for this sort of thing is pretty complete and both the triggers and the necessary actions can be as simple or as complicated as you like.

-C

(in reply to thewood1)

Post #: 4

RE: Recon question - 2/15/2018 9:42:10 PM

Rory Noonan

Posts: 2816
Joined: 12/18/2014
From: Brooklyn, NY
Status: offline

I added ELINT, COMINT and some other offboard intelligence mechanisms--most with at least some delay--to various scenarios in The Silent Service, all made use of Lua and most made use of Special Actions as well.

As for IMINT implementations with processing times etc there's a few approaches I can think of off-hand;

A) AI controlled scheduled flights; a separate side (like in thewood1's suggestion) controls the recon aircraft, initially they're set to be neutral towards the player (who is friendly towards them), and once processing time rolls around you can set them to friendly towards the player and contacts will be shared.

B) Complete abstraction; special messages are used to convey the intelligence information to the player, you could enrich this by using reference points and perhaps randomising the data a little (e.g. assigning a 'probability of detection' to each contact/contact type to determine whether it's included in the intelligence update)

C) Partial abstraction; enemy units in the recon area are set to autodetectable at the appropriate time; you can turn auto-detect off after a few minutes if you want uncertainty zones to grow. Again this could be enriched with some randomisation.

D) Overlays; using a unit enters area trigger you could load actual satellite/aerial images of the relevant area. You could really go to town on this with Photoshop etc. Having a delay from the overflight to overlay loading would be pretty straightforward as Randomizer mentioned.

Once you've got a good idea of exactly how you implement this, if you need a hand with the Lua side of things post over at Lua Legion and we'll do our best to help

_____________________________

(in reply to Randomizer)

Post #: 5

RE: Recon question - 2/15/2018 10:09:20 PM

rmunie0613

Posts: 202
Joined: 1/2/2018
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Thank you guys...and the fact that a unit could be back-and-forth from 'auto-detect' to not, is something I did not know, and can think of many uses for immediately... very interesting.

(in reply to Rory Noonan)

Post #: 6

RE: Recon question - 2/16/2018 1:18:34 PM

BDukes

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Joined: 12/27/2017
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You can also add overlays via lua and messages. So picture can appear with aircraft passing over areas etc. Delays are a little rough but doable if you have programming smarts.

(in reply to rmunie0613)

Post #: 7