New mode: Exploration and identification of moving targets

Introduction

This suggestion presents two modes:

- Survey mode and

- Battle mode.

This article is translated to 3 languages: Czech, Polish and Slovak. However the English version is more detailed.

Survey mode

The Survey mode could be considered the lowest difficulty. Size of the map: default. Availability: AB, RB, SB. To play the mode, there are air maps already created in WT. You could enter to the game with suitable airplane or ground vehicle. Survey mode should be suitable especially for first discovering of the map, first play with a plane or for training of air maneuvers. It supports an idea to make game more realistic. Any map could be explored. It would be better if you could use vehicles with minimum 2 men in the crew.

I suggest adding survey mode, where player can explore any map. The exploration and collection of information should be the task in this mission. You should find positions of your enemies before battle can start. This means, you will not fight in this mission, but only explore the map.

This would be a freelance mode, where you are not punished and you can do anything you want. Communication with enemy players should be disabled. But you could still play in team with your teammates. Your vehicle should be unarmed. You could play only with light vehicles. In air battles you would need to enter game with aircraft which makes sharp turns, can slow down and descend near the ground. In ground battles you could join mission with truck, jeep or motorbike or light vehicle which is unarmed or even with a bike. Unarmed vehicle should be lighter. You can crash but you should not be punished. Even if you kill some airplane with your plane hit, this should not be punished because this is just a game full of freelance!

If you die, the game is over for you but you could play it again without waiting. So you could continue your previous exploration. The map is still open, you can quit it but the current result are still available on the server. There should be menu from where you can select which map you want to play. The list of maps you can choose to enter would be limited to what the server currently offers. It could be possible to play 15 maps for 2 hours. Next 2 hours another 15 maps, and so on.

There would be limit for minimum survey points you need to receive to successive return from the game. You could return any time you want, but your points would be received only if you successively find some minimum enemy targets. Notice: your goal is not to find enemy survey aircrafts (human players), but ground units.

The map should not display enemy players. When the map would be opened by server to play, there wouldn’t be any target marks on the map, except friendly units. When you would explore the map and find enemy positions, they would be drawn to the map. The goal of the mission should be find more enemy targets and record them to map. Another target - it would be possible to make photos of targets which are necessary to bomb (grayscale aerial photos for bombers). It would be great if you could have a key assigned. You would take a picture of what you would look at. This could be good to identify the object later especially in RB or SB mode.

Information to collect:

- type of the object (tank, light vehicle, armoured vehicle, bunker, trucks, AA, etc.)

- purpose of the object (e.g. storage/warehouse of ammo, factory producing war weapons, train - artillery transport, etc; factories & trains & warehouses: currently not present in air battles)

- priority of destruction (how much important is this object when we rate strategic importance; strategy: currently not present in air battles)

- direction of motion and speed of vehicles

- time of the record

Connection to game:

There would be small list of maps from every map type in air battles, where a player could select a game to play in survey mode. Server would offer this amount of maps limited in time to players. The players would be distributed evenly to the map so that both teams have equal survey points. It is not necessary that both teams have same number of players. The number of players doesn’t mind. The only thing which is important is to keep the both teams equally balanced. For instance, if team A reached 4500 survey points but the team B has only 4350 points, team B waits for a player and no-one can join team A. Until both players reach ~4500, then there may be players connected to both teams.

Why the information need to be collected?

The server would offer the maps which already have been surveyed in minimal amount (50-100%) to be played in battle mode. Players could join to battle. It could be random battle selected from these maps, which have been surveyed. The status of the map would change from surveyed to ready for battle. This means, that no survey vehicles could enter to the game anymore. The mission would change to battle.

When a player wants to leave survey mode after he has furfilled the survey order, then he could enter the mission he surveyed - to play in a battle mode. The only condition is that he needs to wait till the map has minimum of survey points reached and minimum players which want to play the map. So he would leave the map in the way, he would select to finish, but to join the battle in this map.

The battle and identification of targets

After start of the game, the players would see the map which has been partly or completely surveyed. You would see the targets, which the players have found. This means, that if they did not found some base, the base stays hidden for the players, until been found. The targets been found would be plotted in the map.

Regarding moving targets … the position where the units were found would be marked and a vector (direction of movement and estimated distance, which the units should pass with a given speed).  It would be necessary to find and confirm the moving targets before you start attack. They would be not marked until you confirm them! You need to identify them.

Until you identify them, the mark on a map is just estimation. You cannot be really sure if you will find the units in the area! On the image above, the yellow positions of the enemy units would mean old position (position when the units were seen). The point where the arrow points to, is the area where they could be located. You only know, they are near the mark. It would be especially good in RB and SB, where the maps are bigger so the ground units would have a lot of time to get on positions. 

Until you identify them, there wouldn’t be any mark or description of the moving units. In SB,  based from the direction they go, you can simply estimate if they are enemies or friendly units. In RB and AB, you know they are not friendly because they are not blue marked.

From the map you can read what vehicles you expect to find. You read it. Then when you see them you can confirm where you have found them. Visual confirmation is needed to mark them on the map. This would be good for team because if you don’t confirm and mark them and start bombing, next team players could be annoyed when the map would not be updated because of you!

Let’s think about the targets which information has been collected and marked on maps. They should be plotted by groups or columns. So when you will kill 9/10 targets in a group, the group still can be identified. However if nobody had identified the group of targets and you would kill 10/10, then you cannot update the map because we don’t know which group was destroyed.

Identification

The identification of the object would happen like this: you would watch the object and press M to open the map. Then you would right click on the target (group of vehicles) on a map to identify it. So the condition is: you need to watch them, have map open and click on it on map.

The result of the correct identification is that the information on map is updated and highlighted. The number of units in group could be confirmed. In the case that the target group would be identified correctly, the usual red mark and red description of the enemy unit would be added to the target units. So you know identification is correct! If it is not correct, anyone can try again.

In AB - when the identification fails, there would be red mark by the target but not the description. The red mark would be the same as the symbol used on map. The symbol on map can move.

In RB - when the identification fails, no symbol or description to the unit is added. The red mark (symbol of the unit) would be added to map. The symbol on map cannot move.

In SB - when the identification fails, no symbol or description to the unit is added. No appropriate (unit type) mark would be added to map. There would be just question mark which would mean, the object needs to be identified and confirmed to update the information of the map. The question mark here has sense because you need to know where you have seen the object. The symbol on map cannot move.

Since the moment when you identified the moving units the game goes like in a usual battle.

Conclusion

The only thing what would change is that there would be more information to be collected. The map would be updated. Different mode in Battle would offer the possibility to play more realistic games. The survey mode is freelance mode where you can do what you want to explore the map. The battle mode would slow the game a bit.

Additional possibilities

- to the Survey (AB,RB,SB) mode and to Battle mode (RB,SB) add a maintenance crew on ground on airfield to refueling, repairs and to help start of the aircraft.

- to the Survey mode add a possibility to go out of the vehicle and go on foot.