I was thinking about how this game relies on communications for targeting but not everyone speaks the same language. So I remembered what I've seen the military do when painting a specific target. Yes I know we have a map where you can plot waypoints but it's not really target specific for a particular say Sunderer or something. I tried following smoke signals but most times it's an empty field where the threat has been gone for some time because people don't remove the smoke manually. Live target painting with a laser pointing like device is something best done by a ground pounder and should be for squad leader use only in my imagination. Not a must have but could be useful.
Why for squad leaders only?!? This would be the perfect method to allow any player, no matter if they are random, in a squad, in a platoon or outfit to communicate with each other! In the military its not the squad lead that paints the target, the squad lead has better things to do. He tells one of his soldiers to do it while the squad lead tries to make sure everyone does their duty. I would attach a radial menu to Q-spotting and to the V radio commands key. We already have a radial menu when you hold the Q button over a friendly, so what if you spot an enemy and then hold Q over him and you can select a few options from there? Q-spot a vehicle, the radial menu can request an AV infantry attack, AV tank attack or an AV airstrike. The range that this is visible depends on what the player is wielding. An AV infantry attack is visible for infantry at further ranges than for vehicles as the vehicles dont need to know about it. The V-radial menu would be to place orders or warnings on a small region. For example a player could designate an AA presence for their allied aircraft to avoid and their allied ground units to take out. Or warn for a potential ambush. Or ask for a non-specific airstrike/infantry attack/vehicle attack. Imagine an aircraft being guided in by a waypoint-like signal to a target that hasnt even rendered for him yet, it would allow for easy communication between anyone. While your squad lead is giving orders over the semi-functional comms network there's a bunch of people in your squad communicating with themselves and outside the squad through quick and easy methods, rather than only you being able to talk and your squad members having no way to communicate with each other or people outside the squad without speaking through your orders. You can easily limit the duration and amount of things you can place so the game doesnt become too cluttered. For many things just spotting a target will do after all. For the basic player 1 Q-radial order and 1 V-radial order will likely be enough. The small extra time needed to place one will likely prevent players from using it non-stop. The Q-radial orders would last as long as the spot (which can be extended by spotting them again before it runs out) and the V-radial menu could last 30 seconds, or until you place a second one which deletes the previous one. If more players place one in the same region a longer-lasting one will automatically be generated. Squad and platoonleads can place as many as they like. V-radial orders would have a standard of 1 minute of uptime. If the squad lead repeats the order a second time on that area it stays for 5 minutes and a third it stays for 15 minutes. Selectable in the mapscreen ofcourse where you can remove it or extend the duration again. A feature that the squad/platoonlead can do with anyone's orders no matter who placed it. Non-leaders who have a lot of success (their orders are often completed) can get access to more than 1of each order at a time. And just for the completeness: this can also be done from the mapscreen. Meaning players can place one if they are dead or respawning, or place one if they suspect something in a region they cannot directly see.
yup, you'll see the options when you left click. It's like way-points. Click remove all way-points, it removes smoke as well. At least it did last time I played in a squad lol.
Press ALT, then hover your cursor over your smoke on the minimap, press RMB and select 'Remove waypoint'.
The reason I thought it should be for squad leaders only is so we don't have 10 different painters going off at the same time. People won't know what to do. As for the rest... ya... sure... whatever.
When you look at the map you aren't overwhelmed by the buildings, roads, terrain features, spotted enemy infantry/aircraft/tanks, friendly infantry/aircraft/tanks, smoke signals, waypoints, generators, points, trees, hexes, base names etc that appear on the map. On the contrary, they give you a ton of easy to digest information. This infantry is standing on a building facing that way. This is a vehicle, I can tell you what vehicle, what direction he's facing and where he's standing. Players can use this to quickly and easily digest information relevant to them, and ignore the 50 other spots and things going on on the map. 10 painters going off at the same time is like being afraid that too many people using Q-spotting would overwhelm players so let's only give it to squad/platoon leaders. As for your reaction, this is one of the giant problems with our current teamplay system: People don't understand and don't care about things that would help it. The system I proposed would allow anyone to communicate with anyone else quickly and easily, it would key individual players in to help each other rather than only once in a while hearing some leader scream in their ear that they all have to redeploy to another base or rush the point. It would help leaders guide their troops as the troops can better guide themselves and have a better understanding of what their allies mean when orders are given. It is magnitudes better than your suggestion or the entire current system in place, and all it gets is a "whatever". If you ever wonder why the current metagame and teamplay is so idiotically stunted and the devs keep screwing up on this front, "whatever" is near the top of that list.
