Major Discoveries about Unknowns, Reveals (Silent vs Verbal), and Knowsabout

[madrussian 347]

Greetings. :)

A while back I made a discovery about All Unknowns being Enemy, supported by my own testing, and rightfully challenged with evidence provided by others. Since then, I decided to spearhead an effort to understand the mechanics underlying the following:

• The concept of "Known vs Unknown"
  
• Knowsabout and it's effect
  
• Under just what circumstances units and vehicles are revealed
  
• Exactly what causes the reveal to be verbally announced (vs silent).
  

To that end, I've been busy creating a Troop Marker System that shows individual units (footmen and vehicles) on the map and color codes them by side. Kind of like what DAC does (when DAC markers turned on), but more advanced in many ways (using editor markers, fading in and out marks based on criteria if desired, etc). Two of the applicable features for this discussion:

• "Differentiate Unknowns": When turned on, monitors the status of all Units/Vehics with respect to the player knowing about them (via countUnknown). Units/Vehics show up as their own color by default. When "Differentiate Unknowns" is turned on, Unknown units/vehics turn white. If they are discovered (and no longer register via countUnknown), they turn the appropriate color again.

• "Hide Non-Knowsabout": When turned on (possible individually for "Friendly", "Enemy", and "Empty"), makes the markers disappear for units/vehics the player does not know about (via knowsAbout). This works with a threshold setting. (I have experimented with both 0.225 and 0 and gotten interesting results).
  

Note the distinction between "Differentiate Unknowns" (which turns things white and back to normal side color) and "Hide Non-Knowsabout" (which makes them disappear and reappear). It all works dynamically. I have spent a tremendous amount of time to ensure there are no bugs in my system, and I do plan on releasing once it's feature-ready, polished, and documented.

Here are some of the discoveries I've made so far. Note that I'm running no mods except my Markers mod (just some additional markers in CfgMarkers) and CBA which my system requires. (No reveal command is being called unless occurring within CBA which I think we can rule out 100%):

Discoveries related to "Differentiate Unknowns" (with none of this set being based at all on "Hide Non-Knowsabout" just yet):

• 
  1. Indeed all starting friendly units/vehics on the players side (except mounted foot units) always show up and remain known (i.e. non-white). Enemy, Civ and Different-Side-But-Friendly units/vehics behave as expected (white when unknown to player, appropriate color when known to player). Again it seems same-side friendlies (aside from mounted foot units) are always known... at least as far as countUnknown is concerned.
  Updates in RED.

• 2. AIs in the player group will silently reveal civilians. I had one AI in my group and a gigantic army of Civs (foot units and civilian vehicles) incoming from their starting position across the map behind a bunch of hills. One by one, the civ men and vehics turned from white to yellow, and my AI never said anything.
  

• 3. When it's just the player (with no friendly AI in his group or otherwise), and enemy units present, ALL enemy units remain white until the player manually reveals them (via "Reveal target"). Indeed you can sneak up right to the back of an enemy tank facing it the whole time, and no silent reveal will occur. :confused: Only if they fire at you (or perhaps the fire technically hits "near you") will they change to non-white (or again of course by manually revealing them).
  Conclusion: Silent reveals are a matter of one of two things and nothing else: Player or AI performing a manual reveal on the target -OR- Target firing at the player (either "hit" or "firedNear" event).
  

• 4. OK, here's where it gets a bit crazy:
  AI in other groups of the player's side will silently reveal units to the player (change from white to appropriate color), even if they are across the map. I was pretty shocked by this!!! :eek: That means there is internal revealing going on within ArmA2. I don't recall that in ArmA1 or OFP, but then I never had a marker system at the time to be able to check it. I do know, however that back in OFP, folks went to great lengths to get groups of the same side to reveal units to one another. Apparently, it's all happening automatically now! Now, I thought for a moment it had something to do with the fact I was carrying a radio, so I repeated the test after dropping the radio first. Same result. Units in other groups (on my side) on the other side of the map were silently revealing targets to me.
  [btw- Tried a similar test with units on a Res side (friendly to my side)... and no silent reveal. So turns out these non-group reveals do not span from one friendly side to another.]
  

• 
  5. Back to AI verbal reveals. After carefully monitoring color changes, turns out there is far more silent revealing going on than verbal revealing. Perhaps by a factor of 10 to 1 or more! :don3: The more I think on it though, it kind of makes sense, because otherwise the player would be overwhelmed by all those calls coming in.
  

• 6. I did finally manage to get the AI to verbally reveal unknown friendlies, on a very specific basis. For me, they were all pilots who bailed out. Update: Indeed, it turns out mounted units on the players side (but not in his group) start out as unknown (appearing white). Once they dismount, the newly unmounted unit appears to remain Unknown (white) for a very brief moment, and then they are revealed (and appear non-white), regardless if anyone is there to reveal them.
  More updates:
  To further illustrate this, in a short test I just ran, I created 2 units only, the player (alone in his own group), and a same sided flying parashoot completely on the other side of the map. From the start, the parashoot vehicle appears known (non-white) but the man inside the parashoot appears unknown (white). Once the parashoot lands, the parashoot vehicle goes away (as expected) and within moments the (now-unmounted) man appears known (non-white).
  The issue detailed here and in #1 is that friendly same-side unmounted units and vehicles are considered known, even though the player has no real-world way of knowing about them (across the map, etc). Perhaps though, that is consistent with the automatic shared reveals by same-side friendlies going on in #4.
  

I know it's a lot to take in, but I'm very curious what you all think about these discoveries. I do think we still have a major problem with knowing that Unknowns are really Enemy. Or maybe it's really something like "knowing that Unknowns are Enemy 95%+ of the time".

Hopefully this discussion will prove fruitful, providing all of us with a better understanding of these important mechanics. :)

Edited March 1, 2011 by MadRussian

[madrussian 347]

Something new just dawned on me! :don 13:

It appears that a unit can consider another unit "known" (in terms of countUnknown), but still not "know about it" (in terms of knowsAbout).

So it's interesting that groups indeed share "known/unknown" info (detected via countUnknown) with other same-side units, as detailed above in #4. But apparently, it's kind of a low-level system thing. They still won't react until their knowsabout level to another unit surpasses a certain threshold.

In other words, the two systems ("known vs unknown" and "knowsAbout") apparently run separately, and only when a positive for each system is in place, does a unit react. All the while, same-side units will go on continuing to silently inform one another of everything that is "known/unknown" to them, all without informing on "knowsAbout". In the mean time, "knowsAbout" must be gleened individually by each group and is shared only by units within the same group. The only exception to this "knowsAbout" part would be scripter intervention via the reveal command.

Thoughts?

[PELHAM 10]

I was playing today in a map with no East forces (Helicopter training) and the AI side gunner in the UH-60 reported verbally 2 of the Blufor troops we just dropped off as unknowns and they were marked orange on the map. Bad eyesight? They were 10m from his door!

You are right there is something happening during the mounting / unmounting process.

I'm not too worried about the whole thing - it adds drama to a game when there are unknowns. You have to get close and identify them to avoid friendly fire or killing civilians. It's another challenge.

I think the way it happens in game reflects reality as every unit is on different radio frequencies and things go FUBAR all the time.

If you read in depth about the 2003 actions of the US Marines they had significant communications problems. Much of the time neighbouring units could not communicate or the system failed due to the amount of radio traffic. This caused more friendly fire incidents than there might have been and many other coordination problems. At times the Marines definitely had more unknowns than knowns!

[dwringer 45]

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns,

The ones we don't know

We don't know.

[PELHAM 10]

I knew there would be an attack of Rumsfeld mania as soon as I read this!

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Lol, wtf? :D One thing I've noticed is that if I do a reveal player to enemies and it's dark (they have no NVGs), knowsAbout is set to 1 and they may come looking for me. But they won't fire until knowAbout gets higher. The fun starts when you just stay prone. You may get an enemy soldier walking by your side but he won't fire on you until you get up and his knowsAbout is increased. Bizarre situation.

[madrussian 347]

Gotta love Rummy. :p

Ooooh CarlGustaffa, I think you may be onto something. Appears based on your observations, there are multiple knowsAbout thresholds (at least since Arma2). Who knew?

[katipo66 94]

To that end, I've been busy creating a Troop Marker System that shows individual units (footmen and vehicles) on the map and color codes them by side.

how's that coming along, I'm interested in this.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

Funny weird thing happened yesternight. In a Domination game I had spent my rockets and was heading back to the MHQ when I got shot at by a distant ZU-23 truck (part of an island defense convoy in the mission). I got hurt and couldn't stand up. So their knowsAbout me was above 1, allowing them to shoot at me (didn't check). Then they disappeared behind a ridge and came towards me. This at broad daylight.

I had absolutely nowhere to go and was just waiting to get killed. However, I was laying completely still only moving my head, and they didn't spot me as they drove past 20 meters past me in clear view. At least the vehicle drivers would have had me in plain sight when they approached. There was also a single unit who had hunted me down and was like 40 meters away, who also didn't spot me even if he was looking straight at me.

So I waited until they had passed, flipped around and shot the guy, letting the convoy off the hook. But sooo close in broad daylight, and they didn't see me 20 meters away - it was bizarre.

[katipo66 94]

Hey man, thats interesting, i think they do not have the skills to finish the job when up close and personal... ive observed them on many occasions ignoring injured units when close, they have no problem in finishing them off from a distance but when they move in close they do not execute...