Radio targeting (f11) fixed !

[Balschoiw 0]

Hi !

There were a lot of problems in laddering caused by abusing the F11 radio targeting that enabled leaders to assign targets that were highlighted with yellow squares. This way people were able to shoot precisly through fog and kill enemies on 400 without having seen them once. You were hidden in a bush and got shot from great distance although you didnt even see the enemy? Be assured that the opposing team used the radio targeting function to get you. As this is not very sportsmanshiplike I searched heavily for a solution. Suma did say there was none, but RED had an excellent idea. He was kind enough to modify a map so that radio targeting doesnt work anymore. All other radio functions work further on, so no prob at all. The scripts only takes away the yellow square that is set on you if you are assigned as a target.

Gooooood stuff eh ?

Download the modified map CiA CTF 1.3 ProEd UPDATED from the download section of the homepage. Rip it apart and modify your CTF´s, DM´s, SC´s, TDM´s or whatever MP map with it.

European Flashpoint League uses it as we speak and I hope all ladder mappers will embedd it as an improvement on fairness and real competition.

[LowMIPS 0]

What means "F11"? My F11 key doesn't work.

Targeting is a great function.Good leader strengthens his team.OFP is a tactical FPS,not a general FPS like Quake,UT.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Balschoiw @ Nov. 01 2002,04:31)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">There were a lot of problems in laddering caused by abusing the F11 radio targeting that enabled leaders to assign targets that were highlighted with yellow squares. This way people were able to shoot precisly through fog and kill enemies on 400 without having seen them once.<span id='postcolor'>

Not true.You cannot know assigned enemy position precisely when he is in fog,or in the distance.You can know that precisely only when he is in sight of you.

[Balschoiw 0]

whatever you say LowMIPS. Others know it works, others have tested it till they were sure and others thought about a solution. Don´t use it if you dont like it. Easy.

[AngusHeaf 0]

What many people fail to realize is that in order for the commander to have any targets in their list of targets someone on their team needs to have seen or been very close to the target first. Distant targets out beyond 300m I believe need to be right-clicked by a player which will then send them back to the commander's target list. At which point what is the complaint? If you have been spotted then it doesn't seem unfair to me that you would be targetted by the team via commander intervention.

As for infantry targets being shot from 400m off, this is an exaggeration in most cases. The target tracking is VERY inaccurate at times and often the target box that players see can be off by hundreds of yards unless you are within sight range of a player. Simple things like small ridges, mounds and hills can totally throw off the target box for a player. For everyone else on the team that is outside sight range of you the box will most definitely jump around and not be accurate enough for them to target you with any small arm. Now the "problem" might arise when a tank with HEAT rounds is targetting the general area with indirect fire, but if the tankers are smart enough to setup in good areas with fields if fire that can hit you at longer range, why shouldn't they be able to artillery an area from a good distance?

To me the "Target Box Cheat" thing sounds mostly like the whine du jour. The VAST majority of players don't know how to use the targetting system, many are unwilling to do anything besides run right into battle shooting and dying, and the targetting system is nice but it is far from being a perfect system that shows you EXACTLY where a player is hiding. It's not widespread and I've yet to see it "abused" by anyone.

A smart team will use someone as forward recon to call out inbound targets to the commander who will then assign them to the players on the team. This to me sounds like just how the game should be played.

[Balschoiw 0]

I didnt expect that I had to explain the whole thing over again.

You can assign targets that have NOT been spotted. Simply check the "Other targets" and a huge list will pop up, that contains objects and men. As there are no other men in a certain direction than the ones of the enemy team it is very easy to target them.

Also on small maps like St Pierre one shot is enough to get uncovered. It isnt shown on screen that´s right, but the officer has listed you in his target list. Furthermore a leader is able to assign targets from respawn. He doesnt have to be in fields to do so. So during a test I was able to assign an unspotted target that was approximately 800m´s away.

You know lads I didn´t do this for fun. I did search for a soultion cause it IS an issue at ladders. If there was none I wouldnt have had to. It is pretty crap if you hide behind two bushes and slowly advance and get shot through these bushes although there is or was no direct sight from the enemy on you. We experienced that very much during ladder games. So we checked the radio targeting very hard. Result was that it is not based on the actual sightings and enables players (leaders) to assign unspotted targets. If you don´t believe me, test it. Also targeting through fog is no problem if the distances aren´t too great.

This is not a discussion on : I believe it or not.

This is a thread about the solution for a problem that IS there and the ladders are aware of it. At least the ones I know. You will know what I am actually talking about if you match a clan that uses the RT to really take away fun from gaming. Anyway a yellow square around the target isn´t that realistic, is it ?

[JRMZ 0]

I totally agree with Bals

We tested the script at the EFL and it seems to work!

[InqWiper 0]

I think it sounds great that there is a solution to this although I havent tried it yet.

Let the n00bs belive whatever they want, doesnt matter how much they cheat they will still be wooped by more experienced OFP players.

[SantaMania 0]

Shouldnt u be mailing ladders instead of its players?

Anyway, good work

[JRMZ 0]

We are the ladders

[Major Fubar 0]

Hmm, if I played adversarial I might care! (j/k)

Good work guys, I know this has been bugging the hell out of a lot of online players. Nice one!

[ID7 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Balschoiw @ Nov. 01 2002,10:37)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">It is pretty crap if you hide behind two bushes and slowly advance and get shot through these bushes although there is or was no direct sight from the enemy on you.<span id='postcolor'>

While you are at it. The way you can hide in bushes is rather unrealistic in OFP. No way you could hide in bush like this in RL. Moving in bush means the bush is shaking which should be easily visible even from 100m. Don't you just hate it when you stare at a bush and you see nobody except for a fire from nowhere? The bush is literally firing at you. It is too easy to hide in bush and move in small steps until you can see the target with iron sight but still be completely invisible to it. This, more than anything else, enables some pretty effective camping.

[RED 0]

Well you could setpos the bushes when you are near them acording to your velocity and add a shaking noise.

But if you did this you would have to be careful to setpos the bush back to its original position after the map else the bush will stay in the position it was last set at.

This would take a lot of CPU power but would be a great addition to the game.

RED

[AngusHeaf 0]

It's great that you guys have found a way to disable this feature, and by all means if you're running a tournament and wish to make it part of the rules then go for it. There's many "features" in OFP that are disabled much to my pleasure for tournaments (3rd person view, crosshairs, friendly tags) so I'm not taking issue with anything of that nature.

I still think the whole target issue is being blown out of proportion by people who don't have any evidence that it was ever used against them on a regular basis. To the contrary, I have had the far majority of my own personal experiences directly asking people if they even knew about the feature and they all said no, but for one guy. Granted I play with honest people and the public server I frequent takes a hard line on cheaters, so perhaps on some lesser servers the crowd tends to have more wankers. Who knows. But from my experience playing since Day 1 on all of the most popular USA public servers I can say that it's hardly a problem.

My team plays in all of the finest ladders and I can say that there too I've yet to find any serious problem with target boxing. But there it would be harder to determine because A) who is going to ask, and B) who would really own up to doing it and C) who would WANT to own up to doing it because it only invites losers to try to use it as an excuse for their own loss. Like I said before, whine du jour. So really, you have no way of knowing for sure, or even knowing pretty well, if what you say about target boxing being a problem in ladders is even true.

As for realism... there's plenty of wholely unrealistic elements in OFP that I don't see many people campaigning to get rid of. No where do I see anyone griping about the ammo counter (make it more real, make you count in your head or pull out the mag and look), or crosshairs, or respawning, or whatever. All of those things are added to the game to keep it enjoyable to the majority of people.

[SSG Plazmoid 0]

Instead of removing entirely wouldn't it be possible to offset the yellow rectangle a random amount left/right, up/down? I think the yellow rectangle was intended to give the ordered unit a location where they should look and move if necessary. I understand the desire to not allow a shot at the center of the rectangle resulting in a kill of something you never would have seen. Moving the rectangle around would have the same effect?

[AngusHeaf 0]

Why move it already more when the blasted thing already bounces around all over the place inaccurately anyway? Line of sight seems to affect the location of the box for a player and by that I mean, if you're in a valley and the box is targetting someone over a ridge I've never once seen the box be accurate to where the target really is hiding. Plus the box only appears for like 5 seconds.

On moving targets the line of sight inaccuracy makes the box jump wildly. I guess it is trying to predict where the target is moving to? Only in the case of close range bush campers who are facing a target, and slow moving armor that is rolling in the open, have I ever seen the target box accurately "stick" to an enemy. I seriously don't see what all the fuss is about. It's a feature that is only mildly useful to begin with. It saves teams from having to relate where the target generally is either over text chat or voice comm.

[walker 0]

Hi Balschoiw

Great news one more cheater trick bites the dust

Tks Out due to Dingers anti TK

Spawn kills ditto

Now Targeting cheats

We should put an anti cheat addon together as a PBO ed script addon. With all the anti-cheat scripts in it or maybe BIS could oblige?

For those who want to command a unit and relay targets do it the real way type in the enemies location or use voice over net using Grid Ref to 3 graduations or clock from a position.

Kind Regards walker

[Balschoiw 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"> by people who don't have any evidence that it was ever used against them on a regular basis. To the contrary, I have had the far majority of my own personal experiences directly asking people if they even knew about the feature and they all said no, but for one guy.<span id='postcolor'>

We have proof. We had a match and were shot magically all the time. I mean we interrupted the match and asked them how they are able to shoot people that were totally covered and not visible. One of the players said he just shoots at yellow square. Then he was told by leader to shut up. Proof enough ? Also many teames dont recognize that they face a clan using the RT. They simply think the other clan is somehow better.

And for sure people that use RT won´t tell you that they do. They use it to their advantage. Why should they tell you ?

Anyway in my experience only people complain about modifying ladder maps to NONE RT ones that use the function a lot during matches. There were complaints like : " If we cant use radio, we cant coordinate our squads movement" and things like that, but that is not the prob, as it is still possible with the scripts that take away yellow square for targeting.

Overall I appreciate the solution and I do think it will make laddering more fair.

[AngusHeaf 0]

Go for it. I'm sure the good squads out there have existed and played well without it for a long time. I'm sure the target box isn't the deciding factor in games against teams like USMC, for either side, but perhaps further into the pack of teams it might make a difference. I still stand by my statement that the system is inaccurate at best and only gives you a decent idea of where a target is located. The only thing you have to worry about is being hit by area-effect explosives if you're goofy enough to sit around in the same bush for minutes at a time.  

Removing the feature from maps is fine by me. I see it as a feature that was most likely added to the game to lessen the learning curve and make the game more enjoyable and approachable for the players out there without hours to spend on coordinating team communication, or just an unwillingness to do so because they don't feel like being that hardcore. Removing it will simply mean that ladders and tournaments are just that little bit harder to play in, and subsequently, harder to get full participation in by more than the handful of super-serious teams. But possibly not, because I do think the use of this feature is being way overstated. Who knows.

Go for it though, I hope your script works. At least if nothing else it will mean there's one less excuse for people to throw around for their defeats.

[Lt_Damage 0]

I totally agree with you AngusHeaf, I believe some of the "hardcore" players have maybe had their ass handed to them a few times and searched far and wide for the how.

Gameplanet bans cheaters immediately, we've had 2 cheaters in the entire time we've run our server, well over a year.

So it's not really a big problem for us. Most kills are legit, or caused by occasional lag. But players who take it too seriously always look for something else to blame instead of their own skill.

[nyles 11]

Good job there!

If only the lock-on feature could be toggled off completely...

I mean, we can disable 3rd person and even crosshairs, would it not be a thing worth considering to add a bunch of other variables to be set by server admins? That way, all parties would be glad, and those that really want to go for as much realism as possible in a clanwar-environment (like myself) could eventually do so.

[Doolittle 0]

Did 1.90 break this CTF 1.3 map? Targetting works again. Anyone else experiencing this?

[suchey 0]

Yes...I have the same issue. The script seems to work somewhat, but targets are still able to get through on occasion in 1.9...I never tried it in any version lower than 1.9 so I had just asumed that it never worked at 100% efficiency.

[Goeth 0]

Little offtopic but is there a decent leaque with 3rd person disabled and crosshair disabled?

[suchey 0]

I dont know of any leagues that opperate this way, however, the MTCO server operates under these configs...swing by some time!

gs3.mtco.com

207.179.200.211

Almost forgot...there is an AddonPack available that some of the mission designers use for the missions on the server...get it at www.DigitalGrenade.com

[Balschoiw 0]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">...I never tried it in any version lower than 1.9 so I had just asumed that it never worked at 100% efficiency.

<span id='postcolor'>

It did. I am currently checking the changes made by 1.90. I dont know why it doesnt work properly anymore, but I am investigating.