release [Release] Incon Undercover: A comprehensive undercover / incognito simulation

[Incontinentia 339]

INCONTINENTIA'S UNDERCOVER / CIVILIAN RECRUITMENT

This is a complex and performance friendly undercover simulation for players and their AI subordinates. Work as a guerrilla cell, go undercover, recruit comrades, and cause mayhem. SP / Coop and Dedi compatible. (For those of you who've used my previous undercover scripts, this release is a significant upgrade and represents a few hundred hours' work and testing over the last version, so hopefully you'll see the improvement!)

Requires:

• CBA

FEATURES

General

• Virtually every factor that can affect your cover (within engine limitations and the caveats mentioned below) has been accounted for.
• Optimised to the max; should not noticably affect performance at all - no noticeable performance impact even during a stress test of 45+ undercover units simultaneously undercoverising several enemy patrols.
• Operates primarily on each client - server / client interaction is therefore kept to a minimum even when multiple players are undercover at the same time
• Compatible with RHS, ACE, ALiVE, Zeus, ASR, bCombat, TPWCAS, VCOM... pretty much everything its been tested on (some factions' helmets and bandannas may not be recognised but the overall effect of this will be minimal - if you desperately want all features, use vanilla or RHS versions of these assets)

Comprehensive undercover / incognito simulation -

• Works on players and their AI group members
• Quick, easy setup: most aspects of the script are automatically implemented based on the settings you choose
• Can run in the background even when the mission isn't focused around undercover operations - automatically reduces checking overhead when unit isn't undercover so it should be practically unnoticeable
• No need to turn the script on or off - it just works
• No checkboxes, compromised notifications or any other "gamey" stuff; just an optional hint when you're obviously hostile and when you aren't - the rest is up to you
• Responds to whether the units are in vehicles or on foot, dressed as enemies or civilians, whether the unit's face fits or doesn't fit in with the faction they are pretending to be, or whether it is day or night, with each situation requiring players to behave appropriately
• Suspicious enemies may challenge or watch and follow undercover units if they act weirdly; the more weird stuff you do, the more likely they are to see through your disguise (you can even use this to your advantage to draw enemies attention away from another unit while they do something suspicious - just don't get too cocky or they will open fire on you)
• Players must "act" their role; doing weird stuff will raise suspicion and could blow your cover - if you point your weapon at an enemy and they see you doing it, they will get suspicious very quickly. Equally, if an enemy sees you crawling around or planting explosives, you're not going to stay undercover for long.
• Enemies will detect if undercover units are the nationality of the group they are impersonating; covering your face with a scarf or bandanna will reduce this but not as much as choosing undercover units whose faces fit in with the people they are trying to impersonate
• All actions have consequences, good or bad. If the MRAP you're driving gets a bit close to a patrol, moving into the back of it and out of sight of the enemy might just save your skin. Equally, putting a balaclava on when you're a civilian will attract a lot of attention - which is especially not good if you're already carrying a military rucksack.
• Once undercover units become compromised, enemies will remember the vehicles they are spotted in and clothes they are wearing - change your clothing (both uniform and either headgear or goggles) and if no enemies see you doing it, your new disguise may stick
• Easily switch disguises: take enemy uniforms from nearby crates, vehicles, dead bodies and the ground (and order AI subordinates to do the same)
• Quickly conceal and un-conceal your (and your subordinates') weapons if you have the inventory space - without faffing with inventories
• Different configurable detection systems for regular and asymetric enemy forces

Stealth kills work -

• If nobody sees you firing a shot, your cover will remain intact
• BUT, enemies do remember suspicious units - if you kill someone and other enemies of that side already know who you are and that you are nearby, there is a chance your cover will be blown regardless
• However, your cover will return if you kill everyone who knows about you before they can spread the word

Different behaviour for regular and asymmetric forces

• Define a side as asymmetric and they will not be able to share your identity outside of the local area, but they will be better at spotting imposters
• Define a side as regular and your cover will stay blown for much longer and for a much wider area once compromised... but they may not have such a good nose for imposters

(Optional) Civilian Recruitment

• Undercover units can recruit civilians to join their group
• The more enemies you kill, and the more chaos you are associated with, the better your reputation will become
• The better your reputation, the more likely civilians are to join you
• Kill enemies without getting spotted and there is a chance they will lash out against civilians, with a potential to cause a civilian uprising (optional)
• Automatically arm ambient civilians with weapons and items which they may use if recruited or during an uprising
• Try to steal civilians' clothes from them (but be prepared that your reputation will take a hit or you may become compromised)
• (Requires ALiVE) Turn recruited units into a profiled group to be used by AI commander of the same faction as the undercover unit (add to object init: this addaction ["Profile group","[player,'profileGroup'] remoteExecCall ['INCON_ucr_fnc_ucrMain',2]",[],1,false,true]);

USAGE

1. Add all files from Incon-Undercover folder into your mission folder. If you already have a description.ext or initPlayerLocal.sqf then add the code to your existing files. (Make sure to delete any previous version of my undercover scripts). In description.ext, if the class is already defined (for instance, cfgFunctions), just add the #include line to the given class.

2. Configure your settings in the UCR_setup.sqf file in the INC_undercover folder (pay close attention to these, one wrong setting can lead to some weird behaviour).

3. For each out of bounds area, place a marker over the area with "INC_tre" somewhere in the marker name (e.g. "MyMarkerINC_tre" or "INC_tre_sillyMarkerName_15"). The script will handle the rest. But if you want, you can also include other markers by listing them in the relevant array in UCR_setup.sqf.

4. Add in Incon Persistence if you want your band of merry men to persist between ALiVE sessions (this is now a separate script but automatically persists reputation).

5. For each playable undercover unit, put this in their unit init in the editor:

this setVariable ["isSneaky",true,true];

Non-player units in the undercover unit's group do not need anything; the script will run on them automatically on mission start.

Caveats / Compatibility:

• Only one side can have undercover units at a time (so no east undercover and west undercover units undercoverising each other at the same time)
• Only one side can be defined as asymmetric at a time and only one side can be defined as regular - and both must be hostile to the undercover unit's side. So if having a three-way war, one side must be asym and the other regular.
• If having a three-way (...war), it is recommended to not have any incognito factions as an engine limitation means that incognito units (i.e. those disguised as the enemy) will be seen as friendly to all - could break the immersion if you're dressed as OPFOR and GreenFOR don't shoot at you when they should.
• For mission makers - just be aware that the following could affect your mission: enemy units may wander from their original positions to follow undercover units if they become suspicious. Also, when compromised by regular forces, an undercover unit's description will be shared across other enemies in the local area after some time if they don't kill everyone who knows about them
• Works on all tested mods. If you find an incompatibility, tell me!

Credits

Massive thanks to Spyderblack723 for his help creating some of the functions and correcting my mistakes / oversights on the original release. Also for generally being super helpful over the past year as I've got into modding. Grumpy Old Man, Tajin and sarogahtyp are responsible for creating a performant detection script, which I then adapted and used as a basis for the undercover script, so thank you to those guys too. Also thanks to das attorney, davidoss, Bad Benson, Tankbuster, dedmen, fn_Quiksilver, marceldev89, baermitumlaut and Duda123 for some top optimisation tips. And huge thanks to accuracythruvolume for testing and feedback. 

 

Download version 1.21 release candidate here

 

CHANGELOG

Spoiler

v1.0: First full release of Incon Undercover standalone. 

v1.2: Lots of bug fixes and refinements. High security areas. Much more responsive compromised routines. 

v1.21RC: Fixed enemy unresponsive issue

 

[zagor64bz 1225]

 

 ....I've the right mission for it....

 

ps: Do you even sleep brother?

[Incontinentia 339]

Not nearly enough!

[Guest]

Release frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

Incon Undercover v1.0

Community Base addons A3

[road runner 4344]

Now this looks quite tasty!!

[IndeedPete 1038]

In technical terms, will it set undercover units as captive?

[accuracythruvolume 547]

Congrats on the official release!  I've made several missions with this system for my gamer group and it is very slick!

 

IndeedPete, the undercover units get swapped between bluefor and civilian depending on their sneakiness.

[Incontinentia 339]

33 minutes ago, accuracythruvolume said:

Congrats on the official release!  I've made several missions with this system for my gamer group and it is very slick!

 

IndeedPete, the undercover units get swapped between bluefor and civilian depending on their sneakiness.

 

Thanks accuracy, and cheers again for your feedback!

 

3 hours ago, IndeedPete said:

In technical terms, will it set undercover units as captive?

 

Yes that's correct, I could switch undercover unit's side depending on their cover but that would cause a whole host of issues, especially for units in groups. Or it would mean creating an AI mod effectively that controls what each enemy unit can see which would mess with compatibility and break a lot of stuff I suspect. So for now, it just sets units as captive (but with a lot of fancy stuff going on behind the scenes to determine when the unit is captive or not). 

[zafjr 50]

When _noOffRoad = true, does this also apply to heli's? I wouldnt want to have to stick to the roads while piloting a heli :p (but i also want to keep the nooffroad to true because it is more immersive). Was curating a mission where you intercept a pilot and impersonate him, pick up the target and crash the heli while you jump out and parachute to safety, but the heli kept getting detected.

 

Btw fantastic job on this and thank you very much i love it.

[Incontinentia 339]

No, it only checks land vehicles. Helis and boats are fine. Even without _noOffRoad, driving offroad counts as a weird behaviour, just not an overt sign of hostility. Cheers for the feedback and glad you like it! 

[the chief 15]

Fanastic creation. Thank you for sharing.

 

Any missions knocking around that include this?

[zagor64bz 1225]

3 hours ago, the chief said:

Any missions knocking around that include this?

I have a WIP mini-campaign on final with this script running in one of the mission...ETA?...soon!

[Incontinentia 339]

Looking forward to it Zagor!

 

Just figured I'd add this bit of info from the readme as it'll hopefully help people understand what the script is all about. I wanted to make it as seamless as possible so people could pretty much act as they would in real life, but this being a game, there's obviously a few guidelines that it helps to follow. So here goes...

 

In Detail: How it works

For the sake of this explanation, we'll separate behaviours into three categories: suspicious, attention-drawing and weird.

• Any suspicious behvaviour will make enemies see the unit as hostile right away. Two minor suspicious behaviours (being both armed and trespassing when not dressed as an enemy) or one major one (firing a weapon) will compromise the unit if they are witnessed by an enemy. Units will remain suspicious as long as there are enemies who have reasonably fresh target knowledge of the unit, even if not doing anything suspicious anymore.

• Weird behaviour will not make enemies see the unit as hostile instantly, but each additional weird behaviour will increase the likelihood of nearby enemies blowing the unit's cover. Weird behaviour in proximity to enemies may cause some to take interest and follow the unit or become outright hostile straight away if you are acting strangely enough. If the unit isn't able to stop acting strangely or the suspicious enemies are not dealt with quickly (or you don't manage to escape), they may compromise the unit and any teammates who are also acting strangely nearby.

• Attention-drawing behaviour isn't necessarily weird, but it does make enemies notice you from further away. While dressed as the enemy, wearing the wrong helmet for your disguise is harder to detect from a distance than wearing the wrong vest, but both are weird. Wearing a vest will therefore add to your attention-drawing behaviour. Running, for instance, isn't so weird but will draw attention from enemies who are further away. Most weird behaviours will be attention-drawing too. The more attention-drawing behaviours you do, the further away units will start taking an interest in you, and therefore, the more likely they are to compromise you if you are also doing anything weird (like wearing NVGs while dressed as a civilian). The default detection radius can be configured in the UCR_setup file but this radius will expand and contract according to the undercover unit's attention-drawing behaviours, incognito status and vehicle, as well as environmental factors like moon intensity, overcast, rain and fog. It is recommended to not change the detection radius much from the default.

If the unit is compromised, the unit should try to kill all enemies who know about them before they spread the unit's identity across the AO. After that, the unit becomes fully compromised and must change his disguise (clothes and either goggles / headgear), leave the area completely, or wait for everyone to forget about them to go undercover again. Each time unit gets fully compromised and escapes by changing disguise, the effects of any weird behaviour will be amplified as enemies will be looking for them.

Suspicious / weird behaviours will vary according to factors including:

• Whether the unit is disguised as the enemy or a civilian
• Whether the unit is in a vehicle or on foot
• Whether the position in the vehicle is completely open, partially open, or completely closed
• What time of day and weather it is (dark / moonlit / overcast / fog at night, fog / rain during the day)
• Whether the unit has been compromised before

Appropriate behaviour: a guide for new spies

This is a short primer for the kinds of things to bear in mind while going undercover. It is by no means conclusive. The best advice is to act as normal as you can for the situation.

WHEN IN DISGUISE AS THE ENEMY:

When on foot, the following may count as weird behaviour:

• Wearing a backpack or vest that isn't normally used by the enemy faction
• Holding a weapon that isn't normally used by the enemy faction
• Wearing a hat or helmet that isn't normally used by the faction
• Running / sprinting (when not under fire)
• Crouching / crawling (when not under fire)
• Wearing a uniform that the unit was recently compromised in
• Raising your weapon (when not under fire)
• Pointing your weapon at an enemy

When in a vehicle, the following may count as weird behaviour:

• Driving with headlights off at night
• Wearing an inappropriate uniform or vest (if not in an enclosed vehicle - won't matter if in a tank or APC)
• Wearing inappropriate headgear or goggles
• Wearing a HMD (like a night vision device)
• Driving offroad (only land vehicles - air units and boats don't need to follow roads!)

WHEN IN DISGUISE AS A CIVILIAN:

When on foot, the following may count as weird behaviour:

• Wearing a helmet, HMD, shemagh or balaclava
• Running / sprinting (when not under fire)
• Crouching / crawling (when not under fire)
• Wearing a uniform that the unit has been recently compromised in
• Smelling of cordite (having fired a weapon recently)
• Holding binoculars / laser designators / rangefinders

And suspicious:

• Wearing a non-civilian uniform or vest
• Wearing a uniform that the unit has just been compromised in
• Visibly carrying a weapon (including on your back - but not including holstered pistols)
• Trespassing onto a restricted area

When in a vehicle, the following may count as weird behaviour:

• Wearing a suspicious vest or uniform
• Wearing a HMD (night vision goggles)
• Wearing a compromised uniform
• Driving fast (the faster you go, the more attention you will draw)

And suspicious:

• Suspicious behaviour:
• Driving a non-civilian vehicle
• Driving a vehicle that has been compromised
• Trespassing onto a restricted area
• Driving more than 30m offroad (optional)
• Driving with headlights off at night

This is a short overview; it is good practice to make sure all aspects of your disguise are in keeping with your cover, even if it isn't listed in the behaviours above. If you are dressed like a civilian, act like one. If dressed like the enemy, keep your head down and don't draw attention to yourself. 

[HeroesandvillainsOS 1504]

@Incontinentia How is your mission coming? I don't think I'll make mine until I can figure out how to override my profile (white American guy) so I can play and look like an Afghani civ. I really want to make this mission! Ugh. Come on BI!

 

Or does anyone else have a SP mission they could share? Or if not now, maybe someone can PM me one down the road?

[accuracythruvolume 547]

When in a vehicle, the following may count as weird behaviour:

• Wearing inappropriate headgear or goggles
• Wearing a HMD (like a night vision device)

Is the above affected by driving in enclosed vehicles?

 

Also, I take it that most of the civilian recruitment functions can be done without alive?   Is there a limit on how many can be recruited?

 

 

 

[accuracythruvolume 547]

Another silly idea:  How hard would be to make some kind of icon appear on part of the screen when you are undercover and change it when the player is acting weird / suspicious / etc?  Would be nice feedback to refer to if it was tucked away on the screen somewhere.

[Incontinentia 339]

1 hour ago, accuracythruvolume said:

When in a vehicle, the following may count as weird behaviour:

• Wearing inappropriate headgear or goggles
• Wearing a HMD (like a night vision device)

Is the above affected by driving in enclosed vehicles?

 

Also, I take it that most of the civilian recruitment functions can be done without alive?   Is there a limit on how many can be recruited?

 

 

 

Yup, the more enclosed the vehicle, the less this will be an issue. In a tank or APC, it won't matter at all (unless you're turned out). The recruitment functions are now completely independent of ALiVE too. There's not really a hard limit if I remember but probably after about 10-12 units it gets much harder to recruit any more. If you more them into High Command groups (with C2 for instance) then you'd be able to recruit more. 

 

I'm not familiar with doing UI stuff just yet but that's a good idea. I was trying to keep it as un-gamey as possible but a bit of feedback is probably warranted. I might just have an addaction that appears after opening your inventory or something for a few seconds that will give you a hint if your disguise is working or not. I'll probably not be around Arma much soon so me learning new stuff is unlikely!

[inhaler 10]

This could just be me, but I cannot seem to get the script to work with ambient vehicles generated by ALiVE. Everything else works great. Am I missing something?

[Incontinentia 339]

Can you be a bit more specific? What doesn't work? Faction? 

 

How the vehicles are generated won't make any difference, it could just be that you need to manually enter the vehicle classnames in the setup.sqf if autodetection doesn't pick them up. For vehicles, it should pick them up fine though. 

[inhaler 10]

I'm using ALiVE and ACE, with an ALiVE custom OPFOR. The thing was working fine, but suddenly I have a situation where player placed CIV_F cars work fine, but ambient ones do not. I'm wondering if it's a corrupt profile item?

EDIT: Testing shows that using CIV_F the Kamaz trucks are undercover, but none of the normal vehicles. I've deconflicted with the custom OPFOR and it's not that. Ideas?

..and MORE EDIT. OK, hand entered all the CIV_F vehicle class names I could find (including all the colours) and that seems to have done the trick well enough.  - that said, what an amazing mod!!

 

[Incontinentia 339]

If the ambient CIV_F cars are duplicates made by the Orbatrator, they will have different classnames so that would have been a possibility but I'm guessing when you say you've deconflicted, you've done a vanilla run right? As in, just CBA, ACE and ALiVE - no custom factions? 

 

I've got a test mission with CIV_F as the civilian faction and ALiVE ambient civilian vehicles and it all works as it should so it does normally work, as far as I know, and ALiVE is compatible (the script was built for ALiVE in fact) but there could be an issue with static data in your particular mission perhaps... Can you share your settings for undercover? And also PM me your mission and I'll take a quick look at it to see if there's anything obviously wrong? 

 

Also, can you run the mission with debug mode on and shoot me your RPT? This will give me a list of all the vehicles it thinks are civilian. 

[JD Wang 352]

Great script, really well done. 

 

Do you know of any way to turn off unit insignias based on the mission?

Kind of spoils things a little if I get into a civilian car while undercover and all of a sudden my NZF insignia appears on the side of the car.

i could always get the guys to untick the unit in the launcher, but if there was a way to do this via script that would be amazing.

 

Thanks again for this great work 

 

 

[Incontinentia 339]

Thanks! I have no idea unfortunately, never really looked into insignias. I can try to look into it but it may take a few months as I'll be away from Arma for a while. The script is open source though so feel free to fork it on GitHub if you can find a way (this goes for anyone else who wants to do something with the script too - no permission necessary!). 

[E_Romanov 1]

I love this script, helps in making missions like Antistasi

[JD Wang 352]

Just a wee heads up, it seems like the scripts don't register Zargarbads roads properly. I was having all sorts of trouble driving anywhere. Seems like even on the road you count as "off road".

Once I set the off road check to false I can now drive around just fine.