Using Neutrals as spotters

[Scully]

Can you use neutrals to serve as spotters/observers for a side? The mujahideen often used men dressed as civilians (no weapons) to serve as observers. Is this something that can be done in ATF?

Thanks,
brian

[CPangracs]

Can you use neutrals to serve as spotters/observers for a side? The mujahideen often used men dressed as civilians (no weapons) to serve as observers. Is this something that can be done in ATF?

Thanks,
brian
I know Pat Proctor is in and out of the field right now, so I'll take a stab at this...

I haven't tried anything with Neutral units, however keep in mind that, if you want a unit to assist the enemy, then it is an enemy, period. Neutral units can't assist either side without joining that side. This is the basis of neutrality. I don't believe "neutral units" are fully fleshed-out in ATF, and may become a feature in future ATF releases.

So, the basic answer is no, you can't have neutral units helping combatants. They MUST be on one side or the other to assist/effect combat.

Hope this makes sense, and I'm sure Pat will straighten me out if I'm all dicked-up.

[kbluck]

By my understanding, there are no "neutrals" at all in ATF. There is an "allied" faction, which are units on your side, but which you do not directly control. I'm pretty sure the enemy faction regards them as enemies to be shot at just the same as "Blue" forces.

The best you can do to simulate "civilians", so far as I've been able to tell, is to stick allied units representing them in places where the enemy won't see them, or at least have been told not to fire with fire control SOPs, because otherwise the enemy forces will brutally murder them at the first opportunity, even going so far as to call artillery.

I suppose another option to quell the enemy viciousness would be to modify the "civilian" units to set pKs for enemy weapons to zero, and Target Value to zero as well to hold off artillery missions. But in any case, allied units will not "share information" with the enemy faction.

As for your idea of plainclothes spotters, those should still be enemy faction, even if not in uniform. Just rachet their "dimension" values way down, to simulate the great difficulty in detecting them. If you make the size small enough, you can render them practically invisible. But, there's no way to make them look innocuous even after being spotted, to my knowledge.

--- Kevin

[Scully]

I think you are both right on this one. I'll create an enemy unit with very small dimensions and see how it works.

Thanks,
Brian

[CPangracs]

I think you are both right on this one. I'll create an enemy unit with very small dimensions and see how it works.

Thanks,
Brian
That was actually my concept of designing stealth units (i.e., Comanche and F-117) and scouts in Raging Tiger. All of my tricks and ideas are being slowly discovered. BLAST IT!

[kbluck]

I did the exact opposite with conventional helicopters and aircraft in my DB, to simulate long-range visibility to radar and such, without needing to make ADA units "super-spotters". SAMs can pop them at outrageous ranges, ensuring that players better use terrain masking or they'll be out of choppers in a hurry. My only misgiving is that the "instant" nature of direct fire makes it difficult to simulate the primary countermeasure, the popup attack.

--- Kevin

[Pat Proctor]

This has, almost certainly, been covered in the previous messages, but here is a summary answer to the original question...

The "Neutral" unit category is, to some extent, a placeholder. Currently, these units are "allied" to the player, sort of "non-player characters".

Enemy units that these elements see, will only be visible to the Neutral force AI.

If you want the enemy force to have observers that the player and Neutral (aka Allied) forces will not engage, make all of their direct fire pK's zero and set their target value to 0. Then, units will not shott at them and Allied force AI will not target them for indirect fire.