Squad Leader Waypoints

[Surrealistik]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):

Squad Leaders gain the ability to paint waypoints with an armour integrated designator that his squad members can get locational information from using their armour integrated pinpointers. This pinpointer will also always display the status (conscious/unconscious; net health and damage taken of each type per the Crew Monitoring console), coordinates of, location, direction, and distance to their SL.

Related and intended to be implemented in tandem with the Armour Integrated Squad Monitoring Console: viewtopic.php?f=59&t=7396


Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):

Vastly improves squad cohesion and coordination.


Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):

Squad Leaders have the ability to paint waypoints with their armour's waypoint designator (think of it as an integrated pointer in the wrist) by using a verb to toggle on a waypoint painting mode, which places a waypoint wherever the user subsequently clicks. Once a tile is selected in this way, they are able to name the waypoint they've just placed.

A set waypoint will be exclusively visible to the SL's squad if possible as a translucent overlay (think the targeting reticle for aiming your weapon at someone).

SLs can set up to ~5 way points at a time (could be as little as 1 if resources are a concern).

SLs can edit/delete their waypoints via a verb granted by their armour which calls up a list of them ordered by name, complete with their locational information that is current at the time the verb was used: Exact coordinates, relative distance and relative location (N/NW/W/SW/S/SE/E/NE).

Marines each have a pinpointer integrated with their armour that when activated via a verb, shows a window identical to the SL's editable list detailing for each waypoint. Further, they will _always_ see the location of their SL as an additional Waypoint.

Both the designator list and pinpointer list could be put on a 1-3 second cooldown to minimize any risk of excess server load via verb spam.


Implementation (Optional, if you have an idea how to implement it):

Synthesis and modification of existing pinpointer and Crew Monitoring code.

[TopHatPenguin]

Might not want it to be right clicking as... well that normally ends badly during combat and freezes your game for a bit if too many items on the same tile you right click, which I presume there will be as it's the summer.

[monkeysfist101]

It'll cause too much lag for the same reasons that this would viewtopic.php?f=59&t=6823 only instead of tracking four points, it would track twenty.

[Surrealistik]

No it wouldn't, because the pinpointer and WP designator are active and manual use.

The difference between this and Whisper's proposal in terms of resource consumption is that in the latter case that you have a proc for every last marine every tick; in this case, you have max 5 processes running when you manually use your pinpointer; the overall resource consumption would be _much_ less; the only way it wouldn't be is if you had a _lot_ of marines constantly spamming the pinpointer verb via macro (you could probably put it on a 1-3 second cooldown as an additional safeguard). That said, you could limit this to one WP and I'd still be down.

[Surrealistik]

Might not want it to be right clicking as... well that normally ends badly during combat and freezes your game for a bit if too many items on the same tile you right click, which I presume there will be as it's the summer.

For sure; in terms of an alternative, I'm thinking there would be a verb to activate a waypoint painting mode which allows you to click on and select a spot.

[TopHatPenguin]

For sure; in terms of an alternative, I'm thinking there would be a verb to activate a waypoint painting mode which allows you to click on and select a spot.

I mean to simplify it you could just use the same code for pens and crayons but don't have a minimum range for it only a maximum..
For example: you could use your binoculars and then switch to this beacon desigantor and click on the tile you wanted (and like pens and crayons it would take a while to complete this process as you would probably be usinga laser designator or something along the lines of that.) while the binoculars were active and then hay-presto you have a beacon.

Just a random thought/suggestion.

[Surrealistik]

Yeah, could bind it to the binoculars; actually kind of like that idea. My only issue with it would be the potential for losing the damn things vis a vis your armour.

[forwardslashN]

Denied. We can't do this right now.