Brainstorming - Electronic Warfare

[Faille]

I'm hoping that we can take electronic warfare to another level, almost a game in itself. While loosely based on what I've experience in Eve, I want to make it a lot more robust and meaningful.


Key to having Ewar mean something is having sensors have meaning. To that end, I envision things like targeting to be variable depending on skills and/or components. eg, you could have skill/component that increases the number of targets you have locked. increase the range in which you can lock them, speed of locking, all pretty standard stuff for those of you familiar with Eve. Some extra's might be a more MMO standard friendly group target window, target sharing within friendly groups possibly, and anything else people can think of!

Where Ewar comes in is obviously in disrupting those things. Rather then Eve's ghey all or nothing system, I'd rather there be a lot more back and forth involved. So instead of wiping all targets from your victim like eve does, I'd rather have each cycle have a chance to remove 1 of their locked targets. Skills/components should lead to the situation where hunter and hunted are fighting over who can lock / unlock faster. if the victim has good locking skills he can probably relock a target as fast as they are unlocked. If the hunter has better skills he might be able to unlock all the victims locked targets and keep them empty.

You could also have a component that lets you Hardlock a target. so it's a lot lot harder to have someone jam that and unlock it, but it might also be a lot more visible that that is their locked target, probably indicating their group's primary target.

I envision most of the stuff I've listed would be performed by dedicated ewar mechs, with most of their slots filled with various ewar components. Standard mechs might only have a couple spots the might generally use for ewar, and they can choose between having the hardlock target component, or maybe components that help their ewar resists in general, etc.


Anyone want to weight in their thoughts, suggestions opinions etc?

[Requiem]

The "hardlock" system could be a magnetic limpet mine that you shoot on to another mech. Could call em "Crybaby" as slang. (Yes, taken straight from Firefly - seems apt) They would broadcast their presence on all pertinent wavelengths, including visible light and possibly sound.

This not only makes sense from an RP perspective, but it also allows you complete control in terms of limitations and whatnot. Firing/detection range, duration, skills/items required, cost and inventory usage of the mines themselves, etc - and it would allow for the crybaby to continue operation even if the person who originally placed it there was removed from combat, unlike a target painter or something else like that.

These mines could be intelligent and capable of modulating their broadcast to include data about what they are currently attached to. That way if there's multiple crybabies in play, you could have an interface to choose who/what you'd like to target - even if you're flying blind due to EWar. They could also provide information on the current status of their host. Maybe even give the person who fired it(or their group members) the control to make it detonate when it's usefulness has expired.

Given the fact that it is possible to remote-detonate these mines, there could be hacking(or somesuch) skills/modules that teammates could use to prematurely detonate the mines on a friendly target with the skill level/module quality affecting how long the process takes. I'm thinking fairly light or moderate damage on the detonation of these mines - not only because they could easily be overpowered but also because it makes sense RP-wise, since most of the package would be dedicated to electronics and propulsion. I envision these being RPG-like - they fly on their own rather than being shot out of a railgun or something - which makes a somewhat short deployment range make sense as the package would have to be fairly well-armored to survive impact and whatever punishment it's target is going to take, and therefor large and heavy when compared to something like a missile.

[Khorum]

In that other mech thread I mentioned my fondness for EVE's EWar gameplay and how I think Battletech could've benefitted from the additional depth, and how I think a new, more modern mechwarrior game could benefit from a complex EWar-Like gameplay. I say EWar-Like because I also think EVE's implementation was cluttered and unintuitive and I agree that it was often too 'all or nothing'; either ECM shut down its victim entirely or it turned out to have no effect whatsoever. As much as I liked that aspect of the game I always felt it ended up making ECM gimmicky and unnecessary.

I'm sure the team and a lot of others will have tons of cool ideas for how to make a good EWar game so I'll just stick to identifying my objections and offering remedies:


1: EWar feels like unnecessary complexity. This isn't just a holdover from EVE or older naval games like Harpoon. Most games just treat EWar as a separate 'sphere' of opposed systems that players have to master to stay competitive. While players happily jump into the big weapons and bigger explosions, having this whole other sphere of chaff pods, phased-array passive radar and electronic footprints that they need to read up and master can feel forced and unintuitive. I always thought this could've been easily remedied by seamlessly 'integrating' EWar into every other sphere of the game.

Instead of having of mechs shut down to drop off the radar you can put something like an electronic 'signature radius' stat on weapons/ammo/armor/chassis type etc. It would add up to a catch-all 'electronic signature' that reflects that mech's vulnerability to targetting and jamming. You could make it so that firing the bigger weapons too often will make their electronic 'signature' grow larger and thus easier to target/hit while using lighter weapons or sticking to very selective alpha strikes can allow advanced players to minimise their vulnerability. Players would have a broad range of chassis and loadout options that can affect this 'ECM signature': with bipedal mechs being the average you can give smaller multilegged spider-like mechs a lower sig radius because of their low profile then you can make massive quadruped mechs who have the armor and the weapons to disregard their ECM vulnerability altogether. You can even use this to encourage smaller 'finesse' loadouts that work well with stealthy mech chassis or just to discourage extreme min/maxing.

Instead of a binary lock/no-lock metric with targetting you can use that 'signature radius' to have a sliding scale 'lock effectiveness'. A giant 100-ton gunboat for example would be easily locked and even easier to hit while a fast small scout mech would be harder to peg down. You can even make all that information available at a glance by putting some extra work on the HUD reticles. For example a large slow target would have a bright green circle around it and the targets with a reduced sig radius, or are in cover, or are actively jamming could have small circles all the way down to black. This even adds extra depth by making high ROF weapons like autocannons, cluster munitions or spammed rockets viable against stealthy/speedy/jamming targets.

Basically by sharing the gameplay decisions for EWar with the player's combat, mobility and survivability decisions you're still getting the same depth and making EWar as much a determining gameplay factor without separating it into its own cryptic niche. You will still have dedicated EWar mechs and specialist equipment that advanced players can master, but at least this way even the newest players can get into EWar and learn it easily as soon as they start playing.



2. EWar doesn't feel as sexy as the rest of combat. Another downside to keeping EWar in a specialist niche right away is that it tends to relegate EWar to a support role, when in fact it's pretty much center stage in any modern conflict. I definitely think there should be a dedicated EWar specialist role in the game, but it definitely should be a more visceral, rewarding experience than sitting there unlocking and relocking targets. I think the problems with unsatisfying support role gameplay isn't that it isn't fun, because it is, but that it isn't as immediately gratifying as being up on the frontlines dumping alpha strike after alpha strike on hapless noobs. Also while most folks appreciate support roles, there isn't a lot in the way of a visceral in-game representation of their contributions.

One of the ways I thought of that would allow a specialist EWar mech to add value to his group or his mission would be by making the ingame minimap--or battlefield radar--vary in the wealth and complexity of the data it can show. Maybe by default every mech's minimap is an empty green field with the rotating radius. But if there was an EWar mech (or if the mech itself was EWar-capable) in his group the minimap would uncover the fog-of-war around THAT EWar mech. So members of the group can see where the EWar mechs are because the area around them is displayed in higher detail than their own meager radar capabilities. You can also have the EWar mech's boost their teammate's ECM capabilities, by improving their lock-on status via the sliding-scale I described above. By only uncovering the fog-of-war around those EWar mechs and improving the overall lethality of his team, the support mech's value-added contributions will be immediately obvious.

Although, like the 'electronic signature' effects, you'd have to make this granular too ; a sliding-scale of radar visibility. Maybe with the best EWar equipment the whole minimap would be displayed complete with terrain, obstructions and descriptive icons of all the actors on that map, their health, speed, vector etc. But at the bottom end of the scale you have a small radar that's just the green oscilloscope screen and blurry gray pings where the radar contacts are that may or may not be hostile. Of course you'd have to make it so active jamming, stealthy mech chassis and smart gameplay like exercising fire discipline and hiding in terrain and buildings should affect a mech's visibility on hostile radar--so using a sliding scale of radar contact reliability you add more depth to the gameplay, instead of a binary i see you/i see you not radar.

Essentially by integrating EWar into the "command and control" aspects of the game like the HUD Minimap etc you can make the EWar player's role more immediate on the front lines and avoid marginalizing support roles down the line.


3: EWar != Pew Pew. In reality, seeing an EWar actor like a Predator UAV circling overhead or a SEAL team pointing a laser at your camel usually means that several tons of hardware are presently hurtling through the atmosphere headed straight for the space you are currently inhabiting. But in Battletech and even in EVE the EWar actors are generally dangerous only because they suppress their targets' firepower. Being primaried multiple times despite being in a totally harmless ship is gay and kinda silly.

One of the problems I had with the Mechwarrior games was that while the LRM's and Artillery had long range, none of the maps really allowed you to take advantage of that. If, however, you wanted to implement a complex EWar system with the granular targetting quality and radar/information dependability, allowing players to pilot forward EWar mechs that double as artillery observers would be great.

You could do this in a couple ways: If you were to run persistent planetary PVP campaigns, you can have an overall 'fire support' value for each faction that determines the amount of 'off-map' distant artillery that each can call in. They'd have a pool of waiting artillery firepower (orbital bombardment or MLRS or suborbital ballistics) that mechs with advanced C3 mods can utilize IE: The EWar mechs. Alternatively you can allow players to fit their long-ranged missiles (the LRM20's etc) and the heavy calliber AutoCannons and assign them to a team 'artillery pool', where their EWar-pilotting team mates essential have fire control of their long-range weapons by illuminating hostile targets from far away.

It doesn't have to be huge, or overpowering or even nontrivial. Maybe the off-map artillery is only good for destroying foliage or earthworks or for flushing out stealthed mechs. The point is giving the EWar-equipped mechs a real bite would bring more depth to the EWar minigame.

[Requiem]

To expand on the idea of the overhead map and directing artillery and whatnot.. maybe add an RTS element where you actually have tracked/hovering vehicles with missile launchers and artillery and shit that the people filling those roles can command. Maybe the ability to call these forces in via dropship to locations of your choice from a pool that you have built up with some sort of resource game, or just a fixed regen rate on em. They could have large, but not unlimited range so that you had to use(and protect) them wisely.

[Linbog]

I totally agree with Khorum, in that I think EWar should be fully integrated and not a denial tactic but an enhancement.

[Faille]

I think we want to avoid healer syndrome as well. Making people play Ewar specialist roles because they are powerful and you can't live without them, rather then because they are fun.

[Linbog]

Originally Posted by Faille

I think we want to avoid healer syndrome as well. Making people play Ewar specialist roles because they are powerful and you can't live without them, rather then because they are fun.

If everyone has to deal with some EWar I think that could be avoided fairly easily.

[splok]

This is super rambling, but you said brainstorming, right?

My first thoughts are that ewar could be used to take care of the traditional enchanter-type functions. You should be able to achieve any number both beneficial and detrimental effects, so long as they all have drawbacks associated with them. To keep any certain effect from being universally required, the drawbacks should be commensurate with the usefulness of the effect, and every effect should have one or more effective countermeasures (each with it’s own drawbacks of course.)

Increased damage (or speed, or any effectiveness really) could be achieved by overloading the module at the risk of damaging or destroying it. The opposite effect could be imposed on enemies by disrupting the functioning of modules on other mechs through various means. Depending on the module targeted and the effectiveness of the disruption, this could result in slowing or halting the movement or attacks of adversaries, effectively slowing, snaring, rooting, stunning, or mezing them. It could be possible to even take control of certain module or even an entire mech, effectively charming them (or a part of them.) (Being able to charm individual modules would open up some interesting possibilities.) There could also be a wide array of awareness improvements and impairments. Beneficial effects could also include various resistances or ECM effects.

The key to keeping something from being overpowering would be to make sure there are a number of resistances or preventative measures that every mech could take to deter such attacks. Instead of having a general EWAR resistance, it would need to be broken down into categories based on the means of execution, each of which could be planned against (though not necessarily at the same time), so long as you were willing endure the drawbacks.

For example, a mech that takes all means possible to harden itself against ewar attacks might end up nearly entirely cutting off his communication ability (not to mention his chance of receiving assistance from beneficial ewar techniques). Would not being able to communicate with your teammates or use any secondary information gathering be worth having an extremely hardened mech? Also, even a fully hardened mech might still be vulnerable to direct system interference from hacking drones (either automated maybe contained within a projectile sticky canister).

I think that the real point behind ewar should be geared toward command and control functions. The point of C and C is really the gathering and utilization of intelligence to improve your effectiveness. So many of these functions are just assumed by most games, and I really don’t think that has to be the case. Why is perfect communication taken for granted? If you’re in a battle, being able to communicate effectively is a HUGE boon, but most games are scared to fuck around with this aspect. Why should I always be able to see where my teammates are and what they are doing by default?

Remember the noob orc oracles in EQ that would blind you and black your entire screen? Sure, it was a pain in the ass, but it was damned effective at disorienting players. (Though, technically, “blind” shouldn’t have blocked chat, as that would be more like “deafen,” which also seems like it would be appropriate.) This seems especially fitting in a battle scenario. If a team wants reliable communication (chat or voice), then they should take appropriate measures to ensure it. Also, the cooperation of teams who plan appropriately would be evident compared to lesser skilled groups if communications were cut.

I would assume that the natural visibility inside a mech would be very limited, and that their controllers would want to enhance their visual awareness with video feeds, night vision, thermal detection, overhead renderings, etc. Each of these could be provided with a certain module and also disrupted with ewar techniques. It might be simple to disrupt someone’s standard video enhancements with em interference, but it would take a very different technique to disrupt someone’s thermal sensors.

There might be some incentive to use a central CnC node, such as a ariel drone, which would provide your team with crucial data on enemy (and each other’s) positions and actions. This might provide the best possible intelligence (or maybe just the easiest) in a certain situation, but this might make your entire team vulnerable if the central point is disabled. On the other hand, if data was gathered by multiple droid or maybe each mech, it might take much more power (or equipment, or skills) to reconcile all of the data, but it might be far more flexible and robust.

There might possibly be bandwidth concerns depending on your equipment and skill (and encryption or hardening techniques might factor in here as well, making transmissions take far longer, or be far bigger). You might have to decide which info is most crucial to have up to date, even if all info is available in theory. You might have to decide between getting a little bit of info continuously, in real time, or much more info periodically, updated once every few seconds, or even some mix of the two.

Does everyone on the team act independently or do they coordinate? It might take much more skill, equipment, power, whatever to orchestrate a coordinated simultaneous barrage of a single target, but it could be hugely effective and much more in depth than simple hitting an assist button and autoattack.

Just think of the main areas that CnC could cover and there can be equipment and skills that improve each one and corresponding resources to disrupt these (and countermeasures, ccm, etc.):

Correctness – Is the info from your sensors right? Maybe it could be faked specifically or just made to have a smaller chance of being correct

Currency – How current is your info? Lag could be introduced or could be a function of the complexity of your system. Is your lag consistent and able to be planned around? Or is it variable, so you are never sure if what you’re seeing is actually up to date?

Precision – Maybe you can easily know that there are 6ish enemies to the west, but knowing exactly where they are and what types of enemies they are would be far more difficult. Something as simple as a smoke screen could greatly affect the precision of your intelligence gathering.

Confidence – Depending on the equipment, skill, or situation, your sensors might have varying levels of confidence. Under perfect conditions, your sensors may produce nearly perfect results, but adverse conditions your sensors might only be accurate 50% of the time.

Any of these things (and any others that one could think of,) could affect a player as a percentage that is constantly updated based on periodic success rolls based on any number of conditions. This would be about as far as you could get from a simple on/off status.


Also, if territory can be gained or lost, the ability to build things such as communications or observation towers could provide a great home field advantage. Launching satellites might be a logical extension if construction is a big enough part of the game.

[9n1or9]

Excellent ideas. I could see eWar having skill trees; Buff, Debuff, Communcations, Etc.

[Angerz]

Originally Posted by splok

Remember the noob orc oracles in EQ that would blind you and black your entire screen? Sure, it was a pain in the ass, but it was damned effective at disorienting players. (Though, technically, “blind” shouldn’t have blocked chat, as that would be more like “deafen,” which also seems like it would be appropriate.) This seems especially fitting in a battle scenario. If a team wants reliable communication (chat or voice), then they should take appropriate measures to ensure it. Also, the cooperation of teams who plan appropriately would be evident compared to lesser skilled groups if communications were cut.

Off topic, I thought my computer broke the first time this happened. I was so mad.

On topic, E-Warfare definitely has room to a fun, active "class", enchanter like to go with an EQ analogy.

Basic stuff like: Radar/Comm/Targeting Jamming of the enemy/Enhancement of your teams, Artillery Coordination, Missile guidance countermeasures.

To things more out there like: Energy shielding, either from other EWar stuff or lasers in general, system shock to totally shut down an enemy mech, cloaking (yourself or an area), Drones, Hacking Enemy mechs to confuse their targeting signals to fire on friendly targets, creating sensor ghosts on enemy HUDs.

When it comes to messing with their systems as opposed to just blowing them up, there is a lot of room for creativity.

[Ghiest]

My first thoughts are that ewar could be used to take care of the traditional enchanter-type functions. You should be able to achieve any number both beneficial and detrimental effects, so long as they all have drawbacks associated with them. To keep any certain effect from being universally required, the drawbacks should be commensurate with the usefulness of the effect, and every effect should have one or more effective countermeasures (each with it’s own drawbacks of course.)

off a tangent of what you have mentioned after this quote but ...

I was thinking more active and passive systems, Kind of like submarine battles of the past passive systems would look and listen rather than actively do something to increase the chances you would pick a target up.

Let me try and explain

Passive systems where like Sound detection, a mech would make a distinct sound, not only all the moving parts but the regularity its feet would hit the floor causing a tell tale sound of where they were and where they were coming from.

Vision systems that would use (even like current tech) outline matching to identify on the fly what it was you were fighting and give you weaknesses based on the outline/vision of the vehicle/mech you are fighting. Varying forms of degree's in this type of tech giving basics from what it is to how heavy and what possible weapon layouts they are using all the way to movement prediction (targeting) so if a mech is on the run it's fairly difficult to move it 90degree's in another direction so targeting systems use the inertia of a mech using visual keys to adjust targeting, just one way improvements to a 'targeting tech' could improve to a stat like 'hit rating'.

Active systems are like Radar, pulse generators giving off pulses of energy reading the returns that come back giving full fixes on mechs in the surrounding areas. Active systems are allot better at picking up longer range targets for longer range weapons (and for finding hidden mechs) but also make it easier for people to pick you up and pinpoint your area.

Also active systems like Tagging weapons, fire usually a radioactive round into a vehicle mech which gives targeting a bonus, also visual laser targeting could be used for indirect artillery and/or orbital fire.

As it is in real life combat at the moment, you have a dedicated unit (be it ground or vehicle) that co-ordinates outgoing fire.
Mechs that are so-called support-type mechs can use a fire-link system that gives the group/team of mechs the bonuses of the support mech. The support mech gives up some sort of firepower/defense to give a bonus it's compatriots. Support mechs tend to be light and fast for scouting given the passive and active detection methods they can pick up and identify opposing vehicles quickly and co-ordinate fire and give bonuses to hit and also using counter measures give bonuses to miss the friendly team using ECM/smoke/flare + other countermeasures.

[Faille]

Personally, I'd rather keep ewar / sensors seperate from buffing, though that's just me. So I think of sesnors being about intelligence, command and control, type roles and ewar is disrupting that.

buffing up weapons and tanking is something I see as different, but I could be wrong it might be better to try and combine them together.


Also, the problem with splitting up ewar resists is that it leads to ewar becoming powerful and far too hard to resists, depending on the number of variations we have. The Target has to try and guard against a variety of resists, while the attack has the option to specialise and that leads the potential that when specialised he might still be more powerful then a defending with the right resists, and no competition against defenders with the wrong resists.

This probably comes down to number crunching and balancing to get right so that remaints to be seen which method would be more appropriate for us.

[Ghiest]

It was more to define that some types of detection were better than others, and some mechs that are equipped for specialist detection would pay for it being hindered in what else they could carry.

Trying to reveal/target someone else easier would in turn make yourself easier to target becase of it ...

think of it as something like Blood rage in WoW, you buff your rage (so you can do damage) but lose 10% of your hps in the process of it.

Do a mech could pick out a target easier but making himself more easier to hit because he's using active targeting rather than the 'normal' targeting.

The whole buff the group idea ... was just an afterthought

Normal targeting computers would come in various forms in order to be upgraded via salvaged/new equipment. Different computers would require different addons that take up space/weight which would require the mech drop armour/weapons in order to be more efficient in targeting.

giving the whole "hit lots but with smaller damage and accuracy, rather than rely on big damage that could miss"

The group buff thing was just an idea :P

Going into a bit more depth on radar/pulse detection, I was thinking more about armour type having radar/pulse absorbent shields and/or Physical armour. So the close one gets to the pinging radar the more likely they will be picked up. Think of it as outright resistance chance to get hit. If you have XX amount of shielding over your armour then you wont be picked up at say 1000m range but at 800m range you have a 20% chance every 10 seconds of being picked up on radar, the more absorbent material or 'resist' on your armour the less likely that percentage is (but is still a percentage).

So a scout mech running around at high speed will have a chance to pick up mechs and that chance is greater the closer they get to them (and therefore being in more danger)

[Faille]

my bad, was replying more the splok.

The submarine analogy is pretty good, though I want to avoid Eve's submarine like warfare.


Not sure if I've mentioned this already but I wanted to steal Eve's sig radius idea but expand it and make it much more dynamic. So crouching in trees would lower your sig radius and thus make you harder to hit, at the expense of being mostly mobile. Good for those ambushes but would want to get up and move fast.

Likewise you could have most armor plate effect sig radius a lot more and wearing weak armor that actually reduces it should be a viable strategy.

[Ghiest]

In battletech it was known as Mag footprint, magnetic radar would pick you up the more you moved and the more you were in action causing all the moving parts to not only heat up but generate magnetic readings making you allot easier to spot, so as you say crouching in a river/trees or even a building would mask your out put and drop your mag signiture to almost zero being allot harder to pickup. This would give rise to ambush type tatics and also combined with Rivers/water giving heat dissipation (another way you could be picked up) it made for a good 'cover system'.

Man this makes me wish they hadn't canceled the Battletech MMO (which I was a part of ) fuck microsoft.