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Spotlight

German description[gitlab.gruppe-w.de]

The Arma 3 AI is mostly not stupid, just badly informed.

Spotlight is a reveal trigger system for Arma 3.
Define areas by placing triggers in Eden editor from where your specified AI recieves information from.
Enjoy reactive but pure vanilla AI.
Designed with performance, compability and usability in mind.


If, at the request of the mission creator, the AI is informed of enemy movements in a particular area using Spotlight, then this information enables the AI to make 'smarter' decisions in relation to that enemy and shows much more aggressive firing behaviour at long ranges.

Then, e.g. these things hold:

• Basically, the combat range of the AI increases massively because it no longer has reconnaissance difficulties. Therefore, in missions with spotlight, battles against AI with e.g. 5.56mm and without optics are possible at well over 500m (depending on the weapon config: RHS often enables 700m and more)
  
  
• Tanks manned by AI shoot on their own initiative at up to 3700m at the unsuspecting player.
  
  
• Combined with Seek & Destroy[community.bistudio.com] waypoint it will lead to strong aggression on nearby enemies because they do not have to be found first, which could otherwise lead to strange behaviour or boring situations.
  
  
• Combined with Guarded Points[community.bistudio.com] and Guard-Waypoints[community.bistudio.com], the AI can now dynamically and proactively defend against the player in all directions without having to set specific routes or apply other specific hacks.

This mod is server side only, meaning: players do not need the mod to take part in a mission using Spotlight!

Spotlight is based on self-contained reveal structures.
Such a reveal structure basically consists of two parts:

1. one or more Spotlight triggers, which can be placed in the editor and which are used to define the areas
   
2. AI of a certain faction, which takes on the role of the so-called voyeurs.

Once a reveal structure is created, the players/units and objects of other factions (the so-called victims), as long as they are within the areas of the reveal structure, are revealed every 30 seconds to the voyeurs.
This function is very dynamic: if more units enter the area of a Spotlight trigger, they will also be revealed to the voyeurs in the next iteration. If, on the other hand, the victims leave the area of a Spotlight trigger, then they are not revealed again to the voyeurs in the next iteration.

Of course, the shape of a single trigger is not sufficient to define complicated areas. Therefore, each reveal structure, which was established by a so-called Main-Reveal-Trigger, can be extended by any number of so-called Remote-Reveal-Triggers. These may also overlap without any problems.
For example, complex avenues of approach can be rewarded, or distant mountains that are normally "out of reach" for the AI become dangerous.

In total, there can be any number of these reveal structures in a mission.
In this way, completely separate information flows can be mapped.

The mission creator can in principle determine which units can become voyeurs or victims at all. In this way, certain units (e.g. well-camouflaged recons) can be ignored by the revealing structures. Or, on the other hand, only very specific units receive information from a reveal structure and all others don't.

There is an API. E.g. for adding dynamically spawned groups on the fly to existing reveal structures.

Each reveal structure can delete itself by a timer, or be manually deleted by a command.

Disable spotlight debug mode and info in ingame chat:

Spotlight readme and repository[gitlab.gruppe-w.de]

• The AI does not cheat through Spotlight and there is no "behavioural hacking". The AI will therefore continue to shoot only on line of sight (unless the vanilla suppression system[community.bistudio.com] is active).
  
  
• For the maximum range of engagement, the weapon-configs are determining!
  
  
• I cannot think of any AI modification or other mod that would not be compatible with Spotlight. The LAMBS modification, for example, even benefits from Spotlight.
  
  
• The modification is absolutely performance uncritical: once at the beginning of the mission and then only again when a reveal structure has been triggered by entering a spotlight trigger, an efficient calculation is done on the server side every 30 seconds.

The mod is well tested (singleplayer and multiplayer). Therefore currently none. Please tell me if you can find issues!

Spotlight is licenced under [www.bohemia.net].

You MAY NOT reupload this mod on the Steam Workshop.

• Gruppe W Website[www.gruppe-w.de]
  
• Gruppe W Discord[discord.gg]
  
• Greenmag Mod

[www.gruppe-w.de]