Systems: Command Tool revision: /Sitrep

[Figment]

All those who played PlanetSide and had a CR should know about the Situation Report command, aka /sitrep.

If not, anything you wrote behind /sitrep would be sent in command colour text to all those of equal and of a single higher rank than you.


Typically, it meant people would share jokes, recipes for pies (not cake, damn you infidels!) and of course just how much the guys making the command decisions sucked.

In some, rare cases, it would actually contain useful information and if you asked for a /sitrep, you sometimes actually got one that was about what you asked for (usualy people just sent tells though to be sure they arrived at the proper adress instead of getting caught in command banter spam).



The new SitRep
Now, what I'm proposing is the following for PlanetSide 2: A command skill called SitRep. Once you got access to this skill (however this is done, though I should note it should be a pretty low level skill) you can use it to transmit information about your location to the map for squad leaders and players with sitrep skill to read.

I would have two versionf of SitRep: /sitrep and /sr

If you were to type /sitrep, you would get a pop up form where you could input the information you want to display and with all the settings that are optional. If you use /sr and just text, you would use your default setting for /sitreps so you don't need to take the time to change settings.

This report would then be placed much like a hot spot on the map, under one of the strategic overlays which I'm sure will be in PS2. They would be possible to read by anyone who is allowed to read it (could be default people like in the old /sitrep, could be you can select who as in the options below).

These sitreps would get a time stamp and fade away over time (5 minute period should suffice), unless you would use the map to edit and update these sitreps or perhaps increase the duration to 10 minutes max through researching additional skills to allow setting the display time.

Of course there should be an option to cancel a submitted sitrep as well. Cancelled sitreps should immediately disappear from the map.

It would be wise to limit sitreps to one, maybe two, three at max, sitreps per player and a limited amount of characters (say two lines of text?) to limit map spam.


Optional and recommended extras:

The first 'extra' is highly recommended. It would be recommended to integrate sitreps under a seperate tab near the chat window, or somewhere near the missions. Regardless of where, somewhere easily visible on the main HUD, but of course as anything in the HUD should be possible to disable seperately. Clicking on this HUD section would show the latest intel reports and their location. Clicking on the report would sent you to the map view and the continent and grid of the report.

It would be recommended to be able to sort and sifting these reports by continent, timestamp and player, even multiple sortings at once so you get the feedback you are most interested in first. Sorting should preferably be possible both on the map and in the HUD.

It would also be recommended to be able to put just the sitreps of players who abuse it on ignore. Of course then sitreps of this player should not show on the map either.

It would be nice if there's options to make them more intuitive. If you can edit messages by urgency and set a status to them by means of for example sitrep shape, internal or border colour, etc. that'd make it easier for other players to sift through the sitreps. Beyond the slowly decaying greying out and transparancy to indicate age of post and whether a sitrep was (un)read or updated, other status indicators may mean things as "Still scouting, update following", "Will need assistance", "Help on its way", "Enemy size", "Situation under control", etc.

Similarly, some people may want to get feed warnings in their HUD (small pop ups or tab starting to blink faster, etc?) about sitreps from particular users you know are usualy important or of situations you want to get updates from.

It could even be optional to submit a low res screenshot to it, buuuuut that'd perhaps be a bit too much intel. Pictures do speak a thousand words though.

It could also be optional to indicate which players may read them: squad members, platoon members, outfit members, etc.

In some cases you might be writing a sitrep, but it would be for a different location as you just got killed there or you are writing because your scout cannot. It is also possible your sitrep is obscured or obscuring another. Hence it would be handy if you could move your sitrep on the map to another location. Note that if you can do that however, you can use this as a waypoint. A better alternative could therefore be to attach sitreps to a hex (and perhaps add this hex location to the /sr command). Clicking the hex would then list all sitreps for this hex.



Summary:
/sitrep creates a pop up with settings that allows you to place a message on the strategic overlay of the world map for others to read. /sr [text] would use your default settings without a popup, to speed up the process.