Official Street Lights and Power Stations Thread

[codeblue]

OK, I wanted to try and clarify this issue because there seems to be a bit of controversy surrounding it. Essentially what I and some others want to know is:

Can you turn off the street lights of a town by destroying the power stations? And, if so, how do you do it?

I have tried everything. I have tried laying satchels down all over the power stations, destroying all the transformers, houses and shacks, and still the street lights are on.

I tried just now going into the mission editor, and LGB bombing all the power stations on the map, they were all completely levelled, and yet, the power was still on for all of the cities.

What am I doing wrong? Is there something else that needs to be destroyed? Maybe a coal power plant somewhere needs to be destroyed as well?

Help us out. Thanks.

[Dslyecxi]

You can script it into a mission to work that way, but by default there is no correlation between power stations and town lights at night. It is completely trivial to script, though.

[Gillespie]

What Dslyecxi means is that it kinda-sorta doesn't matter. Which is why most mission makers usually don't bother with doing such a thing.

The server usually has the AI precision and accuracy so incredibly high that it doesn't matter under what conditions the AI spots you; you're dead within a few shots.

[Dslyecxi]

Originally Posted by Gillespie

What Dslyecxi means is that it kinda-sorta doesn't matter. Which is why most mission makers usually don't bother with doing such a thing.

Not exactly what I meant. What I mean, to be clear, is that it is very easy to get that behavior via scripting. It is simple to set conditions so that when a given power station is destroyed, the associated town loses its lights. While that does not happen by default in the game, the scripting to allow for it is easy to do, and thus it can be implemented in any mission with little hassle.

AI with regards to night time is a different matter entirely though.

[Gillespie]

Originally Posted by Dslyecxi

AI with regards to night time is a different matter entirely though.

That's what I thought you were getting at, and is what I was alluding to. Slight misinterpretation, sorry.

[jex]

Is there any difference to the AI acquiring you under a street lamp? I know the biggest reason for removing the lighting is because it can hamper with NVG's. I did a few tests with AI walking towards me whilst prone in day, night and night with NVG's and there is a difference to when they spot you (with there default skill setting). I'll do some with the lights as well but of course, mission makers can always script the AI to have a lower skill if the lights are out.

[jex]

I just did a quick test and placed myself under a street light at 2:30 am, laying prone with an AI without NVG's walking towards me. It appears to make no difference and he spotted me at about the same distance as if I were lying out in the dark somewhere - about 15m.

[Gillespie]

I never did a definitive test like you just did, jex, but I always did feel that the lights were cosmetic and had no true effect on the AI's ability to spot you.

[Gogeta]

It would definatly help with the NVG issue... it really really sucks looking around at night, in an active city, and not being able to see anything... If the NV was constant and didnt do what it does.. it would be perfect.. i think.

[Switch]

The lights might matter if we employed the rare TvT missions now and again.

[HawkeyeTA]

TvT..? Blasphemy!

[rcpro8]

using that script could make TvT missions more strategic and what not.....but its still TvT.

[stickyjeans69]

I have the strange gut feeling people are implying TvT lacks strategy? either way. the night lighting could be interesting in a TvT situation. not so much in Coop

[jex]

Originally Posted by stickyjeans69

I have the strange gut feeling people are implying TvT lacks strategy? either way. the night lighting could be interesting in a TvT situation. not so much in Coop

I don't think that's the case. TvT isn't played much at TG because we never seem to have enough players on. Because AA is so open ended it doesn't restrict game types (ala bf2) and therefore we don't have a TvT crowd. I think that due to numbers, we tend to gravitate to coop and we also don't have a TvT only server either. I'd love to get some organised TvT going but they seem few and are often at times far too late for UK times. I think that maybe the lack of opportunity puts people off TvT rather than any disillusionment in TvT tactical play.

[Gillespie]

Exactly. For the number of players we usually have on (8 - 10 is the highest I've seen in the past few weeks), TvT can be terribly boring given the size of most TvT maps we have loaded onto the server.