ATG Signals for RHS

What the mod does

This mod fits ATG Signals to the navigation kit RHS already ships, so a server running both gets working GPS watches and handhelds without ATG shipping models of its own. It also offers ATG’s emitters to RHS’s radio-source consumers, so their Spectrum device picks up ATG’s network.

Every ATG-specific idea lives in ATG Signals. This mod only says which RHS item is which kind of device, and translates ATG’s emitters into something RHS’s kit understands — so ATG Signals carries no knowledge of RHS at all.

It requires RHS Status Quo and ATG Signals.

The devices

Each one is corrected in place, at RHS’s own path, so no new item appears in an arsenal and nothing that already hands one out needs changing.

Only the Bravo senses a condition, and the split follows the real hardware. The tactix Bravo is a fitness watch worn against the wrist with a pulse sensor in it, so it is in a position to notice that its wearer has stopped. The Foretrex 401 is a wrist-mounted GPS with no physiological sensor at all, and the two handhelds are receivers carried in a pocket or a pack — they place their holder exactly and can tell nobody whether he is still on his feet. What the report says comes from whichever medical mod is loaded; what this column decides is whether the device could have noticed.

Keeping the Foretrex blind is deliberate, and it is what makes the two watches different kit. Both are worn on the wrist and both place their wearer; only one of them reports what has happened to him. A wristwatch slot with a real choice in it is worth more than two watches that differ by a poll rate.

The four Bravo colours are not listed separately because they inherit it. They are children of the plain Bravo, so correcting the parent corrects all five.

Neither Foretrex 401 prefab is worth putting in front of a player. Watch_Garmin_Foretrex401.et is the older model, and the five button actions declared on it look for a component it does not have. Watch_GarminForetrex.et is the newer one, and its screen displays nothing of use. Both are still fitted, because the component decides how a device behaves on the network and that half is correct on either: a Foretrex on a wrist reports its wearer whether or not its own screen is any good. Neither is recommended.

A watch shows you where you are and nothing else. It has no radio port, so it never reaches the long data band; it puts its wearer’s position out over the short link, which is what lets a display in the same loadout, or somebody else’s relay a few tens of metres away, pick it up.

A handheld is what lets you see other people. That is what costs the inventory volume — a watch is free on the wrist and a handheld is not. It reaches the data band only when its holder is also carrying a radio, because the data band takes its range and its network from the radio, so a handheld on its own is still a short-link device.

Both handhelds have a map-screen twin, DAGR_Map and Orion_Map, and those are left alone. They are not kit anybody carries. The map screen spawns one into a preview world purely to draw a picture of the device, so fitting a signals component to one would put a phantom emitter into the network every time somebody opened their map.

The Spectrum seam

RHS ship a handheld Spectrum device that draws radio sources as bearings and builds confidence in them over a few seconds. This mod offers ATG’s emitters to it.

A contact and a strength, and nothing else. It never says who a contact is, what network they are on, which satellites they use, or what kit they carry — only that something over there is transmitting, and roughly how strongly it arrives.

• The position is coarsened before it leaves the server. No client is ever told where an emitter really is; it is snapped to a grid first, so what arrives is an area.
• Kit that only listens produces no contact at all. A device that neither reports its holder nor carries other people’s positions puts nothing on the air, so carrying receive-only kit is a real way to stay quiet.
• Strength follows two choices. Kit on the data band carries much further than kit on the short link, and a holder with no radio never reaches the data band whatever their device says. On top of that, a device that reports often is on the air more and reads louder — so a slow, cheap device is genuinely a quieter one.
• A jammer is the loudest thing anywhere, which is the counter-play to jamming; a satellite uplink is aimed at the sky and is very quiet on the ground.

It needs RHS’s radio-sources manager running

That manager is a component on the shared game-mode prefab. Other addons override the same prefab and can switch it off there, so this mod switches it back on. When it is missing the bridge says so once, as a warning, rather than doing nothing quietly.

Turning the manager on does not turn RHS’s own emitters on. Whether a radio, antenna, relay or vehicle registers itself is a separate switch on each of those prefabs, so a modset that has switched them off keeps them off and the Spectrum shows ATG’s network and nothing else. That is usually what is wanted, and it is worth knowing before reading an empty screen as a fault: a device with no ATG emitter in range has nothing to draw, however many radios are about.

Settings

None. Everything here is a property of a device or a constant, and the settings that shape the network itself belong to ATG Signals.