ATG Signals

ATG Signals is the transmit and receive layer behind position sharing, and it owns marker visibility on every map surface - paper map and device screen alike.

Every player position marker the game would have drawn is withheld. Each player is sent, on their own connection, their own position plus everybody their kit actually reaches. A position not in a player's picture never crossed the wire, so there is no list on a client to filter. Run this mod on its own and a player sees themselves and nobody else.

HOW POSITIONS TRAVEL

Positions travel two ways:

- Bluetooth reaches a few tens of metres, from a device to a nearby display or relay. It is never passed on.
- The radio data band goes further and can be passed from relay to relay. Its range comes from the radio the player carries, and it only links radios set to the same encryption key.

Kit either shows you the picture, passes it on for others, or both:

- A handheld screen shows you your team, but passes nothing on.
- A mast passes positions on for everyone in range, but shows nothing.
- A relay pack does both.

Only relays extend the network, so covering an area means placing them - that is the signaller's job. The paper map only ever shows your own position (if you have GPS).

OBJECTIVES ARE TOLD BY KIT - ON BY DEFAULT

With this mod loaded the base game announces no objective to anybody: no banner, task list, task icon or hold bar. A handset gets a briefing from Command and texts as objectives land, complete or are lost. A receiver, a display and a data network reaching a static antenna add objective markers on the device screen and an Objectives tab. Somebody carrying nothing has to be told by another player. One setting turns it off and brings the base game's announcements back.

TEXT MESSAGES

A GPRS handset (think text-only mobile phone) carries typed messages between two people and is NOT on the GPS network: no relay has to reach, and no jammer stops it. The ATAK from ATG Displays carries messages too, with a Messages tab. Type {coords} to send your own grid. Contacts are everybody on your own side plus numbers handed over in person. A device that receives a message or a report sounds, and people nearby hear it; each player sets every device to loud, quiet, vibrate or silent, separately for messages and for Command's reports. A setting, off by default, closes every ordinary text channel. The server log records who wrote to whom, never what.

PLACED MARKERS

A marker drawn on the paper map reaches nobody. Markers the world placed, and those from the Game Master editor, reach everybody. Faction scoping is decided on the server.

JAMMING

The satellite uplink denies a whole GPS constellation: a device that listens to a jammed constellation cannot place itself, and disappears from everybody else. The satellite uplink is quiet, hard to find, and the satellite that jams your GPS recovers slower than it drains while jamming so can't be on permanently. 
The ground jammer denies data sharing but not GPS, and ignores sides, including whoever placed it. 
Both jammers have to be switched on after placing.

WHAT IT SHIPS

A ground jammer, a satellite uplink, a relay in carried and deployed forms, and a text handset, all placeable from the Game Master content browser, each with a live screen.
Screenshots taken largely while using ATG Displays which this mod adds tabs to.

LOAD ORDER

Load ATG Core before this mod. Two optional mods go BEFORE it, in either order:

- ATG Displays (or another display mod). The Signals, Messages and Objectives tabs and the device-screen declaration exist only where it compiled first. With none, every surface behaves as paper.
- ATG Garmin Vitals for ACE, which lets a contact carry a condition. Without it every contact reads as well.

ATG Map goes AFTER this mod, and uses it for auto-centring.

Getting the order wrong fails silently: a display then shows its holder their own position and nobody else's, exactly like a display whose network is empty. Which side this mod landed on is written to the log at world start.

SETTINGS

One JSON file at $profile:ATG/atg-signals.json: jamming duration and recharge, ground jammer radius, the text chat gate, the objectives gate, Command's name, whether markers are named, and log verbosity. A bool there is written true or false - a 1 is ignored and the setting silently keeps its old value.

Documentation: https://atg-milsim.org/wiki/atg-signals

LICENCE
Azzholes Tactical Group Arma Reforger Content License (Non-Commercial, No Derivatives). Stricter than APL-ND: no commercial use, and no re-upload or mirroring outside ATG's own Workshop listings.
Permission requests: https://discord.gg/M5ehKnEnQs