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. What is drawn instead is this mod's own picture: 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.

THE PICTURE

Each player is sampled at the rate their own device declares, and what is sampled is where they were, not where they are. Somebody who stops reporting stays where you last heard from them and greys off as it ages; lose the kit that reads the picture and it goes at once. A device screen shows everybody your kit reaches; the paper map shows your own position and nothing else, at any tier of kit.

HOW POSITIONS TRAVEL

Bluetooth is short and single-hop. The radio data band relays, taking its encryption key from the radio its holder carries. A radio also states how far it carries the picture, a different question from how far it carries speech: a set that talks to the next province still puts the picture only as far as the next hill.

Reading the network and carrying for it are separate declarations: a handheld screen shows its holder the team without carrying for anybody, a mast carries for everybody without showing anyone, a relay pack does both. Only what relays is a hop, so coverage is laid out rather than assumed - which is what gives a signaller a job.

TEXT MESSAGES

A handset carries typed messages between two people and is the one thing here NOT on the position network: no relay chain has to reach, and no jammer stops it. The network decides who can be seen; a handset decides who can be written to.

Contacts are everybody on your own side, plus any number handed to you with an action on the model. A setting closes every ordinary text channel and makes a handset the only way to type to anybody; it ships OFF. The server log records who wrote to whom, never what they wrote.

PLACED MARKERS

A marker drawn on the paper map is written on paper, and paper does not transmit - it reaches nobody. Markers the world placed, and those drawn from the Game Master editor, reach everybody regardless of kit. Faction scoping is decided on the server, so a marker for one side is never sent to the others.

JAMMING

The satellite uplink denies a whole constellation at once: a device that hears only it cannot place itself, and having no position it disappears from everybody else. It is aimed at the sky, so it is quiet and hard to find, and recovers slower than it drains. The ground jammer denies sharing and not the fix - kit inside it knows where it is while nothing reaches the network - and it ignores sides, including whoever placed it. Both arrive switched off.

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.

LOAD ORDER

Load ATG Core before this mod. Three optional mods are found by load order rather than by declaration:

- A display mod, loaded BEFORE this mod. This mod reaches across to it, so the signals tab and the device-screen declaration exist only where the display mod compiled first. With none loaded, every surface behaves as paper.
- ATG Garmin Vitals for ACE, loaded BEFORE this mod, lets a contact carry a condition. Loaded after it, or not at all, every contact reads as well.
- ATG Map, loaded AFTER this mod, uses it for auto-centring.

Getting that order wrong fails silently: with no declaration nothing is treated as a device, so a display shows its holder their own position and nobody else's, looking 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, how far a radio that states nothing carries the picture, whether a handset is required for text, 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.

Full settings table and a complete example file:
https://atg-milsim.org/wiki/dev/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.
Full terms: https://github.com/Azzholes-Tactical-Group/atg-signals/blob/main/LICENSE.md
Permission requests: the ATG Discord, linked from CONTRIBUTING.md in that repository.