This guide is intended to help you understand how to control lighting within a mission, and also how to control your visibility to the AI so that you can more effectively LARP as a CIA Ground Branch operator who relies on stealth to accomplish incredibly difficult missions against immensely difficult odds.
Cover of Darkness Tips
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I can say that the light-level in GB makes a HUGE difference in AI detection – but, it is not completely obvious how this works.
In the mission settings, on the mission board when you go to the ready room – the “Insertion Time” is shown at the bottom in local time. This is great because it means that as maps may have different locations geographically, the insertion time will always reflect the time of day for the location of the operation. However, this insertion time is NOT the whole story.
If you click on the mission board to adjust the settings, you should see a little “gear” icon near the time of day, and if you click it – there is a whole interface that opens for choosing NOT ONLY the time of day, but ALSO the month and the day. You might think this is not important – but if you consider it a little bit… you may realize that the LUNAR CYCLES and the visibility of the MOON affect the illumination levels of the Area of Operation across different months and times of day.
So, if you choose sometime a little after midnight – where you know the SUN is down for some hours, it still does not mean you will have true cover of darkness in the mission. You also need to pick a month and day where the Moon is not visible and showing the AO with reflected light.
A simple rule of thumb is to use either Spring or Winter months, and stay near either the beginning or end of the month – then choose a good time where the sun is down. What is very helpful is that this “date picker” that comes up when you click the board and then click the gear will tell you the “illumination” level for the Month/Day/Time you have picked.
If you get the illumination to “Poor” or “Effectively None” and bring your Nightvision, you will be able to move around the map without being auto-spotted by the aimbot AI at long distances… however this is ALSO not the whole story.
Where you are in relation to light sources such as floodlights and such will also get you spotted from father away. You want to try to avoid going in between a light source and an enemy’s position, since this will cause you to be “back lit” and will make your position very obvious for the AI, even when the “ambient” light conditions are “effectively none”.
If you cannot stealthily disable a light source, then you want to be well out of the “radius of illumination” of that light source AND you want that light source between you and the enemy.
Another pro-tip, as you learn maps, is to look for “fuse boxes” and “power junction switches” or even on the 747 map, look for the standalone generator near the front landing gear that is wired to the jet – if you take out that generator, the plane goes totally dark.
The Devs may not have made all of this obvious (because pre-Alpha, clearly – so don’t give them a hard time, please) – but they HAVE given us all the tools to counter the AI’s spotting/detection behavior. It is not intuitive and takes practice.
In a tactical situation, control of information – such as controlling what the OpFor see and hear – is key to tactical domination. Cover of darkness is a HUGE force multiplier if you have NV and the OpFor does not – and cover of darkness is available to us on every single mission and map (provided that we know where to find the settings, and that our “mission parameters” for the operation allow us to delay insertion until we have beneficial light conditions.)
I hope this helps. Hit me up if you want more information or tips on how to make this work for you. For me, it is one of the MOST fun things about Ground Branch.
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