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Seems like a bad idea to me. Adding game mechanics to counter game exploits is not the right way to go about it. What about fresh spawns? They have no chance of beating ghosters unless they've been lucky enough to find the gear required to stop this type of exploiting. There is probably a much simpler way to stop ghosting. Say, if you completely disconnect from a server you can't rejoin the same server for another 20 mins. Stop the exploit from being possible, don't try to counter it with gimmicks. Portable radio towers would be better served as a game communication mechanic.

Dayz has a serious problem right now, ghosting and it NEEDS to be fixed. My friend and i were shooting a person on top of the firehouse, we hit him a few times and then he logged out, joined a different server, came on top of the building we were on and killed us both, we had no chance, he was right behind us. That is anti-fun and very unfair, please fix it either by making a new character on every server or disabling combat for the person logging in for 20 seconds.

"- Prevents "logins" inside a radius of the broadcast range of this radiotower. - Broadcast range of jamming signal affects the length power draw. * Players attempting to login within the broadcast radius will be told that there is currently an active radiotower broadcasting a jamming signal. * Players is given choice to spawn to spawn at edge of the jamming signal." -Quoted from OP Yeah, there are a lot of problems here that I can see already. 1. Moving spawns, which could be buggy. I wouldn't like to spawn on a server and be thrown 100 meters away into a tree or a wall or in a floor or unenterable building. 2. The warning gives away the position of players or their camps. I could easily triangulate their location based on the max size of the jammer and just logging in and out about 3 times. 3. What happens if someone blocks off entire cities with barbed wire and traps, then plants these down? The city would only need a small crew to protect it and replace barbed wire as it is removed. Entire towns taken over by clans, where they can set up these in order to make players spawn in open plains or at the bottom of hills, giving them prime targets for the killing. I like the idea behind the idea, such as working generators and radio towers, just don't like the spawn-jamming aspect of it. +1 for everything BUT spawn-jamming. I hate server hopping and ghosting as much as the next guy, even lost friends to these people, but this has too many problems that could come from this.

poor kiddies noobs! don't bother them! they risk all that precious gear with their mighty clan to steal your car, you can imagine how annoying respawn again with all those bad bad infected and without a mp5sd? that rocket must be crazy! seriously, this never happened to me..i imagine that the best reaction is the same when you see a baby cry for his toy..why they just don't keep playing wow? and the worst things are that you can see youtubers doing the same even in streaming, (what a shame) and i've read only a single topic with the confession of an altf4er..guys why you don't open a thread called altf4 stories? i mean, come on guys, it's a mod where it's supposed i'll permadie and loose my stuff! even if you are in a group can you imagine how it would be funnier if one of you survives and recovers your stuff? at least you would remember that time when you died together like true survivors..i don't know..ghosting ruins the fun...

I'd say its against the spirit of the game but I'm a little old fashioned with the notions of integrity and fairplay. In the old days we called this "ghosting", that was spectating others and telling your friends where the enemy was and was greatly shamed and looked down upon. This is no different imo.

I can only see underground bases being implemented to be honest. As Rocket said building above ground would create hundreds of player camps per server which would ultimately slow things down. Another thing to consider is 'ghosting' where a player could merely go to where your camp is on another server and then change to the server where the camp/building is, thereby 'ghosting' in and wiping the occupants out possibly. This couldnt happen with an underground base because the camp/base only appears on the one server, unless the player makes an identical underground base on another server (possible i suppose) So in response to your thread, yes, i too like the idea of an underground base, something you can mould to be your own.

I certainly agree that something needs to be done about ghosting and abort-on-contact exploits but this solution doesn't strike me as simple nor elegant. Players will need 3+ significant items (radio tower, generator, one of more jerry cans) to combat an exploit that ideally wouldn't exist in the first place. These items will take time to gather and eat inventory space. This means you're actually punishing the victims ​of this behaviour, not the offenders. This will only solve the problem in very specific circumstances. Any players who are travelling from A to B can still be ghosted. Any players who decide against making their camp even more painfully obvious can have it ghosted. Any players who have not yet found and deployed the items can still be ghosted. Anyone with a weapon range greater than the tower range can still ghost to a new vantage point. A somewhat more subtle result of this scheme is that you're essentially condoning ghosting in any circumstances where an exploiter is able to do it. There will be many circumstances where deploying this anti-spawn measure will be impractical or impossible for a group. When this group is killed by a ghoster, the ghoster will simply claim "They should have had a tower up". This idea seems like a cumbersome attempt to fix game problems via the game world. I think these two things should be kept entirely separate. Yes, players vanishing and reappearing is unrealistic - but it's also obviously required. It's okay to use something unrealistic but required to fix problems with it. You don't need some plausible game world solution like this. It will always feel cumbersome if you do. I'm not entirely sure why you wish to use the game world to address this problem. Preventing ghosters will never be fun and using out-of-world systems to prevent the problem will be much more effective. Along these lines there are probably vastly more elegant solutions to the problem. So, to try and be constructive in my criticism, here is my proposal: Log players "last played server" to the hive when they disconnect. Have the server maintain a list of players who have disconnected within the last 15 minutes. When a player connects to a server, check if they're in the disconnected list. If a player exists in the disconnected list and that server not the last server they played on, do not allow the connection. This would allow players freedom to change servers but not for ghosting. If players are on server A but it's lagging or bugged, they can rejoin server B. They can freely rejoin A in 20 minutes when the problems have passed. If a players internet goes down and they are disconnected from server A, they can immediately rejoin as server A is still their last played server and thus they haven't been able to alter their position in any way. A final touch would be to broadcast join/part messages over direct comms. This means if you see a join message, you know someone has just spawned in within X metres. Yes, this advantages the players already in the server but that is a fair penalty for them not logging off somewhere safer. It would also help to name and shame players who abort on contact. It could be used by bandits watching a camp to learn when the camp is clear and safe to raid but this is unlikely and losing all your tents is a just punishment for failing to notice a bandit in direct comms range of your camp. tl;dr: No. This scheme adds nothing fun, punishes the wrong people and will only work occasionally.

Wouldn't it be simpler just add entropy to the position in the DB. On logout, add a random 100-300m in a random 360deg direction to current position. Check to make sure it is on ground level, not in a building, and not clipping any statics. No ghosting and you still log in in the same general area you left. For camps add exception where if you are within 10m of your tent at logout, your position snaps to standing in front of your tent upon login.

As long as they fix ghosting and player structures (fences) are actually working there will 100% be trading hubs set up by players and that's the way it should be. Right now it won't really happen, because you can just switch servers, run to where the trading hub is, log back to the server it's on and end up inside the fences so it's not possible to have a player policed safe area.

i like your idea. but i think your overenginnering the solution. if this is only to stop ghosting/server hopping. then the system just needs to check for other players in the area you are about to log in to and then tell the player logging in to either wait and try again in a minute or log in now x number of metres away from the player already in game. this could be troublesome for groups logging in, so maybe a friend list with permissions could be introduced. basically add a friends battleye code to an allowed list. as for things like camo hides. radio towers (for clan/friends coms) these are all good :) but i would also like to see items from civi street. baseball bats melee knives. civi skins police skins police armour (extra protection/move slower)

Perhaps but one thing would be for certain, it would be impossible for that player to come back and spawn behind you by ghosting.

GHosting will be sorted eventually, there is no way the entire concept of dayZ could work as a fully fledged game whilst ghosting was still an issue. (it is still in alpha)

The issue i see with either radio towers or fire's is that you will need a lot of equipment (and possibly) people to accomplish battling ghosters. While i do understand it can be a problem in fixed locations, like for example the Airfields and the Main cities. Which will give either side the option to realy set up a base somewhere and other the drive to take it down (aka. group play, f/e friendlies taking over Elektro by blocking out spawns for hoppers and bandits) ... but, i think just setting a perimiter isn't enough, if your spawnpoint happens to be blocked this way, then ones option should be to spawn at the beach or goto another server. And i don't think this is harsh, see, if you are not around to defend your spawnpoint (aka. you are sleeping/not logged in) than it's fairly reasonable to assume you either been captured or just slain in your sleep as this group came in to set up this radio tower. You may have been able to take one or two down with you but thats about it, and afterwards you would spawn at the beach with no stuff at all... so IF your spawn is compromised at this particular server, you get the option to spawn at the beach and keep your stuff, or you goto a server where this location isn't compromized... But the ghosting problem isn't just a problem there, it occurs everywhere and everywhen in the game, so there should be an easy to obtain item that gives a player the time to get away from a location someone else just alt+F4 outof, and my first thought was Flares, these only last 5min, so they only cause a fairly short period to block of an area for spawn, but at the same time, they give enough time to get out of that location and perhaps even to a good location to take off this person as (s)he tries to ghost back in. Flares are also so commen that everybody can have 'ghost' protection on them after the 1st or 2nd building they loot. A third thing that just dropped in my mind, it would be kinda cool if this radio tower could be modified to send out a signal that prevents Infected from spawning in a certain radius. Not prevent them from comming in if lured or drawn by loud noises. But clear spawning would be nice, that would give friendlies and bandits the option to set up relative safe zones. While a safe zone might brush against some people's hairs, on the other hand it's exactly what people will do (and have done through the ages), build something that keeps nasties out. Seeing buildings and barbedwire doesn't do much, as the infected just glitch through them, setting up a radiotower with an Infected Modification would atleast create a relative safe zone. What does need to happen though is that gas/petrol becomes limited in supply, meaning that this Infected repellant can only run so long, it will have people organize raiding parties to nearby gasstations in order to keep them running, etc... Perhaps a radiotower can only run in one mode, either repell spawning of people or repel spawning of Infected. In which case a choice has to be made, you can still somewhat secure your base with barbed wire, and other items to create a somewhat save area from people, or when you run two towers, you burn through fuel twice as fast. PS. Now that a generator is planned, it would also be nice if we can run lights off of it, this will help setting up safe zones at night, where you'll be able to see people comming in and can inquire them of their motives, or shoot them on sight...

I dislike this idea, it defeats immersion. Instead of playing in a zombie survival genre I'm now in a more Matrix-like atmosphere where I'm trying to fight people who can dial-in and dial-out of the server. (sadly, it is a bit like that now...) Players will be running "interdiction fields" like in the ship battles in Star Wars where they force other ships to be unable to jump to light speed. Run into a loot area, light a fireplace, loot, kill, and run out. Or better yet, kill the fire, and disconnect yourself. None of that feels authentic, or like an original intention, for a fireplace. The fix for ghosting needs to be passive and absolute, not active and dynamic... and definitely not controllable by other players in my opinion. If you want to create no-spawn-zones (say, for airfields, military areas) then have them ALWAYS be no-spawn-zones. That way no one can spawn in, everyone has to walk. If you spawn out in them by disconnecting, you come back in with the last place the database could save you with the 5 min unconsciousness and maybe some other penalty. I'm glad there are thoughts and discussions about this, I just disagree with this particular method, there's got to be better ways of managing "occupation."

Rather than change where a person spawns, I like the idea of a radio drop which could drop in any loot space. When a player logs in for the first time to a server it sends out a ping, anyone with a radio within a certain radius will hear a squak. When you log out it starts a catalogue, logging into another server will send out the same squak. If you log into another server after that within 10 minutes, it sends out a 3 squak pulse, alerting anyone who hears it that the person who joined has been on multiple servers. If you log back into a previous server within a 10 min window after being in a different one, it sends out the 3 squaks plus any player with a radio will hear increased static when they are facing the person's login position. Static lasts 15 seconds. So: Login = squak 50m Position farming = 3 squaks (possibly adding an additional squak for each server visited within the last 30 mins, so a person with 3 might just be unlucky with servers, but a person with 5 or 6 is definitly abusing the system) 50m +10 for each server visited. Ghosting = alert plus loss of position advantage. 300m Radio would have a 5% drop rate from any pile and fits on toolbelt. Also, I think they should just code into the game that Alt-F4 (when fully logged in) just kills your character.

If you haven't already I'd highly suggest watching this stream: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-07-09-watch-dean-rocket-halls-huge-rezzed-q-and-a-for-dayz The part regarding underground networks is probably as close to what you want as it will get. As it's also the best method against ghosting. Please take your time to watch it if you haven't already!

Sounds like a great idea for basebuilding, but not as a permanent mechanic to prevent ghosting out in the world, carrying around a radiotower, a generator and jerry cans just isn't going to happen. So yes, great feature as long as you continue to address the ghosting/logging out in combat issues in other ways.

The towers should have more benefits like active global chat to those individuals who can access it while running, this would make maintence worth it. Along with preventing ghosting. It could also slow down zombie spawns? It will take a good amount of gas and storage space so make this thing a valued and somewhat rate commodity. Also, make it small enough to fit under camo netting for bases. To be fair, it should have a fly effect like dead bodies do while powered. Generators are very loud when on.

Honestly the only thing this will do is say, "HEY EVERY ONE, I'M CAMPING HERE". What we really need is a charm sound spawn on you every time you log in. This sound could have say a 10 meter radius. This way, if you ghost in somewhere stupid where you know you have the unfair advantage.. say inside a building behind some one... they will know first since they can hear the charm of where you are logging in. Only this will completely deter ghosting. This will also deter server hopping from barracks to barracks looking for the best gear, etc.

What if, instead of 'pushing' login attemps to the outer ring of a radius. The Radiotower emits a destinguishable sound when someone logs in within the radius. Alerting the player's who are being ghosted to the presense of a ghoster. It will not tell them where the ghosting player has logged in, just that someone has within its variable radius. This way it gives the advantage to the players who took the time to setup the Radiotower because they will be on alert. Instead of alerting the ghoster that they are on the right track. It should only emit a sound once per player login, and not detect players entering the area on foot. I feel this might be a better implementation of a Radiotower because this turns the Radiotower into a tool you will want to bring with you and setup when you are raiding for supplies, instead of something you might want to horde many of and place down all at once creating a "blackout grid" preventing login's in a large portion of the game world.

I don't think blocking spawn is a good idea. This could easily be exploited and choosing to spawn at the edge could have dire consequences. Proposed idea: The radio tower gives the owner a radar showing nearby players and zombies and beeps or makes some kind of audible tone when it detects someone. The tower is stationary when deployed but could be moved. The benefit of this would be that it shows players loading in before they fully load in allowing you to kill or at least be ready for them thus preventing ghosting. To prevent this from beeing completely overpowered maybe it shouldn't detect prone players, giving them the ability to sneek up on the camper.

Not bad idea. Of course, ghosting is really bad thing that should to be removed from this game. But, on the other hand, its not really good just to give player "choice to spawn at edge of radius". What if he dont want to spawn in this radius? First of all, if player set radiotower near high traffic areas, knowing a radius of the broadcast, he can calculate the areas in which players will appear that will give him a big advantage. Also, there is really big thing that must be considered - how radio tower will interact with each other. I mean - what if group of players will make something like a "wall"/"triagle"/etc. from radiotowers? I think people will use them more for tricks/ambushes than for real protecting from ghosting. So, there is a lot of special things and situations that must to be considered. P.S. Sorry about my English, I hope you can catch my idea!

Don't really get how a fireplace is supposed to stop someone from logging in a 100-200m radius. Seems like an arbitrary way to prevent ghosting. Radio tower seems like a good way to impliment walkie talkies on private channels. Better yet, can also act as a jamming device for those using voip within the radius of the tower.

can someone define "Ghosting" for me?

http://www.twitch.tv/puddn/b/324493060 10 hours and 50 minutes in you see him die from being ghosted. At 11 hours and about 4 minutes on you hear Vip explaining to him how complicated even simply attempting to search for equipment the user might have to match the same results of individuals logging out around a specific timeframe yields a impossible amount of hits and numbers. Right now, its not that simple to go 'ban' someone for ghosting, disconnecting, or avoiding zombie aggro. Nor is it easy for any admins to battle it or Devs. Please stop thinking it is...