Related Game:
Rainbow Six: Siege
Feature description
Add additional variable(s) to the roster_X events that show the player’s drone economy. Ideal would be something like:
{"feature":"roster","category":"players","key":"roster_0","value":"{\"name\":\"PlayerName\",\"team\":\"Blue\",\"is_local\":true,\"operator\":768,\"kills\":1,\"deaths\":0,\"score\":130,\"health\":80,\"headshots\":1,\"defuser\":1, ==NEW==> \"drones_in_pocket\":1,\"drones_deployed\":0,\"drones_lost\":1 <==NEW== }"}
More simplistically a drones_available: 1 could work as well, though much less useful.
Current workaround
There is currently no way of tracking this in any meaningful automatic way. Most “analytical” players use subjective feeling for how well they use their drones. Pro League teams and professional analysts pay someone to manually track this based on screen recordings.
Implementation recommendation
Could be an additional variable added to the roster_X updates, as suggested above. Alternatively, if only implemented for the local player (not ideal), it could be provided as new separate events of drone_deployed, drone_picked_up, and drone_lost. One could even add a drone_destroyed for when you shoot an enemy drone, though I don’t see much value in the latter.
Technical recommendation
There are several cues in the game’s UI that could be hooked into, as well as obviously “hidden” inventory data for each roster.
Since the new Y6S1 patch from early March 2021, there are a lot more drone economy indicators in the game.
[SPECTATOR UI]
When spectating a game (in Custom Match) the following indicators deal with drone economy:
1. Shows the overall drones deployed (7, left) and the drones in pocket (1, right).
2. Shows the drones per player.
- An “empty” circle indicates a drone in pocket.
- A “filled” circle indicates a deployed drone.
- A cross indicates a destroyed/lost drone.
[SPECTATING PLAYER INVENTORY]
1. When playing the game as normal, after you die and are spectating teammates, their drone inventory is visible in the “character card” in the bottom left. The same symbology applies as explained above.
[LOCAL PLAYER INVENTORY]
1. When playing the game as normal and running around, the number of drones still in pocket are visible in the inventory slot at the bottom middle of the screen.
2. When playing the game as normal and in an “observation tool”, all deployed drones are visible in a row as dots in the bottom left. Those owned by the local player are yellow. When one is destroyed, a red cross appears over it for a short time, before the dot is removed from the list.
Feature potential
The value of being able to track drone economy automatically cannot be overstated!
Drone economy is perhaps the single most defining skill-based element differentiating a “good” Silver/Gold-ranked player from a great Platinum/Diamond player.
It is hard to teach because it is hard to quantify, and yet it is extremely important! Having an automated way to show current performance in this area, and then track improvement, would be a massive boon for my app, and the R6:Siege community in general.
Possibility of exploiting
If (like the selected Operator) it is only tracked for the local player’s team (or both for Spectator), there is no issue at all.
If tracked for both teams, there is still very little risk. The attacking team has drones. The defending team does not. In-game, it is not immediately clear how many drones the attacking team has available. However, it is a common practice in higher ranks to voice when you destroy an enemy drone as a defender, and it is known that the enemy team has 10 drones in total (2 per player). Thus a total tally of the number of enemy drones left in play is generally common knowledge.
Really the value of this information is not in real-time, but rather when the statistics on drone economy are tracked over the course of multiple matches, one can learn from improving in this field over time.
Priority Rating
There are a lot of cool things I can do with this added information, that is impossible to do at the moment. It would also make Overwolf an invaluable tool for the biggest players of the game, which could definitely be a major marketing win for Overwolf!
