I think it'd be incredibly useful for the following kind of thing to be created for AHII - it'd help a lot in organised games, especially those with walkons...
1. Have "Briefing room" as an option to go to from the Tower, with two sub-options: Main and Unit.
2. Main is available to anyone at that base, whilst Unit allows for briefings to just memebrs of a particular unit. The Briefing Room has its own channel, which supercedes Room (which ought to be renamed Local, IMO) whilst people are in the Briefing Room.
3. Person wishing to give a briefing selects option to do so. They have the ability (if allowed by CMs) to post a map to the briefing room map board (possibly allow two, one for route, one for target). These must be files acceptable as clipboard maps, and thumbnailed versions of them appear on the Briefing room Wall.
4. Persons in the Briefing Room can click on either map to get a close-up view, which will load it into their clipboard maps section (this gives them the option to accept or refuse the map)
5. the Briefing officer can use a pointer visible to others in the briefing room to point out things about the mission on the maps.
6. The briefing officer can also create a short text message that can be read by those in the briefing, so that they can easily give loadouts, initial headings, or even a full route plan out without having to repeat themselves in the text buffer or on vox.
7. As a suggestion, the Briefing Officer should have the ability to turn the ability of those "listening" to the briefing to reply on or off, so that they can give an uniterrupted briefing. The status of the channel could perhaps be indicated by a coloured light visible to all in the Briefing Room (Green = all able to speak, Red only the Briefing officer can speak). If so, suggest that a button be available for listeners to be able to "raise their hand". Briefing officer to be able to allow a selected person to respond temporarily. Briefing Officer should also have the ability to lock a session to just those currently in it (allowing discoers back in, but no-one else to join) until the session is over.
The above to ensure that briefings are orderly.
Essentially, what I'm aiming at is that it'd be hugely useful for flight leaders to be able to distribute clipboard maps in-game, and also to be able to hold briefings in-game with a few tools to make the job easier. Obviously, there need to be some precautions to prevent abuse, though, especially in an MA environment. For that reason, some of the features could, perhaps, be only available when the CMs allow them to be available (so anything that gets abused gets turned off in the MA, whilst being allowed in scenario games, if desired).
Esme
