[Kezz]

I voted for minimap spots only, and I'd like to add a caveat:

Let us change the damn colours!!!

Washed out light green, I can see (I'm talking about PS1's minimap), not that I need to know where my friendlies are, much, but unsaturated red on whatever darkish, greenish-brownish or grey background happens to be behind my minimap, and I've little to no chance.

As to what should be shown, I think there should be a measure of tech and certing to allow more than the default. The default should vary depending on where you are: in a friendly installation, there could be an assumption of surveillance tech that you can tap into with standard comms gear. That could go away if some unfriendly captures the "Security core" or whatever. Engineers (or Medics - heartbeat sensors, anyone?) could set up sensor nets to improve "out of doors" detection for a squad/local area, and people could cert and equip sensor modules to improve individual detection radius and sensitivity, or dampen others' for improved stealth (I'd guess the Infil suit would have some sort of base dampening effect that could be enhanced, but any armour could carry some sort of anti-tech stealth capacity).

Perhaps the pinnacle of this tech/cert tree would be a Robocop style "predictive wireframe" that guesses (the game would "cheat" and use the real data with random variations) where the opponent that you could see has gone. The more people (or equipment) in the squad with this capacity who've had some sight of the target, the better the "prediction" so long as comms is undisrupted, and those with the relevant module could share the targeting data, whose value and accuracy would degrade quickly if the target was not positively reacquired.

All this surveillance tech of course opens up the potential for meaningful battlefield EWar/InfoWar. Jamming comms, spoofing sensor contacts, suppressing emissions and defeating sensors. Which would be a niche.

And just to be clear, any reference to stealth above is purely referring to stealth against these technical measures. Emphatically not stealth that cloaks you from the Mk1 eyeball like the Infil's stealth field.