It seems that every time I go to an area that has prisoners or some collectible that I haven't gotten, it's the first thing people tell me when I interrogate them. Then once I clear out the location of prisoners and blueprints and whatnot they'll start telling me about where the specialists are and gun emplacements and whatnot.
Do the guards always tell you the good stuff first? If they do, how does the game determine what order to dish out the details?
The game will run down from a 'list' basically that is created within the area you enter
For example if you go into an outpost where there is main mission objectives/prisoners ect... it will start there.
When you interrogate someone and gain intel it will place a check on your map (if possible) then cross this response/given intel off the 'list' then the next person you interrogate will tell you the next thing that was on that 'list' then it'll be marked in your map then crossed of this 'list' and so on
When I say 'list' this is something generated by the game like a list of responses it goes from most important down to minuscule things like objective locations down to mortar locations
Note: Not all intel you gain will be marked on the list sometimes it'll be an area to look around another will just be a heads up, something to keep in mind while moving around said area
Within each outpost, the information is always provided in order of importance, with critical info like locations of objectives and prisoners provided first. However, the list is different for each outpost. Here's a practical example:
In the mission C2W, the main objective is in the Eastern Communications Post, to the northeast of the LZ. A secondary objective is to rescue two prisoners being held in Da Wiallo Kallai, to the northwest of the LZ. There is a guard post between the LZ and the Eastern Comms Post, and the two guards there will always give you the location of the two prisoners in Da Wiallo. However, if you head for Da Wiallo first, you'll encounter a different guard post, and none of the guards there will give you info about the prisoners.
It seems like this mission is designed this way because they expect new players, still early in the game, to head straight toward the objective and interrogate everyone they can. This would give those new players info about the secondary objective that they wouldn't otherwise have stumbled on.
In many later missions, it seems that interrogating a guard anywhere in the area will give you high-priority information. But in certain examples, such as C2W, the info is divided up so that only certain guards can give you critical info.
C2W also gives us another interesting example. There's a piece of information that's not normally very useful - the location of the main transmitters that the CP uses to communicate with other bases - which happens to be very useful in C2W, because you can take it out in order to finish the mission without destroying any of the antenna dishes on the roofs. The location of the transmitter is a piece of information that can be obtained through interrogation, but it's one of the last ones you'll get - resources, diamonds, vehicles, etc generally come out before the transmitter or power generator locations. In C2W, this hasn't changed, even though it's mission-critical. You'd have to interrogate most of the guards before they'd point out the transmitter.
So this is another point where the information is managed to guide the player through a certain path. The way you're instructed to complete the mission is by locating and destroying all three antenna dishes. The transmitter location isn't put higher in the list because that would introduce the player to the alternate solution in a way that might be a bit too easy.
This is just one example, and things are obviously different in every mission. In general, you can trust that mission-critical information (including prisoners, who are usually a secondary objective) will come out first.
