c3k

Two separate issues being discussed: spotting cycles vs spotting probability. My comment was PURELY towards cycles. Now, if we want to talk spotting probabilities, let's do so...in another thread. (Yes, I agree that some spotting is not working the way we'd expect. "We" being players. I do not speak for BF.C in any manner.)

Well, I would think a moving unit CHANGES LOCATIONS and needs to have LOS checked more frequently than a stationary unit? As well, if a target is moving, the stationary units would need to poll their LOS more frequently to see if they have a shot. (By more frequently I mean in comparison to stationary units, not in absolute terms.) Ken

The anti-tank rifle grenade is a "special item" and therefore you get a picture. That's the grenade with a count of "2". The 30mm HE is the standard rifle grenade. All infantry anti-tank weaponry is considered special. All infantry-carried anti-INFANTRY weapons and ordnance is considered normal and sits in the black window. Ken

BF.C has enabled buddy aid to acquire ammo (and grenades, I think) from fallen comrades in CMFI. It should be back-ported to CMBN2.

LLF, That Ramadi map is a work of art. I can imagine a unit CO using a similar map to coordinate a real city fight. Very cool... The CMSF family is great. I will keep them on my computer for a long time. I'm still in the midst of a campaign or two which I haven't gotten back to for over a year and a half. That's not right... Ken

Makin looks cool. In regards to spotting being too easy, my paintball story was meant to bring attention to the other side of the spectrum. Let's agree that spotting is too easy right now. Okay, put that thought up on a shelf. In CM:HS (Combat Mission:Hard Spot), non-moving infantry in concealment are invisible. These men use shadow, flora, fauna, and light-bending to hide. When they move, it is almost as hard to see them. They are covered in camo and use tiny depressions and slow, irregular movements to get from one spot to another. A bush can hide a platoon. Imagine what the battlefield would look like: a 1km^2 of beautifully rendered terrain with nothing moving. If a deer runs out of the woods, the player would know to rain down the Hammer of Thor, or a 150mm battery, upon the woods. A covey of birds just flew up: unleash the machineguns! Birds stop tweeting? Yeah, bring up the flamethrower! In short, the battlefield would appear unpopulated. The only way to find, fix, and destroy the enemy would be by area fire and scouts. "You and you, up! Move to that hedge. We'll fire near where we think the enemy is after you get hit." The "flow" of the game would be very slow and difficult. (Given a map with plenty of concealment.) Okay, CM:HS is an extreme, but it shows how bad a game it could be if invisibility (or camo abilities near that) were used. Put that next to CMBN/CMFI's spotting model. If perfection is somewhere between these two extremes, is it better to approach from the too easy side and get closer, or from the too hard side and work closer? (Hint: this _is_ a game!) Spotting does seem too easy right now. But, and this is the hard part, how do we quantify what makes it too easy? Given that, how would we quantify what it should be, once we've defined what it is? While you guys ponder that, I'm going to grab my paintball marker and go crawl through the bushes...or just get right to the beer. Ken

If you don't buy CMFI, how will you be able to play CMBNv2? It's not only that you'll disappoint yourself, your opponents will be let down, as well. You owe it to us all. Buy it.

Can you send it to me via the pm link? (If not, PM an email address and I'll contact you offline.) Ken

...and now that we all have image of a happy Japanese woman spinning in the snow-laden parks and running to her husband, fading to the "happy ending" that Hollywood always brings...I interrupt this message. Spotting easy vs. hard: Years ago one of my buddies, flat broke, with an unexpectedly pregnant wife (child number 3 or 4, all very difficult pregnancies), laid off, living on credit cards, went out and bought 8 paintball starter kits. As he told his bed-ridden (at 6 months in) wife, "If I buy it, they will come!" So, we all stepped up and threw down the cash. The first game was in the woods, back of a guy's house. Storm-clouds in the offing. I was the only guy with military service. It was 4 on 4, hunt 'em down, in 4-6 acres of heavy underbrush New England hardwoods. Rolling terrain, rocky crags, brush, leaves, ticks, mosquitoes, leeches, 85 degrees and humidity high enough you just had to sweep a glass through the air to fill it with water. Boo-yah. The game had only gone on for about 45 minutes before the skies opened up. It was a torrential downpour. One by one everyone got picked off...except for me and one enemy. I knew roughly where he was. I knew what I had to do. My team's honor was at stake, as was my street cred' being GI Billy Badass. I belly-slithered, in the rain, mosquitoes, and ticks, through an acre of pachysandra-like growth. I prayed it wasn't poison ivy, but, what the hell, I had a job to do. I set out, in the drenching rain with visibility through paintball goggles measured by how far I could reach out my arm, to find him. I crawled in a clover leaf pattern, inch by inch, on my belly. Mud, muck and filth everywhere. Move, listen. Crawl, stop, listen... Finally, after over an hour, soaked by the non-stop rain, covered in bites and fast-crawling insects I didn't want to identify, all muddied up, I just stood up in the middle of the patch of overgrowth. I was alone. He had gone. I walked through the woods back to the house in the pouring rain, where all seven of my buddies were sitting on the porch drinking beer. "We wondered how long you'd stay out there", one said, as he tossed me a beer. The other guy had quit an hour earlier. The moral of the story? Bring beer if you play paintball. The other moral? If spotting is too hard, it stops being fun. Ken

That's odd. In all my beta testing, I've only ever heard of spontaneous pixeltruppen desertions in the case of horrible commanders. It seems there's a feedback loop based on residual RAM use displaying AAR screens. If the player is really, really bad, some of their troops achieve a level of, well, sentience. Once they understand that they are tools in the hand of a maniacally incompetent tactician, these newly sentient troops tend to flee as soon as they can. Having limited options available to them, some seem to think that they can surrender to the AI and be sheltered by the CPU. This makes them run towards the enemy lines. Are you saying this happens frequently when you play? PM me... Ken

That's a nice video... Thanks.

It seems clear, but just making sure I understand it correctly: if the Sherman has lower numbers in your chart, that means it spotted the PzIV first? E.g., line one, the Sherman identified the PzIV in one second (after breaking the plane of the bocage), but it took the PzIV 10 seconds to do the same? (Clarification only.) Thanks, Ken

I have not tested this. It may take a lot longer than the listed deploy times to get the .50 mounted inside the bunker. (Is it similar to a building deploy delay?) Ken

Actually, 10 identical, independent Tigers: the purpose would be to see if the spot "polling" period (spp) changes from 7 seconds. With more units present does the game change the spotting routine? Is it load-leveling the processing based on the number of LOS origination points, or is it fixed at 7 seconds? Heck, 100 may be a better number for an initial hack.

Nicely done. What happens if more than one tiger is present? Say, 10?

Nice test. BF.C has stated that spotting is done, as you've written, at intervals. I have never seen what that interval is. I wonder if it's the same for all units?

Well, since the enemy was beyond handgun range, the crew had no other choice but to use artillery. They are as accurate with the long guns as they are with the short.

(My bold.) Why doesn't the timer work? Select the "spotting" unit, watch down the road, when the "?" appears that's an initial spot, when it ID's, that's a final spot. In a lot of cases the time between "?" and ID will be very brief. Ken

Um, not quite. A PzIV vs PzIV test compared to a Sherman vs Sherman test would, again, show nothing worthwhile vis a vis Sherman to PzIV spotting abilities. PzIV vs. "Tank X" and Sherman vs "Tank X" is what is needed.

Well, if you're trying to test which side has an advantage, that's fine. However you cannot draw any absolute conclusions between the tanks based on this test. If you want to know if it's better to play as Germans or Americans, that's fine. If you think there's a spotting issue, then this approach is useless. I thought you were attempting to show that there is a spotting flaw (either PzIV is nerfed or Sherman is buffed). That was my mistake.

It is NOT the same. A Sherman (as target) presents a different silhouette than a PzIV (as target) would present. If I said that a PzIV never sees a mouse at 1,000m, but a Sherman sees an elephant at 1,000m, would you tell me that there is something wrong with spotting? Is the Sherman too good? Is the PzIV too poor? Nothing can be drawn from the mouse/elephant test because you've changed more than one variable in the test. Now, if you have a Sherman take 21s to spot an elephant at 1,000m and then a PzIV takes 59s to spot an elephant at 1,000m you have made a test and produced results that can be compared. Instead of mice or elephants, we use tanks. So, pick a target tank. Any kind will do, just make it the SAME tank for both tests. Apples to apples is better than apples to oranges. Ken

Interesting idea. Your analysis of the mouse movement requirements is spot on. For the record, my left hand is only used for the spacebar and my mouse does all the camera/command work. Ken

noob, Your test, as interesting as it is, does NOT test the same criteria for the two tanks. Bear with me while I criticize (in the better meaning of the word) what you've done. The stationary Sherman is spotting with all crewmembers facing towards the PzIV. This is a Sherman -> PzIV test. (I assume when you say you swap positions, that you literally do that. That the PzIV sits on the road and awaits the Sherman which uses the same delay and covered arc command as the PzIV had used.) With a PzIV sitting on the road, you have all the PzIV crewmembers trying to spot a Sherman. This is a PzIV -> Sherman test. PzIV -> Sherman is NOT comparable to Sherman -> PzIV If you want to compare actual spotting ability, you'd need to set up a blue on blue (or red on red) test of the second iteration. PzIV -> Sherman AND Sherman -> Sherman: this would be an apples to apples test. (Or, if you'd prefer, Sherman -> PzIV AND PzIV -> PzIV.) If you're testing the spotting time and first shot times of the stationary tank, why have the target tank cover arc towards the stationary tank? Why not keep it facing sideways? I'm curious about that aspect of your test setup. Thanks for doing these tests and sharing them. Ken

Right now my high school English teacher is fist-pumping in the air and shouting, "Yeah! You tell him bro! Iambic pentameter busting bastard!" I bow to your nursery rhyming grogocity.

Repeat after me: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall Humpty Dumpty had a great fall All the king's men and all the king's horses couldn't put humpty together again Now, insert "PaK40" for "Humpty Dumpty". Repeat as needed.