Paper Tiger

When we were testing CMBN before the release, it was not possible for a crew to abandon a gun during a mission without some combat action that resulted in the destruction of the gun. One strong argument against adding this ability was that people would expect to be able to reman the gun after abandoning it and that that behaviour would require a considerable amount of new code. Fortunately, we got the ability to abandon the gun. This whole thing is a trade-off of the coders limited time. This limited ability came at the expense of something else and any further coding time will detract from another feature. Now, camouflage, that would be good to have and be assured that some of us are petitioning for it as well. Guns, once spotted, shouldn't last very long on the battlefield.

I wonder who crafted that map?

Operation Market Garden. It's shorter and it's slightly less confusing than OMG

Nope. It was also in CMSF.

Light conditions certainly do affect your ability to spot stationary units. If you play a night mission, you'll find it very hard to spot any units that are stationary. But if the open fire, then the fireworks really start. I don't know about Thick Haze or Mist/Fog though.

Oh, you can make it a whole lot worse than that if you really want to. Try playing a mission in the dead of night, no moon, with Fog and Rain. That's a real laugh attack. I think the point of this thread is that spotting is too easy under normal environmental conditions and not the more extreme ones. BTW when we get flares, we can craft much more interesting night missions than we can at the moment.

That mission also starts at 6:30 in the morning, low light conditions, so, coupled with the Mist and overcast skies, it's much harder to spot non-moving units.

I don't doubt that the game would cease to be playable were spotting routines to be altered so drastically as to make spotting very hard. Nobody is asking for anything like that. Steiner's summary is pretty much what I suggested elsewhere too, , Namely that camouflaged units are harder to spot before they open fire, that units in cover, particularly foxholes and trenches receive more benefit from their cover against HE, and that, in general, HE effects against infantry were tone down just a tad to benefit the AI opponent. And that there is a greater penalty to spotting for units that are moving, especially using QUICK and FAST Movement. I also think that the binocular bonus to spotting is too generous. Yes, bins are great for examining an area in greater detail but I doubt very much that anyone uses them when they're moving or just stopped for a short period at a waypoint.

A 7-second cycle of spotting would certainly explain some of the LOS oddities that crop up from time to time. But isn't this what a second processor could be doing? I've got one core doing absolutely nothing while I'm playing this game.

I have observed the spotting behaviour quite closely in the game. I was playtesting something where I had a Sherman drive FAST down to a road junction. The road to the junction was concealed by High Bocage as was the road running at 45o to the east. A Panther tank was sitting about 400m along that road behind some low bocage but otherwise perfect LOS. The tank commander was unbuttoned. This is what happened. The tank screeched down the road and the instant it moved into the Panther's LOS, I heard one of the Sherman crew say 'Enemy Vehicle spotted' and at the same time, the turret started rotating to fire on the fully identified Panther. According to the green text in the bootm left corner, the gunner immediately went from Spotting to Rotating. The Panther didn't spot the Sherman. So the time from spotting to reacting seems to be zero. It is possible to determine the precise moment a tank crew spots another vehicle from the audible clues and the crew text.

Same question. Same answer. No, it won't. Perhaps you're getting confused by CMx1's 'VP location switching control' trigger?

If you mean on its own initiative, the answer is no. But it can be scripted to do so.

I'd love to shower Battlefront with tons of praise but I'm sure they've had enough of that already. You can never hear enough praise for your efforts! Well, I can't:D

ah... how often the H2H/PBEM players are comfortable with issues that only really influence single play against the AI opponent. This is because, for them, most of these limitations can be overcome by human intelligence. At the end of your WEGO turn, you can move units from locations that mortar/artillery spotting rounds are closing in on, unbutton tanks that have been forced to button up, move forward and take a peek for 10-15 seconds to draw fire from an opponent before scuttling to safety, etc, etc, etc. I play this game exclusively against the AI because I design content for BFC to include on the disk. I am not the best 'tester' on the team as running hundreds of tests bores the crap out of me and I really have got better things to do with my game time than that. But what I do do is test my own AI plans in great detail. In the course of running tests I see how handicapped the AI side is in the game. When I'm testing, I AM the AI player and I get frustrated watching AI-controlled vehicles sit in place as the US 60mm mortar hones in on its position forcing the crew to button up rendering it next to useless for the remainder of the scenario. Or an AFV fire off a shot at some enemy infantry firing on their supporting troops and seeing the first shot fall short, kick up a small dust cloud that temporarily breaks LOS thus ending the threat to the defending infantry. And when LOS is re-established, it has to re-spot the infantry all over again before it can get off another round. I do feel that the game doiesn't sufficiently punish a unit that is moving quickly when spotting. The faster you move, the less likely you are to spot threats at distances. I know that when I'm running, I am mostly looking at the terrain in front of me and for traffic in my immediate vicinity while doing so. I'm seeing slit US Infantry squads (4-5 men) using FAST movement instantly spotting enemy infantry and vehicles moving nearly 1 km away on a thick hazy day. That doesn't seem right to me.

This is true. At the moment, it does feel like it is more random than it should be. . Indeed. If a stationary, unbuttoned tank was given a significant bonus to spotting an enemy tank moving into its frontal arc, where everyone is supposedly looking, then we would see instances of tanks moving into LoS of a stationary tank and getting the first shot off happen less frequently. Of course there should be an element of luck involved. For instance, the stationary tank crew may have been temporarily distracted by a loud fart from the driver and missed the Pz IV driving into its LoS. But the element of luck should play less of a factor than it appears to do so at the moment. At the end of the day, the player can do everything right to maximise his chances of getting that coveted spot and first shot and the game should reward him for doing so but not make it a sure thing because there's no such thing in life. So that it NEVER happens, no. I agree.

Heh heh! That's why some of us still remember him as 'Coaxial Ken'.

I just can't imagine any sane gunner pressing his face up against his periscope while the tank was driving. Seems like a very fast way to lose an eye. And if the tank had a gyroscope fitted, he'd probably be trying to avoid getting his skull smashed open by the gun. When the tank is stationary, the tank crew can benefit from his optics bonus.

I have actually done this myself when testing the Scottish Corridor campaign. Prior to receiving Brit units, I was using US units in their place. I drove a Sherman tank FAST down a road and as soon as it reached the bend, the crew literally instantly spotted a Panther tank positioned 45o to their right facing in their direction. It didn't happen ever time I ran this test but it happened often enough that it was wrong. Once the Churchills arrived, I noticed that the Churchill could do the same, albeit slightlyless frequently, but that could just be the God of Random Numbers screwing with me. So it's not a Sherman issue, it's a tank spotting issue.

The Eastern Front seems to me to be the place for them so I'll want to make one or two that have 2+ Battalions on at least one side. (Of course, there were some enormous battles in France as well but the Allies have so much going for them that I don't feel quite so inspired to create any for that theatre.) I made a couple of quite large ones, not HUGE, for my CMSF Red v Red campaigns so I'm not new to big CMx2 missions. In fact, it might be a lot of fun for a change.

Well, I'd be happy to do this as well if that's really what people want. Of course, the player doesn't have to follow my recommended plan if he doesn't want to. And there's no guarantee that it won't get you into trouble. I think most of the Beta designers already do this. But I don't have much time to play other folks stuff so I'm not exactly well-informed here (One day, I hope to take a break from designing and enjoy playing some from time to time though)

I have to confess that it surprises me when I read that people actually want the briefing to tell them what they should do. I would have thought that would count as a SPOILER? I prefer to know exactly what my mission objectives are and then decide how I should go about it myself. I would imagine a RL commander wouldn't be showing much respect for his subordinates abilities if he were to direct the attack himself. However, if that really is what you guys want, I'll be happy to tell you what to do in the future. It would be a simple enough thing to put this battle plan on the Tactical Map for example, and it would look good too. Seldom is perhaps overstating the case When I took over co-ordination of the three CMSF NATO campaigns, it was my stated intention that the briefings should NEVER deliberately mislead the player. It's a old, and very tired trick that's been around as long as CMx1 has been around. It's frankly boring IMO.

I have a couple of ideas sketched out for very large scenarios for the Bagration title. And I've got one monster tank battle on a very large map waiting for v2 to come along after which I can upgrade the 'Scottish Corridor' campaign. But for Normandy, I much prefer the reinforced company-sized missions myself.

Okay, I've got the mission open in the editor. Full Luftwaffe battalion minus the wepons company because they weren't in the actual battle. Full headcount 270 men. Conscripts with low morale. 93 casualties from one mortar team and the battalion is broken and running away. Game over

You're a strange one, Jon. I told you earlier in a thread about the same subject that you're on my ignore list and I will not read your posts to me and yet, here you are, posting immediately after me in a thread out here. The ignore function applies here too, you know

Nope. Not exaggerating. It's a Luftwaffe battalion. I should check the headcount but it is a battalion. It is very low quality too! Conscript -1 leadership with low morale advancing through wheatfields. One mortar team stymied the entire battalion attack. I halted the mission when I noticed the German icons moving in the wrong direction.