Bulletpoint

You're right. Just tested it out. A much deeper field of XT grass and Tall grass starts to block LOS too, but the target line penetrates farther into the grass before it gets blocked.

At this range (1255m), the tank is basically trying to look through the crops. I did some more testing, and if I move the tank closer, it will start to look over the crops. The grass, however, never blocks LOS at any distance. Actually that's not quite true. Tall grass causes very sparse, patchy LOS blocking, seemingly without any pattern.

I did a little test of spotting through crops in CMFB. . Here we have a tank crew. The guy on the left is sitting in XT (extra tall) grass. The guys on the right are sitting in crops. It's clear that the XT grass is much taller than the crops. Using a tall tank (Panther in this case), it's easily possible to target the other side of the tall grass. However, the crops block LOS very effectively, even though the crops are much shorter than the grass. I'm guessing the problem could be that the graphics of the crops have been changed to look like autumn, but that the game still treats the crops as tall summer plants, blocking LOS.

I used to believe it worked like that, but there was some guy recently who demonstrated that trees and forests in this game are somewhat abstracted, so it's more a game of chance if you can trace LOF through X-number of forest tiles.

No problem, I don't mind a bit of digression. Main point has been debated anyway

*tips hat* Did you play the mission in question yourself? Meijel Madness. Would like to hear your take on it, and if you had the same targeting issues that I have.

LOS for crew-served weapons is traced from the gunner's point of view specifically. A grey target line means the gunner has LOS but at least one other crew member does not. So if the gunner does not have LOS, but at least one other crew member has, does the game then display "no line of sight" or a grey targeting line?

That's definitely a factor often in play. I did notice a similar problem earlier in the same scenario though, where I was benefiting from it: One of my Lynx tanks somehow got a spot on an enemy Stuart through what seemed like a lot of trees. The Lynx started firing and just kept shooting for many turns, all shots getting stopped by the trees. The Stuart sat there and never spotted my Lynx and never returned fire. Eventually the Lynx destroyed enough foliage that a few shots started to get through, causing the Stuart to back off. It seems like this situation is like the M8 situation above, just in reverse. One vehicle gets a very unlikely spot, and somehow manages to stubbornly keep that spot indefinitely, whereas in other situations, normally targets drift in and out of active spotting. I'm not yelling this is a bug, but it's something that seems very odd to me.

Hm yes, good advice, and this is what I am trying to do. But leapfrogging overwatch and covering fire depends on the overwatch element actually being able to spot and engage enemy positions that open up. I've reloaded the original situation of this post a couple of times and tried various things out. It's clear that the LOS/LOF is not optimal because of the distance and various trees and a tiny bit of slope in the way. But it still seems the Shermans are dealing with these conditions way better than my tanks. The only thing that really helps me is to drive my Panthers closer. At around 1500m they start to engage "normally" - they start to spot and to keep their spot for more than a few seconds.

When the game says "no line of sight", that is supposed to mean it's impossible to see anything in that location - for all crew members. If it's just LOS blocked for one of the crew, you'd get a grey targeting line. If it's not possible to see the ground, but possible to see a location higher up, you get the "no aim point" message. Also, it's obvious that the scout car can draw LOF to the Panther gun level, so why not in reverse? For infantry, yes. Because they still count as a team. But three separate vehicle in three separate squares don't affect the spotting of each other, as far as I am aware.

Here's some more Panther fun from the same mission: Fritz, go check on that weird banging sound we've been hearing for the last five minutes. Starting to get a headache! Well, nothing to see here, nobody could shoot through all those trees. Press alt+t you dolt! Oh, it's one of those funny little battle wagons... Well, do something. Shoot! Sorry sir, can't shoot back. There's no line of sight. Not sure how I'm even seeing that thing.

I think I mis-explained. The Panthers HAD moved into position, but of course they were stationary in the spotting situation Again, I wouldn't be surprised the Shermans spotted the Panthers first and got off several shots before the Panthers could react, but it just seems unusual that they sit there for about 5 turns getting hammered and never return fire. I doubt this is modelled in the game. Having tanks travel together in a "fist" is usually a good tactic. Agreed, but I think engaging Shermans head-on at long range by Panthers is a quite sensible idea.

It's a nearly flat map crossed by various fences etc, so it looks like both sides are very slightly hull down to the other side. There are some lines of sparse trees separating the sides too. Shermans were stationary and Panthers moving into position, so it's natural that the Shermans spot the Panthers first. However, the issue was that the Panthers never seem to spot back. I agree of course that many factors go into an armour match up, and I'm just trying to find out what I'm missing here.

Hm, you might be on to something here. But I think a Panther is taller than a Sherman. There were a few lines of sparse trees between the Shermans and Panthers in the actual scenario. Maybe trees block the vision of Panthers much more than the Shermans? The logic would be that Panthers, being taller, get vision blocked by foliage, while Shermans, being shorter, can peek under the foliage?

That's why I added a question mark. They did lose a programmer though.

I think that goes for the whole gaming industry actually But yeah, I think that losing their main (?) programmer was a way bigger blow to their business than they will admit.

It's a good guess, but I did a test for that too. The conditions in the scenario (cold) mean that no dust is kicked up. Actually wind direction doesn't really matter much. I tested this out too. When setting strongest possible wind to come straight from the side, the dust cloud still travels quite a distance straight ahead before the wind catches it and moves it aside. It seems dust is much less affected by wind than smoke.

Not sure this would be really helpful though. A contact is a contact, no matter how it was picked up..

Alright, good to know. I didn't know it was a known issue.

Yes it normally can, but when it's inside a building, then the extra building setup time penalty applies every time. At least that's how it used to work, so unless they fixed it recently that's how it still works.

Yesterday I also noticed an infantry team in good condition got panicked by firing their own Panzerfaust. They ran out of the building they were in and into an open field.

From reading the old thread, it doesn't seem like anyone back then really understood that you had noticed a problem. I hope someone will notice it this time.

I had a green tank crew that got permanently "rattled" because their tank got stuck in mud

I haven't tested this. My assumption would be yes, but I can't say for certain.

I did another test, to see if the platoon intel sharing works by consensus. It doesn't: I had 4 out of 5 panthers actively spot the Sherman in its new location. Then I reversed them again so nobody could see anything. The four panthers now had the updated contact location for the Sherman. But the last panther still had the contact marker in the old location and it did not update it, even though the rest of its platoon now had the correct info.