Bulletpoint

But to fire, you need to spot. At least when talking about opportunity fire. In that thread, the guy says his tank was knocked out through a lot of forest. I've seen similar things happen. I always assumed the reason was that each tree halved the chance of a spot. So spotting through ten trees would be 1/2^10 chance (a bit less than one in a thousand chance). This is a low chance, but you can multiply by ten units on the other side of the forest, and multiply again by ten games played, and then there's a one in tenth chance you'd see it happen. Because the game does those centre-to-centre checks, but not only ground-to-ground, also at various height levels. Probably it has 5 different height levels it checks for (prone, kneeling, standing, plus 2 vehicle heights). So the blue targeting line tells you there's LOS from ground-to-ground, and then reverse slope means that there's no ground-to-ground LOS but at least one of the other potential target heights is visible.

This is starting to feel a bit like quantum physics Maybe LOS in this game works a bit like a particle and a wave at the same time. Seriously though, I suspect we need to see this as based on squares, not based on "tree hit boxes". You can fire out of your own tree-square without penalty. You can fire through one (1) tree-square, and you can then fire into, but not through a third tree-square. So that's the maximum LOS penetration you can have in the game. I'm just pretty sure I've seen units engage each other through a lot more tree squares than that though. What's your take on this old thread?

I don't think so. I think HE is basically a case of the game drawing an invisible line from point of impact to each soldier within the potential kill range. If the line is blocked by a wall, ground, etc. then no further action is taken. If the line is clear, then there will be a "dice roll" made based on the size of the explosion and distance to target, plus cover type. In CMBS probably there's some modifier for body armour too - no such luck for my WW2 grunts. But even though the game doesn't model individual fragments etc. the end result is pretty much like your drawings.

All your tests are done very close to the trees. Does anything change if you try to place the spotter about 300m away from the trunks?

Thanks for the videos. I think what is happening here might be that while your visual targeting line is drawn from the individual soldier, the game calculates LOS from centre to centre. If there's a tree intersecting the line drawn from the centres of two squares, you will not be able to gain LOS between those two squares, unless 1) you get into the square with the blocking tree and there's no other trees blocking the line, or 2) you have an enemy contact marker at the target square, in which case LOS will begin to be calculated directly between your troops and the enemies there, based on their actual locations within the square. I am not 100 pct sure but I think this is how it works. And I think this is also the reason why LOS in orchards (where all trees are in the dead centre of their squares) seems so wonky.

No, it's a running argument, just like the halftrack gunners I think some people get confused because they think of peacetime demolition jobs where you have to drop the bridge in a symmetric way, at no risk to public property, and using the least amount of force. In a war, you just need to put a lot of explosives at one or two critical junctions. It could be argued that the engineers in the game currently don't carry enough explosive material for that kind of demolition, but that could be solved by making it possible to boost the amount of TNT they carry by giving them a higher equipment value. Maybe at a high rarity cost. For special missions. (Of course, some bridges are way bigger than others. In that case, maybe there could be more demolition points that had to be blown before the structure would collapse. Smaller bridges could then have one or two points, bigger bridges could have 6 or 8. But I realise it's a lot of coding for a quite narrow addition to the game. So doing it by Occupy for Time objectives could be a sort of halfway house)

We could also use timed objectives to make "blow the bridge" missions. Occupy and hold the bridge for 10 turns with your engineers, then EXIT all friendly forces. But would be nicer to have it as an extension of the blast command. (I know some say you can't blow a bridge in the time of a typical scenario, but I think that mostly depends on how many explosives you carry - at least that's what Hemingway wrote)

I think you might be confused because trees in the same square as the spotter don't block LOS/LOF. But once you get a bit farther away, they do block LOS/LOF. That's also the reason why you can hide your tank behind a tree and the tank can fire out, but incoming rounds will very often be blocked by the tree.

Trees are placed randomly within squares, so depending on where the actual trunks go, that affects LOS. Sometimes there will be "alleys" where there are no trees, leading to LOF corridors in woods. Also, are you sure that the position of that single soldier in the square doesn't matter? I think it does.

Did you make sure they are all the same experience level etc.? Did you make sure they have the same equipment level? Do the squads have the same number of men?

Because his target might be prone, which means at some distance, the LOS from kneeling guy to prone guy would pass through enough tall grass to block the LOS?

I actually suggested that some time ago, but it was not welcomed by the community I agree with you completely that the edge of the woods should be a "green wall". Many map makers actually place a lot of bushes outside for this reason, and it works so-so to block LOS into the trees, but of course it looks mainly like what it is - some trees with bushes outside.

That is a very good idea, I was kind of hoping it was already possible.....I think this is probably a MUST HAVE for CM:SF II, to facilitate properly timed insurgent attacks from previously undiscovered positions. I was thinking it could be used in WW2 titles as well, for example by requiring the player to clear out (occupy or touch) a potential ambush spot before the tanks would be sent forward as reinforcements. Or make B Company appear once A Company has reached phase line 1. Or have artillery assigned to your sector in case the enemy breaches your first line of defence.

Which is a perfectly valid reason not to implement it of course.

Come on, they are obviously smart people. The reason they haven't done it is either that they are not aware that it's something people would like to have, or that they simply decided against it for some other non-technical reason. Not that it's hard to do. Especially since most of the functions are already there. Who knows, maybe they just don't like the idea.

Problem being that you can't really properly area fire into wooded areas in this game, as you need the fire order to "click" into a specific square, and the trees block LOS. When you do get LOS, the trees will still block nearly all your bullets. Especially when you do 3 trees per tile as in your forest edge example.

Oh I could think of plenty of things to add. Things that would be super easy to program within the current engine and add a lot of gameplay. Just one example: Reinforcements by trigger. They already have the reinforcement groups in the editor, the touch objectives and the trigger system. Would take an hour to code and half a day to playtest.

Isn't that just because some of the bullets overshoot the target point and hit further back?

It does, but the problem here is not the facing. The problem is that this particular building had three windows. Window 1 and 2 had clear LOS, but window 3 hadn't. They started the battle in window 1, but then moved their gun to window 3 on their own initiative.

Let's forget about the team with the arc, because they had some enemies coming up the street, inside th earc, and they moved the MG to engage those, I suppose. After they gunned down their foes, the MG was stuck in a useless position, but I sort of accept it made sense to move the gun. The other team had no arc, but it had spotted no enemies, as far as I could tell, and there were definitely no enemies close. The team just suddenly decided to move the gun to another window for fun... apparently.

I have no info on that, sorry. I doubt it. My impression is that the developers just want to get as much return on investment as possible on the version we have now.

Personally, I would definitely choose CM3x, because the gameplay is what matters most to me, and there are so many fundamental things I would like to see fixed or improved. But I am sure there are others who have different ideas.

It happened in at least one stock campaign (Kampfgruppe Peiper?), but Battlefront released a fixed version.

I think that is a separate issue where JasonC could not get the LOS he believed there should be in the place he put his MG. My issue is about the LOS being fine, but that the MG will then for some reason move to another window later, spoiling the LOS.

No, the one with the arc got an 180 degree arc. I think that one moved the MG once enemy infantry was very close. The other one didn't get an arc, but no enemies were close either.