Kaunitz

Walls & LOS Here are some LOS patterns for (straight, no gaps, no diagonals) wall-tiles (CM:BS): light green = clear LOS red = no LOS violet = reverse slope LOS dark green = in a radius of 39-40m around the spotter (exact value may differ based on unit quality, etc.?), measured from the spotting unit, there often is a full-LOS area red dot = spotting unit (always facing north) Large stone wall (adjacent spotter) Large stone wall (1 action spot+ distance) Small stone wall (adjacent) Small stone wall (1 action spot+ distance) Low bocage (adjacent spotter) Low bocage (1 action spot+ distance) It seems as if the violet (reverse-slope) area reaches out exactly one spot (adjacent to the bocage-spot itself) in front of the bocage. Hedge (adjacent spotter) The violet (reverse-slope) LOS area reaches out ca. 10 meter to the front of the hedge. The number and the angle of the light green LOS "wedges" are an approximation. You get the idea: The more to the center, the larger the angle. Hedge (1 action spot+ distance) Note that at 1 action spot distance, the violet (reverse-slope) LOS reaches out ca. 50m to the front of the hedge. With 2 action spots distance, it reaches out ca. 100m. ------------------------------- So, thinking about my woodland-scenario, by the looks of it, placing someone behind a low bocage and then placing another tile of low bocage in front of him might be a rather bad idea on flat terrain. I better use a bocage + hedge combination to keep spotting capability high while (hopefully) increasing hiding capability. At least this is true for LOS-area. LOS-strength might be a different matter, but also here I would believe that the hedge blocks LOS less than the bocage.

Looking at your link, I can only say that I have not made any experiments with houses so far. Trees are complicated enough for now But the tank in the street-situation does not contradict the theory. It's just that you cannot find ANY clear-LOS-point in the target-spot at all, because the target spot is completely filled/obscured by the house. Perhaps if there was a small rim of open territory around the house in the action spot, you would have been able to area-target the spot by clicking on the rim (insider-tactics? ). At least that would be my guess. So maybe it's related to modular buildings that fit together seamlessly? Or perhaps a unit's LOS is usually strong enough to barely penetrate the LOS-hitbox of a house-wall (so that units in houses can actually be spotted). And in this case, for some reason, the tank's LOS was so weak that it could no longer penetrate the house (and therefore see any point in the spot which would have allowed it to area-fire). But I really don't know. Would have been interesting to see where the LOS was blocked. Right at the housewall? Was the housewall located at the border of an action-spot? Or perhaps it is related to the angle? Perhaps the angle makes the game believe that your LOS is penetrating two housewalls (the one on the side and the one on the front), which blocks your LOS into the house. I suspect that a housewall/any object/hitbox is at least one meter "thick" and perhaps in your situation you can't get an angle that does not hit that one meter where both walls are applied (because the other part of the housewall is covered by the other house...). Maybe the game even is so detailed that it takes into account point by point (m by m) and applies a LOS-blocking-malus for each point? And if your angle is too steep, you might end up with your LOS cutting trough two points of "dense house wall" (completely blocking your LOS into the house) instead of one point (which could be seen-through). Thanks! The height system makes perfect sense. I wonder which height is used for "reverse-slope" LOS.

My observations point in a different direction. The target-command does not tell me whether I can target the center of the action square. If you take a look at the last diagrams again, you can see that, depending on which point of the action-spot I have my mouse-cursor/"target-command", the LOS can be either clear (allowing me to place the target command) or blocked (so I cannot place it). So, within a single action spot, there can be places that are considered to be "clear" as well as places that are considered to be "blocked". The determining factor is how much LOS-blocking stuff my LOS touches until it reaches my cursor (If LOS is blocked, however, it always happens at the border between two action spots). Imagine that the action-spot-grid was laid over this graphic. In the blue area, I get clear LOS, in the white area, I get blocked LOS. So both is true: there can be clear and blocked areas in a single spot, and LOS is always blocked at the border of spots - presumably because it hit the "grass"- ground-hitbox which has the shape of the action spot. Other terrain features like walls might very well abruptly stop LOS (within a spot). Regarding area-fire, my experience was that as long as you can find a single clear-LOS point in an action-spot (the LOS-starting point is drawn according to the positioning of the soldiers of the spotting unit), you can place an area-fire-command on the spot (which will stick to the center of the spot). However, the crux is that if the LOS you've managed to find was very fiddly and delicate, most soldiers in your unit will still be unable to fire. (Perhaps because they proceed to check if they can see any point in the target spot to fire at it? And if there is just one clear LOS-point you could find, then the chances are high that your soldiers have no LOS on the target-square from their individual positions either.) Questions, questions, questions

I don't have a terrain-grid-mod either. But it's quite easy to check in the scenario editor. Just switch between the target-command (t) and movement-command (n), which highlights action spots. Yes, artillery can explode if it hits trees. But, as you say, I can't tell if it is when it hits the trunk or a LOS-hitbox. But this only applies to the LOS-line that the player gets to see when he issues a target-command. As Vanir Ausf B has stated, the game itself uses a different approach to handle spotting in its actual gameplay-resolution. If I try to interpret Vanir Ausf B: Apparently, for each spotting intervall (I assume spotting does not occur every single second but in larger intervalls?), the game checks for each unit whether a clear LOS can be drawn from the center of its action spot to the center of the action spots of enemy unit. If this check fails, then no spotting occurs. If it succeeds, the individual soldiers of the unit get to make a spotting attempt against (all the individual soldiers? - it often happens that my unit spots only a single enemy soldier of a larger unit, so I assume it works like that) of the enemy unit, with LOS being drawn from their actual positions within the spot.

This might help: I took a look at a group of trees (density 1) and noted down where exactly the lines of sight of my spotter got blocked. The red dots are tree-trunks, the grid equals action-spots, ground type was grass, spotter prone. Observations: LOS always gets stopped at the border between-action-spots. I'm not sure if that means that the whole LOS-system is based on spots. On one hand, I've never seen a LOS blocked directly at/by a tree-obstacle (sometimes, when the tree is placed very close to the border, it looks as if this is the case), but only at the next action-spot-border that the LOS tried to cross. On the other hand, obstacles such as buildings and walls can instantly block LOS, within an individual action-spot. Obviously the footprint of trees for LOS purposes (= "foliage") is larger than their footprint for LOF purposes (= the trunk). You can clearly see that LOS lines are shorter even when they're close to a tree - they do not need to touch the trunk. Whereever a LOS is stopped early on, it should be safe to assume that it has touched the LOS-footprint of at least two trees. (Not depicted here, but when a LOS only touches a single, isolated tree, it is not stopped). The exception to this rule are the cases marked with blue dots in this image: Note that in all these three cases, one would expect the LOS to be blocked sooner because LOS certainly goes through two tree-LOS-hitboxes. The reason why LOS can reach out one spot further seems to be that they cross into the next spot almost exactly at the intersection of 4 spots (blue dot). The position of individual trees does matter. If it didn't, we should not be able to get the clear LOS in the center. ------- With short trees (treetop closer to ground) things seem to get more messy and random (orchard-phenomenon?).

Bulletpoint, I'm only looking at LOS (the target-command-line) not at fire combat. So, it's just about spotting, not firing. I'm quite sure that LOS is not based on 8x8m squares, but on a more detailed "resolution" (and some form of hitboxes). If it was all based on squares, then how could the game create those "reverse-slope"-effects (LOS-shadows/dead ground) behind walls? Also, the game needs a very sophisticated model in order to handle minute undulations in the ground-mesh and soldiers' stances as excellently as it is handling them right now. Also, the videos and my observations clearly suggest that LOS through trees is not based on squares but that it does indeed take the position of individual trees into account. There are only that many variables once we know that the game considers individual trees: 1. the actual tree trunk (we know that it affects bullets, but what about LOS?), 2. an (invisible) LOS-hitbox (we know that the game represents foliage somehow; the exact shape is unknown, 3. the blocking value of the LOS-hitbox (we have official information that LOS is "degraded" when it cuts through terrain features). The link you posted includes an official bit of information by battlefront.com (quoted above; page 2 in the thread). This information and my own observations were the basis for my "theory" ( ) on.

Sorry, I have only scanned through the videos in this thread quickly, so I didn't notice that it had already been posted. Thanks for the expert info.

I've tried it out with greater distances (but still in clear terrain - i.e. no terrain degrades my LOS before it hits the trees). It doesn't change a thing. Even if there is a greater distance between the spotter and the trees, the spotter can consistently see through 1 tree. But if his LOS cuts through two trees, it will be stopped at the next obstacle (which - for a prone spotter - is grass in most cases). However, there is a bit of inconsistency, regardless of distance. Sometimes, I should be cutting only through one tree (i.e. my LOS into the next action-spot should be clear) but the result suggests that I'm cutting through two trees (my LOS is blocked at the next obstacle). This seems to happen sometimes when there is another tree close by so that my LOS runs "in between" the two trees and touches only the trunk of one tree. It happens more often with some types of trees than with others. My suspicion is that it might be pointing to different hitboxes for trees and that their LOS-hitboxes might be randomly aligned around the visible trunk. But I admit that this is a very bold hypothesis: Well that's pretty much what I had in mind when I said "physics"-based. So this would suggest that you can intentionally design positions to offer protection against HE rounds. For example, placing sandbag walls can be quite handy for blocking shrapnel from vertical HE/artillery, especially in broad trenches (elevation works by aaction spot 8x8 meters - which results in very broad trenches). PLacing sandbag walls would seperate the trech into several compartments/reduce the risk (at least for kneeling or prone soldiers).

@Vanir Ausf B Thank you for the info! It certainly makes sense. From what I can say by looking at the game, spotting seems to be highly sophisticated. So I wondered how the game could ever handle all the calcualtions behind it. -------------------- LOS conclusion/theory I think it’s time to draw a line and summarize my risky theory. Once again, I have to point out that all of this the result of me trying to understand what’s happening in the game. None of it is official/insider-information or confirmed in any way. The following is based on my observations in the game and these official passages by battlefront.com: The way it works is the LOS line is "degraded" as it is drawn from point to point. The more cumulative crap in the way the less strong the line becomes. The quality of the spotter, the less restrictions on view, etc. give the line a higher starting value than a LOS line drawn from a unit with negative factors. Some of the factors are specific (restrictions on range of view or height for example), others are general (optics of X type vs. eyeballs is the best example). Each piece of terrain has ratings which determine how much the line is degraded when it comes to that piece. At some point the line is so degraded that it is considered "blocked". The 3D graphics of the foliage plays absolutely no role in LOS drawing since that is simply impossible to do because the computers are totally not up for it. This is the primary reason for potential disconnect between the visual representations in the game and the ability to spot. LOF, which is not the same as LOS, is a little different. LOF does pay attention to the pixels on the screen at least to some extent. Foliage is one of the things that is a "no" except for the trunks. This is possible to do because shots are fired in low enough quantities that there is enough CPU power to allow for more calculations. Plus, LOF is a binary decision about if something should keep going or stop, not the sort of conditional quality stuff going on with LOS. [http://community.battlefront.com/topic/121832-something-very-wrong-with-los-through-trees/?do=findComment&comment=1652113] So, here comes my attempt at understanding LOS (the one that is shown to you when you issue a target-command). LOS seems to be drawn from point to point, not from action-spot to action-spot (8x8m). I don’t know the exact “resolution” of the grid used for this (1m intervals?). When using the target-command (during turn-resolution, the game uses a routine described by Vanir Auf B ), the starting point of a LOS is calculated from the positions of your unit’s soldiers within the square. If there is just one soldier in your unit, then the LOS starts at his head. If there are two soldiers in the square, then LOS starts in the center in between them, etc. I don’t know how the starting height of a LOS is determined (kneeling/standing/prone) if there are more than one soldiers in the unit. For LOS-purposes, terrain features and objects/houses (except for flavor objects?) have a hitbox and a LOS-blocking value. Ordinary ground-types (like dirt, grass, long grass, etc.) are also treated as a terrain feature for this purpose and come with a hitbox and a blocking-value respectively. Whereas objects such as trees and walls have comparatively small, individually shaped hitboxes, ground-hitboxes fill the whole action-spot (8x8m). Ground-hitboxes still come with varying height though - for example, the hitbox of tall grass seems to have a greater height than that of ordinary grass, and the forest hitbox seems to be even taller. At any point, a LOS has a certain strength or quality. The starting strength of a LOS depends on the quality and equipment (binoculars) of the spotting unit and probably also on light and weather condition of the scenario. Whenever the LOS of a unit (drawn from it’s starting point as described above) touches/cuts through the hitbox of a terrain-feature, the LOS’ current strength is compared to the terrain-feature’s blocking value. If the strength is high enough, the terrain-feature’s blocking value is substracted from the LOS’ strength and the LOS is allowed to pass through the terrain feature. If the LOS’ strength is not sufficient to penetrate the terrain feature, however, the terrain feature’s hitbox acts like a wall. Depending on the angle between the spotter and the hitbox, this might create a “reverse slope”-LOS. As ground-hitboxes (grass, dirt, mud, etc.) are omni-present on the battle-field, it is often a ground-hitbox that finally stops a LOS. This might be the reason why one gets the impression that LOS is working based on (8x8m) action-spots rather than points? The stronger a LOS is on a certain point, the more likely the chance to spot enemies there (but see Vanir Ausf B's comment on the game's spotting routine). In the game, you can’t really see how strong your LOS is on a certain point, you only get to know at what point it reaches zero (no LOS). Having a LOS on a point does not automatically mean you can effectively fire on it. LOS-calculations use LOS-hitboxes – for bullet-mechanics, the game uses a different system. E.g. tree trunks block bullets, but not neccessarily LOS - it depends on whether the (invisible) LOS-blocking ("foliage")-hitbox of the tree is exactly where the trunk is and how strong its blocking value is. Often, one tree is not enough to block a LOS completely - it takes 2 or more trees to reduce LOS to zero (this is why people get the impression they can see through nearby trees). What I keep asking myself is if and how this system generates spotting/LOS-advantages. I.e. how come two equal units can have a different chances to spot each other. Does LOS-blocking value of terrain increase with distance? Is the terrain of the action-spot in which the spotter is positioned ignored for calculating his LOS? ------------------------------- @Bulletpoint My attempt to explain the LOS-behaviour in the second video: I do believe that the target-command-LOS is drawn/calculated from the point that the game actually shows you. I think that the video makes this quite clear because touching trees has an effect on my LOS, and the line for determining whether my LOS touches a tree or not is not drawn from the center of the action-spot, but in relation to the soldiers in the spot. There are two odd things in the second video: 1) my unit can see through 1 tree-trunk – a LOS that touches one tree trunk is not stopped 2) a LOS that touches 2 tree-trunks (and two action-spots of dirt?) however, is stopped - but not immediately at the second trunk, but rather at the edge of the next action-spot (!). [this is a very consistent observation - when your LOS touches too many trees (depending on their LOS-blocking values), it will very often be stopped at the edge of the next action-spot, not directly at the tree itself] This could be explained by the theory pretty well. The LOS has a starting strength of - let’s say - 10. The first hitbox it could touch is the ground-hitbox of the neighbouring square. However, since the ground-type is dirt, I don't think there actually is a hitbox here (or at least it's effect would be trifling). So, the LOS keeps its value of 10. Next, it touches the hitbox of a tree (this hitbox's position might or might not be identical with the tree-trunk that you see – different trees come with different hitboxes). This heavy foliage-obstacle reduces LOS by 5, so it is now 5. Next, the LOS crosses over to the next action-spot - again dirt, so no effect. Then comes the second tree which reduces LOS to 0. Therefore, LOS cannot penetrate the next obstacle on its way, which is a ground-hitbox (grass). Unlike dirt, grass has an actual hitbox and a blocking value. And since LOS power is already 0, LOS is blocked at the grass-square. What I do not understand, however, is why LOS is immediatly blocked. My theory would suggest a reverse-slope LOS (prone spotter versus grass-hitbox at 3 spots distance) from this point on. By comparison: if the LOS only touches one tree on its way, it has enough power to penetrate the grass-spot. Also, LOS was able to go through 2 trees and carry on over dirt-ground - i.e. when it was not stopped by a grass-hitbox. ------------------------------- HE impacts & trenches Now that I've tried to understand concealment, my other point of interest for creating my scenario (a mechanized platton attacking a dug-in squad) is artillery, or more generally: HE-rounds (including horizontal HE such as tank-shells or RPGs). The lack of any kind of overhead protection seems to make off-board artillery a no-go for CM:BS as airburst-shelling seems to obliterate infantry in foxholes and trenches a bit too quickly for my taste. And even ordinary ammo is quite effective against troops placed in trench-units. This made me wonder how HE rounds are handled by the game. I assume that they do indeed work on a physics-basis. So, does an explosion/shrapnel take into account the angle of the ground at the impact-spot? Are individual shrapnel pieces modeled? etc. If it was physics based, one could alter arty-effectiveness by modifying the ground-mesh (dig real trenches, so to speak, not just placing trench-units). I have tried out some designs and I do think my battle-positions do indeed have a positive effect on HE-protection. But testing is a very delicate matter here, and the offmap-arty-panic-issue makes it even harder. A small sketch about my thought-process for the trench-design: The best battle-position would be as narrow as possible (to reduce target-area for direct vertical hits and airburst-shrapnel) with sharp edges (against vertical hits) and have a flat silhouette (to counter horizontal HE fire).

Not exactly recent, but I found this one (clip starting at 13:42) pretty scary. I don't understand a word, but it seems to show separatist (Luhansk people's republic) infantry and two APCs attack an Ukranian position on what must be the worst possible route, in an open field. Stopped by a tank that suddenly showed up at close range. It seems as if the infantry spotted the tank first. They fired RPGs but missed (?). The RPGs' explosions created a lot of smoke? One shot almost hit the other separatist APC which was crossing at fast speed. Then the tank hits the APC at least two times? Then there is a cut and we can see a lot of burning vehicles, the separatists on the retreat.

I'm quite certain that tree trunks do not affect LOS (LOS =/= LOF). Distance doesn't matter. It must be the foliage (must be some kind of hitbox around a tree trunk) that degrades LOS (quite heavily, depending on tree type). A little video: The soldier is positioned on the grass-square. He has decided to be at the corner where the neightbouring square's trunk offers some protection. As you can see, seeing through tree-trunks is not a problem, even 1 or 2 squares away. After the second square though, LOS is blocked. Not by a tree-trunk, but what seems to be the border between the two actions squares (this is how I came up with the diagrams above). This is also why I thought trees might just act like ground-tiles, on a square-basis. I assumed that LOS had been degraded by cutting through two squares of density 1 trees so much that it could not enter the next square of trees. But upon closer inspection, and also with other types of trees, the results are very variable, so that the individual position of trees (with their foliage-hitboxes) must play a role here. Maybe the hitbox of this particular type of tree is so large that it produes more consistent LOS-results. Other trees' hitboxes might be narrower, so that there is a chance that a LOS comes at an angle that does not cut through the hitbox and is not degraded/blocked. if this was a tree of a different, taller type, foliage-hotboxes must look differently or have a smaller LOS-blocking effect as units can see much farther through them/their foliage-hitboxes). Here is a second video that shows a different tree type (same density as above) and a different result. Unlike before, here the position of the tree(trunks) seems to matter. My suspicion is that - unlike the former tree- this tree's foliage-hitboxes are narrower, so that a LOS coming at a certain angle can evade them (so the LOS keeps its power and can go on). If you hit the foliage-hitboxes, your LOS is degraded. Note that when my LOS cuts through trunks/narrow foliage-hitboxes (in this case, I cut through two) I can still target the point immediately behind the trunk in the same square, but the LOS is degraded so that it cannot enter the next square.

Okay after some more testing I think that you are correct that trees do work in a more detailed way. I can drag LOSes of very variable power through a wood (how many squares do I still get clear vision after the LOS cuts through 1 square of a density 3 wood). So indeed it must be based on a more detailed model, not on a broad-brush "per square" model. Also, there are differences between individual tree-types. It can't be the treetrunks themselves though. The situation posted above makes this pretty clear. Also, I sometimes had a more powerfull LOS when the LOS was cutting right through a trunk! So my guess is that it might rather have something to do with the shape of the trees' foliage/soft blocker-hitboxes? I also run an experiment in order to check whether units ignore the terrain in their own square for LOS-calculations. I put unit A on a heavy-concealment-square (heavy forest, 3 trees, hedge) and another unit B on an open square and checked how far they could see across the same kind of terrain. Both could see the same distance, which suggests that unit A's LOS was not degraded by the heavy cover in it's starting square. But I need to run the rest many more times to make any real conclusion.

I found that for LOS-purposes, the exact location of trees within the square does not matter at all. This is also what the official post (linked above) clearly suggests. For LOS, a square that has three trees on it is a square of tree XY/density 3. You can drag your LOS through treetrunks without any problems (until you reach the end of the (half-)square...). When it comes to bullets, however, it's an entirely different matter, as individual tree-trunks block bullets. But until now, I admit that I also had the impression that individual treetrunks affected my LOS (target-command). But now that I gave it a detailed look, this might have been a wrong impression. I was clearly able to drag my LOS through treetrunks (as long as I had LOS in that square!), and the LOS was blocked or clear based on the layout of squares (see picture above), not of the individual treetrunks. You can place a single soldier directly with his face pressed against a tree - he can still see through (but he might not be able to fire). For some reason my screenshot cannot not capture my mouse-cursor and the LOS-line. I've added it (red line). My LOS cuts through the tree, but I had a clear LOS to the end point. This also works with distant trees. LOS (unlike LOF) is not blocked by individual treetrunks. As a sidenote: I was a bit surprised that this team was able to see though the low bocage wall-tile (the dark green bush). A quick test showed me that bocage acts as a soft blocker. It seems to drastically decrease LOS-quality, but it doesn't automatically block LOS. If you're close enough (so that your LOS quality is still high enough to "penetrate" the bocage-square, like it is the case here), you can see through - but your LOS-quality will be bad "behind" the bocage. In fact, a prone soldier placed 1 square away from the first hedge has enough LOS-power to see through 2 hedges and 4 squares of ploughed field! As for the position of the spotter within the square, It is interesting to note that when you draw a LOS, it does not start at the center of the square of the unit. Rather, it starts in relation to the individual soldiers' positions within that square. For example, in a unit of two men, the LOS always starts at the center of an imaginative line between the two soldiers. It's also interesting to note that sometimes a grey LOS-line comes up, suggesting that at least one weapon in the unit cannot draw a LOS (LOF to be correct!) to a particular point in the target square. So here the game clearly takes into account position of a weapon and the exact spot targeted in the square. It's hard to tell where the game draws the line between LOF (detailed resolution, using individual points within a square; "cover") and LOS (based on squares; "concealment/spotting"). NOTE TO SELF: It seems as if fllavour objects don't block LOS, but they do stop bullets. So it should be possible to use unsuspicious flavour objects (e.g. rocks) intentionally to improve the cover of a fighting position (better for my nerves than fiddling around with the terrain mesh and elevation-edges...).

A quick tree-experiment. It seems as if LOS in trees can be explained by the model quite well. One could regard trees (foliage-tiles) in the same way as ground-tiles, just with a different LOS-blocking value and a differently shaped (taller) hitbox. Note the strange irregular pattern (half-LOS-squares). I had noticed a similar effect when I had my unit look through ground-tiles before. That diagonal LOS-extension seems to be consistent. PS: Density 2 and 3 lead to the same results for tree A. But I assume that LOS still deteriorates faster in density 3. So, you're more likely to spot someone on a LOS-square in density 2 than in density 3. The one thing I would really be interested in is whether the LOS-blocking effect of terrain increases with distance AND/OR whether the square in which a unit is positioned is ignored for calculating the LOS of that very unit. Increasing the LOS-blocking effect of terrain with distance would result in cover-advantages. If you're close to a terrain piece, you can see through - if you're far away, you can't. It's a keyhole-effect. Certainly the game does either of these two - otherwise cover wouldn't really work as both units in a spotting duel would always have the same chance to spot each other (even if one is in a wood and the other in the open). The game engine certainly does produce cover-advantages - very clearly e.g. when wall-tiles are involved (e.g. a unit behind a hedge certainly ignores the LOS-blocking-effect of that hedge). It would be interesting to know if ordinary terrain (ground and foliage tiles) can also deliver a spotting-advantage or whether foliage (unlike walls) always works in both ways. I need to run some tests. If we assume that the game ignores the terrain in which a unit is placed for calculating that unit's LOS, then this is how you would gain the greatest cover-advantage for unit A against unit B: maximum cover in the square in which the unit A is placed (ground-tile with high LOS-blocking value - e.g. heavy forest; foliage tile with high LOS-blocking value - e.g. density 3 "low" trees; wall-tile - e.g. hedge). This cover is ignored by unit A but not by unit B. Any terrain in between unit A and B works in both directions, i.e. it reduces the LOS-quality of both units, reducing their spotting chance. It can be used to fine-tune risk/security for unit A. Note that the LOS needs to cut through the hitbox of the terrain (i.e. it needs to cut across a certain height of the ground) for terrain like high grass to take effect. Note that the stance of the unit matters for this purpose (prone/kneeling/standing)! E.g. you could design a map so that unit A has excellent concealment against unit B's position when it goes prone. Unit B should be in the open.

double post, sorry

Oh, that would make perfect sense. Thank you! It's the "if you stand up I can see you because I'm taller than the grass"-effect (see picture). If this sketch was true (remember this is all purely speculative) then allowing area-targeting on reverse slope spots would be a nice addition - simply because noone is safe from suppression and bullets behind a LOS-blocking wall made of grass . It's probably still all totally wrong.

I've been trying to delve into the whole terrain/LOS aspects of the CM, but there is not a lot of info available on the forum for obvious reasons. I can only experiment in the editor. Here is how I believe the game determines LOS (when you use the target-command): There are hard and soft LOS-blockers. Hard LOS-blockers instantly block any LOS unless the LOS passes over the blocker's hitbox: trunks of foliage-tiles (even low bushes have very small trunks) wall-tiles (hedges, walls, bocage): you can imagine a hedge to look just like a wall for this matter. buildings the ground-mesh itself/hills Soft LOS-blockers seem to decrease the LOS quality square by square. Once the LOS-quality reaches 0, your LOS is blocked. This is what an official post suggests (see below): ground: Certain ground types like tall grass or forest deteriorate your LOS if your LOS actually cuts through the hitbox of the tile [I do believe there is some kind of hitbox involved, otherwise why would I get the reverse-slope-LOS and the difference between kneeling and crouching stance in my experiment (see below)]. Once your LOS-quality reaches zero, it seems as if the hitbox of the ground-tile is treated like a hard-LOS-blocker. (see experiment below) foliage: according to the official post, foliage acts as soft blocker that deteriorates LOS-quality (if the LOS cuts through the hitbox of the foliage). I assume it's also based on action-squares, not individual points within the squares (like the hard blockers)? So, from my understanding, foliage and ground decreases the quality of any LOS cutting through their hitbox. I assume that LOS-quality affects spotting chances. When LOS-quality reaches zero, LOS is completely blocked. Hard blockers immediatly block LOS. Experiment: Looking through soft blockers? Since it is an easy experiment, I tested how troops can see through certain ground-types (like tall grass, forest). Note I'm not talking about foliage-tiles (actual trees), just the ground-types that you paint over the map. So, I took a perfectly flat map and a MG team in prone stance and let them look through different types of terrain. Here are the results: In tall grass, they had a clear LOS for a distance of ca. 11 squares. From square 12 up to square 102, they had a "reverse slope, no aim point"-LOS. LOS was completely blocked from square 103 on. In forest ground (light or heavy doesn't matter here) LOS was clear up to 12, reverse slope until 42, then blocked. Ordinary grass or dirt: clear up to the end of my testing range (square 125+) The same experiment with kneeling soldiers: In tall grass: clear up to square 41, reverse slope for the rest of my testing range (square 125+). In forest: clear up to square 19, reverse slope for the rest of the testing range (square 125+) Ordinary grass and dirt: clear How to interpret these results? Here is my hypothesis (see picture 1). A different hitbox-shape might explain the different result for forest and tall grass (picture 2). What I don't understand, however, is the difference between kneeling and prone stance. If the kneeler is higher than the ground-tile-hitbox, then why is there even a reverse-slope on his LOS? If he was lower than the ground-tile-hitbox, on the other hand, then how come his "clear LOS" reaches out farther than that of his prone collegue? I'd also like to try out what happens when there are patches of different ground-types involved. But things get very complicated here. ------------------------------------------------------ Official post on this topic:

If you move a vehicle into the woodland-edge, it destroys the hedges that are placed there.

@Bulletpoint That's true. Actually, finding a LOS into the wood from the outside is a bit tricky, but not that difficult, especially when you elevate the inside of the wood a bit (to prevent the "reverse-slope, no aimpoint"-problem). The second issue that you mention is more problematical. Indeed the woodland-edge stops many (not all) shells and bullets. So, firing into the edge-zone is very easy, firing into the "interior" of the wood, however, is difficult. Trees are concrete structures invulnerable and impenetrable for tank rounds in CM. However, this problem does not directly affect the main idea of placing wall-tiles (in the form of hedges, boage) instead of foliage-tiles (trees, bushes) to provide concealment for troops at the wood-edge. It affects the visual appeal though. The dense trees at the edge are primarily an aesthetical necessity. I have placed them here to create a gapless canopy of leaves - cover and concealment was not my main intent. I can replace those trees with dense bushes that have no trunks (so they don't stop fire into the wood). But this doesn't look nearly as good as my current solution. What I would need is "higher" bushes (as tall as the smallest "G" tree). Inside of the wood, area fire is not a big problem, as I use a low density (only 1 tree per square) wood-layout with very tall trees (no treetop-foliage obscures LOS on the ground level).

Okay, after some more research, I make myself look like a total newbie again. Apparently, irl, you can differentiate: image intensification - basically a sight that is more sensitive to tiny amounts of light. As it works just as ordinary vision, it is not any more capable when it comes to detecting concealed enemies or seeing through smoke - it just gives you better vision at night. infrared/thermal imaging - shows the heat of a surface, doesn't need any light at all. Excellent for spotting concealed enemies at night AND at day, can also see through smoke. So, apparently, all vehicles that have an "IR optics" system come with thermal sighting. The night vision googles of infantry or vehicle crews, however, could refer to image intensification OR thermal imaging (under the assumption that the game actually treats intensification and thermal imaging differently)? As the name "night vision" suggets, I assume that it rather refers to image-intensification, not thermal sighting. Unless of course the unit comes with a weapon that gives them thermal sighting, like most ATGMs or the M107A1 sniper rifle (and only as long as the weapon is still intact?!). Special weapons have no damage-panel, so you can't look up the weapon's optics.

I'm at a loss to understand the different kinds of spotting devices for vehicles in the game. Maybe there's someone with more experience or information out there to help me out? Apparently, apart from plain eyeballs and ordinary binoculars, there are more sophisticated spotting devices in the game: IR optics: Infrared optics are represented by the night-vision-googles in the "special equipment"-panel and by "IR optics" in the damage-panel of a vehicle-unit. I suppose that this determines the unit's spotting capability in night-time scenarios? thermal optics: According to the manual, some vehicles feature thermal optics. I can't really make out how/if this kind of information is represented in the unit-information UI. It might be the ordinary binocular-symbol? E.g. I noticed that the T-72 has binocluars shown in the panel (in addition to the night-vision googles), while the BMP-2 does not. In the damage-panel, I couldn't find any entry for "thermal optics" (but maybe it is not shown because the list is too long). I suppose that thermal sighting greatly boosts a unit's spotting capability both at night AND at day? So I wonder: does the same symbol (binoculars) refer to varying degrees of spotting capability? I would assume that a binocular-symbol for an infantry-unit represents ordinary optical binoculars - except for some special weapons that might have thermal sighting as well, while a binocluar-symbol for a vehicle-unit represents thermal sighting? Vehicle-binoculars=thermal vision would be far superior to optical vision? Also, I wondered which type of optics can see through (black or white) smoke? Last but not least, I've read that spotting might indeed work on a very detailed basis, so that vehicles have worse chances to spot into a direction where they has no/fewer vision slits (this obviously refers to WWII titles...). EDIT: I figured out that the equipment shown in the special-equipment panel has nothing to do with the vehicle itself, but rather with the crew. E.g. let a tank-crew bail out and you'll see that they still have the binoculars and the night-vision-googles with them.

Here is a suggestion to make concealment work more reliably: If you - as a scenario desinger - use wall/fence-tiles in order to represent undergrowth, instead of foliage-tiles (trees, bushes) I find players have less troubles with spotting and foliage. Simply because you replace the unreliable foliage-concealment by consistent hedge/wall-concealment. Units positioned directly at a hedge can look through it pretty well, while towards the "outside", the hedge offers very good concealment unless you give away the position by firing.

I want to share what might be an interesting idea for fellow scenario-designers. I've been thinking about woods and thickets for my scenario lately. Looking at the maps featured in CM, planting trees on top of forest-ground seems to be the most common method. But then I asked the internet. And the internet gave me the idea that there might be a better way to give woods a bit more love, both in terms of gameplay-mechanics and aesthetics. The problem I found with most woods on CM-maps is that they lack a proper woodland-edge (http://www.spektrum.de/lexikon/geographie/waldmantel/8789) - a rim of ca. 10-20 meters (1-2 squares) of very thick bushes and small trees. Basically, you want to create a rising, unbroken forest canopy, with bushes on the outside, followed by trees growing in size as you go deeper, first leaf trees, then conifers. A proper woodland-edge should block any LOS into the wood and provide excellent concealment. Once you're "inside" the wood, you'd get larger trees, i.e. no more treetops blocking your LOS. Right now, mapmakers seem to rely on an increased density of trunks in order to block LOS into woods. This looks and feels wrong and severely restricts the ability to fire "out of the wood". Also, as long as concealment in woods comes from tree-trunks, moving to the edge (from inside) is very dangerous as the number of trunks between you and the enemy decreases. Breaking up forests into an edge-zone and an "interior"-zone is the way to go! With those dense hedges at the edge, you can quick-move units to the edge and only let them crawl the very last square safely. With treetrunks only, quick-moving towards a forest-edge was a game of roulette. After quite a lot of testing and fiddling around, I'm quite happy with my result (see screenshots). The most important finding was that - in CM:BS - you must not use "bushes" (foliage terrain) but bocage (fence-terrain) to represent thickets in the woodland-edge (or thickets in general!). What I've done is to simply place hedges in totally random patterns to create thickets. In my playtesting, the results were superb. Not only does the "low bocage" that I used provide excellent concealment (and still let's you see out), but also, a 2-3 square-wood-land-edge gives the enemy a much harder time when it comes to selecting suspected targets for area fire. Also, I placed smaller random patches of bocage/hedges "inside" the wood. This was a real relevation. The combination of readily available lines of sight (because there are only high trees "inside" the wood, so LOS is only obstructed by spaced-out tree trunks) and drastically increased concealment potential (hedges everywhere) led to very satisfying engagements in which firing almost never gave away the position of a unit to the enemy. Of course, in such a setting, you simply need to area-fire, and the AI cannot make use of it in a way an actual player could. But I'm really looking forward to testing my "wood" in a H2H game! Some screenshots of the map for the scenario:

@ IanL Well that's the problem. If - during the game (setup is no problem) - I have to move a unit around in order to get into proper position, it's very cumbersome and upsetting. Here is an example of what I've been talking about in my last posts: The black line is the outline of the action-square (you can tell where the "low bocage" ends). The square is depressed in relation to it's neighbouring squares by 2m (blue in black-method, which gives nice sharp edges). As you can see, the edges of the depression are clearly located within the square: the depression is narrower than the square, leaving highground to the right and left. This is potentially dangerous as soldiers will randomly pick a position anywhere within the square. So, when ordering troops to this square, you might very well end up with soldiers exposing themselves to direct and arty fire on the highground, instead of seeking cover in the depression. [PS: However, I have to admit that small teams such as this MG team seem to stick to the depression quite well. It gets messy with larger teams.] To prevent this, I've made use of a wall-tile. A wall-tile splits up a square into sub-sections. In this case, I've chosen a "low bocage" layout to block off the highground in the left part of the square. I can now specifically target the right part of the square with a movement order (only the right part will be highlited if you hover a movement-cursor over it) which makes my soldiers reliably (!) stick to the depression, just like the MG team that you can see here. I have to admit though, that there is still a bit of randomness, as the MG team can still shift forward and backwards on the right side. In this case, note that I can also choose to position the MG team specifically on the left part of the square, which offers a nice firing position into the other direction. I think it would be great if we had invisible wall-tiles (with no additional gameplay-effects other than splitting up a 8x8m square) in order to allow that kind of detailed positioning within a square (not everywhere, of course - primarily for MG/special weapon positions).

If you change the facing of a deployed MG in a foxhole, it will just swivel around to point in the new direction. It does not change it's position within the square. The only means to order the MG to a new spot/foxhole in the square during a running game (i.e. not deployment phase) is to move the unit out of the square and into it again. Then you need to keep your fingers crossed that your MG picks your prefered foxhole. If not, rinse and repeat. In other words: there is no reliable way to reposition a MG within a foxhole-square during battle.