In what bizarre world is this possible

[Rocky Balboa]

Note that the infantry guys are out of contact. This influences how quickly you, the player, get info from them.

I think the OP said the tank was firing the whole time so shouldn't the AT team at least get a sound contact?

I have a similar situation in a battle I'm currently playing where a mg keeps firing at my troops from some location but I can't tell where because I'm not even given a sound contact icon. I know he's firing at my troops because they will cower and add suppression but I don't get any indication of even a general location.

Now it isn't unusual for troops to have a hard time pinpointing a well concealed enemy but shouldn't I get a sound contact when he fires giving me at least a general area or location where the fire is coming from?

[TheLotusEater]

In a PBEM I'm doing in a city map, my Panzer IV has a cover arc down a long cobblestone road that goes across the whole map in a straight line. My Panzer IV starts firing (without any target order) down the road, even though there were no contacts. (I selected the Panzer IV and every other unit on the map and still no contacts) My Panzer IV fires for two turns, then takes a penetrating hit on the lower front hull, injuring the driver. I order the Panzer IV to reverse behind a building. I found out from my opponent that his M10 was taking hits from my Panzer IV that he spotted and was firing at. My Panzer IV was in radio contact with my Company HQ which was also in contact with my Battalion HQ.

I'm thinking the game doesn't always show you what your units can see. Banemans' situation with his Stug getting destroyed before it could see anything seems pretty bizarre though.

[Baneman]

Note that the infantry guys are out of contact. This influences how quickly you, the player, get info from them.

But that doesn't ( shouldn't ? ) have the slightest effect on the visual info of the "tank over there" getting to them.

Look, I don't hate the game, I'm a fan, I'm enjoying it a lot, I don't hark for CM1 ( although I still play CM1 too ), I just think that this sort of issue damages our ability to use reasonable tactics and results in somewhat skewed/bizarre outcomes.

ie. it does me no good to set an ambush if my opponent can drive into the ambush and eliminate the ambushing unit(s).

Or in the OP's case, when he takes the time and effort to get into an attacking position on an enemy asset ...and then can't do anything.

Thus I hope that BF are able to at least look into spotting frequency ( or whatever else influences spotting ), particularly with regard to vehicles.

[Bradley Dick]

I wonder if spotting isn't just "Hey, I see that guy." Maybe it doesn't show up as "spotted" until they can actually target it. That could be why it took so long to identify the tank and be capable of firing. It could be a symptom of the old CMx1 partial spotting being absent.

[Vanir Ausf B]

In a PBEM I'm doing in a city map, my Panzer IV has a cover arc down a long cobblestone road that goes across the whole map in a straight line. My Panzer IV starts firing (without any target order) down the road, even though there were no contacts. (I selected the Panzer IV and every other unit on the map and still no contacts) My Panzer IV fires for two turns, then takes a penetrating hit on the lower front hull, injuring the driver. I order the Panzer IV to reverse behind a building. I found out from my opponent that his M10 was taking hits from my Panzer IV that he spotted and was firing at. My Panzer IV was in radio contact with my Company HQ which was also in contact with my Battalion HQ.

I'm thinking the game doesn't always show you what your units can see. Banemans' situation with his Stug getting destroyed before it could see anything seems pretty bizarre though.

That is interesting. Because Moon keeps telling people that this happens, but I have tested out-of-contact spotting extensively and have never been able to produce a single instance of an out-of-contact unit spotting something and not showing it to the player. And at least one beta tester has said that the game does not do this.

It is a mystery.

[Amizaur]

well i can remember a story from a american tank veteran in a history channel documentation that they parked their sherman right in front of a bocage/hedge (ambush position) just before they realised after a few moments that on the other side of the hedge was standing a tiger tank with the barrel pointing in their direction (obviously the tiger crew hasnt seen them either).

Well, those guys were in a tank - so I believe they coudln't hear the Tiger being so close, then.

I dont' believe it would be possible in case of an infantry squad.... Unless they all had their eardrums damaged...

[JonS]

Auditory exclusion.

Soldiers not hearing things isn't unusual. It's expected.

[cool breeze]

I dont know what being out of contact has to do with it but, like moon says happens, i have definitely seen on many occasions my troops seeing and firing on troops that I, the player, am not allowed to see.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I dont know what being out of contact has to do with it but, like moon says happens, i have definitely seen on many occasions my troops seeing and firing on troops that I, the player, am not allowed to see.

Bizarre. If this is happening it seems to require the presence of some factor other than just being out of C2.

It would be nice to get some clarification from BFC.

[cool breeze]

Its usually with infantry where only a few guys in a squad will see something and start shooting but the player doesnt have a contact yet. I think i have seen it happen with tanks too but not as much. Maybe it varies with difficulty? I usually play elite but sometimes iron.

[TheLotusEater]

I have tested out-of-contact spotting extensively and have never been able to produce a single instance of an out-of-contact unit spotting something and not showing it to the player. And at least one beta tester has said that the game does not do this.

It is a mystery.

I love testing the game as it gets you accquanted with how complexly everything is depicted. It also helps you play the game better when you understand the way different units preform.

It definetly happened though and my Panzer IV was firing AP shells at a tank that wasn't shown in the map at all. Icons were not turned off either. Iron difficulty.

Edit: My Panzer IV was in C2

[Vanir Ausf B]

Its usually with infantry where only a few guys in a squad will see something and start shooting but the player doesnt have a contact yet. I think i have seen it happen with tanks too but not as much. Maybe it varies with difficulty? I usually play elite but sometimes iron.

I have tested this before on Iron difficulty and have never been able to replicate such behavior.

Either it requires the presence of some factor other than being out of C2, or it is a very rare random occurance. In the later case I would suspect it is a bug.

[sburke]

That is interesting. Because Moon keeps telling people that this happens, but I have tested out-of-contact spotting extensively and have never been able to produce a single instance of an out-of-contact unit spotting something and not showing it to the player. And at least one beta tester has said that the game does not do this.

It is a mystery.

I may actually have an occurence of this and a save. I need to go back and look to confirm, but I had reviewed the scene several times trying to see what this unit was firing at as I wanted to confirm if there were any casualties, but I couldn't find the target.

[Vanir Ausf B]

That would be excellent.

One other possibility that I forgot to mention is that when units lose sight of an enemy unit they are firing at they will often continue to fire at the last spot they saw it at. This is the reason people still sometimes complain about infantry shooting rifles at buttoned tanks. The tank commander buttons but the shooting continues for a short while. This is an intended feature of the game and is not at all the same as a unit seeing an enemy unit that is not shown to the player.

Definitive proof would be a unit opening fire on its own accord at a target the player cannot see.

[TheLotusEater]

Yeah there was no previous contact at all. I can get the save file after I get my Mac back from repairs.

[Vanir Ausf B]

BTW, as interesting as the subject of units invisible to the player is, it has nothing to do with the OP. The AT team would presumably have fired had it seen the tank, regardless of what the player was shone.

[sand digger]

Auditory exclusion.

Soldiers not hearing things isn't unusual. It's expected.

Your constant smart arse excuse type comments got tiresome a long time ago.

[vonRocko]

I dont know what being out of contact has to do with it but, like moon says happens, i have definitely seen on many occasions my troops seeing and firing on troops that I, the player, am not allowed to see.

I get this alot, and I play on basic training level.

[sburke]

Your constant smart arse excuse type comments got tiresome a long time ago.

Nevertheless, ya gotta admit it is an interesting article and germane to the OP. Honestly, yeah he can get awfully blunt but I have to admit that most of the time I think he is right and some of our requests..well they just aren't thought out very well. We tend to be very self centered on the things that bug us and what therefore is an acceptable solution. Rarely do we think of the wider ramifications of our requests, what that might mean to trying to configure the AI or even the impact on other players.

For example on this very thread there is a suggestion to make a change and the requester considers the only issue to be:

Could I then suggest that the number of spotting cycles be increased ? Surely the only effect of this would be to increase the CPU power required - and calculating a WEGO turn with more CPU power would just make it take longer, right ?

So, seriously, would anyone complain if his WEGO turn took 4 times as long to compute IF it meant that units could spot stuff in front of them ?

Seriously? Up the required computing power when many of the players out there are already struggling on older machines? I mean yeah I generally feel folks should consider upgrading anyway, but that is a financial burden not everyone can simply take on.

[Baneman]

When you say "struggling" - what do you mean ?

It's my understanding ( and yes, of course, I could be totally wrong ) that the heavy CPU load is during the calculation of a WEGO turn - which wouldn't affect the movie file that you later see. And I clarified that I'm only talking about WEGO, not RT as it's obvious that the framerate of RT is heavily dependant on the processing power of CPU and maybe even GPU.

Now my machine is probably middle-of-the-road and I've yet to see a large scale battle take more than about 30 seconds to process a turn. Call it a minute for a machine with half the grunt of mine then.

So would you accept waiting 2 or 4 minutes for a turn to process if it meant that some of these anomalies could be prevented ? Or do you mean by "struggling", that some people's machines already take several minutes to process turns ?

That's all I'm suggesting - and I realise that until Phil or Steve say anything, it remains speculation - as to whether it's possible, or is even related to the issue.

PS: Whilst JonS's comments are pertinent, they only serve to provide a rationalisation for an in-game anomaly - unless BF come out and tell us that yes, they actually coded random auditory or visual "dropouts" to reflect combat-fatigue - which, given we're talking about CPU cycles being at a premium, seems pretty unlikely.

[Mingan]

I found out this "feature" yesterday when my carefully placed panzerfaust ambush troops didn't see a tank 10 meters from them, directly where they were looking, on a road. The tank had no trouble spotting them though, and so they died without ever knowing what hit them. Needless to say, I did not enjoy the moment.

[slysniper]

This thread is driving me crazy, first why should anyone defend how the game presently functions in this area is just stupid. Even though I love the efforts to provide a game with such a feature, there is no question it has a way to go before it protrays things correctly as to how it would be in R.L.

Plenty of examples here, I could add a dozen more, but that is not the point.

As for the original request. Also a waste, really there is no clue as to if that would fix the problem.

But the problem he has pointed out is very real, as to how to correct it. only BF would know.

But as others have pointed out. Large items like 35 Ton Tanks should not take long to spot for most units, weather 30 meters away in the woods or turning onto a road 200 meters away from your front facing as you look down the road. But the game does not do that. Somehow these easy things to spot do not get spotted. whereas the game also lets button tanks spot infantry crawing behind a bocage at 150 meters somehow get spotted.

There is improvements that could be done to how the game spots, if you do not think so, fine, that is your opinion. But as far as I am concerned, any suggestion to improve the game programming so that big noisy firing tanks are seen pretty easy and hiding infantry in concealment stays hidden is a good request. And you do not need Tons of testing to know that them aspects of the game are off at the moment.

But defend the present functioning of the game at times, like get REAL!!!:eek:

[sburke]

This thread is driving me crazy, first why should anyone defend how the game presently functions in this area is just stupid. Even though I love the efforts to provide a game with such a feature, there is no question it has a way to go before it protrays things correctly as to how it would be in R.L.

But defend the present functioning of the game at times, like get REAL!!!:eek:

No less crazy than expecting a computer simulation is going to always give exactly the expected results. Seriously a couple of times out of how many situations does this occur and the game HAS to be tweaked?

S**t happens, it's a game. They can either spend the next ten years ironing out every occasional oddity in the behavior of the AI or they can keep working on bigger items. Does it suck when it occurs to you (or me) yeah probably, but how often is that? I pay really really close attention to my units (yeah I am one of those nut cases who splits all my teams in an entire battalion) and I can't say I have seen this behavior standing out. Not to say folks aren't seeing this but is it a matter of the occasional incident just being frustrating or are they seeing it a lot?

My AT teams are functioning and successfully ambushing tanks, my sniper teams work (including my asst not blowing our position and wasting ammo). Not trying to be a pain in the ass, but at a certain point not everything that goes wrong has to immediately mean BFC has to start tweaking the engine. (at least not if we want to see them churning out the big ticket items)

I have had this happen once (and documented in the screenshot thread way back in some shots of a battle with vKleist in Bois de Baugin. So rare for me I can remember the one time in almost a year it occured.

[c3k]

I will add that the OP's screenshot actually supports the viewpoint espoused by JonS. (I am NOT trying to put words, or interpretations into what ANYONE posted.)

If you look at the screenshot, it appears that the underlying terrain is HEAVY FOREST. Additionally, a dense stands of trees exists in that terrain type. (If you don't understand the difference between the terrain tile and the tress, well, it's time for you to play with the editor. You can have short grass as the terrain tile and dense trees. That is NOT the same as HEAVY FOREST.)

Heavy forest represents an extremely heavy growth of secondary, um, growth. Lots of dead branches, bushes, saplings, etc. Given that level of obstruction, perhaps it is not unreasonable that an enemy unit, even a tank, cannot be seen.

(If the terrain is LIGHT FOREST, then all the above applies, but watered down.)

Now, if the tank had been seen/spotted by the AT team first, then they entered the FOREST and lost total awareness of the tank, that would be odd.

Likewise, a sound contact should become available IF the team can locate the sound source with some degree of accuracy.

Having said all that, I concur that there seem to be situations where it just seems impossible that my guys haven't noticed the enemy. Grrr.

Ken

[Lanzfeld]

PS: Whilst JonS's comments are pertinent, they only serve to provide a rationalisation for an in-game anomaly - unless BF come out and tell us that yes, they actually coded random auditory or visual "dropouts" to reflect combat-fatigue - which, given we're talking about CPU cycles being at a premium, seems pretty unlikely.

FWIW auditory exclusion has nothing to do with combat fatigue. Even a cop in a firefight can experience this. "How many shots did you fire officer?" Answer: "I have no idea!" It's all about the human physical reaction.

Anyway.....I do agree that it should not happen as often as we see in the game. To miss a tank 10 meters to your front should be rare in the extreme.