Terrain information ?

[PobsUK]

Hi, new to CMFI, and struggling a little to make sense of the terrain. I positioned some guys overlooking what I thought was a pretty open expanse of field, but now that i got there their visibility is pretty limited, I assume its a corn field :confused:

Is there any way to check the terrain at a certain point on the map with the mouse?

Is there a listing anywhere of what the terrain is and its nature?

What looked like a very nice defensive position in some bushes overlooking a open field seems to be far from what i thought it was :eek:

Thanks.

Pobs

[womble]

Hi, new to CMFI, and struggling a little to make sense of the terrain. I positioned some guys overlooking what I thought was a pretty open expanse of field, but now that i got there their visibility is pretty limited, I assume its a corn field :confused:

Probably.

Is there any way to check the terrain at a certain point on the map with the mouse?

No.

Is there a listing anywhere of what the terrain is and its nature?

Don't think so.

What looked like a very nice defensive position in some bushes overlooking a open field seems to be far from what i thought it was :eek:

The are two solutions to this sort of issue:

1. Get the camera down in the weeds and look.
   
2. Select the waypoint that you think is a good position, then use the targeting command to have a look around and see what the field of fire from there actually is. The targeting line will be drawn on-screen as being from the current location of the unit, but it is being assessed from the waypoint you have selected, with the unit in its current posture, and to the ground level at where you hover the cursor while targeting.
   

There is no simple way of displaying what terrain is "under" the cursor; there are too many variables.

[Baneman]

... with the unit in its current posture, ...

This is very important - if you're checking LoS from a future position of a squad that is Hiding, you will not see precisely what they will see when they get there ( because units Hiding see very little ). In this case, better check using a different unit.

[sburke]

also depends on what you are looking at. Obviously a tank in a wheat field is a whole other proposition than an infantry team. Infantry can vanish pretty damn fast in wheatfields.

[newlife]

Corn field? This isn't CM:Iowa!

[Michael Emrys]

Europeans refer to all grains as corn, not just maize. They've done so since time immemorial.

Michael

[poesel]

When the Germans where are asked after the war (by Americans) what they needed most, the answer was 'Korn' (wheat). Of course they got corn (maize, 'Mais'). They were angry to be given chicken food - corn was unknown as human food and they were quite insulted.

[eltorrente]

It's strange that there is no terrain information at all. Not in the manual and no reference to look at on Battlefront. No description no nothing.

[MikeyD]

For CMFI terrain the powers that be decided to keep it all 'intuitive', for better or worse. If it looks muddy then its mud, if it looks grassy then its grass. If it looks like impassable rocks its probably impassable rocks. No available charts or graphs or tables on terrain. For the most part it works as expected. Hvy woods (impassable to vehicles) is only subtly different from light woods, though. And the objects representing crops & vineyards don't survive the transition to low rez distance LODs.

[PobsUK]

Thanks for the responses.

I think my issue is solved by

......................... Select the waypoint that you think is a good position, then use the targeting command to have a look around and see what the field of fire from there actually is. The targeting line will be drawn on-screen as being from the current location of the unit, but it is being assessed from the waypoint you have selected, with the unit in its current posture, and to the ground level at where you hover the cursor while targeting..............................

[Placebo]

Thanks for the tip Womble, I did not know that you could check out LOS from a waypoint!!

[TrailApe]

Europeans refer to all grains as corn, not just maize. They've done so since time immemorial

I concur - around about this time of the year, especially in the half term holiday's coming up (blackberry week) we kids would go and play in the corn fields, the crops would be in and the farmer would not object too strongly to kids mooching about in the fields - as long as we didn't mess about with the straw bales too much. Maize just doesn't get grown around here much, and certainly would be non existent in the 40's.

This 'what is the terrain' discussion came out just after CM:BN landed on our PC's and I think a lot of the folk that had skipped CM:SF and were still used to CMX1 were a bit lost as they wanted to 'know' what % factors would be associated with hiding in certain types of terrain.

Q How will I know if my tank will get bogged in a field?

A Drive it across the field and you will find out.

I think the LOS 'problem' really irked quite a few folk as they wanted a quick tool that would make things easy to pick the best spots on the ground for observation, but as in real life, there is no easy answer - you have to go and look (ie waypoint/target).

[Broadsword56]

Or, just open the scenario in the editor and look at the tiles, if you really want to know something about a map in detail.