Hull-down spotting disadvantage

[altipueri]

Kolmogorov-Smirnov (those well known players of CMBB) are your answer. The skew is because you cannot spot in less than 0, but there is no upper limit. So it is a right skewed distribution. For most practical purposes the mean and standard deviation figures are still usable.

I would take the second (Smirnov) part, neat or with a little tonic water and lemon.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

****. The more I think about that Panther spotting the more it bothers me. I know it's a small-ish data set, and I know the Sherman 76 is a better than average allied tank, but that just seems wrong. I can tell already that as soon as I drink a cup of coffee I'm going to have to do something about it, and I can't even cheat by testing them against each other because of vehicle size differences.

****

[Vanir Ausf B]

Wow, that Kolmogorov-Smirnov site has a calculator! My job just got easier.

Ken, you need to click on that link.

[eniced73]

I think it is excellent that you guys are putting the time in trying to get an idea on this. Many thanks from me as I would like a better understanding of the game.

But if we do not know basically squat about what factors are being considered and what are not how do we get where we want to be? What the hell did I just say? Anyhow every time we start one of these every one says all factors and such have to be the same with no addition factors that can skew the result. Well, how many definite things do we know about the game code and how it works? None! How does the game actually spot? Not just in hull down but just spot in general. I seen a post that it goes in some kind of cycle count but never seen BF confirm anything. Looks like they did confirm the more eyes the better. But how so? Do they scan from left to right in a cycle of x seconds or do they scan and then pretty much go blind for x seconds and then scan again? And if we do not really know anything about how the game spots how can we even test spotting in hull down or spotting on the move? Seems like we are embarking on this journey to figure this out but hell we don't even know where we are starting from. I hope you guys figure it out and would help in any way I can but more so I hope BF gives you guys some more concrete examples of how it works to get you a jumping off point. Just my two cents which is not worth much.

[BletchleyGeek]

Maybe the answer is Poisson - but sounds a bit fishy to me.

I think you're right on the money, mate. For a Poisson distribution, the expectation and the variance are the same. Why do you think that's fishy? Spotting is obviously a time-based event: the longer you look into the general direction of an object, the higher the chances of spotting it.

Vanir, do not despair. These tests are giving out data with a lot of tactical value. Let's say they're a quantitative view on the very nice write-up by pznrldr on Bil's blog regarding how important is patience when dealing with spotting and recon in general.

I've inputted your data for the Panther on a Google Spreadsheet (which you can use if you want):

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq0Fz61zV5lgdEVDTVdmdDhiUEZUWFlacmUyLUpFV2c&usp=sharing

Then I went to this other page here:

http://vassarstats.net/poissonfit.html#down

in order to see if your observed times fit well into a Poisson distribution or not. In order to do so, I took each k to correspond to a 60 seconds interval (a WEGO impulse). I reckon it's not a bad fit.

This is tactical signficant since it's telling us, the players, how long we can expect a given vehicle crew to spot a certain object at a certain distance in perfect conditions.

Note as well that if two vehicles crews are the ones looking in the same direction, the 'waiting times' for spotting an object will drastically go down. So I'd say that the spotting model in general is sound.

Which doesn't really say anything on whether or not the advantages due to equipment are well represented

[Battlefront.com]

But if we do not know basically squat about what factors are being considered and what are not how do we get where we want to be?

If one presumes that the game is simulating things realistically, then that's close enough to start with. The basic mistakes I've seen making over the last 15 years tend to be fairly straight forward errors in judgement rather than ignorance of the game system.

Well, how many definite things do we know about the game code and how it works? None!

Not true at all. Just about everything has been discussed here at some point at least once. It's not packed into the manual for the most part because it's not proper to put it there. Especially because there's a great amount of "institutional memory" around here. Testers also come in and help quite frequently, even when they're told to attempt acts of self reproduction by someone who is more interested in a point of view than getting at the truth

How does the game actually spot? Not just in hull down but just spot in general.

This is like asking a 5 star chef "how do you go about preparing a dinner?". There's no simple answer to a general question like that because there isn't one to give. But a specific question can be answered...

I seen a post that it goes in some kind of cycle count but never seen BF confirm anything. Looks like they did confirm the more eyes the better. But how so? Do they scan from left to right in a cycle of x seconds or do they scan and then pretty much go blind for x seconds and then scan again?

This has been discussed plenty of times, so I'm surprised you didn't turn it up in a search. The short answer is each unit has a chance to spot only so many times within a given period of time. There is no hard and fast number as it is situationally dependent. Generally it's every couple of seconds.

The check is technically 360 at once. Each Soldier in the unit does his own check, with a strong emphasis towards the "front" of the unit. This gives each a chance of spotting anything it can theoretically see, but weights those chances depending on facing. Spotting is HEAVILY influenced by a large list of situational factors, but those are taken into consideration as needed. For example, spotting on a moonless night vs. noon vs. being a driver in a tank vs. a soldier in the open, etc.

And if we do not really know anything about how the game spots how can we even test spotting in hull down or spotting on the move? Seems like we are embarking on this journey to figure this out but hell we don't even know where we are starting from.

Ah! Well, this is the problem right here. Trying to "reverse engineer" the inner workings of CM is a fools' errand for the most part because it is way too sophisticated for such a venture. What can be done is what I said above... make a common sense test scenario with standard scientific approaches helping shape it. As I said above the #1 failing with customer tests is that there's often too little thought put into the scientific approach. One doesn't need to know much about how the code works to make a good test.

I hope you guys figure it out and would help in any way I can but more so I hope BF gives you guys some more concrete examples of how it works to get you a jumping off point.

That's what I try to do when we get into discussions like this. I make suggestions to help refine the test. Sometimes the customer is actually interested in listening, unfortunately sometimes not

Steve

[altipueri]

Poisson = fish. Not necessarily a red herring.

[poesel]

The check is technically 360 at once. Each Soldier in the unit does his own check, with a strong emphasis towards the "front" of the unit. This gives each a chance of spotting anything it can theoretically see, but weights those chances depending on facing.

Is the emphasis on the facing of each individual soldier or the unit as a whole?

I assume that it is per soldier but I'm not sure from your wording.

[Battlefront.com]

Is the emphasis on the facing of each individual soldier or the unit as a whole?

I assume that it is per soldier but I'm not sure from your wording.

Yes, it is soldier by soldier, with aggregate results determining what the unit sees and how well it sees it. This simulates the close proximity communications inherent in any unit.

However, not all soldiers are treated the same inherent way (i.e. not taking into consideration circumstantial stuff like terrain, weather, Experience, binoculars, etc). Dismounted soldiers are treated the same, but vehicle crews are treated specific to their position within a specific vehicle. A buttoned tank commander in a tank that has no copula is not the same as a commander in a tank that has one. A commander that has binocular scopes with 6x power magnification is not treated the same as one with a monocular scope with 3x power magnification, etc. Even more importantly, someone like a buttoned driver of a tank has 0% chance of spotting anything to the rear and probably no chance of spotting something to the sides either. Again, it depends on the specifics of that crew position in that specific vehicle. And of course the circumstantial stuff is tossed in on top of all this.

There is no need to know the details of this. It's all pretty intuitive in both concept and execution. At least to the extent that is necessary to understand the basics of the game mechanics. Obviously from a game playing standpoint one doesn't need to know any of this at all.

Steve

[BadgerDog]

Even more importantly, someone like a buttoned driver of a tank has 0% chance of spotting anything to the rear and probably no chance of spotting something to the sides either.

... and, probably very very little to the front as well, except if they passed in front of his peri at 50 yards...

Edit: sorry, didn't realize where I was posting ...

Regards,

Doug

[Battlefront.com]

I don't know at what range the driver and radio operator cease being able to spot, but at some point they effectively do go down to 0%. That's because they have no magnification and restricted view.

Steve

[BadgerDog]

Here's a fun way of finding out...

Spend $40 (or less) and get one of these ...

(Click PIC to Enlarge)

Go out to a target range in the middle of the summer at noon that has 4 footers at distances out to 1,000 yards.

Sit in a 45 gallon empty drum wearing coveralls, turned down naked to the waste .... make sure the temperature inside warms up to 100 degrees plus, put on head phones and play "noisy" radio type chatter (or hip hop.. same thing) loudly though them, while simultaneously having someone beat on the outside of the drum rhythmically with a rubber mallet. While that's going on, stick the M6 peri up so you can see down range and scan using two hands, left and right, then up and down.

If you can see much of anything past 200-300 yards sitting in the open (let alone attempting to be hidden), or virtual anything past that range, I'll buy you dinner at the best place in town.

Regards,

Doug

[YankeeDog]

You have an interesting idea of "fun".

[BadgerDog]

You have an interesting idea of "fun".

Fun .. wow !!

Well, I was earning a huge $7.50/day (1964) and I spent 15 hour days for 2 months sitting in an M4 driving compartment under those type of circumstances.

The I got promoted and I got to sit upstairs in the gunner's seat ...

Regards,

Doug

[Childress]

If you can see much of anything past 200-300 yards sitting in the open (let alone attempting to be hidden), or virtual anything past that range, I'll buy you dinner at the best place in town.

You have strong opinions on this topic, BD. And you may be right. But we need to see some credentials.

[sburke]

Sit in a 45 gallon empty drum wearing coveralls, turned down naked to the waste

Regards,

Doug

What exactly are you using that drum for?

[BadgerDog]

You have strong opinions on this topic, BD. And you may be right. But we need to see some credentials.

I stayed at a Holiday Inn last night..

Regards,

Doug

[BadgerDog]

What exactly are you using that drum for?

Perhaps a little too metaphoric ...

For those that have never been packed into the driver's compartment of an M4 for endless hours, I was trying to create a visualization for them, as to what it feels like ...

(Click PIC to Enlarge)

Anyway, I apologize folks (again)..

I'm afraid I've lost my own focus (again) and I really don't want to get back into this endless loop of trying to make the point that it's just a game, no more, no less.

There's simply no current ability to program for the processing power available on any PC platform, what real life was like working with these old M4’s. So, there are trade-offs....

I’m out of this thread and back to enjoying the game….

Regards,

Doug

[Battlefront.com]

I enjoyed the thought of some of our hardest core customers actually taking you up on the offer. Of course the chances are if it happened that:

1. It would be a Finn doing the testing

2. He'd do it in a sauna instead of a steel drum

3. He would be drunk

Any one of these disqualifies the results, so I guess it's only for the imagination.

Steve

P.S. I kid the Finns only because I know they LIKE it

[Battlefront.com]

Seriously, the point is very well taken. We're doing various tests to see how much of an impact the driver/radio guy play in the overall scheme of spotting.

Steve

[Vark]

I got the impression most tank drivers, in whatever tank, relied on the commander to give them, steer to directions when buttoned up. Is there a way to just dial down the percentages to spot and see what that does to game play, or is CM the epistemological equivalent of the Space Shuttle?

[dan/california]

I got the impression most tank drivers, in whatever tank, relied on the commander to give them, steer to directions when buttoned up. Is there a way to just dial down the percentages to spot and see what that does to game play, or is CM the epistemological equivalent of the Space Shuttle?

Epistemology!, I mean we are all questionable at best, given that we have spent untold hours refighting WW2 instead of helping starving children. But do we really deserve epistemology?

[Battlefront.com]

Is there a way to just dial down the percentages to spot and see what that does to game play

Not easily, no. However, we have degraded spotting capabilities as we've gone along. The problem is that the fidelity of spotting matters more when things are up close and less likely (in real life) to be missed than when they are much further away. That's because time is one of the variables and when things are up close time becomes disproportionally important.

Think about it this way. If you're walking 1 mile down a very long and straight rode, is it more important to see a car 1 mile away the instant it appears or is it more important to see a car 0.1 miles away the instant it appears? Definitely the latter.

Due to the massive demands on the CPU and RAM for spotting checks (which are in turn multiple LOS checks) there's some practical limitations on how sophisticated the system can be. Making it more context sensitive comes at a cost. Sure, you might have a much better spotting system but now you have 10fps on the best machine out there.

I'm not saying there's nothing that can be done to make the game better, just saying that at the end of the day it is a game and a home computer has it's limitations. We also don't have $50 million to spend, so there's that too CM probably already has the most sophisticated and subtle spotting system out there bar none. Over time we can likely make it even better, however compared to real life it will never be as subtle.

Steve

[Buzz]

Steve..."when things are up close time becomes disproportionally important."

Very erudite explanation of more than "Hull-down spotting disadvantages"

[John Kettler]

BadgerDog,

Your Periscope, M3 suggestion reminds me of something I read in the 1970s in the sadly defunct armor grog mag AFV-G2. In trying to convey to a reader the real situation of being in a tank, the first thing addressed was seeing through a tank periscope. It went something like this.

"Take an ordinary piece of paper and poke a hole in it with pin. Hold the paper at arm's length. Now, look at the world through that pinhole. That's when the tank is stationary."

And for a tank bashing about the countryside?

"Hold that same piece of paper as before. But now, jump up and down. That's what your periscope view is from a tank on the move."

Regards,

John Kettler