Hunt & covered arc

[poesel]

IMHO it would be a great addition to our tactical possibilities if units on 'hunt' would only react to enemy units inside their covered arc (with the correct type - all or vehicles).

So while hunting:

- no CA: everything as is

- with CA: only stop when enemy unit in CA

- with CAA: only stop when enemy vehicle in CAA

Hunt is such an important tool but it gets useless in target rich environments.

I guess everyone had his Tiger stopped by a lone surviving crew member a click away 5 seconds into the turn.

[umlaut]

I agree. This would be very useful.

+1

[tdogg]

Another reason I play RT instead of wego.

[Fizou]

+1 would love this.

[Vanir Ausf B]

IMHO it would be a great addition to our tactical possibilities if units on 'hunt' would only react to enemy units inside their covered arc (with the correct type - all or vehicles).

So while hunting:

- no CA: everything as is

- with CA: only stop when enemy unit in CA

- with CAA: only stop when enemy vehicle in CAA

I'm pretty sure it already works this way.

[Glubokii Boy]

Very good idea !

this would eliminate some frustration.

ex.

When you want to hunt a tank forward to engage a known enemy... and you give up the

idea after 3 turns because your armour insists to stop early due to other enemies spotted.

[Cogust]

It already works this way and if you have a cover armour arc on, then your unit will ignore infantry.

[Holman]

I'm pretty sure it already works this way.

Yes, it does.

[YankeeDog]

Yep; it's always been this way for all CMx2 games, since the CMSF was released.

One qualifier: Units on a Hunt order that sense incoming fire *always* stop, regardless of Cover Arc. Exactly what constitutes "incoming fire" seems to be a bit fuzzy; My SWAG is that it depends partially on a unit's situational awareness. Hunting units will almost always stop if an HE round explodes even several dozen meters from their current position, but I've seen Hunting buttoned tanks keep moving even when incoming small arms fire is passing quite close to the vehicle, but not impacting the armor. I assume this is because the tank crew doesn't sense the incoming small arms fire from inside the tank. This can be very bad if there are infantry on the tank and you were hoping the tank would stop on first contact...

Other really important Hunt combo order to have in your toolkit Hunt is Hunt + Hide, which causes a unit to immediately drop and try to hide if it receives incoming fire. Very useful for scouting with infantry.

[Baneman]

... I assume this is because the tank crew doesn't sense the incoming small arms fire from inside the tank. This can be very bad if there are infantry on the tank and you were hoping the tank would stop on first contact...

Other really important Hunt combo order to have in your toolkit Hunt is Hunt + Hide, which causes a unit to immediately drop and try to hide if it receives incoming fire. Very useful for scouting with infantry.

Although if you give the infantry a Hunt+Hide movement order while they're on the tank, if it does take fire and stop, the infantry will hop off and hide

If it doesn't, they'll only execute their movement order when the tank stops at its destination.

If the infantry aren't on Hunt, they'll move forward from that position.

It's all very handy if you think about the possible outcomes and which you'd prefer.

[Whiterider]

What about target briefly+hide?

[Baneman]

What about target briefly+hide?

In my own experience, I've not had much success with this - I've tried to use it, thinking they'll shoot and then get their heads down, but since Hide is sort-of a toggle, they tend to hide, not see their target ( very well ) and not shoot at all.

Mostly. The above is a very subjective take, I've not tested to see if I can get it to work.

[Jock Tamson]

Just ran a quick test:

Armour with hunt and yellow covered arc - stops when any enemy is sighted

Unbuttoned armour with hunt and purple covered arc - stops if incoming fire threatens commander, otherwise stops if enemy armour sighted

Buttoned armour with hunt and purple covered arc - stops if enemy armour sighted or if incoming fire threatens vehicle eg Panzerschreck

[poesel]

I stand corrected - I've just run a few tests and it is as I already wished it to be.

Jock had answered while I was testing and typing:

Did they stop when sighting was inside or outside arc?

I was testing armour and infantry with CAs and CAAs and noone was stopping when the target was outside the arc.

But I could have sworn it to be otherwise.

One thing is what YD already wrote: that incoming fire stops hunt. Even if this fire cannot or is unlikely to harm you. This is independent of having a CA or not. Maybe that is what I experienced and why I came to a wrong conclusion.

What I could not recreate is a situation where a hunting unit looses its nerve and starts to shoot outside its arc without being shot at. I'm not sure what happens then.

Just a fun pic from the test:

There was no shooting and so no suppression. Which means that just being close to the enemy will not stress your troops. That is a bit of a surprise since a pixeltrooper can not know that the other side has orders not to shoot.

[Erwin]

The serious limitation of HUNT is that you can't just set a long distance waypoint and have your INFANTRY units move far without exhaustion. MOVE TO CONTACT would still be a very valuable addition.

[A Canadian Cat]

What I could not recreate is a situation where a hunting unit looses its nerve and starts to shoot outside its arc without being shot at. I'm not sure what happens then.

Apparently Fanatic motivation leads to very strict obeying of orders while Low motivation leads to more chance to disobey your orders. Try lowering their motivation and maybe even their training quality and see if that increases the chances of them breaking their arc on their own.

Just a fun pic from the test:

Great picture, hilarious.

[Michael Emrys]

"Be vewy, vewy quiet and maybe they won't notice."

Michael

[poesel]

Apparently Fanatic motivation leads to very strict obeying of orders while Low motivation leads to more chance to disobey your orders. Try lowering their motivation and maybe even their training quality and see if that increases the chances of them breaking their arc on their own.

I tried it with poor motivation. Same result.

Problem is that just being near to the enemy does not cause suppression (=stress). So everyone is calm and ready and no one breaks the orders. To get them stressed I need to shoot at them and this will break hunt which is the point of the test.

Thus my suggestion that nearness to enemies alone should cause suppression (for very close ranges). That would also somehow solve the lacking hand to hand combat: if they get too close without ammo they will run away from each in very short time.

[A Canadian Cat]

Cool find then @poesel71. I suspect that this would not come up much, if at all, in a real game though.

[JasonC]

Erwin - could not agree more. I miss "move to contact".

[tdogg]

I stand corrected - I've just run a few tests and it is as I already wished it to be.

Jock had answered while I was testing and typing:

Did they stop when sighting was inside or outside arc?

I was testing armour and infantry with CAs and CAAs and noone was stopping when the target was outside the arc.

But I could have sworn it to be otherwise.

One thing is what YD already wrote: that incoming fire stops hunt. Even if this fire cannot or is unlikely to harm you. This is independent of having a CA or not. Maybe that is what I experienced and why I came to a wrong conclusion.

What I could not recreate is a situation where a hunting unit looses its nerve and starts to shoot outside its arc without being shot at. I'm not sure what happens then.

Just a fun pic from the test:

There was no shooting and so no suppression. Which means that just being close to the enemy will not stress your troops. That is a bit of a surprise since a pixeltrooper can not know that the other side has orders not to shoot.

This is why we should have hand to hand combat even if it's abstracted. Needs to be done. And I love the idea of move to contact making a comeback.

[Mord]

Why does hunt tend to tire your guys out? I always looked at it as no different than walking, they are just being more cautious. You'd think it would be just as easy as walking. In real life, guys would move a bit, stop, listen, continue. So, what's the deal? The stress?

And yeah, add "move to contact" and change "hunt" back to how it used to be in CMX1.

Mord.

[Vanir Ausf B]

What I could not recreate is a situation where a hunting unit looses its nerve and starts to shoot outside its arc without being shot at. I'm not sure what happens then.

Motivation level affects likelihood of disregarding covered arc when under fire. I don't know if it has any affect when not under fire, but one other factor that does is C2 status.

[Glubokii Boy]

Do you guys think that a new order...like this...could be useful or just 'a waste of space' in the UI ?

MOVE TO ENGAGE

The player will be able to place any number of waypoints that he wants the unit to move through using SHIFT-CLICK and then the final 'waypoint' of the order should be placed on a SPOTTED enemy (kind of like the target order is now).

This would order the unit to move forward along the path the player have designated and stop as soon as it has LOF to the selected target.

With this order the friendly units will put HIGH priority on fullfilling the the assigned objective and disregard incomming fire to a higher degree then with a HUNT order.

And when it gets to the location that gives it LOF to the target it will open fire...

This could be useful to have friendly units move forward..BUT ONLY AS MUCH AS NEEDED to be able to fire on the selected target and thereby mantaining as much as possible of their cover and concealment that the terrain allows (ex keeping as far inside a wooded area as possible or as far behind the crest of a hill as possible).

Maybe the movement speed could be a bit higher then the HUNT order.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I don't see how that would work with relative spotting. If you can see the enemy unit with the friendly unit in question selected then they already have LOS to each other. Then again, it's been so long since I played on anything other than Iron difficulty I don't remember if it might work on lower realism levels.

But even if you could do it you wouldn't want to. Moving units don't spot well. If you want to engage an enemy unit that has been spotted by a different friendly unit the better tactic is to move your unit to where it is just in LOS of the enemy position and hope the coin flip goes your way. You definitely don't want to be charging toward the enemy while trying to spot him at the same time. You will get shot.