Some good advice about checking LOS I just found out

[Baneman]

...

Sometimes in the game there is just one square with LOS on a whole promising ridge.

I play WeGo, so if I guess wrong about which square it is, I have to spend at least a whole minute plus deployment time to relocate the MG. And then I have to repeat that every time I still guess wrong. I might only have 30 minutes for the whole mission.

...

And that is the situation where you want to check the LoS with the tool - yes, it's not perfect, but it will save you most of the time.

Also, you can sometimes save time by plotting a waypoint at the spot ( or general area ) that you want to target. Then by using the Target tool back to your ridge, you can get an idea of which areas / AS's are out of LoS - also not perfect, because sometimes you can see down and not up, but it can cut down on the search-for-the-AS-with-LoS process.

[mbarbaric]

reading all this it seems the pTruppen need a bit more intelligence and do a bit of work themselves. if they are ordered in some action square they should maybe take it as suggestion and send one ptruppen to left and right searching for a bit better position/overview of the battlefield.

though, that would with no doubt create some other problems...

[Baneman]

reading all this it seems the pTruppen need a bit more intelligence and do a bit of work themselves. if they are ordered in some action square they should maybe take it as suggestion and send one ptruppen to left and right searching for a bit better position/overview of the battlefield.

though, that would with no doubt create some other problems...

Easy to say / wish for - incredibly hard to do.

If you think about it for a moment, the TacAI we have in the CM games is already better than anything else out there !

Our little pixeltruppen run around, stop mid-move, take a shot, crawl into a crater for cover, spot, engage of their own accord, chuck grenades, pull out etc.

Easy to take it for granted, but it's HUGE in terms of AI programming. I moan about plenty myself, but occasionally I stop and consider all the stuff it DOES DO right.

95% of our games function exactly as we expect. Given the complexity, that's a pretty epic achievement, right there !

I'll still moan but I accept there are limitations.

[Skwabie]

reading all this it seems the pTruppen need a bit more intelligence and do a bit of work themselves. if they are ordered in some action square they should maybe take it as suggestion and send one ptruppen to left and right searching for a bit better position/overview of the battlefield.

though, that would with no doubt create some other problems...

lol I'm sure that'll be even harder to do than a "LOS anywhere" function. When that happens we're one step closer to a full blown virtual reality aka the matrix... But you gotta stop taking words at face value. There're hundreds of feature suggestions here to reduce player workload. Off the top of my head how about a minimap, group units by number keys, highlight same split teams within a squad, click waypoint lines to select the unit etc etc etc a forum search will turn up many more. They all help when you perform those LOS checks (and many more aspects of course). Didn't 2.0 engine upgrade introduce movable waypoint, far as I can see it's universally appreciated.

[Jock Tamson]

What I would like is to select a unit and then press:

- a key to jump the camera through its waypoints.

- a key to cycle through its waypoints without moving the camera.

Clicking on wapoints to add facings and pauses can be very tediously hit or miss, particularly if you are playing it high resolutions

[mforrestpal@gmail.com]

I could use some help. LOS has me snookered.

I played CMBO when it came out till I wore out the pixels.

Now I am trying the new games, CMFI and CMBN and cannot get line of sight under control

I go to a spot with clear line of sight, I can see the targets easily (I am positioned behind a wall as an example) but the game indicates no LOS.

I have to be missing something probably very simple once it is understood but cannot advance in the game until I get this figured out.

Maybe I am just an old man who is slow figuring new things out but I would certainly appreciate any help. I really want to get back into the game.

[Erwin]

You really have to get down to level one and see exactly what the troopers see. The wall may be too high and another unit is the one seeing the target. Or, your unit is on HIDE in which case his head is below the level of the wall etc.

[Bulletpoint]

I could use some help. LOS has me snookered.

I played CMBO when it came out till I wore out the pixels.

Now I am trying the new games, CMFI and CMBN and cannot get line of sight under control

I go to a spot with clear line of sight, I can see the targets easily (I am positioned behind a wall as an example) but the game indicates no LOS.

I have to be missing something probably very simple once it is understood but cannot advance in the game until I get this figured out.

Maybe I am just an old man who is slow figuring new things out but I would certainly appreciate any help. I really want to get back into the game.

I've had the same problems as you, and I've managed to figure out most of the LOS-issues.

Typical situations:

• There's a slight rise of the ground in the middle of the field (gives the infamous message 'Reverse slope').
  
  
• There are crops or flowers in the field. Will often have LOS when standing, but when prone infantry goes blind.
  
  
• There are bushes or trees in the way, but you have toggled 'show trees' off.
  
  
• There's smoke blocking LOS, but 'show smoke' is toggled off.
  
  
• Nothing is blocking, but your HMG team is facing away from the hedgerow. Turn them by issuing a "Face" command.
  
  
• You are drawing LOS through a hedgerow, but the horizontal angle to your target is too great.
  
  
• Units are sometimes able to draw LOS through tree canopies. Sometimes through what seems like impossible amounts of distance and leaves. I've had a Sherman tank sit for around 15 minutes in some backwater area of the map, when sudenly it turned the turret and blasted an enemy vehicle at 450 metres distance through what seemed to be a complete forest with several layers of treetops. It's one of my pet peeves about the game, but it can help to do a pre-battle scan of the map with trees toggled off. Sometimes that reveals nasty hills or ridges where AT-guns might be sitting.
  
  
• Very rarely, there's a LOS-problem with buildings. A house is clearly in view, and troops can fire on enemy inside, if they spot them, but area fire on the building is impossible. I've seen it only around two times in total, in more than a year of playing the game.
  
  
• One of the big reasons that LOS is difficult to figure out is because the game does not permit your camera to go all the way down to eyelevel. If you're not aware of that, you might wrongly believe that "what you see is what you get".
  

Oh, and a useful thing I found recently: You can zoom your view by Z and X. That oftens help to get a better view from a certain point.

[mforrestpal@gmail.com]

You really have to get down to level one and see exactly what the troopers see. The wall may be too high and another unit is the one seeing the target. Or, your unit is on HIDE in which case his head is below the level of the wall etc.

This is what I do and it seems that at times, the troops cannot see over a standard game wall but sometimes they can.

Puzzling

[YankeeDog]

Hard to say what your issue might be without a screen shot.

A couple of wild stabs that are specific to walls:

- for heavy weapons teams and especially MGs, the angle of approach to the wall affects how they set up the weapon within the action spot and therefore whether they will have LOF over the wall. Generally, you want to approach perpendicular to the wall for best LOF over the wall. Use extra waypoints to make sure this is the case, if needed.

- Unit stance affects LOF. For example, a hiding or cowering unit may not be able to fire over a wall, while an unsuppressed and "up" (i.e., not hiding) unit can.

[postfux123]

For pinned or hiding units it might help to put a move order in the same AP and check LOS from this point. This should show ideal LOS.

[mforrestpal@gmail.com]

One of the big reasons that LOS is difficult to figure out is because the game does not permit your camera to go all the way down to eyelevel. If you're not aware of that, you might wrongly believe that "what you see is what you get".

I suspect this may be the problem. Let me do some more testing and see what I get.

Thanks for your help. I was getting frustrated and this is probably something I can work around. I figured it was something simple.

[Trooper117]

Good info here... thanks!

[womble]

For teams with a heavy weapon, the Target tool only considers the heavy weapon, so if the gunner for that weapon cannot get a beat on the target in question, you won't be able to "force" the unit to fire on it. However, your helper TacAI will probably take it under fire, and in some circumstances will rearrange the individuals of the team so that the heavy weapon can be brought to bear.

The lowest camera height for an infantry unit seems to be more than 2m from the ground (assuming 1.8m head height for a standing soldier). So your vantage point can be pretty far removed from that of a kneeling or prone pTruppe. What you see is pretty much what you get (in that, if the camera was coincident with the soldier's viewpoint, your sight would be blocked by the same things), but what you get isn't necessarily what your pTruppe can see.

The most common reason for a heavy weapon team to not be able to draw LOF to an 'obvious' target (once you've got your SOP for approaching linear obstacles down pat) is that the gunner is "Cowering" (shown in the bottom left of the screen), either due to poor morale state, or suppression from incoming fire.

[[MyIS] Buffpuff]

I hate to be Mr. Grumpy but, to me, this LOS check method is a cheat/system exploit.

Of course, reasonable people may disagree and, because the system allows it, not using this technique would be according to an honor system in any case. But what justifies a player "looking around" from the perspective of a potential enemy position?

Now look, I know we're all gamey bastages at some point or another and we likely wouldn't enjoy playing a truly realistic game. We each have to find our own way. But I'm just saying that plotting a move (that really isn't a move) halfway across the map for the express purpose of scoping out the enemy's LOS/LOF makes me feel dirty.

It's more fun to wonder if there's LOS from point A to area B just based on camera views and only start to get a better idea as you advance and you (reasonably) can use the Target/LOS tool from the perspective of YOUR units.

Same here. I'll check LOS from my units perspective for their respective "end" turn moves (i.e. Coming up to a hedgerow). Most of my planning time is spent looking at ground level from the troops perspective to see what they can see and what they should be able to see. More often than not you can tell what kind of LOS you have and what the enemy will have.

[mforrestpal@gmail.com]

Thanks all for the help. It is very much appreciated. This has been giving me a lot of trouble and taking away from the pleasure of the game.

This may be enough to get me going at least I hope so.

[Bulletpoint]

Thanks all for the help. It is very much appreciated. This has been giving me a lot of trouble and taking away from the pleasure of the game.

This may be enough to get me going at least I hope so.

The game has its quirks, and the learning curve is long. But if you give it time, I think you will get a much better intuitive grasp on LOS and potential danger areas.