Ability to target from positions you have not actually gone to

[Highlander40]

I am not a big fan of the CMX2 feature that allows you to set a waypoint and then test what terrain can be seen from that point.

 

It strikes me a pretty gamey and unrealistic--like having a personal drone that reports on everything but the actual enemy.  One could conceivably check vision from every part of the battlefield.

 

Is there any way to turn that off in a PBEM?

 

I am a veteran of two CMBS PBEM battles.  In both victory went to the guy who took the time to find "perfect" firing positions.

 

 

[cool breeze]

On the other hand you represent many leaders at different levels of command, when your defending it make sense more your squad and platoon leaders to have spent enough time walking around to find some extra good spots.   Similarly when you are deciding how far forward to move the guy before having them stop on a ridge or edge of forest or whatever, the squad leader would be there checking if its the right "action spot".  And in real life nobody is ever telling a squad to go to a specific action spot, they are told to go to an area.  When they get to the area they pick the best spot for their mission. They don't see the great spot but say" yeah but Ltn. Bob told us to go to THIS no good action spot, not that great one right over there!".  So if you spend the time too look around from ground level before sending 'em, and send 'em to the best places in the first place, it kind of just simulates them doing their job right in the first place.   That said, their are a lot of times when the lack of terrain fog of war makes things less realistic.  At least its a lot less of a deal with drones and fancy maps now in a 2017 conflict than it is in ww2!  I've heard plenty of other people talk about not liking that you can check LOS like that, so I think you'll have an easy enough time finding an opponent to play with that rule.  However I think its going to be more about the opponent you pick than about whether or not they use the LOS tool, I'm pretty sure those premium positions could have been found about as well without the tool just by moving the camera around.

[Highlander40]

Picking spots on defense is different.  In your setup zone, it is assumed that you will find optimum positions--you control the ground and can walk it.  But you can go into your opponent's set up zone and find ideal locations to attack a village, for example, without ever having been there.

 

It would be cool if that feature could be turned off.  I was hoping that moving the difficulty setting to "Iron," for example, would disable the "recon by target line" feature.  You could only check LOS from your current location.

 

Granted, the unscrupulous could certainly still do this in the map editor, I suppose.

[Ryujin]

Until the AI is smart enough to find a good position themselves, it's necessary to some degree. You can't tell your ATGM team to go up on the ridge and find a spot overlooking the road. They'll just go exactly where you say and happily stare at the backside of the ridge, even if moving two meters forward would give them a good view. I'd rather deal with a few exploits of the target line instead of having my troops stand around in a useless spot just out of LOS when moving them.

 

Aside from that, in general CM simulates the combat very well, but not being in the commander's boots. You almost always have far, far more information and command power than an actual commander. Just comes with the perspective and the fact you play as every leader on your side.  

[Thewood1]

How is using the target line any different an exploit than going to ground level and moving all around the map and looking at the terrain.  You can't do that in real life as a commander.  To me you get the exact same exploit, its just one of them is easier and saves time for people that don't have all night to play.

[dan/california]

You have to give orders in this game in great detail. You can't just say crawl to the edge of the woods until you can see the road.  You have to tell them the exact spot, and pick some waypoints in between if you want to have the slightest chance of them doing it right. The way it works is a compromise to make giving orders bearable.  It does reward patience and attention to detail, but most of the time a real battle does, as well.

[womble]

You're also having to leave the troops to their own devices. Even in RT, you can't follow each troop, check what it's seeing and stop it when the vista looks good. You also don't have the squad's ability to say to itself "We can nearly see that from here; if we went 10m over there, we'd be able to shoot at it, pretty sure," on a continuous basis. "Advance your platoon and set up a base of fire that covers the farm buildings at grid ref xxxxxxxx" is a perfectly reasonable order from a captain to a lieutenant to conceptualise, and you need to be able to assess at what point the Lt's squad sergeants see the target and deploy their squads into firing positions. That farm could be a lonnng way off, as well.

The game requires some careful and detailed management of your troops because the environment in which they are operating is complex and intricate. There are lots of things you have to pay attention to, because there are lots of options of how to go about things: for example, when your fire support teams are crawling into their final covered fire positions, do you have them on short covered arcs at their arrival point, or set them straight off with area targets on suspected enemy positions, or just leave them to the TacAI's tender mercies? Three broad-brush options for one waypoint, two of which have more detail under them. Winning against a human takes effort and skill.