Making the most out of cover

[Fade2Gray]

Alright, as a Combat Mission noob I feel this is probably the most frustrating thing for me to figure out.  It seems pretty cut and dry, but its been anything but that for me. When I think I have my tanks set up just right, they get killed before they have a chance to do anything.  On the other side, I'll have a BMP-3 spend 10 minutes popping away at all sorts of targets and survive the entire battle in what seems to be the most magical piece of cover ever.  Never mind 3 or 4 M1s staring at it while it blazes away with its auto cannon, it can't be spotted at all.  It was hilarious to behold.

So, for all you veterans who know better than I do, how can I figure out how to use cover and concealment better in this game?

[A Canadian Cat]

That is a very open ended question.  My head hurts just thinking about all the things that could be said. I'll try to kick things off with something:

 

Get down at the unit level and look at what things look like from their point of view.  It is often crystal clear that there is a best path over the fields because of the way the ground folds.  The single best way to move without getting your tanks nailed is to not even be seen by the enemy.

 

Not just useful for movement but finding a good place to hang out on the defence too.  Turn the trees on and try to position your tanks so they can see out of the trees fairly well but are not out in the open either.  Trees are your friend, enemy ordnance might hit the trees near your tank before hitting your tank and even better you can arrange it so that the forest provides good protection to your flanks too - just make sure there is someone there who can alert you if trouble starts heading your way.

[womble]

First thing to get straight is the difference between Concealment  (which reduces the chance of your element being spotted) and Cover (which gives protection against incoming fire). Some terrain elements offer more of one than the other, and some offer a combination. A low stone wall offers good cover against small arms, but lousy concealment for troops firing or looking over it, because their heads are relatively obvious.

 

Concealment (which seems to be your concern) depends not so much on the terrain the unit is "in" as the terrain that is between the observer trying to spot your unit, and the unit. Trees and other foliage provide good concealment, though there's something about them which very occasionally means a spot (and firing solution) will be obtained in situations where it would appear there should be complete concealment. My postulate is that no vegetation-based concealment gives 100% concealment, so there's always a 1% chance, and even when a unit has to roll that 1% 3 or 4 times to achieve a single spot, those tiny probabilities are expressed in-game from time to time.

[Buzz]

See you are enjoying and appreciating our 'New Modern' Fade2Gray
IanL and womble veteran counsel provide sound guidance.
Unit level recon from the guys trying to KO your forces… point of view… works for me.

Time consuming but well worth the time when going for a win. Ground level recon helps one appreciate the details of where the strong and not so strong points are.

Sometimes the Devil is in the details.

In 'New Modern' things happen fast so details are more important faster.

Have Fun,

Buzz
 

[cool breeze]

great point Buzz.  the difference between a great action point and a bad one can be just 8 meters and once the bullets start flying is too late to fix it.

[Kieme(ITA)]

My two cents:

 

the only good concealment is provided by elevations, buildings, and very large Patches of Woods. Spot your enemy first, by any means; then, knowing the enemy position, move your units under concealment and use the best possible cover (buildings).

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

When setting up in a defensive position prior to the game kicking off, use the target command to check your LOS.  If you're hull down (spotter is partial/hull down etc), then great! Also worth considering is placing your vehicles fully behind cover, and using another spotter (like an infantry team camped out in a building) to let you know when the enemy has entered your tank's fields of fire.  Then generously apply 3# from my next set of tips.  

 

In terms of sneaky sneaky vehicles getting pot shots at you:

 

1. Back up.  Aint no reason to go forward or stay in a fight you're having problems with.

 

2. If you've got them, send a UAV to that area.  Even if you just know where the target is, vs the UAV seeing it, dropping a 2 salvo battery barrage on his hidey hole will make anything but an MBT a bit less functional, and it'll make a lot of the cover go away.

 

3. Learn to love the "hunt" command.  If you're pretty sure where a target is, but not quite sure how far out of cover you need to be to waste him, use the "hunt" command to clear your cover, but then a reverse command back into cover.  For vehicles the thing will creep into engagement window, let fly, and then back right on up to safety.  Often that extra .5 meters that gets the target into LOS, but not the full meter that gets you fully into enemy LOS is what will save the day and let you red mist some things.  This can also be repeated many times, so you vehicle will advance to kill something/the end of the hunt command, and then reverse once one of the previous conditions are met.  Human players might get smart, but it's hard on the TAC AI, and often will cause all but the best used/Javelin type ATGMs to wiff.  

[womble]

 

3. Learn to love the "hunt" command.  If you're pretty sure where a target is, but not quite sure how far out of cover you need to be to waste him, use the "hunt" command to clear your cover, but then a reverse command back into cover.  For vehicles the thing will creep into engagement window, let fly, and then back right on up to safety.  Often that extra .5 meters that gets the target into LOS, but not the full meter that gets you fully into enemy LOS is what will save the day and let you red mist some things.  This can also be repeated many times, so you vehicle will advance to kill something/the end of the hunt command, and then reverse once one of the previous conditions are met.  Human players might get smart, but it's hard on the TAC AI, and often will cause all but the best used/Javelin type ATGMs to wiff.  

Unless something's changed in BS, from v3 WW2 (don't know, haven't got it), that's a dangerous way of doing a "shoot and scoot", because if you use Hunt, and a valid target is spotted (you can restrict valid targets by using Target Arc or Target Armour Arc), or you receive "relevant" incoming fire, the Hunt command will stop you and cancel all subsequent waypoints. So if you're thinking you need to reverse out of an exposed position after firing, using Hunt to find the earliest possible place from which you can fire is going to stop you doing that. Hunt has the advantage if it stops you from getting exposed in the first place, as you say.

[A Canadian Cat]

I was going to point out what @womble said.  However I still do this form time to time.  Why?  Because if they hunt forward and spot something they will engage it.  If they do not spot anything they will pull back into cover.  There is no point in hanging out in the open for no reason.

 

I am very careful about how far out of cover I send vehicles using the hunt command: because this game does not have insta-spot, tanks sometimes drive forward a bit further than they need to before they spot the enemy. So, my hunt commands stay pretty short and the way point at the end is, at least I intend it to be, hull down or otherwise not too exposed.

 

Edited to fix missing negative as pointed out by @womble

Edited April 28, 2015 by IanL

[womble]

...because this game does not have insta-spot...

I believe my bolded addition was an omission by Ian... just before anyone gets the wrong idea...

 

Or:

 

Insta-Spot^tm Technology: making your games gamier since 2007 with the CMx2 engine!

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Weirdness.  I could have sworn it kept the reverse command.  I tend to play in real time though so honestly could be I've just got my memory all mangled/I tend to kick into micromanage overdrive once contact is made anyway.

[A Canadian Cat]

I believe my bolded addition was an omission by Ian... just before anyone gets the wrong idea...

 

Or:

 

Insta-Spot^tm Technology: making your games gamier since 2007 with the CMx2 engine!

 

LOL thank you. Wow that was bad - now fixed.   Insta-spot and perfect pixel troops are my fake trade marked way of mocking the whinny babies that sometimes appear and complain that their units are not able to instantly and perfectly spot everything they see from their god's eye view with the icons turned on.  Nothing to do with the OP's discussion question.

[Fade2Gray]

When setting up in a defensive position prior to the game kicking off, use the target command to check your LOS.  If you're hull down (spotter is partial/hull down etc), then great! Also worth considering is placing your vehicles fully behind cover, and using another spotter (like an infantry team camped out in a building) to let you know when the enemy has entered your tank's fields of fire.  Then generously apply 3# from my next set of tips.  

 

In terms of sneaky sneaky vehicles getting pot shots at you:

 

1. Back up.  Aint no reason to go forward or stay in a fight you're having problems with.

 

2. If you've got them, send a UAV to that area.  Even if you just know where the target is, vs the UAV seeing it, dropping a 2 salvo battery barrage on his hidey hole will make anything but an MBT a bit less functional, and it'll make a lot of the cover go away.

 

3. Learn to love the "hunt" command.  If you're pretty sure where a target is, but not quite sure how far out of cover you need to be to waste him, use the "hunt" command to clear your cover, but then a reverse command back into cover.  For vehicles the thing will creep into engagement window, let fly, and then back right on up to safety.  Often that extra .5 meters that gets the target into LOS, but not the full meter that gets you fully into enemy LOS is what will save the day and let you red mist some things.  This can also be repeated many times, so you vehicle will advance to kill something/the end of the hunt command, and then reverse once one of the previous conditions are met.  Human players might get smart, but it's hard on the TAC AI, and often will cause all but the best used/Javelin type ATGMs to wiff.  

 

I've started using the Target command for figuring out LOS, and its helping me.  I asked someone about figuring out LOS before, and targeting arcs was suggested to me.  It seemed like the perfect way to do things at first, as it'd show exactly where dead zones would be that a tank or whatever can't see, but it always seems horribly... off.

[womble]

I've started using the Target command for figuring out LOS, and its helping me.  I asked someone about figuring out LOS before, and targeting arcs was suggested to me.  It seemed like the perfect way to do things at first, as it'd show exactly where dead zones would be that a tank or whatever can't see, but it always seems horribly... off.

It'll seem that way because it gives no such information. Target Arcs do two things:

 

1. They orient the unit (infantry take cover and seek concealed observation spots; tanks point their turret) to the mid-point of the arc
2. They restrict the fire of the unit to within that arc.

They give no (that's zero, none, zilch) information about what can or cannot be targeted in that arc by the unit obeying the Target Arc. You can have a tank immediately behind a building and draw a Target Arc all the way through the building, entirely occluded by the building. The tank will only fire at things that it can see, which are inside that arc. Sometimes you actually want to do this, so that an intended movement brings the arc into a place where it can see more than half an AS. A Target Arc doesn't even give any info about defilade.

 

As you have discovered, it's the Target tool that's the thing to use. I'm stressing the point to improve the chances that nobody else gets caught by the misapprehension that snared you, not to beat upon you for being misinformed.

[Fade2Gray]

It'll seem that way because it gives no such information. Target Arcs do two things:

 

1. They orient the unit (infantry take cover and seek concealed observation spots; tanks point their turret) to the mid-point of the arc
2. They restrict the fire of the unit to within that arc.

They give no (that's zero, none, zilch) information about what can or cannot be targeted in that arc by the unit obeying the Target Arc. You can have a tank immediately behind a building and draw a Target Arc all the way through the building, entirely occluded by the building. The tank will only fire at things that it can see, which are inside that arc. Sometimes you actually want to do this, so that an intended movement brings the arc into a place where it can see more than half an AS. A Target Arc doesn't even give any info about defilade.

 

As you have discovered, it's the Target tool that's the thing to use. I'm stressing the point to improve the chances that nobody else gets caught by the misapprehension that snared you, not to beat upon you for being misinformed.

 

 

I have to wonder why it doesn't.  Every time I used it there seems to be "holes" about roughly where there are a few gaps, but for the most part it doesn't show jack and the "holes" are not even remotely close to legit.  I can't help but wonder why they didn't part that feature into the game.

[cool breeze]

I think a handy thing that might be related to these "holes"  is that certain things make straight lines that can be used to better see contours.  For example the line connecting movement lines is a straight line; so when you are moving guys up onto a crest, sometimes the movement line dips below the ground.  This is a good time to move the movement line backwards onto the area where the line dipped underground.  you can put a pause there and then maybe another move command a little farther up.  Doing this keeps you from accidently overshooting an important terrain crest and exposing more than you need to. 

Edited April 28, 2015 by cool breeze

[A Canadian Cat]

I have to wonder why it doesn't.  Every time I used it there seems to be "holes" about roughly where there are a few gaps, but for the most part it doesn't show jack and the "holes" are not even remotely close to legit.

 

Oh man yeah that would be confusing.  Those gaps are just the result of the way the target arc is rendered.  It is a arc or circle shaped section of a plane at a certain distance above the start and end points of the arc.  Those gaps are just places were the terrain pops up above the plane of the arc being drawn by the engine.  There is no information in the rendering of the arc about visibility at all - it just shows you the extent of your orders.

[cool breeze]

Another reason they that using the movement line to notice and plot pauses on little crests is because it actually these kind of non horizontal little crests that can matter the most.  Horizontal crests aren't really important per se, the important thing is the crests between your guys and the terrain that the enemy is on.  So  if the enemy is below you your key crest will be on the far side of the horizontal crest, and if the enemy is above you it will be behind the horizontal crest.