Shooting from Hull-Down Position?

[Chris Nahr]

Fantastic game, I'll buy it as soon as it hits the stores... uh, web site! I have two questions about hull-down positions, though:

1. Does hull-down confer any defensive advantage? If so which? Harder to hit, and/or only turret/upper hull can be hit?

2. Will you be able to shoot out of a hull-down position in the finished game? I tried it in the demo, and although my Hellcat had a clear LOS to its target on the turret/gun level I couldn't fire, obviously because LOS was checked on ground level rather than turret/gun level.

This makes it impossible to fire in a certain direction unless you completely uncover the tank in this direction, including hull & tracks.

There was a similar question here a couple of months back but the dev team said they're still working on the issue. So what's the current status? Thanks!

[Guest Scott Clinton]

Hull down prevents certain parts of the vehicle from being hit because they are under cover.

It works fine in the demo for me.

What you need to do is setup behind the hill then "Hunt" forward. The AFV will stop in a hull down position and fire at any targets.

Hope this helps.

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The Grumbling Grognard

[Chris Nahr]

Thanks, but as outlined in my previous post, I did try to shoot from a hull down position... and failed.

Scenario was Last Defense, my Hellcat was just behind the last houses past the bridge (from the US viewpoint), trying to shoot up at the Tiger near the edge of the map, at the end of the forest road to the right of my position.

Lowest camera view for the Hellcat showed clear LOS with the Tiger's profile in full view. Yet the Target command refused to target the Tiger, claiming that I had no LOS. And I didn't -- on ground level which was what Target used. I did have clear LOS at main gun level, though.

So was this a bug? Should or shouldn't it have happened? Any other comments?

[Paul]

Maybe, (I'm just guessing here) it is because you may be able to see through the woods with your naked eye, but the game does not let you draw LOS through the woods.

Paul

[Chris Nahr]

Nope, no woods or other objects. Just empty air. The line drawn by the Target command cut through the uneven ground right in front of the Hellcat (as I said LOS tracing started on ground level rather than main gun level). As far as I can tell this was the only reason why I didn't get a clear LOS.

[Guest Big Time Software]

I'm not sure I quite understand what the problem is here. Did the LOS line show a blockage, or did it say everything was A-OK to the target? If it showed blockage then there was a reason beyond hull down aspects (this is in and works). Most likely problem is that your eye is being deceived because the vehicle graphics are scaled up above 1:1 scale. So what might visually LOOK like a clear LOS in this case isn't.

Now, if the line was showing everything was a go, and the tank didn't fire, then something else is not OK. There most likely is a non-bug reason, but without seeing the particulars I can't say what it is.

Hope this helps

Steve

[Chris Nahr]

Thanks for the reply! The game did say that LOS was blocked, and as far as I could tell it was blocked by uneven terrain (only). My visual impression was that the main gun was high enough to have a clear LOS; that's why I was wondering if something might be wrong with hull-down positions.

However, I was unaware that the vehicle graphics are scaled up by default! I just tried Shift+C to chance scale and was shocked to see how much smaller the vehicles are on a 1:1 scale. Most probably the error was on my side then. Thanks again!

[Peter Western]

To continue this LOS questioning and hull down topic perhaps BTS could explain the difference between a tank being hull down, and part way behind a house.

This is my understanding. In the hull down case only the top of the tank is in LOS, but if the tank is behind a house and the front appears to be sticking out, when you have an LOS to it you can see all of it not the just the part sticking out. Is this right?