Night and illumination

[James]

I dont know if this has been dealt with in the past but in night battles can you use flares? (illumination, not the trousers)

[Keith]

I posted this question before and I was told by a beta-tester that it was decide not to put flares in this release. In his words he said he didn't think flares were used that often. From what I have read, I would have to strongly disagree. I think it was probably a decision based on the amount of extra coding required. Think about the extra complexity based on the graphical illumination of terrain & units as well as the code required to model the flares. In any case, I really think it should be put in a future patch.

In the battle around Arnhem during Market Garden, there are several incidents I read of where the Germans used flares:

"This time a feint atack was mounted on the right, which included Lippert driving widly on to the drop-zone with his jeep, firing green verey flares.."

Another incident

"Muffled dumpfs signalling the barking of mortars, and the signatures of tank guns. These had to be ours? Flares rose steadily to our left, something like 400 to 500 m away, where there was open ground to the Rhine.."

I know the Marines in the Pacific typically used flares to illuminate their positions all through the night in order to keep Japanese inflatraters at bay.

[Moon]

The main problem with flares is: were they used for signalling or for illumination? Or both? And when both, to which extent?

According to my reading and some discussions within the beta group, it seems that flares used by platoon leaders were used mainly (if not solely) for signalling purposes. Illumination would be reserved for the bigger caliber guns and mortars, firing long-burning parachute flares which illuminate a large area.

Having something to do with night vision professionally, I can see why: once you fire a flare, you have to keep firing them, otherwise you will, in fact, see less once it stops burning. Individual flares fired by flare pistols, therefore, have little use and in fact give your position away more than being of any good seeing the enemy.

If you, therefore, want to simulate a night battle aided by floodlights or a constant flare illumination by artillery, you can do so by setting the time of day to dusk/dawn. It yields pretty good results IMO.

[Guest Captain Foobar]

I wonder if you could have dusk illumination, with a night-time horizon, that way your "flare-illuminated" battlefield would look more realistic.... Anybody know?

[Guest Babra]

As I understand it (going on memory here) the reason this feature is not included is because it would require artificial illumination on the map, which I suppose is difficult to implement.

[Darwin]

I remember reading on the IR searchlights used with equiptment on panthers. I am curious, was this a technology used otherwise in the field at the time?

[Moon]

Well, I did read about some infrared units (what is called Generation zero) which were mounted on rifles and could be used for sniping. They were big bulky devices equipped with a big infrared lamp and the necessary batteries (weighting some 20 pounds or so). Range and visibility were maybe within the 100 meters range, but the device had a few inherent flaws.

One - it was VERY heavy. Two - it could be used for 10-15 minutes before the batteries ran out of power. Three - anybody with a similar device or a simple IR light detector was able to spot you.

Especially the latter problem meant that the Panthers equipped with the IR device were not very successful, since the light beam gave away their position quickly. The short-time solution was to use big IR flood lights mounted on trucks in the rear to illuminate the battlefield, but this - too - had its problems, since these lights were easily detected and destroyed by artillery as well.

Uh... oops - sorry about boring you with all this.

[Seanachai]

I've read a couple of books that describe both the Brits and the Germans as using 'floodlight' units on night offensives (the Ardennes for the Germans), where the beams were reflected off low cloud cover to create 'artificial moonlight' conditions. Of no particular siginicance within the context of CM, of course, just a little historical aside.

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