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Detection... magic?


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One squad behind a low wall, bushes in front, trees behind, starts shooting at some approaching infantry on its right. AG 350m away, facing them starts shooting at them, immediately.

One squad, still, in hiding inside a wood, bushes in front, a tank 80m away starts shooting at them. 

One sharpshooter in some trees -wood terrain- takes one shot at a tank commander 200m away,  tanks replays immediately.

All in a clear day,  armour Regular.

 

How can I avoid this?

Always heavy wood with 3 trees?

All tanks cons/green?

Help will be much appreciated.

Regards.

 



			
		
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Avoid what? The enemy trying to kill your guys?

Joking aside I am not sure what you are asking. To avoid enemy units opening up on your men you have to have them remain unseen which means manoeuvre so that they cannot be seen by enemy from many locations. Or have enough friendly support to win local fire supremacy - see the previous sentence regarding using the terrain and manoeuvre to restrict your enemy's sight lines. Or, accept that they will get spotted and withdraw after taking some shots.

Edited by IanL
grammar fix
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Clearly the advice to practice is good but just repeating what you are doing without reflecting on what worked and what didn't and seeking guidance is not a productive as: couching, practice, coaching, practice, coaching and practice. :D

There is no shortage advice and opinion here so it you want to share some screen shots, maps overviews and scenarios I am sure people will give you some coaching / advice. Or links to useful resources to read and watch.

Here's one: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy-tactics-a-video-series

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Yeah for one thing distance matters. 200 meters isn’t enough to really hide that sharpshooter. 

Regarding the above point about practice I’d also suggest testing. Take advantage of the editor to do some trial and error on weapons systems. If you are like me and not much of a grog, understanding the capabilities of the systems in game is really important. While I have a general understanding, I definitely lack specific knowledge and experience.  Finding out just how far away a sharpshooter should engage and maintain concealment is a pretty easy one to play with and it will help improve your experience a lot.   Play with the terrain, is your sharpshooter in trees but the underlying tile just plain grass or is it a light forest tile?  That makes a huge difference. 

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How you use a unit makes big difference too.....Try having your sharp shooter use different combinations of movement orders to position himself and then reposition after shooting. 

Sometimes you just have to accept that he will be seen, so taking the shot followed by a 'Quick' move might get him out of trouble best, on other occasions 'Slow' moving from position to position without ever losing concealment might be possible, @Erwin produced a masterful display of the latter technique back in the very early days of testing for me.

As I should have said in the first place, experiment & practice.....Also as the lads suggest, 'the only dumb question is the one you didn't ask', but you do need to frame your questions fairly precisely to get specific answers.

I'd second the recommendation to use the editor, you'll learn a lot more about the game mechanics in there than you will in the manual.

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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I would like to point that:

1). the tank was unaware about that sniper before the sniper opened fire, so the sniper was not spotted

2). when the sniper opened fire (one shot) the tank IMMEDIATELY knew the position of the sniper and returned fire.

This is unrealistic IMO.  Even if the sniper was not hidden well enough, finding the direction of enemy fire (a SINGLE rifle shot), scanning that area, finding the sniper (which under various conditions and backgrounds possible could be not trivial even using thermals) should take some time. Especially immediately knowing the direction of the single rifle shot is totaly unrealistic for me - in the other case, specialised "sniper detection" acoustic systems would be not needed !!! 

I believe that in some conditions (clear LOS is one I guess, range less than xxx is the second) the game engine automaticly  reveals position of the shooter to the victim. I've seen this many times. An enemy tank is taken by surprise by a side shot from 500m and if not killed outright, it immediately starts to rotate turret and return fire. Not a second of hesitation, thinking, frantically scanning trough vision slots. It always know position of the shooter and knows it the very second it shot.  Even if this mechanism is needed (as removing it would broke the game somehow) it should be modified to include a random 2-10s delay between taking fire and "detecting" the enemy and some (like 20%) chance to completly fail to detect the shooter. I tlk about detecting gunfire and automatic weapons sources now.

Detecting single small calibre shots is yet another matter. There should be very small chance they would be detected at all, and even then it should take some time (for troughly scanning the surroundings at _suspected_and_approximate_ direction of fire) and not 0.01s. 

 

Edited by Amizaur
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Spotting never happens immediately... I forget the exact timing, but its something like a spotting check every 7 seconds or so (someone with more knowledge please correct me)... so I suspect there is something else going on in this situation that allowed the tank(s) to spot the offending sniper.  What it is who knows?  The sniper moved prior to firing perhaps, and was spotted moving into position.. the tank had a sound contact from another source (nearby infantry unit) and the firing solidified that contact, perhaps the sniper was on the edge of the treeline, rather than inside the woods.. it is far more exposed if so... we weren't there so we can never give you an accurate explanation.

We would require much more information, screen shots, perhaps a movie showing the action, etc. in order to really dissect the encounter.

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11 minutes ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

I forget the exact timing, but its something like a spotting check every 7 seconds or so (someone with more knowledge please correct me)

Someone, I forget who, empirically determined that the basic default interval is 7s. But that is not the end of the story. Each unit is on its own cycle - to spread out LOS and spotting calculations. A long time ago an improvement was made to make this time interval dynamic, so, that units that were in close proximity would not have to wait to have a chance of spotting nearby enemy units. Thus the cycle interval reduces for units close to enemy units. This eliminated some goofy things that used to happen: a unit behind a building gets is spotting cycle just before it move out around the corner - now that unit used to have to wait 7s before even having a chance to see enemy units in the street. With the changes the will get a chance to see those units much sooner.

Having said that there is no auto spotting (TM) in the game - every unit spotted is earned by some member of the crew or team that noticed the enemy.  As @Bil Hardenberger there is so little information it is difficult to even guess at the merits of the conclusions being drawn above. OK I can guess but I will refrain from doing so :D

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9 minutes ago, IanL said:

Someone, I forget who, empirically determined that the basic default interval is 7s. But that is not the end of the story. Each unit is on its own cycle - to spread out LOS and spotting calculations. A long time ago an improvement was made to make this time interval dynamic, so, that units that were in close proximity would not have to wait to have a chance of spotting nearby enemy units. Thus the cycle interval reduces for units close to enemy units. This eliminated some goofy things that used to happen: a unit behind a building gets is spotting cycle just before it move out around the corner - now that unit used to have to wait 7s before even having a chance to see enemy units in the street. With the changes the will get a chance to see those units much sooner.

Interesting.. I must have missed those discussions... thanks Ian.

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Sorry, I wasn't clear enough.

How to avoid, if at all possible that as soon as a tank has LOS it can see and detect everything, immediately.

I'm by the road, my engine running, some trees and bushes on my left, a guy, 200m away behind a tree is using his lighter while looking at my car... for half a second.
While playing should I imagine something like this or that I am in a Fairy Tale?, should I practice warfairy talegaming? ...the tank commander is always Legolas?

Yes, it is a game but if I deploy my troops -nobody was moving, the tank was the only one with LOS- hiding in a wood, for some reason my expectations are that they are hidden in  a wood.

I will add even more trees and bushes and I will lower the crew quality... but something is rotten in Denmark I don't think to remember that CMBB was that easy for tanks.
 



			
		
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well my experience in the game does not match yours so I'd have to say you are reacting before we know the full story (game saves are the best way to demonstrate) and that isn't going to get much traction here.  It is really hard to offer suggestions, advice or just agree that yeah that was a sucky situation with no data.  Yes there are going to be situations where the game will absolutely not be able to match reality.  It is only a game that costs $50 after all.  However even within those confines I have had even the AI snipers reek havoc on my troops and frustrate the crap out of me.

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9 hours ago, Bil Hardenberger said:

Spotting never happens immediately... I forget the exact timing, but its something like a spotting check every 7 seconds or so (someone with more knowledge please correct me)... so I suspect there is something else going on in this situation that allowed the tank(s) to spot the offending sniper. 

My experience is that unit that was shot (hit) gets instant, "free" info about shooter localisation, without need to wait for it's "7s" cycle. Of course not always, but in some conditions (like close-medium range and clear LOS). Maybe just an instant detection check is performed.  

I may be wrong but this is what I remember from my tests (was testing another matter but it involved some units being hit and I observed their reaction) and games. Would have to test it to be sure. 

Edited by Amizaur
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11 hours ago, Amizaur said:

My experience is that unit that was shot (hit) gets instant, "free" info about shooter localisation, without need to wait for it's "7s" cycle. Of course not always, but in some conditions (like close-medium range and clear LOS). Maybe just an instant detection check is performed.  

That is not true, at least it hasn't been true in the games I've played, and I have played a fair number.  What firing does do is it makes the shooter easier to spot, as does any movement.   

Definitely do more tests, or better yet, just play a few games and see if your initial reaction still holds after you have more experience. 

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16 hours ago, semmes said:

How to avoid, if at all possible that as soon as a tank has LOS it can see and detect everything, immediately.

 

14 hours ago, sburke said:

well my experience in the game does not match yours ... However even within those confines I have had even the AI snipers reek havoc on my troops and frustrate the crap out of me.

Yeah, what @sburke said. Tanks spot like crap in the WW2 games - as they should. Clearly they are not helpless and are dangerous but they are usually the last units on the battle field that figure out where the enemy is.

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@semmes,

Here is a suggestion: try the SAME battle you mentioned at the top of this thread. But, this time, play it as WeGo, 2 Player Hot Seat. Keep your guys how you had them and have them open fire at the same time. Obviously, push the "enemy" into the same locations they were in.

Use plenty of savegames.

Watch the "?" pop up over your troops. Why and when did they occur?

Reload the turn. Instead of "Move", try "Quick". Maybe getting there earlier will help. Or use "Hunt": perhaps a more cautious approach is needed. Keep trying different techniques and watch how and when the enemy becomes aware of your forces.

Sometimes the enemy becomes aware of your units through their internal command and communications. This is modeled. So, if one unit sees your guys, that information propagates through the enemy forces until they all know about your guys. Once your guys open fire, their "?" status changes to known, and the enemy opens up.

A lot of the folks posting here (myself included) have 1,000's of hours of playtime. A lot of experience helps. You're getting some good advice.

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