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Expect confusion in WW2 night battles

This extract is from the Bruneval Night Raid on a moonlit night at 2am..

"British parachutists were in the area but they had no idea how many, where they were or what they were trying to do. They heard firing from the cliff top, and then the sound of battle coming up from the beach about five hundred yards away. But they had received no clear orders as to what they should do. So the sergeant sent out small patrols to reconnoitre and bring back information as to what was going on. It so happened that one of the patrols went south in the direction of Charteris and his men, who were advancing towards them.

Moving quickly through the woods on either side of the steep little valleys it was dark and confusing, and the German patrol became split. One man separated from the rest saw the familiar sight of soldiers moving through the woods and fell in behind them, trailing them for some minutes. It's not clear who spotted whom first, but the British Paras realised that the man at the rear of their squad was not one of their own when he suddenly called out to them in German. At pretty much the same time the German realised his dreadful mistake and screamed out. Charteris, near the rear of the group, turned and pulled out his revolver to shoot the man at about five yards, almost point blank. But in the flurry and speed of the incident he forgot to release one of the safety catches of his pistol and the weapon did not fire. The terrified German soldier fired his rifle but was too distraught to take proper aim and missed.

Sergeant Gibbon, who was at the front of the group with his Sten gun, span around in a flash. Private Tom Hill, at the rear next to the man with whom he had been advancing through the woods, was amazed to find he was a German. He saw the sergeant move and threw himself to the ground. Gibbon fired his Sten gun over Hill at the German, who dropped instantly."

Edited by Wicky
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There are night battles and then there are NIGHT BATTLES.
If its a high full moon on a clear night the battlefield will be illuminated like a football stadium during a night game. If its overcast with no moon you won't be able to see your hand in front of your face. When making scenarios I'm sometimes compelled to Google the lunar cycle and need to switch either dates or scenario time to correspond with moonrise and phases of the moon.

Edited by MikeyD
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2 hours ago, BornGinger said:

Issues in night battles and fog battles are only two things which are wrong in this game and need a complete change.

Do you think you could expand at all?

IMHO several posts in this thread demonstrate an inability to comprehend of the concept of abstraction in a 3d game.....None of them demonstrate an actual issue with CM.  :rolleyes:

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City boys often don't realize just how frickin' DARK night time can get. City light pollution is often so bright you can read a newspaper by it. Go out into the countryside, away from the glow of habitation in the distance, and night turns pitch black. Its actually been years since I've found myself outside in genuine darkness. Its also been years since I've seen the Milky Way at night. Ah, city life.

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As mentioned, I have seen night and fog conditions that were so bad that I could not see 10 feet and make anything clear out of what I was looking at.

a no moon night with clouds or under a tree canopy makes it very hard to see any distance. Fog can get so thick that shining a light makes it worse. Either situation is really bad

The problem is, the game reflects that type of vision all the time in settings it should not. Where as, those type of conditions are very rare even in the middle of no-where.

 

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9 hours ago, MikeyD said:

City boys often don't realize just how frickin' DARK night time can get.

Countryside boy here. The game is able to simulate extremely dark conditions, and nobody is saying it can't be pitch black in real life.

However, in the game, you can send a whole battalion of infantry running at top speed through a forest completely blind, yet arriving exactly where they are meant to. But they are unable to figure out there's an enemy team feet away, or that the tank that just ran them over was enemy (despite getting an "enemy contact" marker).

It's this mismatch that's the problem, not that visibility can be extremely low.

So I agree that night battles could use a little tender loving care to make them more believable. A good first step could be for scenario designers to stop making scenarios where visibility is so bad that it would be impossible to coordinate any troop movements.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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On 7/13/2019 at 11:42 PM, General Jack Ripper said:

Right up until the shooting starts.

Yep. Reminds me to a night exercise during my Bundeswehr time.

We were stumbling through a pitch back forest, until one of the guys “found” a trip wire and started an amazing show with flash-bangs and fire from all sides. Would have been a very short adventure in RL...

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On 8/10/2019 at 4:42 AM, StieliAlpha said:

Yep. Reminds me to a night exercise during my Bundeswehr time.

We were stumbling through a pitch back forest, until one of the guys “found” a trip wire and started an amazing show with flash-bangs and fire from all sides. Would have been a very short adventure in RL...

Just another reason you gotta love this game.

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