Spotting in CM2/CMII

[Jeff Heidman]

I was considering the way CM does spotting and how it could be improved the other night.

Currently, all spotting is "global" in that if one of your units spots an enemy target, everyone spots it. While this is rather unrealistic, given processor power and other issues, it can be seen why this method was chosen.

However, this results in some unrealistic behavior. Stalking a tank (even one buttoned up) becomes almost impossible for a LATW team, since ANYONE spotting the team means that the tank has also spotted the team. Indeed, armor in general is greatly helped by this little issue, since it takes away one of their major weaknesses (poor ability to see much, especially when buttoned).

The more you consider the entire issue, the harder it becomes. For example, the view through a tanks vision blocks is very limiting, but just fine in the direction you happen to be looking. So that has to be taken into account. Of course, then you want your tanks to be swinging their turrets back and forth while on the move in order to keep tracking across their field of view.

Even unbuttoned, spotting for an inexperienced crew could very well be problematic. With only a single pair of eyes looking, it would be easy to imagine a non-veteran TC not keeping up a good pattern of scanning and missing something of to his side, especially if he is busy directing HE fire into that village (for example).

Finally, can you imagine the screams of outrage when someone drives their M4(75) Sherman up besides that King Tiger and blows it away because the KT never saw it coming? The player sees it. Every unit of the battlefield (except that KT crew) sees it. Believe it or not, it would be entirely realistic for a tank to never see another tank driving a couple of hundred meters away in plain daylight if the crew is concentrating on something else.

Spotting is one of the area that currently CM does no better than most of the wargames it has replaced. There is a lot of work to be done to bring spotting up to the new expectation of realism that CM has themselves set.

I, for one, find the entire issue (from design to actual implementation) really interesting.

Jeff Heidman

[Juardis]

I believe Steve said that relative spotting will be implemented (or considered at the very least) for CMII (the engine sequel, not the game sequel). By relative spotting, I mean that in order to be spotted, a unit has to be within LOS of a unit that has either 1) a radio or 2) in C&C of someone who has a radio. Otherwise, the unit remains unspotted. In the case of buttoned tanks, this obviously means a much longer time to acquire a target.

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Jeff Abbott

[Schrullenhaft]

A very complex issue to resolve with code. Hopefully BTS will come up with a good solution in CM II. It will further change the way some people play the game.

To get the most realistic effects, a thorough knowledge of radio-nets and other command and control issues of the combantants will be necessary to make spotting and communication between units more realistic. This would highlight some of the interesting differences in tactical SOP and organization between the combatants.

It will be an unenviable task since designing such a system is going to be fraught with mixed opinions for whatever results are achieved.

[Guest Mikey D]

Does all this 'CM II' talk mean that an entirely new (or highly modified) game engine is now being devised to run standing CM I scenarios? Wow! We've already had 3-4 upgrades in just the 6-7 months that the game has been out! What version of CM is currently being burned onto the CDs?

As to trouble spotting while buttoned up, I understand the Soviet T34-76 was especially notorious in that regard. something to condiser for CM II - the GAME!

[Schrullenhaft]

CM II will be a new version of the game engine that will have to be "purchased". It isn't a slip-stream upgrade like you've been seeing for CMBO. I'm guessing that it will be developed after CM2 (the Eastern Front) is released and future CM games will be based on this engine (so CM3 will be based on the CM II game engine), but there aren't any hard details on that at the moment.

[aka_tom_w]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

However, this results in some unrealistic behavior. Stalking a tank (even one buttoned up) becomes

almost impossible for a LATW team, since ANYONE spotting the team means that the tank has also

spotted the team. Indeed, armor in general is greatly helped by this little issue, since it takes away one

of their major weaknesses (poor ability to see much, especially when buttoned).

Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

well I agree (sort of)

What we have now in the game is "borg like intel spotting" or absolute spotting, one units spots something and all other friendly units know about it. That's Absolute spotting.

Relative spotting as has been discussed will be VERY challenging to model correctly, but sure YES it would be cool.

With regard to stalking tanks with anti tank teams, I had a Panther NAILED by a zook that remained hidden from ALL my units as it sneaked (snuck?) up across 50 - 70 meters of OPEN grass, to within 30 meters of my Panther to score the HIT.

How is that possible? , try playing with armour units at night in the FOG!, thats where you get the BEST, closest aproximation of relative spotting. Nobody can see anything and there is the potential for friendly fire.

NO unit can see more than 30 or 40 meters, plenty of grey unidentified tanks shapes and sound contacts running around.

Want to play with the closest thing to relative spotting?

Set up an attack or a defense in the dark in the Fog at Night. Now you have relative spotting, relativly speaking no body can see anything!

(yes, true, once one unit actually does spot an enemy unit ALL friendly units still know about it)

It was fun and I highly recommend the combination. FOG at Night with Armour and anti tanks units

he hehe

Good luck

-tom w

[This message has been edited by aka_tom_w (edited 12-08-2000).]

[This message has been edited by aka_tom_w (edited 12-08-2000).]

[Terence]

Does the light from burning tanks or buildings or other burning objects affect spotting ability at night?

After all, a burning building would silhouette anyone between it and the spotter and cast bright light for a bit in all directions.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Jeff, this is something that will be addressed in CMII (the engine rewrite). As you guessed, making a Relative spotting model is not easy. To the best of our knowledge, no wargame has never used such a system even though, as you stated, it is much more realistic.

For the rest of you... CMII will certainly come after CM2 (the Eastern Front). It will be a rather large rewrite of the existing codebase to incorporate many fundamental changes. Relative Spotting is one of them. Another one would be to have a lighting model so we can simulate better low light/night stuff (see Terence's post above). Other changes are more mundane coding things that never-the-less have a great impact on what we can do as game designers.

We do not expect CMII to see the light of day for at least 2 years. CM2 will keep us busy for most of the next year.

Steve

[Olle Petersson]

At least spotting isn't entirely global. Some units seem unaware of threats recently spotted by others. Of course these threats can be targeted the next order phase.

My first encounter with the global spotting was in Chance Encounter, where I as German had three Schreck teams crawl through the woods to within LOS of a lone Sherman parked in the treeline. I figured that it might spot one of my teams, but the others would get him. As it happened, as soon as my teams came within LOS, that Sherman and two other 200m back in the open immediately opened up and plastered all teams before they could fire a single rocket.

Those Shermans in the open should in real life never had any chance of getting a visual contact with my teams, only the one in the treeline would have any possibility to spot.

Cheers

Olle