Proposed new command (for CM2)

[willmontgomery]

Of course it is possible that this specific suggestion has been made before, but with all the discussion that has gone on about the limitations imposed by the current set of orders options, checking with a search first is just not realistic.

So here goes:

How about a move option that has a speed and a terminal point (as now), but that also has another reference point X. The order would be to move toward the given terminal point at the given speed and to stop there. But if the unit gains an LOS to the reference point X on the way, it stops as soon as the LOS is gained. Like "go that way until you can see the top of that hill, but do not go more than 200m".

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"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."

[MadmaN]

yeah that would be pretty useful.

[gunnergoz]

I'd like a command like "don't get your ass pulverized."

[Agua]

That's pretty good. An OpFire target preference for units hidden in ambush would be nice too ... particularly zooks and schrecks.

[Agua]

double post

[This message has been edited by Agua (edited 03-24-2001).]

[Vitalis]

No kidding, that would be a GREAT order.

I just lost a StuG today because of that. The 3d graphics are awesome, but there is a very fine line about knowing where your vehicle is ACTUALLY going to sit. The StuG went a few feet too far in its ambush set up and instead of a nice hull down posture that I was looking for, the lower hull was exposed and got ripped next round by a Sherman.

I am all for a command like that one.

[Grisha]

Thumbs up on this idea

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Best regards,

Greg Leon Guerrero

[Cybeq]

Another command I would desperately like to see is the LOS tool referenced from a point on the terrain instead of a vehicle or unit. I want to know what my FO will see when he gets to point "B".

[Grisha]

Punt!

[Homba]

by Vitalis: I just lost a StuG today because of that. The 3d graphics are awesome, but there is a very fine line about knowing where your vehicle is ACTUALLY going to sit. The StuG went a few feet too far in its ambush set up and instead of a nice hull down posture that I was looking for, the lower hull was exposed and got ripped next round by a Sherman.

I have been having the same problem, and thinking about this issue. For me, the issue is one of your tank halting either a little too far, or a little too short of, my planned hull-down position (which is one important element of the issue raised in the above posts). I have spent FAR too much time eyeballing a rise in the terrain from a direct flat side view, and eyeballing my tank (at 'realistic' size)- trying to figure out where EXACTLY on the rise I need to place my Hunt (or Move) dot so that my tank will actually stop in a proper hull-down position.

I have a solution- read on.

My experience has been that it is quite easy to screw up your stop-point- if your tank moves a bit too far, you top the rise and lose the hull-down benefits. Deathly afraid of this evil miscue, I make sure not to place the stop-dot too high on the ridge- but the other side of the coin is, that if I dont make it far enough up the ridge, my gun will not get LOS over the hilltop, and I'll be stuck useless for a whole turn behind the hill.

To answer a few anticipated objections: The Hunt command DOES NOT in my experience guarantee a hull-down stop if an enemy is spotted. And yes, my tank commander is unbuttoned and on the lookout. I have had the experience of my tank running just out of hull-down before the Hunt command kicks in (ie- I spot the enemy) stopping my tank to fire. This is NO GOOD. In real life, my commander could order the driver to EASE up the slope, a foot at a time if necessary, to get just enough of the turret out of defilade to achieve a shot. In CM, there is no mechanism/command in place to mirror this reality. And this mechanism, and the attendant benefits in many situations (not just hull-down issues) is exactly what is being argued for and requested in this thread. The question is, what is the best means to achieve this end?

Also, let me dismiss the 'pre-target' objection- I don't think it helps matters to "pre-target" the enemy tank with a target line before you start your move up the hill. I might be wrong- it may help. However, this is irrelevant to the overall issue in many many situations. If I am just moving into hull-down, moving between buildings, around the edge of a wood or hill, etc, without a visible target- the 'pre-target' wont help me. The issue is much larger than 'achieving hull-down against a known enemy.' The greater issue is one of fine movement control- the exact control that the tank commander would have IRL, that is often the difference between life and death. How to work this into CM?

Cybeq's idea of a 'prospective location' LOS command is a start. But we need to incorporate the unit into this equation, to be able to see what the tank commander WOULD SEE when he reaches that point on the map. Thus we mimic the fine control he has in the only way we can do it in a turn-based game.

Here is how i'd implement 'prospective LOS':

(1)I give a tank a hunt (for example) command. I move the 'hunt-line' up the hill, but instead of just the line on the ground, a 'shadow image' of the tank moves right along with the line (I can see the terminus of the line, any waypoints, etc., right through the shadow image of the tank). The shadow image IS EXACTLY WHERE THE TANK WOULD BE if I were to end the move/hunt/whatever at that point on the map.

(2) I can check LOS from the shadow image location! I do this by fixing the shadow image in place (by right clicking, using the 'X' key, WHATEVER) and then I can draw LOS from that unit! I can thus assure the same result that my tank commander would achieve IRL: I can place the tank in the optimum hull-down (or other) location, because I KNOW (like the commander IRL) when I've got LOS over the hill (or to the point I want to cover with my gun).

No more guessing about what I can see from where I stop! I can do EXACTLY what the tank commander would do in real life- carefully position his tank in crucial situations requiring care! I would love to see this 'prospective LOS' feature implemeneted in CM2 or 'reverse-patched' into every version of CM on the market at the time.

I'd like to hear what others have to say about this, and if this solution (or some version of it) would solve the various problems that are being complained of in this thread.

Homba

[Guest wwb_99]

I think that the current LOS system works fine. If you have ever done some long range photography, you know how hard it can be to predict what the LOS is from a given point to another. No way should you be allowed to have a freehand LOS tool.

I, for one, have no problem getting tanks into good, hull down positions. You just set it to move about a tank length off the crest, and presto, you have it.

WWB

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Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

Check out the Dogs of War CM Players Community

[Michael Dorosh]

Homba, that is an excellent suggestion and something I've thought about for a long time - being able to check LOS from the endpoint of a move. One might argue that it gives too much omniscience to players, but I personally like the flexibility it would give. I think BTS may be making the conscious effort to err on the other side of the realism coin, which is fine - as it stands, we have a pretty unrealistic view of the terrain and ability to guide units over them. It's a great idea, but creates more problems than it solves.

For example - running a FOO into a building hoping to get a good view of enemy infantry in some distant woods. In real life, the FOO would have no idea if he could see the enemy from "up there" until he (or someone else) tried it. Allowing him to do so with your new rule would give him an unrealistic advantage.

[Skorpion]

Originally posted by wwb_99:

I think that the current LOS system works fine. If you have ever done some long range photography, you know how hard it can be to predict what the LOS is from a given point to another. No way should you be allowed to have a freehand LOS tool.

WWB

So what you're saying is that if a squad, for instance, was ordered to "go to that treeline and cover that field" that they would be unable to decide exactly where in the treeline they sat so that they had the best cover and yet still see the target?

Christ almighty! Why do people keep trying to introduce more micro-management into this game???? What is it? Would you like to have to position every single man in every squad to the exact position that they should stand? Would that make the game more playable? Of course not.

In this game you play as the commander, and it is legitimate IRL to say to a unit move over in that direction and cover that area. Of course, we don't want the ai to second guess where we want them, but we can simulate the men choosing a good firing position, for instance, by allowing us to determine what they will be able to see from a certain position.

The current system is silly, because the map doesn't provide enough clarity as to whether a unit can see something, or if it should move two pixels further away.

[Homba]

Dorosh, we seem to agree in principle. Maybe we are talking around each other on the details. In your FOO example ('Forward Observation Observer?') you have a guy sending the proposed shadow of the FOO into a building, then checking the LOS. Ok... Assuming no enemies had yet been identified in the woods, you obviously can't magically 'spot' them with the shadow image. But you do know whether or not you can see *the wood line* that might contain enemies.

First, my concerns, and I believe the concerns of the others as expressed in this thread, have a 99% focus on vehicles, not infantry. Lets just change your FOO into a vehicle. Example: An enemy tank in the next valley has already been identified by scouts, and it's position relayed to my tank commander by radio. I want to get a hull-down position on the valley edge to shoot at this enemy tank. Under the current rules, I MAKE MY BEST GUESS (after an excrutiating examination of the terrain) of where the hull-down location for my tank is, use a hunt command on my tank, and hope that I dont either over-shoot (exposing my entire hull) or under-shoot (resulting in no shot on the enemy) my guestimated hull-down position.

In real life, myself, as the tank commander, orders his driver toward the lip, slows down as he nears, and edges into the position, stopping exactly when he gets his gun barrel above the lip with LOS on the target.

With the proposed 'prospective LOS'change, the real life situation is immitated. The only abstraction is the question of WHEN you have the info, the info being "where exactly you need to be" to be both hull-down and have LOS to your target (one of several issues identified above). Using prospective LOS, you get the info early, BUT this is the only way to replicate the correct fine-manuevering of the tank commmander once he gets near the spot.

We are eliminating a lot of really really unrealistic results with this change. No more tanks driving over the lip of the rise that the player wanted it to be hull-down behind. I say that the ADDED realism of accurate tank-driving (or maybe I should say 'the added realism of NON-CATASTROPHIC tank-driving') in my opinion, heavily outweighs any concerns about 'knowing what you can see from there before you get there.'

Theoretically, we can zoom the camera in to any hill or point on the map, regardless of whether we have units there- which just further undermines the agument that 'you shouldnt know what you can see til you get there' as a valid bone of contention in the 'prospective LOS' debate.

It is always a choice between two evils, and again I argue that we should be advocating the choice that eliminates wildly unrealistic results. In this case, I think prospective LOS is not an evil, but a good! Tanks behaving irrationally is an evil.

Homba

[Guest wwb_99]

Originally posted by Skorpion:

So what you're saying is that if a squad, for instance, was ordered to "go to that treeline and cover that field" that they would be unable to decide exactly where in the treeline they sat so that they had the best cover and yet still see the target?

Christ almighty! Why do people keep trying to introduce more micro-management into this game???? What is it? Would you like to have to position every single man in every squad to the exact position that they should stand? Would that make the game more playable? Of course not.

In this game you play as the commander, and it is legitimate IRL to say to a unit move over in that direction and cover that area. Of course, we don't want the ai to second guess where we want them, but we can simulate the men choosing a good firing position, for instance, by allowing us to determine what they will be able to see from a certain position.

The current system is silly, because the map doesn't provide enough clarity as to whether a unit can see something, or if it should move two pixels further away.

The map provides plenty of clairity. Try view 5. You can see 25m thru dense trees or 50m or so thru scattered trees. Move the squads ~20m of the treeline. You should not ever be able to plot LOS across the map, thru complex terrain and elevation changes. Quite simply, you should never know until you get there.

WWB

------------------

Before battle, my digital soldiers turn to me and say,

Ave, Caesar! Morituri te salutamus.

Check out the Dogs of War CM Players Community

[Juardis]

Just trying to integrate the idea into relative spotting. To me, relative spotting should take higher priority than finding a hull down position because IRL , the commander does not have this fine of control over his troops. In relative spotting, a tank may not have an idea what is on the other side of a hill or just around the bend. So IRL, the tank commander would cautiously nose up the hill or around the bend if he suspected danger.

Pre-targeting may not be an option with relative spotting. So giving a movement order to the top of a hill to cover an advance is a perfectly acceptable order. Telling him to go to an exact spot on the battlefield is not a realistic order. Once in the general area, you can then give the order to stop once point x comes into LOS (like wilmontgomery said in his original post) to allow you some small control. The two commands are different. One is saying go to this exact point, the other is saying, go to this area to achieve your orders of covering this real estate. But the effectiveness of the tank at achieving this should be entirely dependent on crew quality. Elite should stop exactly where ordered, Regulars may overshoot or undershoot by x meters, and so on.

This is a small exception to the relative spotting philosophy where you are the battlefield commander issuing orders, but one that would be welcome to the micro-management crowd (i.e., the battlefield commanders who wish to be tank commanders at the same time).

To make a long story short, I like wilmontgomerey's idea.

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Jeff Abbott

[Guest Michael emrys]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

It's a great idea, but creates more problems than it solves.

Exactly. There may presently be a problem for some people, but any tool proposed to adress it must be carefully examined to see how it might be abused in practise. I think too many people who have complained about this problem (as with other problems in the game) have not considered this point. Trying too hard to make to make one aspect of CM perfect might well throw something else completely out of balance.

Some people just want a tank sim that performs the way they think or would like it to. But CM is committed to doing other things besides that.

Michael

[Homba]

emrys: you do not cite one example of this supposed 'abuse,' nor can you cite examples that would outweigh the benefits of eliminating idiotic tank behavior.

H

[Homba]

I think the overly broad title of this thread might have something to do with the lack of comments on this issue.

I'd like to hear some more input.

Homba

[willmontgomery]

And to think I gave up on this thread last week when it was stuck at seven replies for a few days.

Not that being the one who started this particular thread gives me any claim to greater wisdom, but I'll tell you what I was thinking when I made my original proposal:

1) We have the opportunity to extend much more micro-control over our forces than any real battlefield commander would.

2) Since this is the way the game works, we also are required to extend this degree of micro-control; our forces will not do sensible things unless we direct them to very specifically.

3) Some people are struck by point #1, and would prefer not to make things more unrealistic in this respect than they already are; this is a reasonable viewpoint.

4) Other people are struck by point #2, and (given that micro-control has been forced upon them) would prefer to at least have the means to accomplish realistic military maneuvers; this too is a reasonable viewpoint.

So we have a conflict between reasonable viewpoints. I sympathize with those who would prefer not to increase the already unrealistic degree of control we have. But I also sympathize with the other group, and in fact I personally lean in that direction; I made a conscious choice to suspend disbelief about one intellect's being responsible for every little detail governing an entire battalion.

Since CMBO is the best thing out there, everyone (whatever his/her precise viewpoint) wants to adopt it, and he/she naturally hopes and argues for its evolving toward his/her individual notion of the "right" level of control. Unfortunately the game cannot be all things to all people, and hard choices have to be made.

The idea of being able to trace LOS from anywhere on the battlefield is not new. It certainly is not realistic, so I know it would offend proponents of point #1, which is a viewpoint I certainly respect even if I prioritize other concerns higher. So I began to contemplate why it was that I thought I wanted to be able to trace LOS from anywhere (back when I used to want this).

I realized that I wanted to use that capability to identify points that I wanted to move units to. There is a notional point where the LOS to something will be unmasked, and in fact in Real Life you wouldn't specify the point in space, you would characterize it. "First Squad! Get up that hill and see what's in the valley on the other side of this hill." The squad understands this as "Advance in that direction until you can see into the valley." As Juardis says, troop quality might affect how precisely or sloppily they carry out this instruction, but it sure seems to me to be a reasonable instruction.

So I offered my proposal as a compromise, as I intentionally charted a course between Cybeq and Homba on the one hand and WWB and Michael Dorosh on the other. It does not allow unrealistically tracing LOS from anywhere on the map. To those concerned about micro-control, the only unrealistic degree of control associated with my proposed command would be having a battalion CO issue commands directly to a squad leader, which is something any player of this game has to be able to abide. For those concerned about being able to accomplish realistic maneuvers, it would ease the burden of trying to determine the exact points for OPs or hull-down positions, which are 1) potentially very important, 2) reasonable to aspire to locate and occupy, and 3) difficult if not impossible to judge given the inevitable abstractions of the depiction of terrain.

Homba: my proposed command would not give you everything you have asked for, but do you think it would suffice to avoid "catastrophic tank-driving"?

WWB and Michael Dorosh: would you care to comment on my original proposal?

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"C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."

[This message has been edited by willmontgomery (edited 04-02-2001).]

[Homba]

Will, fantastic statement of the balancing of concers at issue here! Having gone back and read your first post (and hoping to understand correctly what you are getting at), I would say:

1. I see very little difference in the practical effect of your version and mine. Both seem to achieve the same end by a different means. To what extent my means could be abused beyond yours, I am uncertain. With both ideas, you obviously have to abstract what is going on, with the goal of eliminating unreasonable results at "low cost." The goal in both is to replicate the reasonable actions of the tank commander WHEN HE REACHES THE CRUCIAL POINT. Because of the nature of CM, we have to do this beforehand. This doesnt make the result unrealistic in any way- because IRL the commander would achieve the correct position.

2. I think your version may be more difficult to implement than mine. I am not programmer, but my version is pretty damn simple and objective. In your version (just for starters), a tank might have to go from full speed to dead stop when the target site is obtained. The computer would have to know to slow down your tank BEFORE the sight was reached. This is problem is simply resolved in my version, because I simply tell the tank where to stop beforehand. So I think there is a big question here about how difficult your solution (seemingly complex- at least to me) would be to code.

What do you think about the above?

Homba

[NightGaunt]

don't know if anyone said this already but here is my thoughts:

1. micromanagement ability for tank control, ie ability to put them in hull down positions correctly, IS a Major requirement. Why: because we have to make up for the limitations of the AI to REALISTICLY handle situations. a tank commander would put is tank in a hull down position irl, not stop on top of the hill or behind it.

So from my point of view, anything that helps to simulate realism, should be added.

2. the other part of this, being able to get los from anywhere on the map, should not be available, because it is NOT REALISTIC. You don't know for sure what you will be able to see in any location until you actually get there. you can estimate and kind of guess, but that is simulated by going to view 1 and checking.

hope that makes sense, it made sense in my head.

[Homba]

NightGaunt has again stated the problem pretty well. It is a choice of evils, and I say it is more palatable to have accurate tank driving.

I am going to run a test to perhaps give some more insight into the significance and degree of the problem.

Question: Whether tanks of the same model can have varying degrees of exposure in 'hull-down' position on a given slope, or whether any 'hull-down' position gives the same benefit, regardless of how much tank is above the ridge. I will use a tank with a relatively high aspect for this test.

Hypothesis: The chance to be hit will be higher for a tank that is further up the ridge (with less cover, but still hull down) than for a tank with only its gun peeping above the ridge.

Experiment: I will construct a map with a ridge. In hotseat mode, I will have 4 tanks at varying positions on the ridge slope, all somewhat 'hull down'- and all with LOS on the woods hiding the guns. An AT gun will be directly opposite each tank, hidden in woods. I will target each tank and see if the % chance of hitting are higher with the tanks that are more exposed. I will also check to see whether I get the text signal that the tank is Hull Down when I target it.

Ramifications: If my hypothesis holds up, then it will be even more important to implement some system ('prospective LOS' or some variant) to allow players to precisely control their tank's hull-down stop point, as would the commander IRL. If my hypothesis is false, and any tank that registers as 'hull down' has the same to-be-hit chance no matter how far up the slope, then it is less important to change from the status quo.

Side issues: How big is the range on a slope in which you can achieve Hull Down? Hopefully we'll get some insight on this as well- and how hard or easy it 'should be' to get your tank to stop in a hull down position.

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I'll post the results in this thread as soon as a get them. Any duplicative tests would be appreciated.

Homba

[Keith]

This proposal is too much in the way of micro management. The system works fine as is. Somtimes you just have to eyeball things. Maybe you should not move your tanks so aggressively.

[Lopaka]

I think the original idea is a great one. Anyone who claims it is micromanagement is not thinking about how an order is given. You WOULD tell a unit to go towards the top of the hill until you can see over it. You WOULD NOT say, "go exactly 100M in that direction regardless of whether that puts you over the crest into an exposed position or puts you into a position below the crest where you can't see anything and are generally useless."

I think Homba's suggested order forgets the idea that each turn is 60 seconds. The process moving from point A to point B and then slowing down and inching into possible hull down position is what might take you until the next turn to achieve.