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A Remarkably Obvious Minefield


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I'm slowly playing my way through the excellent Storfang campaign from Eichenbaum.org, and yesterday a very odd thing happened.

One of my units managed to spot an enemy minefield from over 650m away. This wasn't a daisy-chain minefield - it was an Anti-Personnel minefield.

There were two units that might have had LOS to the minefield at some point during the turn. One was a Veteran Sharpshooter, the other an Elite Platoon HQ. As mentioned, both were never closer than 650m to the minefield, and whoever spotted it spotted it 'on the fly' (i.e., while moving), as they both ended the turn out of LOS of the minefield.

Anyone else ever experienced anything like this? Every once in a great while I manage to spot a minefield without tripping it, but usually only with a unit that is very close to the edge of the field. I've never spotted one from any great distance. . .

Curious to know what others think of this.

Cheers,

YD

[ August 25, 2003, 12:10 PM: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

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Is this an Op? And if so, was the minefield spotted during the setup phase of battle #2 (or subsequent)?

Yes, it was during an Op, but the minefield was spotted between turns, not between battles, so that's not it.

As far as an enemy units tripping the minefield and revealing it, I suppose this might be a possibility but I find it rather unlikely. I certainly had not spotted any enemy units in the general vicinity of the minefield. In my experience, usually only routed/broken units run across known minefields. While I had given the AI a good drubbing on several parts of the field by this point in the battle, none of the enemy units I had routed could possibly have made it all the way to the minefield by that point in the battle. Besides, I've never heard of a routed unit running over 300m after breaking contact. . .

Would the AI really order an unengaged, good morale unit to march across it's own minefield? If so, it's dumber than I thought. . .

Maybe I just got *really* lucky - the minefield spotting version of scoring a weak point hit on a KT with a 45mm gun and taking it out. I can accept that once in a blue moon an Elite HQ might notice something unusual about a patch of ground 650m away through his binoculars and so deduce the presence of a minefield.

To bad I didn't save the previous orders turn - I could re-run the turn and see how often I managed to spot the minefield.

Cheers,

YD

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I suggest you save your game and investigate after you fought the op (ie surrender that save game). If there is a pinned unit nearby, you know what happened.

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

Would the AI really order an unengaged, good morale unit to march across it's own minefield? If so, it's dumber than I thought. . .

[/QB]

The AI does some strange things :rolleyes:

I heard and saw a big explosion on an AT mine field while having no LOS (viz was way too low) to it. The minefield disappeared. Glad I had saved the game before. Saved that turn, too. After the battle I investigated. A T34 run onto the minefield and got immo'd. Plenty of grunts around. Next turn a pioneer unit cleared the minefield. Result: Minefield gone. T34 blewn. 45 casualties more than the turn before while there was no other "action" that turn.

In the same game the AI did the same stupid thing with an AP minefield.

In another game I found that there were 3 immo'd AI tanks on a single AT minefield of mine. AI did not want to leave the roads in wet conditions.

Gruß

Joachim

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Originally posted by YankeeDog:

Anyone else ever experienced anything like this?

That used to happen fairly often to me in BO, but I don't recall it happening from quite that far away. IIRC, 250-300m would have been about the max. Other times, I didn't spot it until one of my units marched or drove onto it. The weirdest is once I had an HQ unit crawl all the way through a minefield without spotting it. I didn't realize it was there until another unit walked past the edge and spotted it. Whew!

:eek:

Michael

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After reading everybody's comments and looking more closely at the map, I have come to a conclusion that an enemy unit *must* have triggered the minefield and revealed it. Unfortunately, I don't have a saved game file right after the minefield revealed itself, but I do have one just a couple of turns later - probably still close enough to reveal the pinned enemy unit. Once I finish playing the Op (I don't want to spoil any surprises!), I'll load it up and see if this is the case.

In the meantime, I would humbly suggest that the AI's behavior in regards to its own minefields might bear a bit of review. . .

Cheers,

YD

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