CMAK LOS & Hull Down Question

[crowbar]

can anyone tell me if the cmak engine is going to tinker with the los rules and the ability of players to find hull down positions in the new game. With the steppes of russia the lack of a true los tool was disappointing but for a desert environment it seems to me to be an almost make or break point about buying the game. If a player has to randomly search each point on the terrain again to try to find hull downs for me at any rate it would become a tragedy repeated twice. How about a tool where you choose first the point that you want to be hull down from and that then shows in a highlighted colour the potential hull down sites on the landscape. Does anyone else have a dream? is it impossible in CMAK?

[Berlichtingen]

Originally posted by crowbar:

can anyone tell me if the cmak engine is going to tinker with the los rules and the ability of players to find hull down positions in the new game. With the steppes of russia the lack of a true los tool was disappointing but for a desert environment it seems to me to be an almost make or break point about buying the game.

Two questions:

1) What do you mean by a real LOS tool?

2) You are aware of the HULL DOWN command, aren't you?

[crowbar]

re LOS and HullDown

yes I am aware of the hull down command - to be honest though I didnt think it was implemented very well in CMBB ( does anyone else issue Hulldown for the tanks to trundle off into the sunset looking for a never found hull down site? - whereas if you chose a slightly differing route ... )Its not being able to AIM afvs towards hull down positions that grates - yes you can go to a camera view behind each tank and try to micromanage each one to find a hull down position but how many game turns would that take?.Correct me if I am doing this wrong or if I ve got this wrong but the hulldown state feels like its a mathematical bonus that gets assigned to a vehicle on a random but not very common frequency rather than having a tangible relationship with the terrain we see in the game.

I know that the graphical scale factor between an afv and the terrain is not 1 to 1 - and so the visuals we see in the game are an approximation - but for me a desert wargame by definition only increases the importance that the terrain has on a battle. With very few real differences in cover states on an unprepared desert battlefield LOS & response times are the only thing between a Sherman and its ronson state.

[Berlichtingen]

Originally posted by crowbar:

I know that the graphical scale factor between an afv and the terrain is not 1 to 1 - and so the visuals we see in the game are an approximation

Shift C changes the visual scale... one of the options is realistic. The default it +2

[YankeeDog]

I agree that the "Hull Down" command in CMBB isn't very well implemented - I rarely use it.

I have little trouble finding hull down positions the old fashioned way, though - I just put the unit scale to 'realistic', get down to viewpoint 1 and eyeball things.

I don't think finding hull down positions should be too easy. Like many other things, I find it realistic that you need to actually put a unit on a specific location to know for sure whether it is hull down to another point or not. IMHO, a command that allowed you to see all hull-down positions to a target location on the map would be going too far. IRL, tankers *do* have to search for hull down positions, and this search can take time and a careful eye. I am all for new commands that automate this search so that the player doesn't have to spend large amounts of time crawling around on view 1 and carefully adjusting waypoints down to the meter, but tanks should still have to actually rove around the map to find good hull down positions.

Perhaps the best compromise would be a command similar to the current "Hull Down" command, but with the hull down target area and the movement waypoints disconnected. This way, you could plot a movement path in any direction, and the AFV would stop when and if it achieved hull down to the marked point. This way, you could prevent your tank from trundling on towards the target hull down point by simply plotting a short movement leg - if the AFV doesn't find a hull down position by its final movement waypoint, then it would just stop and wait for further orders.

I would certainly use a command like this more often. The current engine may not be able to handle a movement command with multiple conditions like this, though. In any event, I'm sure CMAK is too far along at this point to allow the implementation of a new command - heck, there's previews going on in a couple weeks. . .

As far as the 'bonuses' hull down conveys, my understanding is that the 'hittability' bonus is binary - roughly, being hull down reduces the chance of being hit in the first place by a specific percentage. This does effectively penalize tanks with small turret/superstructure fronts - IRL they would gain even more protection from Hull Down positions compared to other AFVs with larger turret faces. This also oversimplifies hull down a bit - IRL, hull down is not an all-or-nothing thing. An AFV can be just 'tracks down', 'hull down', or even 'turret down', with nothing but the command cupola visible over the rise, or anything inbetween.

Other benefits of hull down are not binary in CM, though. For example, many hull down positions also effectively increase armor slope because the tank is on a reverse slope. Depending upon the AFV, the benefit from this can be substantial. For example, at likely combat ranges (500m - 1000m), an IS-2 in a good reverse-sloped position stands a good chance at resisting penetration from 75mm/L70 and 88mm/L56 AP rounds, substantially increasing the tank's survivability against Tigers and Panthers.

In CMBB, I actually find this reverse-slope 'armor bonus' much more useful than hull down shillouhette reduction, so I tend to look for these types of positions rather than just hull down per se.

Cheers,

YD

[GreenAsJade]

I completely agree with YD's description of how the Hull Down command should work.

I think that the CMBB version was well intended but just not right. (At the very least, you need to be able to say "don't go further than this", but YD's suggestion is WAY better).

GaJ.

[crowbar]

I guess what I dislike about driving each tank to a hull down position from a rear camera view is that you cant press a key to halt or change the direction of a tank's movement to get to the spot you want.

Yes you can have a similar view to a M1Tank Platoon type game but you dont have the fine control with positioning that such games give you. With CM afv's following the waypoints I find the process a lot more frustrating and time consuming than it needs to be.

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by crowbar:

I guess what I dislike about driving each tank to a hull down position from a rear camera view is that you cant press a key to halt or change the direction of a tank's movement to get to the spot you want.

That's not how I do it. I scout for likely spots on the map and then get down to the ground level view to check out the most promising ones. If one passes those tests, I move my AFV to it. After it gets there, I check to see if it has LoS (if it hasn't already begun firing) and make slight adjustments if it doesn't. I don't find that any more unrealistic than most of the features of this fine game. Some may find it fussy, but the movement of all units in CM is fussy to some degree or other. Until a game comes along that allows you to give the kind of orders a real life commander would give and have the AI carry them out the way real life subordinates would, I think this is about as good as we are going to get.

BTW, an alternative might be to give your AFV a Hunt or MTC command, assuming the enemy is already revealed, and chance that it will stop as soon as it has LoS over the crest. Not perfect for all occasions, but it can work.

Michael