Stop-go solution for the "borg spotting" problem...

[Oddball_E8]

Whilst playing one of my non-bts favorite games Jagged Alliance 2 i thought about something that may help in the borg spotting problem...

in JA2 if one of your "units" see an enemy all other units may also shoot at this unit but unless they have also spotted that unit they get a large hit percentage penalty... my suggestion for CMBB is the same... if a unit has not spotted the target it is shooting at it recieves a penalty in hit chance.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

It does work well in JA2. But CM is 100 times more complex. The Tac AI would need serious reprogramming to deal with this change. But it would be worth keeping in mind for the new engine IMO.

Great to se there are more JA2 players out there. The Gold Edition really increased the dificulty level and I'm enjoying my battles now more then I did when it was just out.

[Oddball_E8]

Gold edition??? whats this then??? i have to buy it!

but then again im just going to play the Diedrana lives series and the Urban Chaos one when it comes out...

would it really require that much coding by the way?

the way i figure it there would only be the question of keeping track of each units spottings and non-spottings... and the game does that somewhat already... the tac-ai doesnt target things it hasnt spotted itself all the time... not until you tell it to do so... i think that this could be implemented in CMAK...

[gunnersman]

I have wondered what it would be like to have the option in CMBB to play as just the platoon leader, or company commander, or battalion commander at the ground level being able to only immediately control those directly below you in the chain of command with no micromanaging, but with the same graphics engine and same type of maps. AI would control the other aspects of the game as to which route to take, covering fire, overwatch, etc. That would take out much of the "Borg spotting" element. The only thing is you would need the equivalent of a topographical map and some kind of way to get reports as to enemy contact and progress reports of the attack.

[Louie the Toad]

Gunnersman,

What you described is available vs AI or a highly trustworthy opponent. Use Franko's True Combat Rules.

Send me an email and I will explain.

Low level Toad

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Oddball_E8:

if a unit has not spotted the target it is shooting at it recieves a penalty in hit chance.

Have spotting dependent on unit. If you have selected no unit, you can see everything that any of your units can see (borg-effect like now). Once you select a unit, you will only see what it sees - and thus only be able to shoot what it sees (area fire is a problem, but could be explained). Units known but unseen by that unit could either have no icon at all or they are indicated by the same icons as unknown units now.

Gruß

Joachim

[Elmar Bijlsma]

This is a good solution but there is one problem. This way you need to redraw wich units can be displayed each time you change the selected unit. That would mean near continual load times. Better to have a LOS/targeting tool label saying what the current spotting level is from that unit to the spotted unit. Say: Unit spotted/LOS to unit/no LOS.

Or perhaps greying and blacking out units based on how their visibilty status is in relation to the selected unit. Would this need loading time?

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Tweety:

Or perhaps greying and blacking out units based on how their visibilty status is in relation to the selected unit. Would this need loading time?

On my old Amiga changing the colors did not need loading time. Just switch color 243 to colorscheme A1 00 3C and all was well.

Given that we work on a PC with MS, it probably will take loading time.

Gruß

Joachim

[Oddball_E8]

i think everyone is missing my point... nothing would change visually... just internally... it would be a function like hull down and displayed likewize... ie. the computer determines if the unit you are ordering your unit to fire at has been spotted by the unit being ordered to fire... if yes then no problem... if no a "hit penalty" is incurred and a tag (a la "hull down) appears when you mark the target saying it is not spotted by the unit targeting it... would that require a drastic amount of re-writing the code?

[Joachim]

Originally posted by Oddball_E8:

i think everyone is missing my point... nothing would change visually... just internally... it would be a function like hull down and displayed likewize... ie. the computer determines if the unit you are ordering your unit to fire at has been spotted by the unit being ordered to fire... if yes then no problem... if no a "hit penalty" is incurred and a tag (a la "hull down) appears when you mark the target saying it is not spotted by the unit targeting it... would that require a drastic amount of re-writing the code?

Me thinks we miss not so much. We want a graphical display of what we see and what not. You want this only once the LOS marker hits the targets. Your solution will definitely not take more programming time than ours. Our solution needs some programming, but is more comfortable. If we get your solution in CMAK, I'm happy. If we get it in the new engine, I would not be amused.

I'd just improve your solution with - you see it, you can hit it. You don't see it - use area fire (though of course everybody will imediately use a covered arc in that direction).

Gruß

Joachim

[IntelWeenie]

I don't see redraw times being that big of a deal in the orders phase. Ditto using the LOS tool to show spotting info. I like this idea the best so far:

Originally posted by Scarhead:

Have spotting dependent on unit. If you have selected no unit, you can see everything that any of your units can see (borg-effect like now). Once you select a unit, you will only see what it sees - and thus only be able to shoot what it sees (area fire is a problem, but could be explained). Units known but unseen by that unit could either have no icon at all or they are indicated by the same icons as unknown units now.

Gruß

Joachim [/QB]

The big problem with all of these? They only address targeting/shooting. Sure, you can force area fire where you know an enemy is at, but that's small potatoes. The biggest problem caused by Borg spotting lies with tactics (IMHO).

Example:

Unit A on one side of the map see enemies advancing in area not viewable by unit B on the other side of the map. The next orders phase, you can immediately give new orders to unit B reacting to a threat it would not realistically be aware of. This includes shooting and movement orders.

Sure, you could argue about radio or field phones make sharing info between units possible, but that means the game would need to know who has commo devices and who doesn't (much like vehicles with and without radios are now tracked). Not having comms could introduce a command delay, but that in itself may not be entirely realistic since it would not allow units to react properly to threats they can see.

As a lot of ex-military types will tell you, information is half the battle. Everyone instantly knowing where the enemy is and what he's doing can be a huge advantage. Borg spotting is what the US Army is trying to accomplish with the IVIS system and various "infantryman of tomorrow" suits, by the way. These systems can typically share displays between everyone in a unit showing friendly and known enemy locations.

Frankly, I don't know if there's any easy solution to Borg spotting. At least when playing against other humans, the advantage tends to even itself out.

[aka_tom_w]

this thread is IMHO a nearly complete treatise on the entire subject of borg spotting and the concept of how to make relative spotting "workable"

http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=024461;p=1

I suggest you read it if you want more ideas and opinions and see what Steve and Charles have to say about he issue

-tom w

[Brightblade]

IMHO Scarhead´s solution seems pretty good. Of course it´s not realistic, but this is a game, after all. Though a really good one.

But the concept of the game is that the player is some kind of overmind (at least that´s how I get it). The player issues orders to every single unit on his side. That´s not realistic even on company scale.

No company commander tells every squad or even team what exactly they should do.

He recieves orders from the battalion commander (the idea of the battle), brakes them down and transmits them them to his platoon leaders and maybe some specialist squads and teams. Then the subordinate leaders brake these orders down to their level and so on.

Like that it works on every level of command.

In the game you sometimes have a regiment or brigade at your command and you have to tell every single vehicle, squad and team very detailled what they are to do.

I really like it that way. But it´s not realistic. So why bother about features which would IMO only reduce the playability? You could still get the same information like now, only it would take much more time as you would need to click through every single unit to check what they see. Turns would take much longer and TCP/IP games would be almost impossible then.

[Donan]

Greetings folks. Louie, I did a search for Franko's True Combat Rules (which way back when I printed out, but be darn if I can find them now:)in this forum and went to your recommended CM Archive #3 (2001) and got 11 hit's or so and only one post actually had these (Franko himself posted it. Many other's supposedly had it transferred to their webpage, but defunct now), but it was a v. 1.1 (Oct. 2001). Is there a place to find an more updated edition?

Thanks!

Donan

[Joachim]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

this thread is IMHO a nearly complete treatise on the entire subject of borg spotting and the concept of how to make relative spotting "workable"

Thanks for the link. After reading it (esp. p. 7)... Me likes BFCs ideas.

Gruß

Joachim