Spotting question.

[Ant]

Does anybody know if a spotting unit's ability to spot a concealed enemy remains constant with time, increases with time or is a random factor.

What I mean is: If I suspect that an enemy AT gun is hidden in some woods and I use a binocular equipped unit to try and spot it and that unit fails to spot it in one turn does that mean that it will never spot it? Or will it's chances of spotting it increase with time? Or does each turn generate a different random chance of spotting it?

[Ant]

Nobody any ideas?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Ant:

Nobody any ideas?

Haven't a clue, old top.

At least, I have no idea what CM does. In real life, I have never heard of any evidence for there being an increased chance-per-unit-time of spotting something just because you have been looking at it for a long time. I believe the reverse is the case; a pal of mine who does direct-fire combat modelling at Fort Halstead tells me that if people don't see a target when it is first presented, they are unlikely to see it at all.

All the best,

John.

[Cabron66]

I have sometimes wondered about this aspect of the game, but not from the same point of view. My concern being not the spotting, but the staying unspotted, as it were.

I agree with John, but respectfully suggest that spotting has much to do with the nature of the target. A camouflaged immobile tank is likely to remain unspotted as long as it remains camouflaged and immobile and as long as the spotter does not change positions.

I say this because I believe "point of view" would change things dramatically. After working for years in the mountains of Western Canada and not being required to do a great deal I noticed several things about animals and the way they conceal themselves. Namely, not only do they usually have a broken colour scheme (i.e. camouflage), but tend to "freeze" whenever alerted to danger. Hundreds of millions of years of evolution at work.

Of course, they freeze because most complex organisms have vision which is strongly attuned to movement. In fact, many animals simply cannot see you unless you are moving. Incidentally, our ability to see colours gives us a huge advantage (but that's way off topic).

In a military context I think this is important. An AFV, for example, would be able to stay hidden for quite some time, all other things being equal, because it does not move. A platoon or company of men, however, is a whole different ball of wax.

Humans are not good at remaining immobile and are probably much worse at it than an AFV. For short periods, a human, being small, can hide very effectively, but cannot maintain perfect silence indefinitely. The game seems to treat units as either hidden or not. I do not believe this to be accurate. Humans make noise and must exert great discipline to remain quiet. Discipline which can easily be broken by even the smallest things at the worst possible time.

I once walked straight into a very large bear. Why? Because he saw me first and froze. I didn't even know he was there, despite his size and black colour, until I was maybe five feet away.

[ September 21, 2003, 09:02 AM: Message edited by: Cabron66 ]

[Ant]

Thanks for the feedback and Interesting obsrvations on real life situations. I guess I may just have to try a test when I get enough time to see how CM handles it.

[Michael Dorosh]

On my basic training 15 years ago, we were taken to a patch of woods and told to write down what we saw. We took a good 10 minutes and looked at a stand of trees about 30 feet away. One guy was laying against a tree, there was a hat in a tree, etc.

After 10 minutes we stood around discussing what we were looking at. The Platoon Warrant Officer gatheered the responses, we had a discussion of 'why things are seen', then he blew a whistle.

Two soldiers had been camouflaged in the underbrush right in front of us no one had noticed them until they stood up on command.

Bear in mind personal camouflage at that time (1987) was practiced as an art form. In WW II, personal camouflage was not preached nearly as much.

[ September 21, 2003, 11:19 AM: Message edited by: Michael Dorosh ]

[PiggDogg]

Cabron,

Humans are not good at remaining immobile and are probably much worse at it than an AFV. For short periods, a human, being small, can hide very effectively, but cannot maintain perfect silence indefinitely. The game seems to treat units as either hidden or not. I do not believe this to be accurate. Humans make noise and must exert great discipline to remain quiet. Discipline which can easily be broken by even the smallest things at the worst possible time.

I agree that humans are not good a remaining silent and stationary indefinitely (wow, that is a real long time) or for long periods of time. Over longer periods of time, two to many hours, such is true. Natural fidgitiniess and calls of nature might nearly require movement, talking to one's buddy, ord lighting a cigarette.

However, over the small time period of a CM battle (20 to 40 minutes) plus a lead up time to the CM battle (maybe, 30 minutes), anyone can and probably will remain stationary and silent for an hour or so or longer. Certainly, a soldier knowing the likely, permanent, and final result of moving or blabbering (that is, exposing one's position and thus, making one's soft human body subject to being pierced by shrapnel, bullets, and debris), most every soldier would have the proper incentive to remain real quiet and real still for as long as necessary. One must suspect that such a quite and still period can easily be for at least an hour and can probably be for many hours on end. :eek:

Indeed, under such a sword of Damaclese, kabitzing with one's buddies, lighting a cig, or tending to the calls of nature, would probably wait a more appropriate and opportune time. However, maybe, I'm wrong.

Cheers, Richard

[Redwolf]

IIRC CM does not do this for normal spotting, but even more IIRC I think that two units in house have their chance to see each other increased over time.

A test is short and easy.

[Cabron66]

Originally posted by Micheal Dorosh:

A bunch of stuff about him and a group of men not seeing something in the woods...

Perhaps that is why you are in the reserves and not the real thing. Just kidding . I'm sure there's other reasons.

Incidentally, was marijuana legal for medicinal purposes in those days?

Cheers

[ September 21, 2003, 09:30 PM: Message edited by: Cabron66 ]

[Cabron66]

Originally posted by PiggDogg:

Indeed, under such a sword of Damaclese, kabitzing with one's buddies, lighting a cig, or tending to the calls of nature, would probably wait a more appropriate and opportune time. However, maybe, I'm wrong.

The question is, does CM take all of this into account? My guess is it does not, but I could also be wrong. I think if you view the battle as an isolated period of time with nothing but empty void on both sides then perhaps, but one must remember that in the real world battles did not simply materialize and disintegrate.

No they surely did not. If they did I would be inclined to agree with you, but since we have no way of knowing exactly how long those little virtual soldiers were lying perfectly still before the little virtual enemy ever arrived it is hard to sustain a logical argument.

Of course, we must also ask ourselves if those same virtual soldiers were aware of the coming battle. I wonder if the game takes this into account. Granted, if I know the enemy is near I might be able to restrain myself from moving for a short period of time, but what if I never even saw him coming?

You see the problem is this, Pigdog. The game seems to have two settings. Hidden and not. I wonder if this is an accurate reflection of real life conditions.

Logic, of course, is highly overrated, but when one really considers the evidence, one cannot help but think that perhaps CM is not really a good foundation for resolving this dispute.

[CMX2 Borg]

Originally posted by Cabron66:

Another question. Was medicinal marijuana legal in those days?

A hopelessly arcane question, on the fringe of being off topic, but poised delectably so as to arouse the senses of your fellow posters.

Your distinctiveness has indeed been added to our own. You are are one with we, the collective. You will henceforth post trivial knowledge and swap inconceivable notions. You will argue, you will namecall. You are one of us now.

You will play CM until all hours of the night; you will take notes and study graphs. You will create Excel spreadsheets, and you will lobby for factors such as the above to be represented in the internal calculations of the new game engine.

All is going according to plan. We have viewed your progress with great interest, 13269 of 13479. It has happened.

You have been aCMilated.

[Cabron66]

Originally posted by CMBB Borg:

A bunch of crap meant to get my attention.

Keep trying. That was pretty good. Seen any female genitalia since the day you were born?

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Cabron66:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by CMBB Borg:

A bunch of crap meant to get my attention.

Keep trying. That was pretty good. Seen any female genitalia since the day you were born? </font>

[Other Means]

these people are being friendly Cabron66. try it.

[Ant]

The game seems to treat units as either hidden or not.

I don't think that's correct. There are various stages within this game.

1. Totally unspotted (invisible)

2. Partially spotted (generic unit graphic)

3. Sound contact only (generic unit graphic)

4. spotted but unidentified (unit graphic with no info)

5, Fully spotted and identified (unit graphic with info)

6 Spotted but no longer visible (nationality symbol)

[JasonC]

To Ant and his original question, purely about CM and leaving real world stuff aside -

My experience is that additional time makes no difference if the problem is that the range is too long. I've seen waiting for a spot to improve, help, only in these conditions -

a. target is moving

b. target is firing

c. target panics

d. point blank in cover (same house, 10m woods)

(The last seems to me to work because of hearing rather than sight based locating. Which apparently gives only sound contacts unless the range is very close).

The attacker's greatest difficulty typically comes in resolving a sound contact vs. a firing unit into a fully located ID. Time and more eyes makes only a marginal difference on that score. If the range is on the borderline, a second minute of fire can put it over.

But the critical variable in those situations is how close the nearest spotter is - regardless of number or time spent looking, or optics. You improve your spotting most by just getting close enough. (Facing also does help, though - if you don't have anyone facing the right way you won't see much).

How close is "enough" depends mostly on the caliber weapon doing the shooting. ATRs, MGs, and light AA are hard to spot and quite short ranges are needed - around 150-200m. Large bore ATGs are easy, 10 times as far. Small ATGs, in the 37mm to 50mm bracket, are in between, with spots relatively hard beyond 1 km.

A key way to resolve gun and MG sound contacts to full IDs when the range is still long is that third one, "target panics". Units experiencing morale failure seem to lose much of their stealth. Once it is lost, they can be hit hard enough they typically try to run. Then movement makes it easy to keep the spot.

So tossing in some HE as area fire near the sound contact, particularly if you can guess where the real position actually is (from terrain, or a spotted by seemingly empty trench e.g.), often pays. Just putting half a dozen binoc equipped units at e.g. 400m from a firing MG and scanning for several minutes, doesn't seem to do any good.

[ September 23, 2003, 04:02 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Ant]

Thanks Jason. I Haven't had time to do a real test yet but your observations sound good.

[Redwolf]

More eyes looking into the same direct doesn't make any difference in CMBB.

Infantry does spot farther to the front, so if you are unsure about the enemy location you can improve spotting by having multiple units facing one direction each. But more than one unit for each direction makes no difference.

Unbuttoned vehicles on the other hand spot all-round equally well.

According to my notes the good spotting of binocular infantry applies when riding any vehicle, including under armor protection in a halftrack.