Combat and visibility in CMx2

[Elmar Bijlsma]

CM doesn't deal at all well with combat in limited visibilty conditions. I can only hope dynamic lighting fixes some of that but I fear more needs to be done.

How I hate being fired upon from visibilty+1 and not being able to return effective fire.

Or that new marvel dust. Sure it looks nice but it's effectively broken. Antitank gun fires on target. Round falls short, kicks up dust, tank dissappears. Dust settles, gun fires round, falls short, loses target, etc ad infinitum. And this happens with low caliber guns aswell. I just can't picture it. A 6pdr round kicks up so much dust that it loses all data it has on it's target? It's not even getting the data of that first round falling short, it engages a 'new' target with every round falling short. Realism? Pull the other one.

I hope that the increased 'memory' of units in CMx2 helps with this because it so seriously nerfs the anti tank gun that the victim has ample time to retreat into it's own dust cloud. Which is another curious tactic that shouldn't work as well as it does. How about allowing one 'blind' shot at anyone pulling that sort of stuff. Similarly that solution might work on anyone backing off into the night. Everyone know where it is and the night/dust shouldn't be a bullet proof barrier. It's too I/O in CM an I hope it can become a bit more vague in CMx2.

Similarly combat in woods being too much a stop start affair because one unit get's supressed and goes to ground, thus becoming virtually invisible. What would I do if I have an enemy going to ground? I'd fire a few rounds extra for good measure. Not sit there scratching my head as to what next to do, because that unit will become unsupressed and will return the favour. In massed infantry combat it is less annoying but with just a few units fighting in woods it's just frustrating to watch. Again, I hope the 'memory' that is supposedly increased in CMx2 accounts for this. Allow a unit that engaged another in the previous round to spot that unit more easily next round, from greater range.

This would also fix the insane hiding ability of guns somewhat. Many are the times I had various infantry+hq in good condition 100m or so from a large gun and not spot it. That's suprising in the first place but maybe they are really that good at camouflage though I had hoped a guy with binoculars would spot a big sucker like that. The gun fires. It becomes visible to my troops. It dissapears again. Huh? Did my troopers just lose track of that big a gun, please tell me they didn't! Are they assuming the crew shoulderd the gun and ran off with it? Did the crew put a box over the gun and told it it was a Schrodinger cat? Have they borrowed a Klingon cloaking device? I know it's there, everyone knows it's there. Except the dudes 100m away overlooking it. I can try era fire but otherwise I can't efectively engage it unless it fires again or I'm right on top of it. When this sort of stuff happens with 150mm guns you know something is wrong.

[SpitfireXI]

I agree with you on the dust issue, but even worse I find is the Artillery spotter ability to correct.