Communication between units

[WEAPON42]

I dont fully understand in cm how units communicte with each other.A squad is hiding in an upper floor and spots an enemy tank.I now try to bring my tank/at unit into los of enemy tank to kill.How does this really take place?Does the squad leader radio the tank?does the suad leader radio the co and the co gives the order to the tank?or does 1 member from the squad go run and tell them of the enemy pos?are all units in cm assumed to be in some sort of communication?if so

what is it?

Can someonehelp me out on this issue?

[Peaveyyyyyyyy]

This is just about the only quibble some people (not me)can have about the game. The commander (you) can see everything. All units are thusly assumed to be in communication with one another. Communication IS modelled, in the command bonuses of the HQ units, and it works really well. Just see the effect of losing an HQ or moving too far away....

Personally I don't care 2 hoots, because:

1) I can't think of a solution. How could you police it any other way? How could you stop a unit reacting to what a distant unit sees? You can see what's happening, and you send a distant unit to help or whatever. The game would never know which of your orders should be barred for this reason.

2) The game is just sooo awesomely good as both a sim and as a fun experience, especially against another human. People can complain all they like, I'll defend the authors to the death. They rock.

[Priest]

I concur, there really is no other way to handle it effectively and maintain the fun level.

BTS thanks again!

[aka_tom_w]

They all share intel like the "Hive Mentality" of the Borg.

OR

Every unit has a magical radio that NEVER fails and every friendly unit tells every other friendly unit every thing they know about the enemy and they update each other every minute without fail.

This is also called "Absolute Spotting"

hope that helps

-tom w

[tar]

Re: How to do non-absolute sighting.

I would agree that a fully realistic system would be impossible to implement, simply because there is one mind controlling all the units.

Nevertheless, depending on how sighting is implemented, it may be possible to do something that goes a bit more in that direction:

As I understand it, the game currently makes all spotted enemy units immediately spotted for any additional friendly units that enter LOS of the spotted enemy unit. One solution would be to make this spotting not be automatic, but rather take some additional time, although there should be a bonus because of the unit being spotted by other friendly forces.

If one wanted to get fancy, the amount of the bonus could be related to other factors such as proximity to other units that have spotted the enemy unit, chain of command distance, etc. The problem is that one would also have to be careful with some of these modifications in order to allow things like attaching a tank to an infantry platoon for support.

[Swift]

I think that the game works pretty well as it is but one way to model a limited communication could be to have the player seeing all units (absolute spotting) but the individual units only having information about enemy’s (and friendly’s if it effects morale) that they can see. If the player selects a unit all the enemy (and friendly) units not spotted by that unit could be transparent indicating that you as the player know about them but the unit does not. If a fire order was given against a transparent unit it would result in an area fire (until the unit spots the enemy).

This idea might not be possible to implement due to the limitations of current computers but it would be one step towards solving the problem if it is.

[Mud]

Aye. To do it properly, you'd need to have a much higher-level control system (delegating authority over a company and associated arty assets, and telling 'em to capture a ridge via a few suggested approaches, rather than micromanagement) combined with smarter tactical AI. And it would quite possibly be a) much less fun, since we'd be spending much more time watching and less time deciding, and much harder to do (the demands on the AI would be far harder. Maybe it wouldn't be the delayed vaporware debacle that RtMoscow seems to be, but...)

I'll be happy with a merely *decent* relative-spotting system, taken into account by TacAI say. For instance, a buttoned-up tank shouldn't immediately know that a single friendly sharpshooter 200m away spotted an AT team creeping up behind it... since we don't have control during the 60 second turns, a TacAI that would be non-Borg might have substantially more reasonable results. You'll still be able to Borg-like call in arty after the 60 seconds unless that's reworked (e.g. HQs/FOs automatically call it in as they see fit, rather than player control... erk, wonder what the heuristics/rules would look like...); and you'd still be able to adjust concentrations much better than you should, but it'd be an improvement.

I wonder how one would model information sharing, so that scout units could report back to base (or, say, radio a warning to a nearby squad or vehicle that's about to get ambushed). Guess you'd have to have information on radio usage, maps, accuracy (how precise would radio'd-in locations be), and so forth.

[Schrullenhaft]

Relative Spotting is definitely going to be hard to model. There will be a lot of hard, complex decisions to make regarding game play/balance and mechanics.

The basic idea would be to give players a similar level of control as they currently have with CMBO/CMBB, but to limit the disadvantages that Absolute Spotting confers on the game. So the end result may be that Relative Spotting won't be modelled to the full extent that some people may expect; sacrafices may be necessary for game play/balance. As mentioned previously, if too much control is wrest from the player the game may lose a lot of its enjoyment.

The player's 'God-like' view will probably have to remain, despite its unrealistic effect on the game. A certain amount of misinformation may be used in the game, but what a unit sees (and what it can properly identify) will most likely still be shown on the screen for the player to move assets to counter. Mechanisms to eliminating the player's capability to do this would probably change the nature of the game too much.

[newlife]

I don't see why some people seem to view less control over units as less fun. Personally, I'm a big picture sort of person. I'ld much rather tell a company to take that hill and come up with strategic plans than to micromanage forces. I'ld imagine anything like that for future CM engines would probably come with toggles so you could play something very similar to CMBO, or from just the commanders perspective, or anywhere in between.