Light Terrain and LOS

[Treeburst155]

Tom,

I understand what you are saying. I'm just trying to keep the "LOS line feedback" issue from being clouded with much more difficult to test things like spotting, EFOW, etc..

Speaking of EFOW, it's plenty extreme for me. Most of the time you don't know what you've spotted. I love it!

Treeburst155 out.

[Treeburst155]

Mission accomplished!! Thanks, Madmatt!

Treeburst155 out.

[Broken]

I really don't have a problem with "low terrain" (brush, summer wheat, steppe, rocky, rough, etc) not degrading LOS for tanks, since they are tall enough to see over it. IMO, it should affect LOS for infantry, especially hiding infantry. It doesn't seem right that infantry hiding in wheat or brush should be able to see though 100s of meters of the stuff. Maybe it should be treated the way stone walls are treated: LOS is blocked if the infantry unit is hiding or sneaking.

Another inaccuracy in the manual is a statement sugesting steppe is a good for hiding in. It looks to me that it offers only about a 15% improvement over clear.

By the way Treeburst, LOS isn't just blocked by trees, it is also still blocked or degraded by buildings, rubble, smoke, and bad weather. As far as I can tell, the only real difference with CMBO is for low terrain features.

As far as movement rates are concerned, only movement in tree terrain and mud seems out of wack. Everything else seems pretty reasonable. Rough, brush, marsh, fords, etc, seem to degrade movement rates in a reasonable way.

[Sabrewolf]

I hope this is not off topic but there was a thread regarding LOS into factory building which I think does not block as well. Unit from outside can spot and fire into unit inside a factory deep on the furthest end of the wall. We are talking about 2 normal houses deep of a distance here. The factory walls is still intact btw.

[Treeburst155]

Edited because I misunderstood a previous post.

Treeburst155 out.

[ October 06, 2002, 03:28 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

[Ace Pilot]

Originally posted by Agua:

Just ran a few tests with flat, 1680m x 280m adjacent strips of brush, rough, grain and steppe. It looks like although the LOS tool indicates unimpeded sighting, spotting is affected by terrain. I still can't tell if, once spotted, a unit may be fired upon by all units on the map.

[edited to include the following:] Okay, it looks like only the unit which spotted the other unit my directly target the spotted unit, although other units may provide area fire at the marker. Sound contact seems to be unaffected by these non-tree terrain types.

I'm confused. Is this a correct summary of what you are saying? Unit A spots an enemy squad in brush. Unit A can trace LOS to the squad (Targeting function gives exposure percent, firepower rating, etc.). Unit B, which must trace a longer LOS through the low-level terrain, cannot get the Target function to acquire on the spotted squad. However, it does not say "Sight Blocked" but instead says "Area Fire."

Is that what is happening?

And any word on the running in terrain issue?

Ace

[Hurricane]

The Finnish manual says this (page 220):

"Joillakin maastotyypeillä on visuaalinen esiintymismuoto, esim. ruoho, pensas. Näillä ei ole sinällään vaikutusta pelimoottoriin, vaan ne on lisätty visuaalisesti paremman ilmeen saavuttamiseksi".

My translation:

"Some terrain types have a visual display, for example grass, brush. These do not have any effect as such on the game engine, but are added for greater visual appearance."