flares

[walpurgis nacht]

I watched the _Band of Brothers_ series over the holiday, and noticed the use of flares at night by the 101st/Krauts at Bastogne. Flares might be a really interesting addition to a game that emphasizes small tactical battles like CMBB.

Any thoughts?

[MasterGoodale]

I never thought of this. I think it's an outstanding idea and would actually make night battles playable. I don't know what effect it would have on performance but I know the developers of CMBB can find a way around that.

[Snarker]

I don't think this engine can do that sort of stuff. Maybe in the next engine. Would definitely be fun.

[walpurgis nacht]

Originally posted by Snarker:

I don't think this engine can do that sort of stuff.

I suppose it is too late to throw something so drastic into a game like CMBB, and I'm not in expert in how these were used (if at all) on the eastern front, but I can see flares being useful in SO many ways in night-fighting. Maybe even in fog and light snow. I have to read up on this.

[WWB]

No dynamic lighting model hence no flares. They would have to make the entire battlefield lighter at things now stand.

WWB

[Dowdingski]

They were extensively used on the Eastern front. Read 'Cross of Iron' by Willi Heinrich. Not only does it have a bit in it where they are sending up lots of flares, it's also a very good book.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by Walpurgis Night:

I watched the _Band of Brothers_ series over the holiday, and noticed the use of flares at night by the 101st/Krauts at Bastogne. Flares might be a really interesting addition to a game that emphasizes small tactical battles like CMBB.

Any thoughts?

The lack of dynamic lighting has already been mentioned; this is a graphics limitation, and a separate concern from how one would model surveillance and target acquisition at night.

I suspect that considerable changes to the way STA is currently done would be needed to model night-fighting adequately. The background against which a target is viewed would make a considerable difference to the range at which a target can be spotted, and doing this would I think necessarily entail an end to Borg spotting. It would also be quite a nasty computational problem, having to project a line-of-sight from spotter through target and on to whatever the viewing background happens to be.

Flares are, in my experience, surprisingly dreadful at helping you see people at night, but they are likely to make any enemy near them drop to the ground and freeze, for fear of being seen. Much more likely to actually find an enemy is the trip-flare (which a good O-O programmer should be able to model simply as inheriting some behaviour from mines and some from flares), because when the trip-flare goes off, you know that's where the enemy is -- unless, of course, it was a rabbit that set it off.

The other thing that would need to be modelled is the common habit of firing at gun-flashes, which are visible many times further than people in most low-light conditions. Once the gun flashes have started, that's your night-vision wrecked -- and if the game is going to last more than 15 turns, you might want to model the slow return of full dark adaption.

Sound detections become noticeably more important at night; I don't know how sophisticated the current sound detection model is.

It would be fun to be able to buy "Monty's Moonlight", searchlights reflected off low cloud to provide some degree of overall battlefield illumination (usuallly only "movement light" rather than "fighting light"). I don't think any white-light searchlights were used for direct battlefield illumination, but I'm sure there would be great demand for the late-war German IR searchlights and viewers and Amercian IR goggles.

The easiest thing to model will probably be the infra-red warning detectors the Wehrmacht issued during the Saar campaign in 1940. These were small, man-portable warners, intended to tell infantry patrols if they were being illuminated by French IR searchlights. As the warning detectors never, ever activated, they were quite soon discarded as useless deadweight; only later did it become apparent that the French had never fielded any infra-red searchlights.

All the best,

John.

[YankeeDog]

I must agree that a more complex modeling of Lighting and Visibility, especially at night, is high on my list for the engine rewrite.

In addition to flares, as Mr. Salt has alluded to, Modelling muzzle flashes would add a whole new element to night combat. A unit opening fire would potentially reveal itself (by muzzle flash) to a whole host of enemies.

Other interesting possibilities:

1) Burning buildings/terrain/tanks - these would dramatically effect visibility and spotting in their general vicinity, and not always for the better.

2) Moonlight and snow cover effects. Ever been out in an open field when there's a clear sky, a full moon and snow cover? The snow reflects the moonlight and the result is dramatically brighter lighting conditions than you normally see at night - I would gauge about as bright as twilight, albiet with less color perception.

3. Some Terrain features and large objects (such as buildings (such as bridges and buildings) are much more visible at night than smaller objects like humans and AFVs. I don't have any detailed knowledge on the subject, but I would guess that area firing targeted at a large building at night is possible at a considerably longer range than is modeled in CMBB, especially if the building is shilhouetted against the sky.

Ahh, the possibilities. . .

Cheers,

YD

[Cull]

Definitely a swell idea for an addition. I bet we all have lots of nifty things we imagine for the next engine!

I wonder if BFC would be interested in a " Official Massive Idea Thread"? (Notice the cute acronym)

I bet we could keep it going for the next couple of years, and provide plenty of laughs for the boys....