Define this play style? [att.Green Hornet]

[Fly-By]

I was reading another post ["Is it just me, or.."],

and noticed Green Hornet mentioned a game play style he refered to as " excessive exploitation of borg spotting". Whats borg spotting, & how can it be used in excess?

[Panzer76]

Borg spotting refers to the Star Trek series, where a there was a all knowing "specie" called the Borg. Anyhow, what it means in CMBB terms is that when one of your units see an enemy unit, sudenly everybody else is aware of it, this was not of cource true in RL, but a consequence of the how CMBB is coded. This will supposedly be fixed in the engine rewrite.

[TSword]

In CMBB however atleast for tanks it was toned down quite a bit, otherwise i couldn't kill such huge loads of AI tanks. Maybe now it has some latency before spreading. And it seems that a buttoned T-34/76 with early turret doesn't participate in Borg spotting at all....

[Eric Alkema]

One would exploit it by sending scouts with no radios out of command and control and still getting every bit of info that they gather.

[Green Hornet]

As Panzer76 mentioned, "borg spotting" is simply a consequence of how the game is coded and the limitaion of it being "just a game". One unit spots an AT gun and your entire force instantly knows its existence and location. This would not happen in RL (real life) or at least it would take much longer for the information to travel through all the units on the battlefield. To a certain extent there is little or nothing you can do about this since its simply a result of one person (you) controlling all the units.

The "exploitation" of this is exactly what Eric mentioned...you take one unit, usually a cheap or low firepower unit such as a sharpshooter or crew from a KO'd mortar, and run the unit far ahead of your main force to do "scouting". Sneak the unit on a high tree covered hill to observe your opponents movements, location, etc...all of which is now known by all of your other forces.

There is a lot of debate as to whether this is "gamey" and to what extent this type of strategy is acceptable. That's why I mentioned in the other post that this may be one thing you and your opponent may want to agree upon before playing.

[ November 05, 2002, 12:53 PM: Message edited by: Green Hornet ]

[Silvio Manuel]

Originally posted by TSword:

In CMBB however atleast for tanks it was toned down quite a bit, otherwise i couldn't kill such huge loads of AI tanks. Maybe now it has some latency before spreading. And it seems that a buttoned T-34/76 with early turret doesn't participate in Borg spotting at all....

T34/76's have HORRIBLE spotting up until late 43 or start of 44, IIRC. This is b/c of two factors:

1) 2-man turret- TC must button up when firing the main gun, since HE is the gunner

2) no cupola- severely limits tank spotting once buttoned up

Also, it has no radio until somewhere around late 43 or early 44, so as soon as they button, they go out of C-and-C and a far more vulnerable to bailing out due to non-lethal hits.

[ November 05, 2002, 02:23 PM: Message edited by: Silvio Manuel ]

[Fly-By]

As a newcommer to the the CM realm, I am grateful for the very usefull information. This play style never crossed my mind. I agree w/Green Hornet about setting up guidelines when challenging other players.

Thanks all!

FlyBy

[Vanir Ausf B]

Originally posted by Eric Alkema:

One would exploit it by sending scouts with no radios out of command and control and still getting every bit of info that they gather.

A small niggle: this is not taking advantage of Borg spotting. This is taking advantage of the "god's eye" view of the player, i.e. the fact that since there is one person controlling all the units on one side, he knows everything all his units know and can act on that knowledge. This may seem like a minor distinction, but they are actually two entirely seperate issues. Borg spotting (technically called absolute spotting) will be eliminated in the next CM by relative spotting, but there is no feasable way to "fix" the god's eye issue, nor is there any way to avoid taking advantage of it.

[ November 06, 2002, 05:40 AM: Message edited by: Vanir Ausf B ]

[Ace Pilot]

Originally posted by Vanir Ausf B:

[snip] ...but there is no feasable way to "fix" the god's eye issue, nor is there any way to avoid taking advantage of it.

Hope you don't mind if I offer a different opinion. On other threads, I've read some ideas of how to address this issue, such as limiting or delaying the spotting information that "isolated" units obtain. Of course, there are many complications to solutions such as these. One is how to define "isolated" unit. Is it any unit not in command? Without LOS to any other friendly unit?

Another example is how to deal with a unit that spots an enemy unit but doesn't relay that information to the player. I think most would agree that the TacAI would need to be improved in order for it to properly handle such a situation.

These solutions would remove some of the control that players currently have in CMBO and CMBB, which some would object to. In any case, I think implementing any of these solutions would be a HUGE challenge, and something we won't see for quite some time.

With that being said, the best solution is probably a true multi-player mode, where each player only sees what his men see. And that may not be that far off.

Ace

[Vanir Ausf B]

Ace, I was involved in some of those earlier discussions so I am familiar with the proposed solutions. I do not consider any of them feasable without turning CM into a command level game.

Team play will reduce the effect but will not eliminate it. Every unit would have to be controled by a different player to do that.

For the time being, I maintain that the best thing to do is not worry about it since there is nothing we can do to change it.

[Webs]

I think this is a just a conequence of the game that we have to live with. Both sides can do it, so I live with it. It doesn't bother me.

So, which units would have radios in CMBO and CMBB? Just HQs? Would mortar teams? I don't know the logistics of who would and wouldn't have a radio in this time frame. I assume no one has a cell phone.

[Nippy]

I think this is a just a conequence of the game that we have to live with. Both sides can do it, so I live with it. It doesn't bother me.

In CMBB set the Fog of War to "Extreme". Sending single units to recon usually results in their destrustion by a still unseen enemy. Being fired on no longer results in an instant ID, especally with lower quality troops.