Unit spotting, something should be done, if possible.

[Blashy]

When you have a plane on a hex it will see six hexes away ALL the time.

This IMHO is totally not right and should be improved on.

You should never see more than the hex in front if you for ALL units.

You could use planes for spotting missions. Meaning you send the plane six hexes where you want it to spot, it would not attack, it would simply stay where it is and then the hexes it travelled would be revealed or something like that.

I just don't like that you have a bomber and all of a sudden you can spot anything around a whole coutry 360deg all the time. You should have to pay if you wish to have such "scouting reports", not have it be automatic. And if you spot a certain area it should last 1-2 round and then it would become FoW again.

This would make it a more realistic military issue in terms of enemy troop movements.

I've only played SC for a wargame, but I'm sure some game must have a feature like so.

[jon_j_rambo]

This has been discussed & I agree. Air units should have to actually fly the mission to get spotting results at long range. This has been discussed in depth.

Speaking of information, how about the "Reports" menu? Enemy gets an accurate count on all your units? People read that "Reports" menu religiously, slows up the game.

[Edwin P.]

There are several ways to handle this and I anxiously await HC's comments on the subject.

Personnaly, I would like to see four changes:

1. The chance for an air unit spotting what is in a hex is reduced by range. Thus at Max range an air unit might have only a 25% to spot an enemy unit, at Max range -1 this increases to 50%, at Max Range -2 this increases to 75% and at Max Range -3 its 100% to spot enemy units.

So, Air Fleet with Range of 6: 25% to Spot at Range 6, 50% to Spot at Range 5, 75% to spot at Range 4, and 100% to spot units at Range 1 to 3. Naturally increases in LR tech increase your ability to spot enemy units.

2. CAP for airfleets. Airfleets flying CAP deny spotting to enemy air fleets within 2 hexes of that air fleet. Thus allowing you to build a secret reserve force at the cost of this air unit not being available for attack or interception.

3. Spotting chance or an airfleets range is reduced during Russian winter.

4. Air Units have a reduced chance to spot submarines, especially if they are running silent.

[Blashy]

AND this spotting result should not be permanent. It should last the round it was done and the next. Information on the area would no longer be valid so you loose the spotting of the area.

I like the % idea. The farther you go, the less fuel you have to circle around and get very good information.

IMHO, every unit should not see more than the tile in front of it, these tiles represent many square miles.

You want to see farther, use spotting.

Oh and if you do spot something, the spotted target should have a chance to attack you, make that unit's air defense 1/2 it's usual level for this attack.

[Edwin P.]

Rambo, I agree the reports menu is too accurate.

It should be accurate before the war starts as diplomatic spies in every country monitored military developments.

After a nation enters the war the reliability of this information should decrease. I would say that the estimates should be least accurate for Russia - with its secret police - and most accurate for the US with its production levels and losses being reported in the major papers of the day.

[willebra]

Guys,

I'm thinking this subject an another way around. SC is a high abstraction strategy game.

If the game was a tactical level game (e.g. steel panthers), one should spot only the units that are within the visible range.

But in SC, an army level unit should have (an apparently also has) built in recon forces that function autmatically. Historians may tell more accurately, but let's say an army level unit has 2-5% of its troops committed to recon: this means at least 1000 men. Its no surprise that they are aware of enemy troop concentrations (of corp-size, i.e. 20.000 upwards) within 50-100 miles.

The same should apply to air fleets: always some troops are committed to recon. The entire air flee t does not fly over 200 miles to look what's down there: rather they have squadrons patrolling all the time. These patrols naturally occur during the best possible wheather (remember that turns always last longer than one week and during that time there will be better and worse wheather conditions). As the turns are longer during winter, there similarly is more possibility for really good whether conditions.

The reports sure are too accurate.

[Blashy]

Willebra has a very valid point.

If we look at it this way, it makes sense and it also keeps the flow of the game going.

[Exel]

Having manual spotting missions would take the micromanagement to a level we don't want to go to. Recon missions were continuous and numerous irl, so having them automated in SC is perfectly logical. This is a grand strategy wargame, and having to do the everyday "chores" is just beyond the scale of the game. Next we'd be having manual supply lines, airfield construction and reinforcements.

[ April 18, 2004, 07:16 AM: Message edited by: Exel ]

[roman uk]

'Next we'd be having manual supply lines, airfield construction and reinforcements.'

Good Point.

Automate when you can.

But I do think spotting should be very imperfect.

Many times in WW2 intelligence gathering was very imperfect despite heavy air reconnaisance: for example allied unawareness despite total air supremacy of a number of panzer divisions in operation Market Garden. decisive.

What about:

Cities should not show units, or always inaccurately

randomness in spotting units

Diplomacy/ other intelligence gathering: aka radar tech, ultra

[Exel]

I think a better solution to imperfect spotting, rather than making it manually operated, would be to calculate each units spotting by some formula containing a random element for each turn separately. That way you'd have no additional micromanagement but there would still be a hazy FOW.

[With Clusters]

This thread seems has some bearing on Liam's "Little Qualities in Tech" thread, regarding airplane ranges and spotting. I suppose having an extra 'recon' command for air units (even if it could be done in the same turn as a 'combat' mission?) might add to the micromanagement. But a bomber unit having complete spotting knowledge in a 360 radius out to its maximum range still seems a bit much. That's a hell of a lot of ground to cover, even in one month turns, I would think, at least with precision. A couple options (which probably have been mentioned before, sorry):

1. Make the spotting distance different from combat mission range. Simple perhaps, but not quite accurate, as an anticipated target would certainly be more thorougly investigated (compared to a 'typical' ongoig 360 radius scan), even out to the bomber's maximum radius.

2. FOW gets even foggier the further away enemy units are from the spotting air unit. Perhaps after a certain distance, all the information you'd know would be "ground unit" or "naval unit" (except in the case of subs?).

Just off the top of my head, so perhaps not the best ideas, but I do think the spotting as it is in SC1 can certainly be improved upon...

[ev]

I very much like your second recommendation:

Originally posted by With Clusters:A couple options (which probably have been mentioned before, sorry):

1. ...

2. FOW gets even foggier the further away enemy units are from the spotting air unit. Perhaps after a certain distance, all the information you'd know would be "ground unit" or "naval unit" (except in the case of subs?).[/QB]

An air unit may be able to detect a land unit in the vicinity of Kiev. It may spot a few infantry or even guns or tanks, but most likely it cannot tell the exact size and strength of the unit from the air.

Furthermore, if a unit is entrenched (hence did not move in the last turn) the unit should be much harder to spot from the air. I would propose the following model:

If a unit is unentrenched, the air unit can tell whether it is a tank or infantry, but not the exact strength.

If a unit is entrenched level 1 or 2, we assume the land unit did not move last turn. Hence we assume it had some time to camouflage, etc. The air unit can detect the unit but cannot detect whether it is a tank or air unit.

If a unit has a higher entrenchement level, the air unit will not detect anything.

Now, with regards to range or area to re reconned... An air unit represents a fleet with hundreds of planes. If every plane in the fleet is set to recon a different area, they can probably recon a very large area. The 360 radius used in SC1 is not entirely unrealistic. However, an air unit should not be able to do both recon and combat in the same turn. Recon should be a mission to be performed instead of other missions such as escort, bombing, interdiction, or attacking other units. Furthermore, Recon should be subject to interdiction by enemy air fighters, much the same way that bombing is subject to interdiction.

[With Clusters]

Thanks ev, glad you liked the idea. You're 'furthermores' sound good! But I still have a problem with the 360 radius spotting, even if we make 'recon' a dedicated order. An air unit might represend hundreds of airplanes, but I think only a handfull were dedicated reconisseance (sp? - now I know why its shortened to 'recon' ) aircraft, meaning, fitted out with cameras, and tasked with that specific role. Could that many/few craft search so much territory completely, even in a one month turn?

In any event, I do understand that is is a 'strategic' game, and too much micromaneagement should be avoided, so maybe its a moot point anyhow. So some tweeking to FOW, something in line with your suggestions, might be the most helpfull...

[With Clusters]

Hmm, another wacky thought, related to the 'Intell' tech (there's going to be such a thing, right?) as it relates to air unit spotting:

Part of this (tech research) might be extrapollated (yep, I sure can't spell, can't I?) into improvements in cameras and photography analysis, as opposed to just more money spent on spies and code breakers. Any ideas on how to relate this kind of intel tech directly to how well air units can spot?

[John DiFool the 2nd]

I assume that detection isn't automatic within

the search radius of the air unit in question?

I'd prefer to see some chance of missing an enemy

unit [Ground units: not mobile and/or camoed.

Naval units: it's a big ocean and detection %

should be low to start with, weather of course

lowering it even more]

[Edwin P.]

I agree with John DiFool that detection should be automatic withing the search radius, perhaps, as suggested earlier the percentage chance to spot an enemy shoud decrease as the range increases.

Futhermore, since the game allows you to give orders to air units - Auto / Intercept / Escort / Ground why not add an order called Recon.

Recon - Increases the chance of an air unit to spot enemy units but reduces the action points of an air unit so it can not move or attack that turn and readiness for interceptions is reduced by a %.

[ev]

What about making decoy armies? There are a couple of great examples in WWII:

The allies built a decoy army in eastern UK and had Patton show himself around to fool the Germans into thinking the invasion would be at Calais.

Rommel made two similar bluffs. First, after landing the first armored batalion, he had his troops loop around some Libyian town several times so that spies would think a whole division had landed already. Second, in a dash through the desert he had some trucks disguised as tanks and made them lift a lot of dust while the real tanks attacked elsewhere.

It would be nice to be able to use engineers to either make fake "dummy" armies or to camouflage to forts to decrease the chance of them being detected.

[Edwin P.]

You could probably create decoy armies using the editor by using one of the rarely used unit types (ie Rockets) and renaming it.

You would assign it a Maximum combat value of 1 and possibly limit it to a few units (1, 2 or 3) so that you don't have a large mass of decoy units on the board. The cost should be about 25MPP per Decoy Unit. A few decoy units should be just enough to discourage an invasion of the British Isles or an early D-Day invasion or perhaps trick an opponent into thinking that most of your land forces are in Egypt.

[ June 07, 2004, 11:29 PM: Message edited by: Edwin P. ]