Spotting in game version 1.06

[Lethaface]

Originally posted by Darkmath:

If it could NOT be right for a such simple situation, how can it be better for more complex more realistic situation we're talking about?

Because there is no direct relation between those two possible result sets in terms of being RIGHT? perhaps a correlation at best

EDIT: Sound contacts would also not make the difference between 4 or 2 tanks as I think of it.

[skelley]

Is there any chance we can get another more difficult level of spotting for infantry? What I mean is that when I see an enemy HQ in a building I am told immediately that it is an HQ. I can understand that if it is in the open that I may see the field radio or somebody yelling out orders but in partial concealment I should just be able to identify that it is a group of enemy soldiers.

[SlowMotion]

Originally posted by Darkmath:

... it's not credible at all that the same duration happens for units as close as 20 metres!!! Even if you couldn't get visual contact , you still have sound contact.

I am interested in spotting results for Blue units too.

My bad writing I guess. I meant that the enemy tanks are all within about 20m, like you see in my second screen shot. Spotting unit is still far away.

One thing that may make those results look worse than normal is that they are DESTROYED, so no sound contact. And they are destroyed so that they wouldn't destroy my spotting unit before it has spotted all 4 tanks. Maybe this test setup could be tweaked.

There is some randomness in spotting times. In most cases when testing with same unit you get pretty much same times, but sometimes it may take noticably longer. More realistic.

[Darkmath]

Thanks for the feedback and sorry for my recurrent misunderstanding.

In fact, from my gaming experience I don't have a lot of problems with spotting, but these tests give weird results, as Redwolf points out, and it bothers me too.

[hoolaman]

Originally posted by SlowMotion:

I made small test to see how units spot enemy units. Does it work like a player might think: for example if there are some units straight ahead, they are all spotted quickly and at the same time?

I moved a tank to a position from which it should "see" several destroyed enemy tanks, if a tank crew member just looked at this direction. So I was expecting that it would take a while for someone in the tank to scan the area around it and once looking to right direction then all the four tanks would be spotted.

What actually happened was that after a moment tanks 1 and 4 were spotted almost simultaneously. Then after maybe 10 seconds #2 and then soon after this #3.

Have you thought about how the crest of that hill actually interferes with LOS?

A more useful test would be a 90deg approach and a straight slope edge. The diagonal slopes in CMSF produce the saw edge type of effect of the elevation tiles which might be effecting your results.

I mean if you want to check spotting take the terrain out of the equation as much as possible.

[Darkmath]

Ok, I read again the thread and I want to reply to Redwolf's first comment :

10 seconds to see a tank-sized object in that distance, when you are a soldier who's life depends on spotting the enemy first?

What's the distance there?

In fact, tank 1 and 4 are spotted immediately, so I don't think there is problem for spotting a tank sized object at 300 metres.

A unit can spot at least one enemy threat quickly enough to get into cover.

The problem is elsewhere : why does it take longer to spot units between 2 vehicles spotted instantly?

Because individuals would concentrate its scanning in the area he has spotted units.

Moreover, 3 soldiers from the tank are spotting at the same time. So even if tank commander decided to scan around its tanks, driver and gunner still have their sight in front of the 2 tanks not spotted beofre 20 seconds.

[SlowMotion]

A small clarification: Since it's very difficult to know when a moving tank *could* spot those enemy tanks, I didn't even try to see how long it took before the first enemy unit was spotted. I only measured the time between first and last spotting.

[flamingknives]

Tell me how many tanks are in the picture on the top of page two.

Or this one:

http://homepage.mac.com/michaelpiggott/militarymodels/TankFest/Overview.JPG

You have 20 seconds or less...

Bear in mind, also that when sat in the commanders position of the T72 in the foreground, I could hardly see any of the tanks in the arena.

I suspect that the problem could be that where a human can see "lots" of tanks, a computer can only see them when it's counted.

[Battlefront.com]

Skelly,

Is there any chance we can get another more difficult level of spotting for infantry? What I mean is that when I see an enemy HQ in a building I am told immediately that it is an HQ. I can understand that if it is in the open that I may see the field radio or somebody yelling out orders but in partial concealment I should just be able to identify that it is a group of enemy soldiers.

This is something I touched on in the middle of Page 2 somewhere (look for the post about VW Bugs). One of the side effects of having a more exact simulation is that it is harder to fudge things. In CMx1 everything was abstracted from the graphics, which meant we could show, or not show, anything we wanted to for whatever reason without a problem. CMx2 is a far more exact simulation with graphics and data tied together very tightly. To abstract things is now a problem.

We do intend on getting misidentified and poorly identified targets back into the game system much sooner than later.

Darkmath,

The problem is elsewhere : why does it take longer to spot units between 2 vehicles spotted instantly?

Because individuals would concentrate its scanning in the area he has spotted units.

Moreover, 3 soldiers from the tank are spotting at the same time. So even if tank commander decided to scan around its tanks, driver and gunner still have their sight in front of the 2 tanks not spotted beofre 20 seconds.

I've explained this all a few times already, so you can reread my responses. The bottom line is that simulates are designed a particular way. When someone does something that is not expected within the context of the "proper use" of the simulation, there are bound to be things that look wrong. However, within the correct context of the use of the simulation these problems may either never happen or happen so infrequently that it doesn't matter.

Again guys... I can not stress STRONGLY enough that one can not take a completely, and utterly, unrealistic test situation and expect it to perform realistically. It MAY do so, but we make no promises. The simulate is not designed to simulate things that aren't relevant. I know, I know, I know... it's very difficult to grasp how it is that that something like this doesn't really matter in the game but it's true. The Louch showed that on Page 1, not that it really needs proving. If the game behaved, on average, the way Slow Motion's test did I think we'd be having a very different discussion

Now, as for the point about not being able to FORCE information up/down the chain of command... that would be unrealistic. The chain of command is set up to move information around according to what we view as realistic methods, timing, and accuracy. To allow the player a means of directly influencing this, based on God knowledge, would undermine the whole system. It's not something we ever intend on allowing.

OK, so how about being able to target something you can't see? Provided that thing is well identified you can do this already by assigning a Target Command to the enemy in question. If the enemy is not fully identified that means you have to take your chances because the unit you're moving does NOT have exact information and therefore can't go over the crest of that hill or around that corner knowing right where to look and shoot.

My advice is to either wait until the Intel is spread around (remember real battles go much slower than you guys are pushing them to go), use Cover Arcs, use Hunt or Assault Commands, a combo Movement Command (Hunt or Assault) waypoint with a Face Command in the direction of the suspected enemy, and trying to come in at a blind side. Depending on what you have for a unit and what the enemy is you can preassign an Area Fire to where you think the enemy is. Er... at least I'm pretty sure you can. Haven't tried that recently enough to know for sure if it works, but I think it should. Again, not very useful most of the time.

These should increase the chance that your unit will spot the enemy and take it under fire before being fired at. But war is as much about luck as it is planning, so no guarantees.

Steve

[Drusus]

Nice advice about the area fire. But I think that it is very, very gamey. How does the unit know to magically area fire the BMP to oblivion when he doesn't know it is there? If forcing info up/down the chain is unrealistic and would undermine the whole system, then how doesn't area fire do that, too?

Using area fire it is too easy to exploit the god knowledge you have (as the player). Or how realistic it is that you can immediately bring down 40mm fire from a Stryker to any location where you (as the player) see muzzle flashes. This severely contradicts the slow relaying of information. My suggestion is to have a pause (even a small one) before the area fire command is passed to the firing unit.

It is the situation where the assault is halted because of one or some enemy vehicles in key locations that I have a problem with. As you can't force the relay of information, there isn't much to do but wait if the information might get passed to the right units. The supporting unit is usually a MGS, and passing info to them is very slow...

I don't know how things work in real life, but in these situations I think information passing could, and should be a bit faster than it is in the game. On the other hand, information passing of units that the spotter doesn't see important to _his_ survival should be slow. For the TacAI to decide which ones are important and which ones aren't isn't probably easy, though...

One problem here is that scenarios are usually made with unrealistically tight time constraints, which means that you can't just wait until the information is passed to the supporting unit.

I also agree that forcing the relay of information isn't probably the best solution. One suggestion would be that if the supporting unit is close by to the spotting unit then information passing could be a bit faster? Not unrealistic, not exploitable and gives _something_ you can do in locked down situations.

Maybe information about enemy vehicles should be passed a bit faster to your own vehicles than it is done now? Especially when the spotting unit doesn't do anything and isn't under fire. When you get the partial information system worked out, that should help, too. At the moment the question mark is usually too little information, but full ID is too much. If there was a middle stage of "it is vehicle/tank/infantry" in between it would be a huge improvement.

[Taki]

I don't know how things work in real life, but in these situations I think information passing could, and should be a bit faster than it is in the game. On the other hand, information passing of units that the spotter doesn't see important to _his_ survival should be slow. For the TacAI to decide which ones are important and which ones aren't isn't probably easy, though...

There is somethin else come to my Mind. What about overload of the C2 Systems? If nothing is shared on the System the INfo goes a bit faster and if hell brokes loose the Info goes slower over the Network? Any Chance to simulate this?

[Roter Stern]

Tell me how many tanks are in the picture... http://homepage.mac.com/michaelpiggott/militarymodels/TankFest/Overview.JPG

I'd actually go as far as saying that you should roll a newspaper into a tube and look though it at that picture on your monitor while someone is shaking your desk back and forth ... and then try to count how many tanks you can spot in 5 or 10 seconds.

And that's on a perfectly clear day, without any battle carnage. Where as I'd be pretty hard pressed to identify the 6th tank in this picture, even without the "newspaper periscope":

http://www.jodyharmon.com/militaryart/Kursk1.jpg

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

The Louch showed that on Page 1, not that it really needs proving.

Are you saying my test was highly redundant and overall useless? If I had feelings, they would be hurt right now

[SlowMotion]

Originally posted by The Louch:

I'd actually go as far as saying that you should roll a newspaper into a tube and look though it at that picture on your monitor while someone is shaking your desk back and forth ... and then try to count how many tanks you can spot in 5 or 10 seconds.

And that's on a perfectly clear day, without any battle carnage.

Yes, visibility from a moving buttoned tank is probably pretty bad. But in my tests the tank did most of the spotting after stopping. And in several cases buttoned times weren't any worse than when unbuttoned.

But like Steve wrote the important thing is how it works when you play the game and I don't see big problems with that. Just wanted to get more info on how spotting works now. One more interesting thing was that when I did the same test in CMBB those 4 enemy tanks weren't spotted at the same time in that game either.

[Battlefront.com]

C2 in the game probably works faster and better than it does in real life. We have no intentions of making it any faster. In fact, the slowness of it is desirable because fast (or worse, automatic) information sharing means the God view is too accurate and the player can do things he shouldn't be able to do in real life. This results in actions that are more "sure" than in real life, which in turn means the action is carried out faster than real life.

Ask yourself... if a MGS in real life doesn't know about a target, then how could he know that the information is taking too long to get to him?

In short, this is the difference between Relative Spotting and Absolute Spotting. The faster the information is process, the more we have ourselves right back to an Absolute Spotting system. Not what we want

The Louch,

Are you saying my test was highly redundant and overall useless? If I had feelings, they would be hurt right now

heh... actually, I thought that was a great little test there. What I meant was that intuitively I think we all know spotting during the game doesn't work like the original test Slow Motion did. I mean, if it did I think we'd see a few dozen people yelling at us on a daily basis to "fix it or do somefink".

I also agree with your assessment of how easy it is to spot things with a gun sight. I've also heard battlefield commanders describing UAVs as an expensive way to get intelligence information viewed through a straw.

Steve