Advancing Tanks and Troops

[birdstrike]

It just crossed my mind that if we get the new option of moving infantry in cover behind advancing vehicles, I guess there will be a need for a special movement order for this.

For one I wouldn't want my tank to charge forward and leave the infantry behind unprotected.

And secondly, if I order the tank to move forward with the "hunting" command (or whatever its sucessor will be called ) and the tank stops to attack a target, it would be very unfortunate if the infantry would just move on.

Or is this likely to be covered by the introduction of a convoy movement?

[undead reindeer cavalry]

something like the "follow vehicle" command in CMx1?

[YankeeDog]

Unless I misunderstood it, BFC has already stated that moving vehicles will not provide cover, at least in the first CMX2 release -- to difficult and costly (in processing cycles) to code.

They did leave open the possibility that stationary vehicles might provide cover.

Cheers,

YD

[birdstrike]

Originally posted by undead reindeer cavalry:

something like the "follow vehicle" command in CMx1?

As long as they don't start throwing satchel packs or grenades at their own tank...

[birdstrike]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

Unless I misunderstood it, BFC has already stated that moving vehicles will not provide cover, at least in the first CMX2 release -- to difficult and costly (in processing cycles) to code.

Aw, d*mn. I was pretty sure I read that this was included. Must be seeing things again.

[Steiner14]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

Unless I misunderstood it, BFC has already stated that moving vehicles will not provide cover, at least in the first CMX2 release -- to difficult and costly (in processing cycles) to code.

Really? Do you know, in which thread?

What i read about was, that the shooting calculations are done on a per shot basis and not every µs for the flying projectile. It doesn't exclude cover behind moving vehicles.

[aka_tom_w]

The long answer is in this thread:

LOS thread

The example in the linked thread involves moving units. Can they block LOS? No. Can they block LOF? Yes. The question is... if the system knows that the vehicle is in a specific spot, why can't it treat it like a piece of blocking terrain and therefore not see what is behind it? After all, the system knows that it can't shoot through that vehicle, so why can't it also know it can't look through it? Remember what I said above about the very clever shortcuts? Remember that I said they are essential for managing the hit to the hardware for all those LOS checks? That's where the answer lies.

One of the most important shortcuts is establishing a "LOS map" of the entire battlefield which is, basically, a precomputed LOS check. Units don't scan the terrain map directly, they scan the LOS map. So it doesn't matter what is on the terrain map, it matters what is in the LOS map. Since the LOS map is precomputed, it can't possibly know about things that move around dynamically since that would require constant recomputing the LOS map data. So much so that it would probably negate the reasons for having the LOS map in the first place. Which brings us back to the point about this shortcut being necessary for the game to run at all.

-Steve