Minor 1.06 area fire problem

[SlowMotion]

Haven't noticed any major problems in 1.06 yet. Now that LOS seems to be working well I'd like to bring up another basic feature - area fire. Maybe someone from Battlefront could comment if this could be tweaked in the near future?

The perfect solution IMO would allow area fire to all visible parts of the map. Now it seems we can use it only if the center of 8x8m action spot is visible. Sometimes this means that units in those "center of action spot hidden" locations can fire at your unit, but you can't fire back at them. Here's a screen shot:

Area fire is possible from the Stryker to building1, but not to the partially visible buildings 2,3 and 4. In this case there were infantry units firing from the visible window of building2, but the Stryker couldn't fire back.

I think this is a bit like the shoot-through-tanks situation of v1.04. You couldn't fire at an enemy tank if it was behind a destroyed enemy tank. This was changed to 1.05 so that firing was possible to both directions.

[Battlefront]

Note that if there are spotted soldiers in any of those locations you will be able to fire at them. The restriction you see is intentional and applies only to area fire. It's there because you can't see "enough" of the building to fire at a reasonably large portion of its "area".

If we were to change area fire to be micro-targeted, it would open up gamey issues because it would allow units that don't actually see an enemy to be able to fire precisely at its exact location, and that's not realistic.

[thewood]

But at the same time, if I were seeing muzzle flashes coming from a window, I would probably fire on it in a battle. Now, I can't do that without repositioning. That means an enemy can fire at me with impunity due to an angine limitation. That seems a little gamey to me.

[SlowMotion]

Thanks for clearing this.

I thought the situation in that picture was sort of gamey because I could see exactly where the tracers were coming from even though the enemy unit inside the building hadn't been spotted yet.

I like playing my "real" games in turn based mode and there this micro-managed area firing would be nice to have. Line targets like in arty missions

Oh well, almost everything that is in the game now is working very smoothly now.

[WW2Wargamer]

Hi

It is a game a very good one. Lets enjoy this new game CMSF 107 for awhile. Lets give BFC a chance to rest. Remember 2 patches one for TOW and One for CMSF in Two Weeks. BFC very GOOD.

[Martin Krejcirik]

If it was up to me, I would restrict area fire more adding command delay. Because if a unit can't see anything suspicious somewhere, there is no reason why they should start firing there immediately. They must get order, possibly from higher ups, so there should be a delay.

[MD82]

That negates "reconnaisance by fire". Many times I would suspect an enemy might be in buildings or brush and I would fire into those places. If area fire is not allowed unless the enemy is spotted, this valuable and realistic tactic is not available.

[missinginreality]

Yes I'm thinking similar to MD82 especially re firing through smoke. it would seem of sense to be able to pop smoke then spew a heap of fire through it whilst backing off but LOS through smoke stops even area fire from being allowed.

[Battlefront]

Keep in mind that the game may be showing the muzzle flashes but that doesn't mean that the particular soldier or vehicle of yours sees those same muzzle flashes. If he did, then the enemy unit would also be "spotted".

We let the muzzle flashes show even if only some of your units see the enemy shooter, just because it looks cool. If it's confusing people, maybe we will remove that.

The point is that all of your guys don't always see all of their guys, even when some of your guys see some of their guys. And we don't want to give your troops some sort of mind-melded uber-brain where what one man sees is instantly acted upon by a different man in a different location who does not see the same thing. But this being a game, the player (you) is, in a sense, that uber-brain that connects the "thoughts" of all your digital soldiers in a way that does not exist in real life. So we have to put some constraints in there.

As for reconnaissance by fire, troops have to have some idea where they should shoot. In real life your vehicle would not even know that enemies were in those buildings at all, most likely, and especially not which building specifically. Add to this that 85% of that building is not in his LOS, and it's pretty artificial to expect that the crew would not only choose to fire, but to choose to fire at that exact building (where the unseen enemy happens to be, not any of the 4 other buildings right nearby), even though they don't see anything happening. It's a problem born of the fact that one human player controls all the soldiers on his force, and his knowledge is effectively "shared" in a way that does not exist in real life.

We implemented relative spotting to solve the major part of this problem. Putting some modest constraints on area fire is the other part of this. The only restriction here is that if your unit can only see a small portion of a building, you can't area fire at it. That's all.

[Rokossovski]

Keep the muzzle flashes. The ARE cool.

[WW2Wargamer]

Hi Battlefront

The muzzle flashes are fine. Please leave it alone. You did a great job.

[Roter Stern]

Hehe, all it takes is to scare us with a possible removal of some eye candy and all of a sudden a problem is no longer a problem at all

I would actually say that Area Fire restrictions are not harsh enough … with some careful planning there is still very little stopping the player from spraying every possible contact with a dozen 50cal and AGLs from Strykers not even remotely aware of the contact.

This actually reminds me of the infamous Sea of Halftracks “tactic” I've seen people use in CMAK for no-armor-allowed quick battles. The idea was to buy nothing but those American 3xMMG halftracks, so you'd end up with 20 or 30 of the damn things, and then have them area fire every inch of visable terrain as they advanced forward. The ammo was usually not a problem considering that the 60 to 90 .30/.50cal's spraying your troops with lead was usually enough to route even an elite squad in a matter of seconds.

While I do not want to suggest that area-fire should be removed completely, perhaps it should be tied into relative spotting a bit more. Perhaps have it handled closer to the way artilary is - a unit with a possitive contact could 'requiest' a suppresie fire, at which point the command and communications chain would kick in and spread this request to other friendly units. Those who are able to reveice this request and see the target would then open up with an area-fire… and those who are out of the loop would remain clue less to the requested area-fire.

[ February 07, 2008, 07:19 AM: Message edited by: The Louch ]

[Rocky Balboa]

In situations like this I will usually set a very narrow covered arc on the suspected location and this makes it more likely that your troops will spot the OPFOR.

[Oddball_E8]

what im thinking here is the following scenario...

the stryker sees muzzle flashes from that window (ie. spotting the enemy) and immediately engages... this supresses the enemy, but since that means the stryker no longer sees them, they all of a sudden cannot fire at that window... knowing full well that an enemy might pop up there again...

see what i mean steve?

[SlowMotion]

One more situation where area fire would be useful:

let's say there was a tank where the Stryker is now. You'd assume there might be enemy inside building #2 and your infantry would need to enter this building. Without area fire possibility your soldiers would probably get killed while entering the building. But if you could use tank's gun you'd probably suppress whoever is inside the building and also create a hole to wall for entrance.