Spotting, LOS, and LOF explanation

[aka_tom_w]

I predict that as soon as the demo appears there will be a thread discussing the appropriate way (in step by step military detail) to clear a building.

Steve has listed two possibilities in this thread alone:

i) "using the Assault Command instead of Move"

ii) use "the Cautious Command which will send one of the Squad's Fire Teams in first, followed by the second one IF the first one completes its movement successfully"

(Hint: don't MOVE into possible danger in unknown buildings)

[ December 19, 2006, 08:53 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Yes, LOF is tracked based on where the actual soldier is. I suspect it is a lot finer than 1m x 1m. LOF is calculated on the fly this time, so things like guys hiding behind a moving tank can be simulated this time around (it wasn't possible with CMx1).

Individual soldiers act individually. This means 2 guys might keep poking their heads up while the others stay down. The decision is based on the unit's Commands and situation, just like CMx1. Unlike CMx1 it is not abstracted graphically.

Steve

Again WOW!!!

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

These situations will be extremely uncommon. If a tank in Action Spot 32,45 can see an enemy tank in Action Spot 56,94 then it probably has LOF as well. The only reason he wouldn't is if something, like a truck, happens to move into the LOF just before he fires. If the truck moves though the LOF after the shot is fired, it won't matter because the shot is already on its way.

The truck had better hope it doesn't get hit too, since all rounds are real time tracked from shooter to target. Meaning, if that truck moves into the LOF at the same eaxct moment that the shell is passing through, and the shell is at a height that is less than that of the truck, then the truck is going to be hit.

Steve

:eek:

WOW!

Sounds great

any AAR anecdotes from your play test experience with LOS or LOF issues and "that truck in the LOF" getting nailed (like and friendly fire as a Stryker passes through the LOF of a shot from a tank for instance?

I really disliked that aspect of CMx1 where you could fire directly through friendly vehicles. I am assuming you cannot fire through any vehicle in CMx2 without damaging it. Yes?

-tom w

[Thomm]

aka_tom_w, not sure if you intentionally design these posts to be funny, but keep up the good job, because I am having a good laugh!

Best regards,

Thomm

PS: WOW!

[aka_tom_w]

Glad to be of service. Humour is important in life.

Just wondered if anyone was paying attention

-tom w

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by stikkypixie:

Thanks for the response Steve, but what I really wanted to know was how the TacAI would response to a surprise. Because if I understand correctly what you're saying, if I tell a squad to MOVE into a building, they will assume it is safe. But say that the squad get ambushed, because of an error on my part. If the first guy gets shot, will the other guys still assume that it is safe and move in?

Or will they assume some sort of alertness and go into the building ASSAULT style, or whatever it's called.

It is of course obvious to most of us, that to clear a house you need to use some special command.

I think this falls into the category of the limitations of a computer simulation versus real life. Some things may make the AI look silly but there are always work-arounds once you've got used to the game system. Example from CMx1: opening and closing the hatches on your tanks each orders phase when there is a sniper around to make sure your crews don't stupidly pop their heads out of the hatch until the sniper is confirmed to be KIA.

[ December 19, 2006, 07:37 AM: Message edited by: Cpl Steiner ]

[undead reindeer cavalry]

any idea yet if humans block LOF?

human-LOF-block could be crucial in those tight alleys and it would be neat if my overwatch weapons couldn't fire thru my advancing infantry.

EDIT: Steve wrote: "Smoke and dust are LOS blocks only". does this mean i can give some sort of Area Target for my MG to fire blindly thru smoke or the darkness of night?

[Battlefront.com]

The TacAI in CMx1 was able to switch gears depending on the status of your unit, its orders, and what was going on with it. That behavior is in CMx2 as well. The game would be unplayable without it. So yeah, if a Team enters a building in Move mode and comes under fire, it will have a chance of switching its behavior. That's not what you originally asked about.

You were quite specific that if the first guy went in would the Team stop dead in its tracks. The answer to that is no, there is nothing specific like this coded into the game. It might happen this way, but it would probably be because the unit flipped out in some way. And it probably won't be instantly either. And probably not for the average US unit, which is less likely to flip out in the first place. However, like in CMx1 the Move Command is more easily overruled by the TacAI than somethingn like Assault.

Basically... conceptually the TacAI in CMx2 is no different than CMx1. Yes, it can do some more fancy stuff thanks to th 1:1 soldier simulation and what not, but the underlying logic of what it does and why it does it is pretty similar.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Keep in mind that no matter what we do, or how long we take to do it, or the size of the computer crunching the numbers, CMx2 will have a lot of abstraction still in it. True, it has a LOT less than CMx1, but it is impossible to simulate everything in exact 1:1 real life detail. LOF/LOS issues are some of the most complex and difficult to tackle elements in any game, for a variety of reasons, so for sure there will be some degree of abstraction in CMx2. The important thing is to see that it is a lot less than CMx1 since that is the only reasonable yardstick to measure progress by.

No, friendly soldiers do not block LOF. There are two reasons for that, the first being TacAI. It would really not be good to have the TacAI moving units around trying to shoot around each other. If you want to think up a worst case scenario for the TacAI doing stupid things on a regular basis, that would be it The second reason is that in real life soldiers do fire very close to one another. Therefore, it's pretty rare when a small group of Soldiers would totally block the fire of another group.

BTW, the narrowest an alleyway can be is 4m. In some circumstances we should be blocking LOF for individual Soldiers. Therefore, we do hope to be able to code up something for this type of situation, as rare as it might be. Tactically, you would be a fool to stuff an alley full of guys because all you're doing is asking for mass casualties.

Steve

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Keep in mind that no matter what we do, or how long we take to do it, or the size of the computer crunching the numbers, CMx2 will have a lot of abstraction still in it.

that's fine and expected.

No, friendly soldiers do not block LOF.

a shame but i can live with it.

The second reason is that in real life soldiers do fire very close to one another. Therefore, it's pretty rare when a small group of Soldiers would totally block the fire of another group.

yes but you still have to set up sectors for supporting arms, preferably with higher ground. it would be super cool if you could find a way to simulate this in WW2 CMx2.

BTW, the narrowest an alleyway can be is 4m. In some circumstances we should be blocking LOF for individual Soldiers. Therefore, we do hope to be able to code up something for this type of situation, as rare as it might be. Tactically, you would be a fool to stuff an alley full of guys because all you're doing is asking for mass casualties.

it would be cool if you could come up with something for tight alleys. after all they are not rare in less modern urban areas (like in mideast or Europe) and offer unique tactical dilemmas and possibilities.

one is a fool to stuff an alley full of guys, but alleys are safe highways for infantry repositoning and can be defended by very small numbers. they are ideal for breaking contact with the enemy, especially if the enemy is largely bound to supporting vehicles.

4 meters is a huge improvement over CMx1 (nay, more like the very end of one of the main weaknesses of CM), but honestly i was expecting to see alleys like these in Shock Force:

[MikeyD]

I'm wondering.

With Action Spots solving a big CPU problem what looks like the big culprit now for gobble-up processing speed? Realtime trajectory calculations? Realtime AI Strategic thinking? High-end animations? Shadow effects?

In CMx1 what seemed to slow my old computer down most wasn't large forces clashing but a lot of craters sitting on a map! When you figure out what CMx2's 'CPU killer' is most likely to be I hope you'll be able to provide a sliding scale in the preferences screen for us to control how much of - whatever its going to be - our computer willl have to handle.

I'm not entirely sure that was a coherant sentence.

[Cpl Steiner]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

No, friendly soldiers do not block LOF. There are two reasons for that, the first being TacAI. It would really not be good to have the TacAI moving units around trying to shoot around each other. If you want to think up a worst case scenario for the TacAI doing stupid things on a regular basis, that would be it The second reason is that in real life soldiers do fire very close to one another. Therefore, it's pretty rare when a small group of Soldiers would totally block the fire of another group.Steve

As I understand it, in real life you try to suppress an enemy from one direction whilst a manoevre element moves in from another, preferably perpendicular to the suppressing units LOF. Not only does this cause your enemy to face two threats but it avoids hitting your own side.

If a unit has to provide covering fire from behind a friendly unit then I would like to see it penalized in CMx2 in some way, perhaps by reducing it's rate of fire or accuracy. If no friendly casualties are possible in this scenario then I would expect the firing unit to be exercising extreme caution and therefore losing some combat effectiveness as a result.

[c3k]

Cpl Steiner,

Not to be pedantic, but why wouldn't a unit "exercising extreme caution" not actually increase its combat effectiveness? Sure, wild firing is reduced, therefore cool aimed fire increases which results in more effective downrange hits.

Now, I'm not looking for a new thread on psychology under fire, but rather trying to show that the immediate in-game penalty/bonus may or may not be warranted without deeper research.

I'm willing to bet that for every example you could give of reduced effectiveness due to friendly units, I could give a reasonable argument for why the effectiveness should increase. Nor do I doubt that you could do the same were I to argue my position as being the primary one.

Regards,

Ken

[Battlefront.com]

URC,

one is a fool to stuff an alley full of guys, but alleys are safe highways for infantry repositoning and can be defended by very small numbers. they are ideal for breaking contact with the enemy, especially if the enemy is largely bound to supporting vehicles.

In such a situation you have nobody firing into the alley or out of it, so the way CM works now simulates what you suggest perfectly and without a flaw.

4 meters is a huge improvement over CMx1 (nay, more like the very end of one of the main weaknesses of CM), but honestly i was expecting to see alleys like these in Shock Force:

That looks to be about 2 meters for each of those pics. Too small for the game engine to handle at this point. But trust me... when you see a 4 meter alley after playing CMx1 you're going to feel clausterphobia

Mikey,

With Action Spots solving a big CPU problem what looks like the big culprit now for gobble-up processing speed? Realtime trajectory calculations? Realtime AI Strategic thinking? High-end animations? Shadow effects?

In CMx1 what seemed to slow my old computer down most wasn't large forces clashing but a lot of craters sitting on a map! When you figure out what CMx2's 'CPU killer' is most likely to be I hope you'll be able to provide a sliding scale in the preferences screen for us to control how much of - whatever its going to be - our computer willl have to handle.

The big CPU killer is the 3D world. It was in CMx1 as well. That's why those craters were such a hit to the game's speed. All Action Spots did was allow us to increase the graphical representation without proportionally increasing the hit from LOS/LOF, path finding, and other critical game functions. If we had not gone with Action Spots we would have had to settle on a "tile" size of something inbetween what CMx1 looked like and what CMx2 looks like.

Cpl Steiner and c3k,

We are considering some sort of penalty. I think the best one would be to add suppression to any unit being fired over. I'm not sure how tough this is or the system to handle (CPU and RAM issues), but I think it is the most realistic penalty to apply. Reduced outgoing fire from the unit behind also has something to be said for it.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

I am still not sure I "get" action spots?

Is it not just simply like the dot in the center of every hex on a PanzerBlitz board game.

Meaning that for every CM:SF game tile there is a "center dot" (action spot) and the game determines what other action spots this one has LOS to?

Steve says:

"Action Spots are 8m x 8m squares that are dynamically assigned to each map based on terrain based on LOS. They tell CM what spots are important to be in, why, and how they relate to other spots. It is akin to what earlier wargames called "LOS Maps".

Sorry... I am still trying to visualize Action Spots.

I guess I am reading too much or thinking too much:

this part has me a little puzzled:

Question:

It might be easier to follow what I am visualizing by recalling how LOS worked in games like ASL. LOS was established by connecting a straightedge from the dot in the middle of one hex to the dot in the middle of another hex. Though I gather than Action Spots are going to be more dynamic than a fixed hexagonal grid (are they going to overlap, for example?), I could only think that LOS was going to be checked by essentially this same center point to center point technique.

Steve says:

I think they are more dynamically laid out than a straight grid, but I'm not sure about the inner workings of this part of the system that much. It's mostly geeky programmer stuff!

Thanks

-tom w

[ December 21, 2006, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Battlefront.com]

Tom,

Action Spots are invisible to the player. Unlike CMx1, when you look at a CMx2 map you'll have little sense of this or that piece of terrain being a distinct "tile". The terrain is refined enough and graphically varried enough that this is the case most of the time, especially with natural terrain features. But to the game engine things are still very much divided up into a grid. We call the individual, 8x8m defined areas within this grid as Action Spots. This is where LOS, pathing, terrain info, height info, and other things are stored.

There is some variation in this stuff to account for peculiar situations (such as a cliff or a single oil barrel), but by and large CM thinks of things in 8x8m spots. You will not. You'll be thinking of the map as you would natural real world terrain, not as a grid of Action Spots. I can say that for sure because I have more knowledge about these things than the average gamer and yet I don't give them a second thought when I play.

In short... you don't need to understand how Action Spots work because that knowledge has little applicability to playing the game.

Steve

[StellarRat]

OK, I'm coming into this late in the game, but I remember there were two parts to "Borg spotting". One was that every unit on the board was aware of anything ANY unit spotted. I'm assuming that now only the unit that spotted the enemy can fire at them.

The second part was about the delay between the time the unit spots someone and the commander (YOU) know that they spotted something, right? If the spotting unit has no radio or is out of comms it could take a long time before you would know about the situation. Has this also been addressed?

[aka_tom_w]

Hi Steve

Thanks great answer thanks for the explanation, I get it now.

Hi StellarRat....

ahhh the old issue of the "imperfect" command delay.

good question...

-tom w

[ December 21, 2006, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[aka_tom_w]

Action Spot Refresher course..

[Thomm]

Please stop resurrecting these old threads!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Huntarr]

Why not? They can inform those who need the information.

You really don't have any idea how much work Tom is putting in to help out this game. (for free I might add)

..........I'll now go back to watching my favorite show "As the Skunkworks Turns" (already in progress).......

[ November 13, 2007, 03:59 AM: Message edited by: Huntarr ]

[Thomm]

Originally posted by Huntarr:

Why not? They can inform those who need the information.

Why not, you ask?

Because the information in this thread is one freakin' year old and I do not think that the system works as intended as of 1.04, so I guess that what we read here is a "should work like this" snapshot of the engine that has no relevance to the present state!

There are so many good, recent threads on LOS problems that went without any official statement that resurrecting this old stuff is a little bit insulting since it contains zero information on the actual problems.

By the way, no insult meant to Tom.

And thanks for letting us know that you enjoy being a beta tester!!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Elmar Bijlsma]

It's still a valuable source for information as (without re-reading the entire thread) it is still how the system works in 99% of the case. As such it could help the understanding of what the current issues currently are with LOS, LOF and spotting. Relevant since that's the topic du jour.

People wanted the devs word on what was going on, this is still it.

[aka_tom_w]

Yup!

As such it could help the understanding of what the current issues currently are with LOS, LOF and spotting. Relevant since that's the topic du jour.

People wanted the devs word on what was going on, this is still it.

AND that's why I bumped it up.

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