Seperating Ground Cover from Trees.

[Moronic Max]

pretty much how I see it too, only I see two classes. Always blocked, ie that hill will always be their and "checkable" ie, it has buildings in the way that might be destroyed.

Alternatively, they could simply have a trigger in place that does something to the effect of "if destroyed, update LoS map", which shouldn't be very processor intensive at all--depending on how detailed building damage modeling is.

[Peter Cairns]

Moronic Max,

I am not so sure, if the LOS map is so intensive that having it done pregame is to stop LOS calculations slowing performance then you'd want to keep the redrawing to a minimum.

So having deformable lines marked and only these checked would seem less CPU intensive than constantly redoing the map. In addition the LOS check on the "possibles" might be able to use essentially the same technique as a LOF check.

As to vehicles not blocking LOS well given that where theirs a vehicle you can expect infantry even if you can't see them, it isn't a big issue for me. In the game if there are men behind a moving Stryker, you'll know they are there but won't be able to shoot them, but if it did block sight you might still cover it with suppression fire or overwatch just in case a squad debussed.

I would suspect that if a better target emerged the defender would switch to that so it wouldn't really effect realism.

Of course you could try thr gamey tactic on advancing your Strykers right up to the enemy with the infantry buttoned up on board, in the hope that he thinks,

"I can't see any supporting infantry and the Stryker doesn't block sight so it must be empty",

but thats probably a really good way to get them all killed without firing a shot.

Peter.

[mav1]

I have done several search's in google and I still can't find free detailed topography maps with contours for Europe and North Africa.

[Peter Cairns]

mav1,

It's abit labourious and not 100% accurate, but as you move your curor over the map on Google Earth, it gives you the height above sea level of the point it's at, which at least would let you plot the relative heights of key points.

Peter.

[mav1]

Thanks for the info Peter

[Peter Cairns]

No problem Mav,

Now answer the question, should ground cover and trees be split so they can be set separately.

Peter.

[mav1]

Ok Peter I will try to answer the question. My answer is no, because I think it will take too much processer power and memory to achieve this. Iam not a programmer so I dont know for sure. Instead you could have different pines, taller or shorter ones. The taller pines could be programmed to block los from a taller height but give low cover and not block los from ground level. The answer could be having more different tree terrain made up of smaller or taller trees. These trees could be also be thicker together or more spaced out. But the ground and trees would be still be counted as one on the same grid. By having smaller grids of 1x1m you can add a lot of variety with different tree grids to choose from. The ability to choice individual trees on the terrain is still in the future.

[Peter Cairns]

Mav1,

Fair answer, but if we assume that different trees is a big problem in terms of them having different values at different heights.

What about the compromise of being able to put down ground cover and then add trees on top, in the same way as you add buildings roads or walls.

Peter.

[mav1]

Peter,

Its all to do with numbers, you can have hundreds of buildings, roads and walls. But you can have thousands of trees on a map. Every single tree will have to be calculated for los and this will slow the process time, I think.

I would like ground cover and trees to be seperated, but Iam not sure if its possible.

Iam going to do a experiment, Iam going to create a huge map and fill it with hundreds of buildings. I will see if the game slows done a lot.

[Peter Cairns]

mav1,

I always thought the view that CM had a sort of density view of trees a bit like looking through fog, rather than calculating how many individual tree trunks a line of site went through.

In that respect I would be looking at at most two LOS calculations, Low, for crouched Infantry v Crouched infantry , which looks at ground cover, and high which is over the top of ground cover.

I don't know how different that would be to what CM1 does.

As for buildings, I had hoped that M:SF would let you mix levels so that you could have an open sided base and solid above, to represent the likes of a block of flats that had shops at the bottom but apartments at the top.

To do this different levels would need different LOS characteristic for seeing in to and through, so that would mean some Vertical LOScalculations just like tree cover.

Peter.

[mav1]

Peter,

Well I made a map with 10,000 buldings and the game didn't slow down. I have realised that the thing that slows down the game, is when units have los of other units. Which means for cmX1 you can have seperate tree and ground cover. You could have individual trees and it wouldn't slow the game down. If Cmx2 works similiar to cmx1 then you can have seperate ground and tree cover. But the impression I get is that things will be more complacated in cmx2.

As for the buildings you won't be able to create (true) flats in cmx2 as there might be a maximum of only 6 stories.