About LOS/LOF problems (from devs)

[Cornfleek]

Originally posted by HardRock:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Cornfleek:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by HardRock:

LOS is a sterile wargaming tool not available to real men in the field.

LOS is NOT available to real men in the field? WTF? As in real men in the field are not able to assess what they see and cannot see if it's hidden? Oh well, who needs an LOS tool anyway, if this tool will just pierce through 3 trees and say, yes, the enemy can see you.

LOS in ToW is a sterile wargaming approximation resulting in see through trees, not available to real men in the field. </font>

[Txema]

Well, in my opinion it will be very usefull to have a tool that helps the player to understand how the LOS/LOF calculations are being done. I would like to give that tool a chance, to try to understand properly the logic used for the LOS/LOF calculations. Developers, go for it !!! And thank you very much for all the support !!!

Txema

P.S. I like TOW, and I am sure that the LOS/LOF calculation tool will help me to enjoy this game much more.

[BillyBob]

The only thing a LOS tool will do is confirm that trees and bushes etc are effectively transparent. I don't need it, all I have to do is go into 1st-person view to see what my units cannot see (and therefore cannot be seen by).

But I'm sure it'll be a useful placebo for some ("Oh, the LOS thingy says that enemy tank can see me from behind multiple trees and bushes, so that's ok then. I'll wait until there's a mountain handy before I try an ambush again").

[Tripps]

Originally posted by HardRock:

And for umpteenth time...trees never blocked LOS.

[/QB]

Really?

[Reichenberg]

Originally posted by BillyBob:

...all I have to do is go into 1st-person view to see what my units cannot see (and therefore cannot be seen by)...

BillyBob, I think you do not have the scouting capabilities of your units and of the enemy units in your calculation. There can be the situation where your units (with little scouting skills) can not see the enemy. But the enemy (with better scouting skills) can see you already.

Nevertheless there are some major issues with LOS/LOF that have to get fixed. I think the approach of the devs can maybe help us understand better how the system work. Will that be enough??? I don't think the better visualisation of LOS/LOF is the big issue here. Hopefully I will be corrected by the devs and the visualisation solves some problems.

As long as LOS/LOF, (doubtful?) armour penetration and pathfinding and waypoints will get fixed, I still think ToW has the potential to be a great wargame......

Still chewing, digesting and understanding.

Uwe

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by Reichenberg:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by BillyBob:

...all I have to do is go into 1st-person view to see what my units cannot see (and therefore cannot be seen by)...

BillyBob, I think you do not have the scouting capabilities of your units and of the enemy units in your calculation. There can be the situation where your units (with little scouting skills) can not see the enemy. But the enemy (with better scouting skills) can see you already.

Nevertheless there are some major issues with LOS/LOF that have to get fixed. I think the approach of the devs can maybe help us understand better how the system work. Will that be enough??? I don't think the better visualisation of LOS/LOF is the big issue here. Hopefully I will be corrected by the devs and the visualisation solves some problems.

As long as LOS/LOF, (doubtful?) armour penetration and pathfinding and waypoints will get fixed, I still think ToW has the potential to be a great wargame......

Still chewing, digesting and understanding.

Uwe </font>

[ZaPPPa]

Originally posted by HardRock:

Sorry but you're just wrong. Tanks in the field didn't pause the battle and start checking LOS on a computer showing the terrain and draw straight LOS lines to every possible direction.

Yeah, but in real life each tank is occupied with a human with human intelligence. In the game the tanks are occupied with AI with less brainpower than an ant. Therefore you have to abstract certain things.

You wargamers are just to used to sitting there for hours with time on your side drawing LOS lines.

Let's do a little math shall we? Let's say I have to manage 4 tanks and 24 infantry. According to your logic I am not allowed to pause the game. Which gives me 1/28th the time to react that every unit would ordinarely have because I have to divide my attention over 28 units.. I have to to switch the camera 28 times and be able to process 28 individual LoS processes instanteneously.... yeah, that's very realistic.

[BillyBob]

Originally posted by ZaPPPa:

Let's do a little math shall we? Let's say I have to manage 4 tanks and 24 infantry. According to your logic I am not allowed to pause the game. Which gives me 1/28th the time to react that every unit would ordinarely have because I have to divide my attention over 28 units.. I have to to switch the camera 28 times and be able to process 28 individual LoS processes instanteneously.... yeah, that's very realistic.

And on top of that, apparently, you also have to make sure your tank gunners are using the right kind of ammo (and maybe also juggle crewmen around so that the guys with high scouting ability are in the right seats?).

I know the AI is stupid (when it's the human's AI), but to be expected to direct each individual gunner to use the right kind of ammo in the middle of a blind and chaotic battle is a workload too far. They made the same kind of mistake with SH3 and it crippled that game too, until the modders fixed it. Unfortunately we can't get into ToW's files like they could with SH3. Not that it would do much good probably, I suspect this stuff is hard-coded into the core engine (and probably why we won't see it fixed in a patch).

[ChrisND]

Originally posted by BillyBob:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by ZaPPPa:

Let's do a little math shall we? Let's say I have to manage 4 tanks and 24 infantry. According to your logic I am not allowed to pause the game. Which gives me 1/28th the time to react that every unit would ordinarely have because I have to divide my attention over 28 units.. I have to to switch the camera 28 times and be able to process 28 individual LoS processes instanteneously.... yeah, that's very realistic.

And on top of that, apparently, you also have to make sure your tank gunners are using the right kind of ammo (and maybe also juggle crewmen around so that the guys with high scouting ability are in the right seats?).

</font>Agreed, in a real time fight in multplayer, when you can't pause, this type of forced micromanagement sounds like hell.

Although, to be fair, the AI does a pretty good job of picking the right ammo as long you don't interfere, once you do, all bets are off for that crew.

[seppDieter]

in close combat you cant pause the game either during a human vs human battle. and the LOS tool is verry handy, and it doesn't cause any division of the attention given to each unit. as a matter it even enables you to know what units are not exposed and thus leaving them alone. giving more time to spend on the exposed units.

but in real time the LOS tool is used to decide wether a unit should shoot or not, because the LOS tool gives you the probability of succes.

when the odds are favorable and the LOS tool turns green, you order to fire and mostly with succes.

this cant work yet in TOW, since even with a LOS tool, all units in the Field Of Vision are targetable. so theres no way of hiding soldiers in ambush.

as long as there is no AMBUSH mode in the game, the LOS tool is USELESS

[TTorpedo]

Originally posted by seppDieter:

in close combat you cant pause the game either during a human vs human battle. and the LOS tool is verry handy, and it doesn't cause any division of the attention given to each unit. as a matter it even enables you to know what units are not exposed and thus leaving them alone. giving more time to spend on the exposed units.

but in real time the LOS tool is used to decide wether a unit should shoot or not, because the LOS tool gives you the probability of succes.

when the odds are favorable and the LOS tool turns green, you order to fire and mostly with succes.

this cant work yet in TOW, since even with a LOS tool, all units in the Field Of Vision are targetable. so theres no way of hiding soldiers in ambush.

as long as there is no AMBUSH mode in the game, the LOS tool is USELESS

Exact, The focus should be on setting your unit behaviour. Not micromage shoot/ wait/ prone/... but instead ambush/ defend/ hold ground or not... So that you don´t need to be omnipotent.

So far only played the Demo, and I didn´t use pause at all, the game is already build towards a more relaxed play just needs some tweaking balancing - bushs / trees and crawling more cover los/ lof efective- and a few more options to the squads/ tanks behaviour.

[molo]

I think part of the problem is that the only AI units seem to exhibit involves their sprint away from the front lines when they rout.

[Tontoman]

Yeah, the tool is not going to me much use if LOS isn't fixed as it's just going to show good LOS everywhere except through a mountain.

BUT at least after that step, then LOS tweaks can be done and thus seen to take effect by the players, instead of more guesswork about how LOS works if tweaks were done and no LOS tool existed.

T

[HardRock]

Originally posted by Chazman:

"And for umpteenth time...tress never blocked LOS. these are trees in the game, not patches of dense forest 500 meters deep!!"

You're kidding right?

The trees in the game are "tree lines", ever heard of the bocage in Normandy, I guess everyone could see right through that too?

Yeah and Bocage is not trees. It's dense hedge and its thick. I mean talk about thick.....

[HardRock]

Originally posted by Cornfleek:

[Righto, good point about the computers and pause button not being available back then. [/sarcasm]

My point was, that Line of Sight in itself is available to you, me and everybody back then. we can see what we can see, and can't see what we can't see. No we can't pause our life, but we can very accurately tell if we can see something or not.

In ToW you get shot through the foliage of three trees, with absolutely no LoS (as in from that position you cannot see what shot you). Trees should block LoS since they should be solid objects. In this game trees look solid, but apparently are translucent objects.

Adding a tool that explains that the AI can see through three trees is useless if it doesn't fix the original problem of translucent trees.

And about the tankers normally not knowing what hit them, it was quite often caused by ambushes, which have been made impossible with the current state of LoS calculations.

Devs, fix the problem, please don't give us a tool that explains how the problem works. [/QB]

I've been playing LOS military games for 30 years including miniatures with hard core los rules and never a rule where a single tree..or a tree line..or even a couple in depth block los/lof. In light woods there would be "to hit" modifiers which seems to be what they're doing with the degradation. Also there is muzzle flash that can reveal you though I don't know if thats modeled.

The thing is the developer is not using the "draw a string line" to targets and if it hits something its blocked that we are all used to. They are using another method. It may be more realistic..it may not..it may work perfect as is or broken..that I don't know because we don't know whats under the hood. The LOS tool he's coming out with will help one to deduce why.

Most of us are looking for some bushes to hide behind. I was behind a tree..and a couple other trees up front blocked my FPS view. However in almost every case when I went to a top down view with the fire line..it cleared abeit going through edges of branches which is not enough to stop it.

The game uses the colored icons. So if its colored he's going to see and shoot you and you him..although your AI might want to move to a better position not to waste ammo.

There is in real life..at least back in WW2, a fog of war with LOS and spotting or not spotting was a factor...it wasn't a perfect let me drawn a line to every possible position and get an yes or no.

That's probably why they have a scouting value.

Btw..ATG's ambushed. Not tanks except rare occasions. There location was known from other sources.

[ April 30, 2007, 03:27 PM: Message edited by: HardRock ]

[Platoon Crusher]

Chazman, Tree lines and Bocage are two completely different things. You absolutely cannot compare them at all. Truly.

[Jacques Lacan]

Originally posted by chanss:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by maniac_mat:

i dont see how making the LOF visible will help anything. the fact is the T34 1000m away and block by multiple trees and bushes, can still see and shoot at my tanks and inf, not only see and shoot at them, but hit with alarming accuracy.

So strange with some posts here, its like we are playing a different game. What you are describing never ever happend to me. Could it be dificulty setting that sorta cheats for the AI then? What difficulty are you on? I have been playing mostly on easy as a matter of fact. </font>