Action Spots Future

[panzermartin]

BFC have said that hardware limitations are to blame for the action spot compromise in CMSF engine. It took a decent number of patches to polish the problematic LOS/LOF and we are now in an acceptable state of gameplay. Still some shortcomings remain, like the gridded area fire and positioning of infantry which in some ways is a step back from the CMx1 where you could target every inch of a building and ground and precisely take advantage of every terrain feature, ridge, hill crest etc. Is there a plan for further fine tuning of the action spots dimensions leading to a truly 100% 1:1 simulation when hardware allows for it?

[stikkypixie]

CMx1 only gave you the impression you could target every inch of a building or a patch of dirt, in reality you were targeting a 20m by 20m square. In that regard CMSF is well 400 times better.

[Redwolf]

CMx1 only gave you the impression you could target every inch of a building or a patch of dirt, in reality you were targeting a 20m by 20m square. In that regard CMSF is well 400 times better.

That's definitely not true. Easily evident when area firing on a point in a 20x20 title that has several squads in it.

[stikkypixie]

400 times better? That may be a bit exaggerated, but for sure you could target "anywhere".

[thewood]

Even using your math, 400 sq.m vs 64 sq. m = 6.25 better, at best.

[stikkypixie]

Even using your math, 400 sq.m vs 64 sq. m = 6.25 better, at best.

I thought they subdivided an action spot even further to about 1m by 1m. But you're all arguing besides the point.

[thewood]

No the action spots are still 8x8, but they did do some subdividing for LOS, I think. I know area fire is still on an 8x8, as well as how squads assemble at waypoints and stops.

[cool breeze]

once LOS for the action spot to action spot is checked to see if they can possibly see each other I thinkg they do LOF and LOS checks for the actual spotting person to person, so the bush in front of one guy but not the other matters. sounds meter to meter to mee, a 400 times imporvment. correct me if Im wrong. I bet cover for each soldier being area fired is also done on a 1x1 meter basis.

[stikkypixie]

Ah ok, I was wrong. Still rather play with the new system than the old one. But every improvement is welcome

[panzermartin]

As others noted 20x20m was only the graphical tile in CM. You could target any inch inside this tile and LOS tool was precise regarding hill crests. You could master the technique of hull down only by judging with your eye. I too like where the game is going right now and its cool that every tree for instance is accounted for LOS/LOF calculations. I just wonder if it is possible to further downsize action spots in the upcoming WW2 game for exampe. CMSF from 1.00 to 1.10 had a huge performace boost and I have started to feel optimistic about the flexibility of the new engine.

[Battlefront.com]

Well, you've all got it kinda wrong

The most important thing to remember is that the terrain in CMx1 was 20x20m with extremely little variation in what terrain could be within that large space. In CMx2 we have 8x8m terrain with vastly greater terrain combination possibilities within each. So from a simple terrain resolution standpoint, all things considered CMx1 is vastly "inferior" to CMx2 in terms of the quality of terrain simulation.

The next thing to remember is that CMx2's LOS/LOF is indeed 1:1, while CMx1 is not. I'll explain the latter first, then the former, because this is where people usually get tripped up on how things work. Even though I've explained it a bazillion times, including to some of you who have posted in this very thread

In CMx1 you could aim at any given spot. Very true. However, what you were aiming at was a "fuzzy" extrapolation of a unit. The system would see if there was LOS/LOF to the center of the unit and then would assess where to land the round/s based on some complex, but still fundamentally artificial, calculations. The system would then draw the round's trajectory and register the hit based on the decision of where the round should land and what sort of effect it should have on the unit/s in the immediate area. Sometimes this produced impossible results, such as shots going through buildings to hit tanks on the other side because LOS/LOF was only checked once when the shot was fired, never again after it was fired.

In CMx2 LOS/LOF is 1:1 in nearly all respects. When a unit goes to shoot it first checks to see if it has LOS (NOT LOF!!!!!!!!) to the center of the Action Spot that the enemy is in. If so, this then tells the system that inherently a shot is possible. For lack of a better term, the system then "authorizes" a more precise LOF check between the exact locations of both the shooter and the target. And I mean pretty much right down to the polygons shown to the user. If that LOF check passes, then the unit is allowed to take a shot.

Once the shot leaves the shooter it follows a trajectory based on the characteristics of the weapon, aim point, wind, visibility, and other factors which effect accuracy (suppression, Experience, etc.). Where that shot goes is where it goes. When the shot hits something the effect is applied to whatever it hit based on the physics of the hit. So if a unit shoots and it hits a building along the way, it stops there and then does whatever that sort of shot should do under those circumstances. If it actually hits a unit, the place where the shot impacted on that unit (leg, MG on the roof, 3rd road wheel, etc.) is the starting place for applying damage.

On top of all of this CMx1 traced all LOS/LOF from a single point above the ground (1.2m or something like that), with fudging of damage results to simulate things like being prone or behind a wall. In CMx2 we had a similar system to start out with, but changed to Enhanced LOS/LOF which directly simulates stance and relative height of each individual soldier and parts of vehicles. I'm pretty sure there are currently 6 levels of LOS/LOF now, but I'm rusty on its status. Originally it was 5 states but I'm pretty sure Charles added another one for vehicles around the time of v1.08. In any case, that's a 4 or 5 fold increase in fidelity of stance and the effect it has on the ability to shoot and be hit.

Hopefully everybody can see that there is no way, no how, that the CMx1 system can be compared to the CMx2 system in any other way as its more primitive cousin. I'll close up this explanation and start a new one next to explain the issues that are specific to Area Fire.

Steve

[Lanzfeld]

Dammit Steve!

Now I cant play CMx1 knowing all this!

[Battlefront.com]

The system in CMx1 was very good for its day. Compared to other wargames, even more recent ones, it is still vastly more detailed. Our mission has always been, and will always be, about moving wargaming forward and not being complacent with rewarming what has already come before us. It matters not who made the stuff that came before, it's all the same to us... a starting point for making something new.

I love what we did with CMx1, just as I love what Grigsby did with War in Russia and Kampfgruppe. Just because technology and game design has moved on doesn't mean I think any less of what came before. I would think less of War in Russia if it had been released last year. I change what I do with the times, I don't change my memories.

OK, so back to the discussion about Area Fire.

In Cmx1 Area Fire was possible at any point within a 20x20m square. There were some special rules that allowed the effects of that Area Fire to spill over into neighboring squares. Generally a maximum of four would ever be involved (picturing hitting right where four squares meet), though something like the big naval guns probably affected many more than that. This made things manageable at the time.

In CMx2 Area Fire can be directly aimed at only the center of an Action Spot. Within a 20x20m space that means roughly 9 possible aim points since a CMx1 size piece of terrain would overlay 9 Action Spot centers. So the first thing you guys have to keep in mind is that one can not compare a single square in CMx1 with a single Action Spot in CMx2 in terms of fidelity. It simply isn't true. What is true is that you could aim anywhere in the old CMx1 square and you can only aim in 9 places in the same real world area in CMx2.

When Area Fire is engaged in CMx2 the weapon/s spread out their fire around the entire Action Spot, to the best of their ability (things within an Action Spot can interfere with the actual hits). This means that even though you can only aim at 9 spots, you can hit anything within that 20x20m area provided you have LOS/LOF. The effects of the fire can spill over into any number of Action Spots, but generally speaking when you target a single spot you likely are affecting at least one other, perhaps several, perhaps a great many. All depends on the circumstances of the terrain and what is actually being fired.

In CMx1 the terrain was so generic that such restrictions rarely existed. If you could draw LOS to a specific square, the effects of your Area Fire would be generically applied within it and possibly to neighbors. There was no subtlety at all, other than truly random reductions/amplifications of hit results based on the type of terrain the unit was mostly in.

In CMx2 the effects are far more realistically applied. 2 guys behind a damaged car or a bunch of sandbags within an Action Spot may have better protection than 2 guys standing up without such cover. The circumstances matter a great deal. And because the terrain within the 20x20m area is so much more specific and refined than in CMx1, you get a lot more natural variation of results instead of artificial number fudging.

Remember that the Action Spot system is in place to allow all this extra detail to exist on our modest home computers. At present we feel that 8x8m is about as small as we can make it. We can, over time, strive to reduce the size of an Action Spot or to have multiple aim points within one instead of a single aim point. The latter is more likely because it doesn't require a change in the graphical environment, which is in our opinion is about optimal considering people have to hand assemble maps. If we increased the number of graphical Action Spots to 4x4m, for example, that would mean scenario designers would have to put down four times as much terrain! So we're likely to first increase the resolution of the Action Spot behavior without changing the resolution of the graphics that sit on top of them.

Because an Action Spot is, by its nature, larger than the simulated environment underneath, it is inherently suboptimal. Though less so than the massive 20x20m squares with simplified terrain combos was suboptimal for CMx1, which was also done because of computing resources. Fortunately, there are very few instances where these limitations are seen in CMx2, and Area Fire in certain circumstances is one of them. We've made improvements to this over the past two years (i.e. during beta testing) and will hopefully be able to do more as computing resources allow.

In conclusion... no matter what the limitations are of the current Action Spot system, the simulated and graphical detail that it allows us to have is well worth the few negative tradeoffs. Having a more precise aim point in a far less precise and rather simplistic environment doesn't make for a better overall level of realism compared to one that is vastly more precise and realistically diverse.

Steve

[dan/california]

Could we get the ability to intentionally spread area fire over larger areas? Maybe hold down the shift button and keep adding more action spots to the target area? In most cases the reason for are fire in the first place is you aren't quite sure where the bad guys are.

Managing tank main gun rounds in WEGO is really tricky, just to pick one of the most obvious examples. I frequently want to put one round into each block of the building, not 3 or four into the same one.

[Topo]

A method is to shot at first point, assign a short movement command and from this new position give an order to shot at another point and so on.

Works fairly for me.

Saluti.

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, one of my personal disappointments with CMx2 is we didn't overcome some of the same Area Fire problems that were in CMx1. It's just a case of not everything can be improved at once, so this was determined to be one of the things that could wait.

More control of Area Fire requires more UI and micromanagement. When we were making decisions about giving the player more control over outgoing fire we found the "total" solution to be a bit daunting from a playability standpoint. We added Target Light to the mix, but shied away from other more direct control. For now, anyway. It's still a goal of mine to come up with something better. Maybe it will happen for Normandy, maybe not until after.

Steve

[c3k]

Oh, please tell me the building area fire issue we discussed in another thread is indeed going to be looked at? And after being looked at, improved upon? Like in, say, v1.11?

Thanks,

Ken

[Battlefront.com]

We know what the problem is and it isn't a very common one. It's a case of where the center of the floor is blocked from LOS/LOF, which blocks Area Fire on that particular floor for that particular building. Often times this can be worked around by shifting position a few meters, using a different unit to fire, or Area Fire being placed on the same level but at an immediate adjacent building.

From a coding standpoint there is no easy way around this because the whole point of Action Spots is to make the calculations efficient. Checking LOS/LOF to any particular pixel within an Action Spot (and a floor of a single building unit is considered its own Action Spot) basically means that buildings have no Action Spots. So we have to weigh the occasional, and generally avoidable, situations with the overall good of the simulation.

No system is perfect, therefore every system has its flaws. This is one that we hope to smooth out at some point since it is, IMHO, the only remaining issue of significance.

Steve

[cmfan]

Hello, not to derail the discussion too much, but it was brought up by Steve - could we get a statement on what the six levels of LoS actually are? I think for infantry prone, kneeling and standing has been mentioned, but what are they for vehicles? Are these mapped to any particular view levels while in game? Is LoF mapped to the same points?

[SlowMotion]

I think *by far* the worst problem of current area fire system is that to player this LOS/LOF check seems to give different result depending on which direction the check is made. Let's say blue and red squads are in different buildings. Player can see that some enemy squad marked with ?-icon (so can't be targeted, area fire is the only possibility) is firing from a building, but he can't shoot back.

[c3k]

SlowMotion,

That's EXACTLY what we discussed in a previous thread. The RPG element of a Syrian squad had LOS/LOF to my Bradley because the RPG'er was at the corner of a building. He would get fired at, duck down, then go "?". Once he was under a "?", he became ineligible to be a target. That meant that the only way the Bradley could fire would be to area fire at the floor of his building. That was impossible because area fire at a building needs to trace a LOS to the center of the floor. That LOS was blocked by another building.

Therefore, an asymmetric LOS/LOF existed. One side could fire with impunity at the other side. (Okay, ALMOST impunity: for the brief seconds the RPG'er was exposed, he could get fired at. Without exception, the first notice Blue had of the RPG'er was AFTER he fired. The first rounds fired at the RPG'er always missed and always caused him to gain "?" after he ducked and became suppressed. Then the return fire would stop immediately. Rinse and repeat.)

Since then I've been on the lookout for this behavior. It occurs much more frequently than I'd like. It is not a very rare occurrance in MOUT. I agree with Steve that it is not very common WHEN COMPARED WITH ALL THE OTHER ACTION, however, it seems to occur at least once in every single battle in MOUT if you look for it.

Being allowed to area fire at ANY action spot would be a solution.

Continuing to fire at a last-known enemy position for 10's of seconds after the enemy disappears would also be a solution. (Current system: "There he is! Fire, fire, fire!!! Stop! Stop! He just ducked down. Now we have to wait, men." Not very realistic. )

Regards,

Ken

[Thomm]

c3k,

I agree with what you write!

I can offer you a workaround for the time being regarding enemy troops on the ground floor. Target the ground in front or beside the building and due to scatter some of the rounds (preferably autocannon) may impact the building itself.

Best regards,

Thomm

PS: I apologize if this has been mentioned already.

[Battlefront.com]

As I said in my last couple of posts, we know what the problem is and do acknowledge that it is a problem. It comes up frequently enough in MOUT to notice it a couple of times a game, no doubt, though most of the times there is a workaround as Thomm has pointed out. Another work around is having another unit that is within LOS/LOF providing covering Area Fire. So overall, there are few instances where it becomes a very significant issue. That being said, I am definitely strongly in favor of figuring out how to overcome this problem since it is, IMHO, the only significant issue remaining with the entire Action Spot system. As minor as this thing may be, I want to see it eliminated as much as any of you.

I'm going to have to check with Charles to make sure my memory isn't playing tricks on me about how many heights a unit can be at. Assuming my memory is OK, here are the 6 levels:

6. Aircraft

5. Very tall vehicles (this simulates things like the RWS on Strykers)

4. Tall vehicles

3. Standing soldiers, short vehicles

2. Kneeling soldiers

1. Prone soldiers / ground

I know, for absolute sure, that 1-4 and 6 were part of the original Enhanced LOS system. My recollection is that #5 was added. That's what I have to check on.

Here is a Blogfront article which describes Enhanced LOS as it was introduced in v1.06.

Steve

1. Prone/Ground

2. Kneeling

3. Standing

4. Vehicle Height 1

5. Vehicle Height 2

[Martin Krejcirik]

The good solution would be to allow target (precisely) last known position for several minutes (then the marker should disappear or change color). 'Classic' area fire should be taxed with order delay.

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, that is the only technical work around I can see. Basically, allowing people to click on the "?" icons and have Area Fire center on that spot. It's possible to do this, however Charles is concerned about unintended side effects. At some point I think we'll tackle it, but I don't know when that might be.

Steve