Night illumination

[Copper]

Any thoughts made to adding more illumination to the night in Normandy (or in versions beyond)? Talking about both artillery illumination flares and one shot up from flare pistols.

Thanks,

[Pvt. Ryan]

Just use bad Nvidia drivers!

[Wiggum]

Will there be night battles in Normandy ?

If yes, then how will they play out ?

Should be some differens between Normandy 1944 and the modern warfare with all its night optics...

[Elmar Bijlsma]

More importantly, will I be able to see what is going on at all?

Night time scenarios are completely unplayable for me during the daylight hours (if you think of making a joke, don't) and even when it gets darker I still find it an unpleasant strain to see what is going on.

[Pvt. Ryan]

I never cared for night battles in CMx1. On board mortars were useless since the limited visibility was within their minimum range, plus it was difficult to view the screen.

[LongLeftFlank]

I always thought CMSF should have gone to a "green on black" NV monochrome mode at night with big white splotches for fires and explosions. But that wouldn't make sense for the new game, obviously.

Night combat was an important part of the Normandy campaign, especially for the Germans who excelled at infiltrating whole companies and battalions to retake territory lost during the day. As I noted in a previous post, many an Allied unit after a hard fight and a sleepless night manning unfamiliar positions found itself at daybreak hopelessly cut off by brand new Spandau nests and mortar fire. The Germans bagged a steady stream of Allied prisoners using these techniques into 1945.

Not being able to see f***-all is part of the night combat experience. Pandemonium and misdirection should rule, with muzzle flashes tracers, flares/illum rounds and fires adding to the confusion.

CMBN is the chance to make all that dynamic lighting work pay off, at least at higher video settings.

1. Night combat is a very good reason to have building fires. This feature would seem relatively simple to add -- basically an invisible destroyed jeep object. Place on haystack or up against building and voila!

2. To simulate the uncertainty and trigger happiness of green troops, especially GIs in Normandy (but also raw late war German troops), what about giving the enemy a number of "spies" who have no point value for VC purposes. The owner (or the AI plan) sends them moving around just to trigger fire. The wireframe could be alpha-channeled invisible so that only the "infantry" icon shows.

3. Ooh, ooh, ooh. And perhaps in IRON mode on overcast/inclement nights the players are required to be "tab-locked" on a unit (i.e. they can't scan the map with the mouse or arrow keys) and also cannot view the map above height level 3 or zoom beyond 2.0x.

OK, you can probably just throw all those into the "things Charles could in theory do some day but probably won't" circular file.

[Wiggum]

Would like to hear a official statement from Battlefront about this.

[Erwin]

Clearly, we need to have an option for moonless nights where one only sees a black screen and you have to give orders in total darkness!

[Michael Emrys]

But in the real world it's rarely totally dark outdoors. Even without the moon, and even if it is overcast, a little starlight will filter through. Not enough that I'd want to engage in combat necessarily, but it would be great for skilled and dedicated warriors to infiltrate enemy positions in twos and threes and slit a few throats, set a few demo charges, etc.

Michael

[LongLeftFlank]

Infiltration actions might not necessarily lend themselves to fun scenarios, (although I would probably play one anyway just to get a sense of what it was like. Maybe I'll build one when the game comes out).

Movement takes a LONGGGGGG time, and you also have to consider the Exhaustion effects of SLOW moves. I found the Spotting in CMSF to be overly generous at night, even for RED forces -- I found it virtually impossible to keep a moving unit unspotted even when crawling several hundred meters distant through long grass on a dark night. But since NV gear is not an issue in WWII, curious.

BTW, upon rereading I really like my own idea (2) above, about adding invisible "dummy" Spy type units to freak out green troops into giving away their positions. Kind of like the old "dummy" stacks of ? counters from ASL days. These Spy units, btw, should have zero spotting capability of their own (i.e. be "blind") so the owning player couldn't use them as scouts (cf. Starcraft Ghost units). All you do is move them and look and listen for what shoots. And their Panic/Rout threshold would be super low.

Anyone else?