Just started and have couple of terrain questions

[Ted]

Edit: These questions were answered by womble in the a previous thread "Just started and have a few size and targeting questions".

Hello all,

It's the end of the summer here and I've finally been able to start playing CMBN.

I started the tutorials a couple of days ago and not having played CMSF am learning from scratch.

I'd like to ask a few questions, I think I all ready know the answers to some but would like to hear what others say or lead me to threads where these were discussed.

1) Is there a way to tell what terrain a unit is in? i.e. Am I in the open ground on the edge of scattered woods or in the woods or am I behind a hedge or in it?

2) There used to be a LOS tool that showed what terrain you were looking at. Stone or wood house, open or brush, where the edge of trees started etc. No more?

[stikkypixie]

CMBN uses a literal representation of the terrain. So if you see a tree. There is 1 tree. If you see many trees, it is a forest. The spotting chances and cover are determined by intersecting bullet paths with polygons. The actual calculations and values that are used are kept away from the player. So basically what you see is what you get. It takes some getting used to and there is more uncertainty that in CMx1, that's for sure .

[Ted]

Man. I am catching that drift all right.

It's still weird not seeing what terrain is underfoot.

Thanks for the reply

[stikkypixie]

Man. I am catching that drift all right.

It's still weird not seeing what terrain is underfoot.

Thanks for the reply

Terrain is also layered, as in, you can mix up the types of trees, the type of undergrowth and the type of soil. Although I guess nothing is impossible, it was probably deemed not high enough priority to make it in, assuming they wanted it to be in.

[RockinHarry]

Man. I am catching that drift all right.

It's still weird not seeing what terrain is underfoot.

Thanks for the reply

If you have difficulties evaluating terrain underfoot, I recommend to play something with the games map editor to see what´s all in there.

Generally if you "see" a grassy tile/action spot with 2 trees, then you have a place with rather firm ground, sorts of grass (normal, high, yellow, extra tall, clover, ect.) and 2 trees. This means infantry can move rather quick through with little tiring, have some means of concealment (2 trees & higher grass offers more than short), but beside that rather little actual cover vs. incoming fire (2 trees can just offer cover for 2 soldiers behind, unless soldiers line behind each other, vs eactly the point of incoming small arms fire or shrapnel).

The point is, you can have ONE actual ground type per tile (with some spilling over/blending from neighboring tiles), but multiple combinations of foliage, walls, brush and trees in it. There´s off course a number no go combinations (pavement & trees, ...) as well. So practically you can have a "clover" (grass variation) ground tile, with bocage and trees added. Or high grass with brush and trees. Just look and see, use common sense....

Off course it would be quite comfortable to have all that info pop up with the LOS/target tool, but one can pretty quick get used to rely on what one sees in our 3D CMBN battlefields. Similar to a first person shooters perspective.