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Kacper
Guest
Until this is fixed, CM will never be a great game ... imhoDrifter Man said:
Yeah and then you experience something like @Stafford shared here
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Kacper
Guest
Combat mission is the best game in the world.... that we have.
Listen this has happened to us all. screaming at the screen "HE IS RIGHT THERE ! RIGHT THERE!" as we lose what we thought just a red button push ago was a sure thing. the soldier that is looking at the enemy only not to see him 2 feet away, the tank that is right in front of a( to him )invisible tank. it's frustrating as hell. but here is the thing. combat mission is a granular complex sim on a shoe-string budget. What I'm trying to say is this. The CM engine is trying to give us an experience like no other in the strategy game landscape. with a richness, I myself love, but they cant have an animation to communicate to the player exactly what is going on at all times. we have one animation for each thing. a talk, a run, buddy aid, sitting in a tank, whatever. but the game tries to sim a violent terrifying adrenalin-pumping environment. so I try to see between the lines. In real life, that tanker wouldn't just be sitting there smoking a pipe. He would be knocked about with sweet and dirt in his eyes, guys screaming in his ear over the radio scared as hell some guy at this very moment is aiming at his head from the bushes. sure in the playback you just see a calm tank commander sitting there looking like he just had his frontal lobe removed, and are screaming at him to SEE THAT BLOODY TANK! but the game is trying to simulate more than it can represent. so long story short when that stuff happens to me I just take a breath and thank the gods that I have a game like this. And then I try not to be angry the whole day.
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KGBoy
Guest
I use this technique and often I am not sure if my behaviour is superstitious or rational but I found different units will spot differently (via waypoint viewing) at the same tile square. So using a tank to spot from the waypoint square will yield a different view then say a squad. What this precisely reveals as to spotting behaviour in fulI cannot say.
I am relieved to know others scream at the screen too.
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KGBoy
Guest
Or at the very least it will raise some dust around the threat obscuring their view. Just not sure if this qualifies as Borg spotting?
I would like to know the group's opinion of this as well. My sense is if some of your forces can see a target it's likely they will find some way to get word of the general location of the target around. I think about that scene in Band of Brothers where they are trying to get the British tanker to shoot through a building at the German tank. He is generally made aware of the area of the German tank even if he can't see it.
In regards to the LOS issue, I seem to recall reading somewhere that it calculates LOS from the status of the unit you are creating the waypoint from. If they are prone and hiding then they don't seem to be able to see as well as units that are crouched or standing. At least that's the impression I get. So if they change status when they move to the waypoint (by standing and running for instance) then perhaps they spot better. So the waypoint method to check LOS is not anything close to exact. It just helps.
The problem here is that the game actually does have a system for handling units "being made aware" of threats they haven't seen, themselves. It's the contact marker system. But it's not properly used by the game to prevent silly things from happening. A tank does not need to be made aware by other units in order to area fire on a specific location.
It's like if you're watching Band of Brothers and some infantry spot a German tank behind a house. But instead of shouting to the British tank, the tank just automatically decides to open fire on a seemingly completely random house out of the blue, which just happens to be the one where the German tank is hiding. Watching that on the screen, you'd think "what? That's a lousy script"
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ChuckDyke
Guest
LOS gives you an idea that is all. As Soviets maneuver to get as close as possible. It counts for everything whether infantry or armor. Below 1km a T34/85 was superior to the Tiger 1 in a recent game. Eyeball a situation it makes a more enjoyable game. The tank commander is nervous and has a -2. Not exactly the best tool in the shed.
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ChuckDyke
Guest
I agree I was puzzled once that the Browning .30 LMG on a tripod didn't have LOS while a nearby unit of infantry engaged. It was a wheatfield and once on a tripod, the LMG didn't have a LOS. It is relative spotting as per the manual or compare it with a roll of the dice.
The rulebook and tutorials encourage area fire at ‘likely enemy locations’. So the issue for a player is if the contact marker system does not spot a target for a unit (but other units make you aware of the location) you then have to decide if you would have targeted that location anyway as a likely enemy location. Just because your unit doesn’t know the specific house doesn’t mean he wouldn’t fire at something. If there are fifty houses I see your point. If there are two or three likely spots it seems like a real disadvantage not to fire if your opponent will not also be so restricted.
There is a Fortress Italy scenario where the Italians are attacking a farm with two bridges. Beside one of the roads near a bridge there is one building. It almost looks like a gas station. I had a tank destroyer spot my opponent’s gun halftrack down around that building before he lost the spot. Closer infantry could still see the halftrack. Is it bad form to area fire behind that building?
I wouldn’t mind being restricted in not taking an area fire shot as long as my opponent reciprocated. It just seems like the case by case nature of the determination could be murky and prone to subjective interpretation.
As far as I'm aware, most people play the game aware that Borg spotting is a thing, you will use it, your opponent will use it, so you adjust your playstyle accordingly.
It's certainly how I play the game, as soon as my unit crests over the ridge out of my startline and is spotted by an enemy scout, it is fair game for any of his units to hit - regardless of whether they have spotted it or have a sound contact or not.
It's certainly how I play the game, as soon as my unit crests over the ridge out of my startline and is spotted by an enemy scout, it is fair game for any of his units to hit - regardless of whether they have spotted it or have a sound contact or not.
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ChuckDyke
Guest
The reason I play on Iron. Units outside another unit C2 structure don't get the Contact Icon eg infantry and armor. The turn is finished and by clicking a unit you can see which units outside his C2 he can see before you press the Red Button to start a new command phase. A scout unit if it is attached to an armor unit doesn't pass on the intel if its C2 is only with the armor. I let the TacAI do most of the work most area fire by direct fire units is a waste of ammo. Play the game a lot and keep a log of what works.
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KGBoy
Guest
But I see a problem here with the CM engine itself. Recently I had various tanks units all in contact with HQ and HQ was aware that enemy tanks had moved yet one formation refused to update that knowledge. I was then made aware of a bug where the engine will not update the visual but I could take it as a given that they were aware of the change in position. To make that assumption would be borg spotting by appearance yet not due to faulty engine graphics. When is it one thing and not the other and who makes the judgment?
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ChuckDyke
Guest
You're the person making the judgment. The contact icon is only passed on by the vertical structure. I use the IXO of a company to contact for example an armored platoon. They hypothetically will be assigned to the company and do what the XO does. Typically the HQ will have an HMG, Sniper Team. It is feasible that the MG or even the XO will area fire and the AFV will follow him. Also, an AFV when unbuttoned will get the contact icon of an adjacent infantry unit.
I'm not talking about "bad form" here - as long as you agree with your opponent and have fun, it's all good. What I'm saying is that I would like the game to restrict the area fire so you would have to get the target info from your infantry to your tank before you could fire.
In this case, your tank destroyed already spotted the threat by itself, so it had a contact marker and would be free to engage by area fire.
Yes, and this is exactly why I would like the game itself reinforcing the rule. I'd also like the game to be able to reinforce limits on the amount of points spent on tanks, and the option to lock all unit purchases to "typical" values, etc.
Much of this can be agreed on with your opponent, if you're lucky to have a trustworthy opponent, but it would be easier if the game could just handle this automatically. That's the beauty of playing a computer game. That the computer handles all the rules and you can focus on the tactics.
Yes, the contact sharing feature seems glitchy, and I suspect this is one of the biggest reasons for why BFC doesn't implement this feature. They know they would then need to fix the contact sharing, as currently, contacts sometimes refuse to update or sometimes bounce back and forth between several locations, but we as players disregard this as there are no real gameplay consequences. If a contact marker was needed for area fire, suddenly it would be very important that the game out it in the right place.
Borg spotting has never been a problem for competitive play, since both players can take advantage of it equally, as you said. My argument is just that it would be fun with an optional game mode where area fire is restricted. Combat Mission has this great spotting and contact sharing system - I think it's a pity it's not used more actively for the actual gameplay.
If memory serves correctly, a couple of guys over on the BF forums had a specific ruleset for this a while ago - I think @Bil Hardenberger was one of the guys who agreed to play a game although I can't recall a DAR/AAR.
The crux of it was, again IIRC, spotting by the player could only be done from ground level (ie you only see what your units see), and you could only area fire something with a unit if that unit had a sound contact.
Obviously it requires a huge amount of trust so was only really applicable between players who held a good rapport.
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Below is the BFC forum link for Hard Cat rules. They were made by Bil and @A Canadian Cat. They work very well and are easy to use. The basic rule set is a one page PDF document. The advanced rules add a second page to the document. I generally keep the rules open on my laptop, for reference, while I play on my gaming desktop.
Hard Cat Rules v2I - Simple to Use Command & Control Rules - UPDATED 01 JUNE 2022
This thread is an offshoot of the Co-op AAR that @IanL and I have ongoing in the CMFS 2 forum. In that game we tested a set of realism rules we called the Hard Cat Rules. Well I have been doing a lot of talking about perhaps adding some rule additions to that basic set and got some great feedback...
You really think it is in the "great" category? It seems to be very pessimistic about which unit can see which enemy unit. Especially right down the coax of a tank, where multiple people's optics point. With and without magnification. Still I often have AFVs not see something right in front of them that infantry spotted.
I'm not saying it is a dealbreaker, but for me it certainly doesn't count as "great".
On the tanks unable to spot category id like to share an anecdote.
While training on the simulator of a Leopard2a6 as gunner i had enemy tanks appear 600m ahead of me. I destroyed 2 quickly and went back to scanning my assigned area. 30s later we got destroyed by a 3rd. He was right next to the two i just destroyed and looking at the footage afterwards was comfortably in my field of view the entire time i was engaging the other tanks.
So as much as some details of the spotting system are overly simplistic units sometimes not spotting easily visible targets is concerned thats one of the more realistic parts of it.
While training on the simulator of a Leopard2a6 as gunner i had enemy tanks appear 600m ahead of me. I destroyed 2 quickly and went back to scanning my assigned area. 30s later we got destroyed by a 3rd. He was right next to the two i just destroyed and looking at the footage afterwards was comfortably in my field of view the entire time i was engaging the other tanks.
So as much as some details of the spotting system are overly simplistic units sometimes not spotting easily visible targets is concerned thats one of the more realistic parts of it.