Seriously tho... Line of sight and spotting...

[Richtig]

Ok - firstly you are all correct - it is a good game - I am an old woman - I should just let this go and enjoy it - BUT - seriously (and this is aimed at anyone from Battlefront or with Battlefront connections). The line of sight thing isn't strictly fit for purpose - discuss....

We have probably all got perfectly good examples, but this one just happened, so I thought it would help to get the message across...

Shot One. This is the overall picture, a reasonably sized T34 comes around a building catching a PAK 76 looking at other things...



Shot Two. But this is what the PAK 76 and its crew see. Nada. Zip. Zero. Chalk one up for Russian stealth technology.



Shot Three. Still using its cloak of invisibility, the T34 machine gunner despatches an unwitting German... If only they had noticed its unshielded exhaust smoke or unsuppressed muzzle flashes.



Shot Four. And then using the one ring to bind them all he despatches another...




Shot Five. These Germans may be blind and slow but they aren't stupid. With 2 crew dead, the PAK 76 suddenly 'spots' the T34 - which has had time to turn through 90 degrees so is now side on...



Shot Six. A bizarre dance begins as the T34 seems to lose interest in the antitank gun, whilst the PAK gunners try to aim at their target before it 'stealths up'...



Shot Seven. Success, a round thuds against the T34, but to no real effect - lets be honest - it had only just left the gun... So what will the T34 do? Is the commander slipping on his ring of power...



Shot Eight. No of course not this is a serious tactical war-game, it retreats back the way it came clouded in smoke but... visible all the way....




No don't get me wrong - I am not stupid. I think I can pretty much hear the apologist reasons for the above sequence of events. My point is - why not do it properly. Actually rewind that. A while ago I aid to someone else be careful what you wish for in a game like this - it is always better that we imagine more is going on than actually knowing how poor the algorithm or mechanics are. So (for me) a better fix would be let us see what we should see (no more magic tricks) and let the optics be reflected in ability to hit not to actually see.

For me this is a tactical game, and if you can't judge fields of fire accurately then you are simply playing percentages - I don't remember what the game was, but I am pretty sure I played something where you could select a unit and then press 'check line of sight' and the hexes (squares) it could see were highlighted - and guess what if something came in those squares you could see it.

Ok - I am stopping now. And don't get me wrong I am not trying to put anyone off - I am just interested to know if I am the only one who thinks a good game could be a great game - if only they could have got that extra bit right...

 

[PhilM]

I hope that you're **EDIT ... NOT ...(was what I meant to write )** planning on making use of that Stealth T-34 in our game ...

Seriously, though, I know what you mean. We all know we are playing a game, on something less than supercomputers, and so there are limitations: but times like this do make it more difficult to suspend your disbelief that it is *just* a computer game ...

How far apart in time are the various pics? Just wondering if one thing at work is the 7 (?) second spotting cycle? Though I thought that got more frequent, the nearer together the two units are?

But as far as I know, your "check line of sight" comparison will never work in the CM game engine: the AS where the T-34 is is clearly within LOS of the gun crew (PaK 76? A captured, re-chambered Russian 76mm AT gun, firing German 75mm ammo?), so it would show as having LOS to there. But the T-34 fails the "do they spot it" check: BF would have to change totally the way the game engine works "to see always what you should be able to see", if I get your meaning correctly.

 

[MeatEtr]

Yep, its the classic LOS problem, we all know it and we all hate it. Long story short, it's the LOS checks for the units that is at fault.

 

[enigma6584]

Looks perfectly normal to me. Firstly, there are a number of threads over at BF forums explaining why they do what they do and many of the factors which go into LOS, reacting units etc. I'm not going to rehash stuff so I would just say go and re-read some of them, they are quite illuminating. Secondly, there are so many things going on in the virtual battles of CMx2, for example, your anti-tank gun crew is obviously (as you mentioned) concentrating elsewhere, what morale state are they in? Panicking? There is fire all over the place, smoke etc., so many things affecting that one unit. I wouldn't pooh, pooh LOS just yet. Remember, you as the human player are God-like and see everything going on in the battle, your pixel-truppen do not.

 

[Richtig]

@enigma6584

Thanks for the response. One of the things that make humans so successful is our wide range of opinions and viewpoints (well I guess actually it is both a benefit and a curse) but I can't understand your thinking. Forget all the rubbish Battlefront have written to explain the inconsistency and just think of line of sight. In the real world if you at point a and can see point b you will always see it unless someone physically puts something in the way. In Combat Mission sometimes you will see point b and sometimes you won't.

It is irrelevant really. The game has this huge flaw at its heart and for me the only thing to do as part of a very involved community is make the people who matter listen so hopefully next time they will get it right.

Whats kind of weird for me is the banal attention to detail sometimes exhibited which is almost irrelevant - so as an example a german machine gun team changing the barrels on their machine guns - absolutely brilliant - but line of sight is fundamental.

 

[enigma6584]

@enigma6584

Thanks for the response. One of the things that make humans so successful is our wide range of opinions and viewpoints (well I guess actually it is both a benefit and a curse) but I can't understand your thinking. Forget all the rubbish Battlefront have written to explain the inconsistency and just think of line of sight. In the real world if you at point a and can see point b you will always see it unless someone physically puts something in the way. In Combat Mission sometimes you will see point b and sometimes you won't.

It is irrelevant really. The game has this huge flaw at its heart and for me the only thing to do as part of a very involved community is make the people who matter listen so hopefully next time they will get it right.

Whats kind of weird for me is the banal attention to detail sometimes exhibited which is almost irrelevant - so as an example a german machine gun team changing the barrels on their machine guns - absolutely brilliant - but line of sight is fundamental.

Rubbish from Battlefront? LOL...well I guess no point in discussing this further. You and I must have read different threads. Oh well.

 

[Richtig]

@enigma6584

Thank you for the well humoured response. You catch me at a bad moment as I am at a very tense stage of a Whack the German Mole game - sorry I meant Combat Mission Red Thunder - if I can see the german tanks I will kill them - but I can't always see them - tho it has nothing to do with line of sight lol...

 

[enigma6584]

@enigma6584

Thank you for the well humoured response. You catch me at a bad moment as I am at a very tense stage of a Whack the German Mole game - sorry I meant Combat Mission Red Thunder - if I can see the german tanks I will kill them - but I can't always see them - tho it has nothing to do with line of sight lol...

LOL...You still got it wrong. YOU can indeed see them. Your pixeltruppen, fighting in that virtual world cannot all

@enigma6584

Thank you for the well humoured response. You catch me at a bad moment as I am at a very tense stage of a Whack the German Mole game - sorry I meant Combat Mission Red Thunder - if I can see the german tanks I will kill them - but I can't always see them - tho it has nothing to do with line of sight lol...

See...who says camouflage doesn't work in CMx2 game engine?

 

[Fizou]

There are limitations with the engine as is now and we will probably always see problems of this sort (even if they will get more rare as we go on). There are, as engima posts, several threads over at the BF forum that explains this (spotting cycles and computing power limitations - there is no easy workaround as you seem to believe Richtig).

Some work is going into chaning the spotting cycles for units that are closer together that will help mitigate situations like this.

In most instances things work as intended and in a believable way, so describing it as a huge flaw is very wrong IMO. You are wrong when you write that a unit wont see spot A at one point but might do so later. A unit will always have LOS to areas they can see. What they might not do is spot a unit that is in their LOS, as in the real world.

But as mentioned and obvious from your first post, this can produce very wierd results in close, at times.

 

[Richtig]

@Fizou Thank you for the response.

If things worked

as intended and in a believable way/QUOTE] we wouldn't be having this discussion, and indeed if all was ok you wouldn't need to hear of

limitations with the engine/QUOTE] or

probably always see problems of this sort/QUOTE] or even

work is going into chaning the spotting cycles for units that are closer together that will help mitigate situations like this/QUOTE].

And I really don't want you to get me wrong - I do see what Battlefront were trying to do - can we say it isn't as well implemented as it should be? I don't want (ad indeed shouldn't see everything - but I should see what the units can see - actually even that doesn't always work - remember how you can see what units can see by clicking the unit and the 'bright' icons are visible - well not always - actually sometimes you can't draw a line of sight to them - or sometimes the line of sight actually passes through a building (and there goes another whole can of worms).

Imagine I design a farming simulator -it's looking pretty good, I can pan around my Farmer Giles and see his lovely fields and sheep from his own perspective - you could even say he has a faux line of sight - but wait whats this - the evil Farmer Tom from the farm next door is sneaking up on him from an adjacent field - surely he will see him - no you cry - he has been distracted by a particularly pretty Shepherdess on the next hill, and the dog is barking at him and its a bit foggy - so the 2 ton tractor is winking in and out of existence as it approaches him... poor Giles his doom is set.

I am mildly intrigued by the statement

What they might not do is spot a unit that is in their LOS

- because if one side of this is so that T34 was actually invisible to them for a while kinda makes my point - we know because later they watched it leave that they had a line of sight all the way back so how did they miss it approach. Of course it may be somebody thought half a dozen blokes on an A/T gun has the same 'vision' as a vehicle - but again i kinda hope that isn't the answer...

 

[Fizou]

Very hard to read your reply with all those quotes formed like that Richtig. But here goes..

"As well implemented as it should be" - well that depends. You have to take into consideration the resources at hand for BF and the computer capabilities they are creating this game around (the niche market of wargames often dont have users with high end systems). More juice available and we could have spotting cycles down to milliseconds. Thats not he case today. Sure thing can get better and awkward situations like the one you posted will be less frequent with the new solution of quicker spotting checks for units closer together (and future improvements down the road).

Again a unit can always see a spot of ground or a building that it has in its LOS. Units that are in its LOS is not the same. I might have a bunch of guys in my LOS but if they are camouflaged I might not see them. Take this into consideration and the difficultly of when something should be spotted or not is pretty complex. Maybe BF can implement some additional changes so that vehicles are easier to spot as well.

I cant say I have situations like this ruin my games. Some instances of unbelievable spotting, sure, but its no huge flaw in my book that changes outcomes of battles. You also have to chalk some of it up as part of the abstraction.

 

[mg422]

Richtig I totally agree and unfortunately it does not appear that it will be fixed until there is a an entire new version of the game. I am surprised by the responses on the forum about this issue over at battlefront (I am paraphrasing but "It works 99% of the time). I would say that it seems like more than a few times in each battle I am surprised that my unit cannot return fire or spot a unit that it should see. We just need to continue to "beat the drum" on this one.

 

[Fizou]

Mg422,

That depends what you mean when you write new version of the game. CMx3 is far off if it even is ever produced. CMx2, the current engine, has a lot off posibilities, what is a bottleneck is the end user computer and its capabilities. With a more powerful system spotting cycles could be miliseconds instead of seconds. We will see more improvements in this area with the x2 engine.

The alternative to what we have now would be a much less sofisticated system with borg spotting seen in x1.

Im not seeing (to me) rare situations like this in every battle, not to speak of several times in the same battle. More like in every 10th battle.

IMO the god like abilities of the player (see the lay of the land, area target with units that dont have a spot etc) make up for this.
I chalk it up as the chaos of war.

 

[Richtig]

@Fizou I feel again the points are being missed. Having played computer games since their inception, I can say reasonably confident that the more wiziwig or realistic you portray something the less space exists for abstraction.

Despite showing an example of disappearing battle tanks you refer back to camouflaged soldiers- keep it simple don't confuse the issue.

Now we introduce the end users machine limitation as the issue. Well sorry but that is poor design decisions. A bad workman always blames his tools they used to say (or in this case my cheap computer).

I get it isn't easy. I don't agree this is the best solution. And as @mg422 stated all the players can do is keep pointing out what's wrong and hope someone listens- a good business would realise that this isn't a problem it's an opportunity.

 

[mg422]

My frustration with the LOS, but more like LOF is when a member of the crew (most often in tanks) can see the target but the gunner cannot.

Another is when the crew is taking fire, bullets are flying closely over/around/through the crew, but the crew does not fire. Even after a few minutes of taking this fire and no longer suppressed, the crew, stilll cannot see the target and no longer fire on the target. Which is another pet peeve: why BF doesn't create a key to view through the eyes of the commander of the unit instead of hitting 1 or 2 and then toggling to the correct height and move forward (so then their head is not blocking the view) is beyond me.

Fizou, I am referring to an entire new version of the game (if cmbb/cmbo/cmak is cm1, cmbn/cmfi/cmrt is cm2) then it will probably not be fixed until cm3. I still think it has more to do then increasing the rate of spotting. I do wish that they would program with today's pc capabilities in mind. I feel like they program for those that have commodore 64s.

I still find it frustrating so I save very often just in case these cases happen. If it was so bad I would not own all three versions and still play the game.

 

[Fizou]

I feel again the points are being missed. Having played computer games since their inception, I can say reasonably confident that the more wiziwig or realistic you portray something the less space exists for abstraction.

That is true (more WYSIWYG leaves less room for abstractions), but there will always be some bits that are abstracted in CM. Its just not possible to portray everything in a perfect WYSIWYG manner for a tactical wargame of this type.

Despite showing an example of disappearing battle tanks you refer back to camouflaged soldiers- keep it simple don't confuse the issue.

I'm not confusing the issue, the same thing can be said for a battle tank. You can have it in your LOS but not see it. Say its in a patch of woods, or at a long distance (not silhouetted against the horizon), you might not spot it. After scanning the area you might spot it, if it moves it would become easier. The problem is to get the true spotting (no borg) to work at all distances, in all situations, in a perfect way at all times for all units. In what situations would you get a perfect spot, and under what circumstances. Your situation in the original post is of course obvious but overall its a complicated matter. Taking fire wont help the spotting as happens in your example - only one of the factors effecting this.

Now we introduce the end users machine limitation as the issue. Well sorry but that is poor design decisions. A bad workman always blames his tools they used to say (or in this case my cheap computer).

It is a fact and part of reality, not a bad excuse. But the current situation can be made better, for example optimizing the spotting cycle at closer distances. And to optimize the spotting chance against vehicles. All working within the limitations of the current hardware.

I get it isn't easy. I don't agree this is the best solution. And as @mg422 stated all the players can do is keep pointing out what's wrong and hope someone listens- a good business would realise that this isn't a problem it's an opportunity.

Id love to hear what your solution would be. In all seriousness.

If anything BF listens to its customers when it comes to issues etc. They will do what they can with their engine to make it as good as possible over time.

 

[Fizou]

My frustration with the LOS, but more like LOF is when a member of the crew (most often in tanks) can see the target but the gunner cannot.

This can indeed be frustrating but in my experience it doesn't happen that often. Its also not something that is unrealistic in all situations (you might have LOS but no LOF).

Another is when the crew is taking fire, bullets are flying closely over/around/through the crew, but the crew does not fire. Even after a few minutes of taking this fire and no longer suppressed, the crew, stilll cannot see the target and no longer fire on the target. Which is another pet peeve: why BF doesn't create a key to view through the eyes of the commander of the unit instead of hitting 1 or 2 and then toggling to the correct height and move forward (so then their head is not blocking the view) is beyond me.

Also something that necessarily is not unrealistic. They just might not spot the enemy. Going down to ground view to watch what the tank can see (also use LOS tool) works good IMO. Sometimes the correct response is to pull back when under fire and no enemy is spotted.

Fizou, I am referring to an entire new version of the game (if cmbb/cmbo/cmak is cm1, cmbn/cmfi/cmrt is cm2) then it will probably not be fixed until cm3. I still think it has more to do then increasing the rate of spotting. I do wish that they would program with today's pc capabilities in mind. I feel like they program for those that have commodore 64s.

Well, a CMx3 might not ever see the light of day. Hopefully CMx2 will be so successful that we will see a third iteration but either way this is a loooong way down the road. If spotting cycles where down to milliseconds I'm sure no strange situations would occur. We might not even have to go down to milliseconds to have that effect. The users hardware will always play a role in design. Im not sure what computer capability BF is creating the game for but it sure aint for high end systems. BF has also said this is a conscious decision as wargamers/their customers in general don't have powerful systems.

@Richting and mg422 .. I just want to end of with the fact that I also see problems with spotting in the game and I also want to see progress made in this area. Just trying to put some more light on the different aspects of this.

 

[Richtig]

@Fizou I think to close this off, looking at peoples response, only 3 people think it works. I suspect the majority of us just put up with it because its what we have. I have read and read the battlefront stuff and sadly it is nonsense. They got it wrong at the beginning and given the way their business model works (minimum effort for maximum reward) I don't expect it to get fixed anytime soon.

In re-reading some of the battlefront stuff I actually took huge offence at what some of the programmer/technical guys implied about peoples (enthusiasts) comments. I am glad you inspired me to re read the forums - sadly it only confirms the problems.

But hey - enough doom and gloom - I have a couple of T34's I need to convince they can see the PzkwIV sky lining in front of them, and two invisible germans just ran past an infantry section with out being seen (yep infantry not seeing infantry thats a new one on me!) - must dash...

 

[Fizou]

@Richtig In all fairness, its only 4 people that doesn’t think it works. 15 people or close to 80% think it’s functional (like me) or better. And as you say.. there is nothing out there that comes close to what CMx2 does.

Cant comment on the stuff written by Battlefront / Programmers as you dont give any reference, Im only sure that I haven’t read any nonsense, certainly nothing that has been offensive. Rather a good explanation of why certain shortcomings are the way they are. You keep coming back to what needs to get fixed - that it wont get fixed anytime soon etc.. well its has been explained to you. You don’t seem to want to understand.

Cant agree with the minimum effort for maximum reward either.. non of their products are very expensive, rather cheap. And their backwards compability program is just genius. If you dont want to pay for new stuff, then dont, as simple as that. Cant expect to get stuff for free.

Hope you will enjoy the game.. I know I will.