LOS and spotting

[evan]

I am sure both of these are explained in the manual and on the forum but I'm being a bit lazy about a couple of questions.

1: Trees blocking LOS; how many trees between you and the enemy will block LOS and how high are trees assumed to be from the point of view of blocking somebody on a hill?

2: Why can I never see enemy infantry untill it's far too late? OK not quite true but they seem to hide very well and I don't feel that I get the same advantage in that the Ai always seems to know where my troops and guns are all the time

3 height of hills. what is this measured in for game purpose; relates q1 above.

[Sgt_Walrus]

Hi
My understand is that..

1. It varies. Sometimes one tree will block LOS, sometimes you can see through two or three.
Trees do not have "height". Look at the height read-out of the hex itself to know the height of a hex.

2. The AI has no advantage. It is just your perception that they see you more than you see them.
It is possible that you are being outplayed by the computer :-)
If you move too fast, you will see less. If your units are inexperienced, they will see less. If the enemy is experienced, he will hide well and see you earlier.
There are many parameters to seeing and being seen.
IMHO, the main issue is that players tend to move their units too fast and then expect them to have seen everything in the general area.
Remember, if you use the full movement allocation of, say, and infantry unit...they are considered to be sprinting.
It is hard to spot a well hidden sniper, or scout unit in some trees 150m away when you are sprinting in full battle kit and in a different direction.

Slow down and you'll see more :-)

3. I think it is not meant to have a hex height = x meters.
It is a relative measurement.
I tend to think of it in meters. Height 1 = 10m
It works for me.

Good luck bro
SGT

[MajorDisaster]

Yeah, it definitely pays to move slow and having some scouts in your core, (mind you, it's a challenge keeping them alive). With increased experience they spot more for you as a campaign goes on.
But why I sympathise and what I do think is a little bananas is that flak guns and other seriously large hardware is often invisible in OPEN country until it's only a few 100 metres away, Sure, infantry can lie prone and be very difficult to spot in bumpy grassland - but a Flak gun? Have you seen how tall those things really are and what sort of silhouette they have on top of a hill? Fine, in woods buildings etc, they could be very well camouflaged, and small AT like PAk38/6 pounder are very low profile so easily hidden in a cornfield etc.., but an 88mm stood in a field? I saw a PAK43 in the flesh recently - it is seriously BIG. You couldnt miss it even if you were on a speeding motorcycle - and again I stress the Open Country.. forests, bushes and the like, fair enough, an experienced unit could hide a cruise liner.

[PatG]

MajorDisaster said:
... - and again I stress the Open Country.. forests, bushes and the like, fair enough, an experienced unit could hide a cruise liner.

Open country ain't that open. There is usually enough variation in the ground, patches of scrub or slightly taller grass to hide all kinds of nasties in a 50x50m area. Look at a chunk of real life ground, figure out what kind of hex it would be overall then try and find the hiding places for infantry, guns, tanks etc.

Half the effort of camoflage is not to make something invisible but to make it look like something harmless. I agree that the 88 flak on the fully rotating platform and the barn door gunshield is pretty damn obvious. The key here is to ensure that Ivan thinks it is a barn door from 1000 meters, asks "What is that?" from 500 meters and only figures out what it really is when well in range of the dug in protecting infantry.

[DRG]

A very big part of the problem for some players is the game scale. They see this......



and forget that it represents this....



And those green areas are fields not golf greens

Don

[MajorDisaster]

ha ha .. yeah .. but I can still see you ;-) That only underlines the issue - it's a chocking huge area of featureless grassland with a single ten foot tall lump in the middle of it. I guess you could cover it in foilage or disguise it as haystack - wouldnt stand out at all. Has anyone seen Monty Python sketch - "How not to be seen"? I've seen photos of camo'd AFV's deployed in woods and you wouldnt see them until you walked into them; I've read about Russian infantry lying motionless under carefully dug turf etc, but even very lumpy bumpy tufty grassland isn't going to hide an 88' and its crew.
I think the real problem for some players (me included) isnt so much scale, (though that admittedly takes some getting used to), but expecting the AI to deploy on reverse slope or in a forest or behind/in buildings etc,(anywhere sensible), but instead it parks a couple of flak guns in the middle of a huge field, (and we're not talking tall grass or wheatfields), and even stationnary infantry "cant see", (in the age of binoculars?). I mean, there's COVER and there's err... cover - where you really gonna put a large gun/tank? If a plain grassland hex actually means mini hillocks and furrows, then something not quite right with some of the terrain representation? The opposite problem is that aircraft seem especially good at finding tanks in forests or heavily built up areas where they'd be nigh on impossible to see at 150 mph in the first place let alone fire rockets at.
They're not huge deals but happen a fair bit. Mind you, other games Ive tried have a similar (or even more serious) issue especially with static AT weapons. Maybe that's a way to balance the game a bit? It has certainly made me value recon units - but maybe that's the point...

[chuckfourth]

Hi all
I might add something. Part of our training was (in full kit and olive greens) to pour a bottle of water over us, roll around in the dirt and hide 20 paces in front of the instructors I hid in plain sight in the shadow of a thin bush the size of a crouching man, no one saw me. The next part of the excercise is to inch forward which most of us did without being detected however a quick move makes you visible immediately. The point being that its movement that the human eye sees. It is amazing what you cant see until it moves. The game models this very well. Again fatigue always plays a part. After an 8 kilometer patrol in full kit in 45 degrees celsius you dont see a lot. I magine it becomes the same after a few hours being jolted around in a vehicle going cross country at speed.
Best Chuck.

[narwan]

I noticed something very similar when I was in school as a kid. Some kids were playing hide and seek near the bycicle stands. One was hiding behind two bicycles parked just in front of the stands. Now two bycicles are just some frame work and weels with a whole lot of air in between. Not much to hide behind. But I didn't see him till I almost walked into him. Now that startled me. Okay you say, I wasn't paying attention so I was suprised. True but I did look right at the bikes as they were in my way (as I said in front of the stands instead of parked in the stands). When looking at them I didn't look PAST them. Your mind tends not to. Just like you tend to look at a window at first instead of through it, or at a tree line instead of into the treeline. The best part though was that when I was startled the other kid doing the seeking looked straigth at me and the boy who was kneeling at my feet. The 'seeker' had a straight LOS from about 50-60 feet away to the 'hider' who was only hidden by the two bikes and he did NOT see him. He was actively looking for people and did not spot him. And I checked it a bit later, if you know he's there he's clearly visible. But you tend to see what you think you ought to see, not what's really there. Sometimes hiding in plain sight really works. Logic isn't the only factor here.

Narwan

[dlazov]

Desert scrub, yes.

The thing that most war gamers fail to realize and the one important piece missing from the Steel Panthers games is dynamic time. What this means is that in the game world you move one unit at a time, and when [censored] hit's the fan, you can adjust a hell of lot easier then in reality, likewise in reality, it's for keeps so your not going to be flying down a roadway full throttle (unless the [censored] General in charges gives your platoon of M1A1's direct orders to do so) trying to draw fire, but more seriously the whole freaking company moves at a certain time and fires as a unit together.

There is no rally phase, prep-fire phase, you move I move, it's all at once and when a tank gets smoked in reality the crew is probably dead and you knew them...and if Steel Panthers started doing that [censored], I probably would quite the game (too close for comfort), but it's a game and you to realize I have been war gaming since I was 11 in 78 and have always loved the military, until I joined and had to clean the ****ters and other things...been there done that, now I can kill Germans and Russians in a war I was not part of and it's recreational. I do have SPMBT, but it holds very little interest for me.

Anyway I'll shut up now, I have talked to much...later

[dlazov]

On topic

LOS from a tank

One tank is a sitting duck.

Driver has (if he is lucky) 3 periscopes about 2 to 2.5 inches in height and six to 10 inches in length to see the world to drive in, that is looking for [censored] not to hit, don't want to throw a track in the heat.

Gunner has one freaking hole to look through, but his job is to hunt for [censored] to kill.

Loader see [censored] unless on a road march and want to expose their noggin to buzzers, there job is to feed the beast.

TC has to be the eyes and keep his wing man in view, 2 are better then one.

Plt.Leader has to move the platoon and keep them together 4 are better then 2 (plus he has to keep his boss (CO) off his ***).

really that's it.

Now throw in lots and lots of smoke, arty all over the place, night, and other bad guys trying to kill you (remember you really don't want to die, so your amped) and some other [censored] Col. wants you to do such and such which is really not a safe thing, but...

Now your going 35-40, Narwin is right, [censored] that moves can be seen, but from a moving tank it's still not easy to spot, the gunner or TC has the best chance of spotting stuff, the only bad guys the drivers look for (now a days anyways) is smoke, smoke and a flash is very bad, and everybody better hang on tight, cause he is swerving, smoke and flash is bad, AT tow, etc. You guys think we drive around overrunning infantry, no freaking way, we park it and blast them bastards with all we got, infantry are killing bastards, the only thing worse then crunchies is freaking jets, and in the last two wars we were the ones that had jets. Arty not so bad for tankers, but crunchies hate it....

done