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...

[RubberNeck]

In the old version (I have yet to see it happen in the new Win version) my most vexing spotting issue was to sit in the same hex as an AT gun and still not see it, even after it had been visible a turn or two before. It is almost stealth technology!

[evan]

Good point although it was much the same story with 3" motars and their crews.

Also where the scale is concerned; I understand 1 hex 50 metres/yards lets not get down to the difference in inches and millimetres; you are talking about two hexes being a football field ( in rough terms and regardless of what you call football in your part of the world) and a squad of 11; 13;or 15; depending on the game stands out like a sore thumb.

Secondly I suspect that MajorDisaster may have hit on the key to the problem. only the Ai troops are equipted with virtual binouclars while we have to make do with our limited eye from above? DRG, possible?

[dlazov]

even wrote:

a squad of 11; 13;or 15; depending on the game stands out like a sore thumb.

Not likely, I was sitting in M1A1 in a loaders hatch and I did not see the ****ers until they were 15 feet away, too much [censored] was happening and we were killing the big fish, I just happen to hear small arms on the side of the tank, popped up and [censored] there they were. All tankers hate infantry, especially infantry with AT weapons, the only thing we hate worse is [censored] jets with bombs, kinda hard to hide tank from a big jet with laser guided bombs.

Most infantry (at least the smart ones) don't want you to see them, until it's too late. I think it's called self-preservation, camouflage and ambush.

Again, if you don't like LOS and spotting the way it's set at 100%, then don't ***** and say it's broke, change the preference to something that suits you, if you get spotted to easy turn it down, if it's too hard turn it up. Same with the toughness if you think the game is too hard, turn it down, or if it's way too easy turn it up. I have the AI at least a 10 point advantage over me, cause it's too easy to beat.

[PatG]

MajorDisaster said:
<snip> If a plain grassland hex actually means mini hillocks and furrows, then something not quite right with some of the terrain representation? </snip>

That has always been my understanding since I first played Panzerblitz in the 70's - open ground is NOT billiard flat despite the graphical representation.