Scouting/Recon

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by Imp

It never ceases to amaze me how in depth people get with the game mechanics. I consider myself quite observant & watch what happens. As it turns out the human brain is a marvelous thing & when people say how does this work you realise that a basic understanding has been tucked away. You may well be right on search mechanics but for me personaly I want to understand the rudementary mechanics rather than reducing it very much to a game & taking advantage of the system underneath as this spoils the game IMHO. All to our own though but for the likes of me & simplicity moving bad, faster worse

Look at it this way.
If it were real life we'd be using what works in real life.
Since it's a game we use what works in game.

Most of us try to avoid "pure" gamey stuff (bug, rule, game mechanic exploits) but we have to do what works in the game not necessarily what works in real life.

The game mechanics give a rather large bonus to spotting moving units. I can tell you from real life it's very difficult to spot a couple guys moving at all cautiously at 50m much less the 2,3, 500 the game allows for.

[hoplitis]

Originally Posted by Imp

...
You may well be right on search mechanics but for me personaly I want to understand the rudementary mechanics rather than reducing it very much to a game & taking advantage of the system underneath as this spoils the game IMHO. All to our own though but for the likes of me & simplicity moving bad, faster worse
...

If winSPMBT was a board-game and you were sticking to the "rudimentary mechanics" and not "taking advance of the system" you would actually be playing the game (BTW it is a game eh!) without full knowledge of its rules or the intent to use them. Of course you play the game as you wish (heck it's a hobby after all) but in my book game rules are the "soul" of games. Now, the computer handles the "arithmetic" of it all and eventually, if you keep playing the game, you may develop an instinct for it, which in essence is a form of "discovering" the underlying rules. Believe me, I understand your "spirit" on the issue. But sometimes I miss a clear-cut "traditional" rulebook ... it can save you time and time can be a scarce commodity...

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by c_of_red

In the original SP, Vehicles of the class scout DID get a searching bonus.
They searched at the same percentage as Infantry instead of as vehicles.
I don't know if that was changed.

Here is the source of the confusion. WinSPWW2/WinSPMBT, scouts have no extra spotting ability or ability to stay hidden (aside from that inherit with being a size 0 unit). In SPWaW, a similar competitive product, recon units do receive a 25% spotting bonus. Since many people play both games, a certain degree of confusion occurs.

While I don't know all the details, it seems that the development teams for both the WinSP games and the SPWaW game originally worked for one single company. That company was responsible for the original DOS version of the game. Somewhere along the line, creative differences or something along those lines created a split and two independent competitive businesses. Don and Andy know more about it than I do. The long and short of it is with two similar games, sometimes the line blurs a bit and it is difficult to remember which game does what when it comes to the little details.

[Imp]

Understand all your points on game mechanics as I say everyone to his own.
Myself I like to know what does what & for complex stuff which this game is not some detail. As its mainly a tactical than rule driven game discovering how to do the stuff is half the fun. I could have a chart that says a tank with FC/RF XX etc will have a hit chance of approximatly XX but its more fun to fudge it. Still forget & take a silly shot but generally just do what seems to work. For instance on the occasions I turn a units range down normally use 3 not because I knew there was a step there but because it seemed to work. Now I know why & in fact had probably figured it out without realising.

C of Red my quota is full at present but we can certainly have a bash once one ends.

[c_of_red]

Originally Posted by RERomine

Here is the source of the confusion. WinSPWW2/WinSPMBT, scouts have no extra spotting ability or ability to stay hidden (aside from that inherit with being a size 0 unit). In SPWaW, a similar competitive product, recon units do receive a 25% spotting bonus. Since many people play both games, a certain degree of confusion occurs.

While I don't know all the details, it seems that the development teams for both the WinSP games and the SPWaW game originally worked for one single company. That company was responsible for the original DOS version of the game. Somewhere along the line, creative differences or something along those lines created a split and two independent competitive businesses. Don and Andy know more about it than I do. The long and short of it is with two similar games, sometimes the line blurs a bit and it is difficult to remember which game does what when it comes to the little details.

So you are saying that scout VEHICLES are treated as ordinary vehicles in the Cammo games? In effect, there is no unit class of 'scout' in the Cammo group versions of SP. Why is that? After all, the three most important things in land warfare are recon, recon and recon.

[Imp]

So you are saying that scout VEHICLES are treated as ordinary vehicles in the Cammo games? In effect, there is no unit class of 'scout' in the Cammo group versions of SP. Why is that? After all, the three most important things in land warfare are recon, recon and recon.

I would say its because of the way the vehicle is used that makes it scout, going slowly & observing. They get very marginal boosts to represent dedicated scouts are probably above average soldiers but thats it. How exactly does an identical vehicle say a jeep all of a sudden gain the ability to see better because its a scout than the standard one?
Dare I say you have only just realised so you must have thought they were doing okay but in fact its because you were using them in a scout role that you percieved they could see better.

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by c_of_red

So you are saying that scout VEHICLES are treated as ordinary vehicles in the Cammo games? In effect, there is no unit class of 'scout' in the Cammo group versions of SP. Why is that? After all, the three most important things in land warfare are recon, recon and recon.

I can't answer the why part. It's just how they opted to set it up, I guess. All I know for sure is that is how it works. As Imp pointed out, they do come with a bit more experience so they would spot slightly better than the average size 0 unit but in the Cammo games, that's about it. The vehicle is nothing more than a quicker way to get to their scouting location. It would be nice to drive you jeep where you want to go and just bail out and take up a position on foot. Unfortunately, that doesn't work.

[c_of_red]

Jeeps, like armored cars, scout cars, etc have crews. I assume that the crew of a scout vehicle has been trained on observations techniques and has practiced those techniques until they are better at them then the average GI.
Sort of like why in the game a crew has to remount it's own vehicle, or why a rifle squad cannot grab the Sagger left laying on the ground after it's crew got mowed down several turns ago.
Scouting is a skill set, an MOS, 19D according to this;
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/enlistedjobs/a/19d.htm

[DRG]

Originally Posted by RERomine

While I don't know all the details, it seems that the development teams for both the WinSP games and the SPWaW game originally worked for one single company. That company was responsible for the original DOS version of the game. Somewhere along the line, creative differences or something along those lines created a split and two independent competitive businesses. Don and Andy know more about it than I do. The long and short of it is with two similar games, sometimes the line blurs a bit and it is difficult to remember which game does what when it comes to the little details.

What at first was called SP2WW2 started development in January 1998 and was released early December later that year. We started working in direct co-operation with what was then known as "TGN" around the end of October 1998 "SPCAMO" resumed working independently at the time WaW started development in the summer of 1999 with WaW version 1 being released in 2000. Who worked on our version is detailed in the Game Guide. Anyone really interested in who worked on both can check the WaW GG . You could call it "creative differences". I have other terms but that is all in the past now and I have no interest in getting into it again. And yes, with two similar games and thousands of people playing both, there will be some confusion about some things.

I will deal with the "scout" question when I have more time but I will say now that the "scout vehicle" class wasn't even defined in the original SP2 code so any "magical qualities" anyone thinks it had are mythical. YES there was a "Scout Vehicle" in the game but all the code knew about was it's name.

Don

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

The game mechanics give a rather large bonus to spotting moving units. I can tell you from real life it's very difficult to spot a couple guys moving at all cautiously at 50m much less the 2,3, 500 the game allows for.

When you get time you can post an example of "a couple guys ", "moving at all cautiously " that are easily spotted" at "the 2,3, 500 the game allows for" if those couple of guys don't do something dumbass like fire their weapons.

I have an example of scouts spotting the majority of the stationary enemy units after they moved towards them and only two units were spotted and fired on. One at 150 yards and one at 50 and had I had arty support I could have beaten the crap out of them and they would have had no clue where the fire was being called from and that's with a high visibility in a height 1 field not a height three tall grass

Don