Re: Fog of war
 

Lol on renaiming Co Commanders I sometimes do in a Campaign vs AI as its easy to keep them out of trouble then but against another player may as well stick a beacon on his head.

Not realy an exploit but more as said a quick reference guide. Looking up crews left/damage could be classed as such & I dont do but to be honest if my opponent wants to thats fine. I think most people do not use to check for men left but could just be me.

Its time vs effect if you like in my opinion bothering to check is not worth the benefit but if a new vehicle has turned up worth a quick gander to access threat level.

Same goes for unit names think about if change them, the game uses 1 set of names. I have assorted T-80s or MkIIIs & now have to look at my info screen to see which have the 50 gun. The only way round that is icons diffrent enough to tell which defeats the whole object as its far enough away you cant recognise it. Also the person with the better memory has a huge advantage, my mate has a photographic one could learn all the icons. (Not joking read a bit from a book he has read recently & he can continue it word perfect)

As said before allowing for timeframe scale of the game & the fact could be a few days between turns playing or indeed several games I think the level of detail the game provides is fine.
House rules could cover things raised but if I wanted more fog of war would insist on hex grid off as makes much harder to tell where that shot came from.
But I am not fussed its his game & his call what he prefers, also once you play without for a while you become very good at judging distances so would give the player that plays that way an advantage.

The strange thing is most issues raised here would make no diffrence to me except to slow down play & make me pay more attention to the replay causing less fog of war.

Point in question the renaming a firing unit thats not seen.
I can catagorically say if it fires at me & does not become visible I only have an idea of the type of shot not the unit. Why because I am watching the action & by the time I realise should look at whos firing its to late & I am not going to watch it again to find out I know a gun or missile fired from around there & that will do me.

My view so far is suggestions cause more problems than they fix apart from maybe not listing men left if possible on info screen.

The only way to find out is play someone & see if any of it does make any diffrence but on spending time renaming units seriously I would rather watch paint dry. May be wrong but sure it was mentioned before that the reporting is deep in the code & will not change, so probably is the info.
To be worth it it has to have an impact on how the game plays like FOO, giro missile fire & diving helos we have had added recently which do.

One last point to keep in mind if someone wants to spend time using C of reds deploy trick, renaming units, repeatedly looking up info screen etc thats fine with me. The returns are small & they could instead actually have spent that time playing the game instead of getting bogged down on details.

You have made this as a subconcious decision already the benefit does not make using worthwhile exept in the odd case & therefore thats exactly what you do.

Re: Fog of war
 

I agree that the returns are not worth the investment if you are on a time budget. I'm retired so to me it's rare that the difference between a 2 hour set up and a 3 hour set up doesn't mean much. I prolly spend more time fooling around with hte game then playing it. By fooling around I mean setting up test games to experiment with different things under controlled conditions. I enjoy analyzing the game as much as I do playing it against another human. My analysis leads me to believe thatthere is no silver bullet in SP. No 'trick' that will ensure victory or cannot be countered in so way.
That is a big part of the charm of SP and why it has lasted an age in the fast paced world of gaming.

Re: Fog of war
 

C of Red
Agree entirely but there is a major diffrence in what you do compared to things like overusing the info screen IMO.
Your fidling probably gives you insights into the game & therefore makes you a better player.
Where as spending lots of time say renaming units rather than playing gives no insight into new tactics.

The person that spends hours picking his perfect force looking at info screens etc is probably easier to beat than the guy that just gets on & plays the game because hes using his time more effectivly & can use units in more varied ways because he does not always have the right tool for the job, that makes him dangerous.
Course he does need to spend enough time buying not to shoot himself in the foot but hes playing & learning with less time lost that is not doing so.
Hence the reason why I said am happy for my opponent to do any all of the above hes helping me:)
Dont have a go people just expresing a view.

Re: Fog of war
 

I figure I'll throw in my 2 cents.

There are some aspects of the "right click" that provide information that we shouldn't know. Ammo payload is one. There are many units that have specialized roles and there ammo payload is altered accordingly. I shouldn't be able to tell if it has 10 Sabot rounds as opposed to 25. Still, do I really care? It only takes one round to kill my tank and I'm not going to take up tracking the number and types of rounds fired by an enemy unit. For all I know, the enemy unit might be right next to an unseen ammo source. Another thing we should not know is infantry unit size. Ten men in a hex could be two 4-man patrols and one AT team or a 10-man squad. Tactically, it helps knowing you are dealing with three independent units as compared to one. I accept it because it is just how things are with the game.

On the other hand, we probably don't see as visibly damage that has been done. It was mentioned that some units might trail smoke; a tank gun tube blown off or a turret constantly pointing at the same angle would also be a sign of damage; secondary explosions in the impact zone of an artillery strike; infantry man "Bob" knows he got two enemy soldiers, etc.

The idea of renaming units isn't new. I've read stories of people renaming all there stuff to "truck". It makes targeting more complicated, but not impossible if you are careful. For those with the CD, the filter option isn't going to be tricked by a unit name change. If the firing unit is unseen, a different name could be confusing, but if the weapon can kill me I don't care if it is mounted on a tank, truck or hand carried. My unit is going to seek out cover.

I like to look at it this way. While we, the players, are just one person, our force is composed of hundreds or thousands of pairs of eyes and ears. These eyes and ears are trained for their time period. Who playing the game knows what every nation had during every time period the game covers? Nations of a given time period probably had a good idea what their most likely opponents were able to field. In those scenarios, the fog might not be as dense as we think. Even in unlikely scenarios, such as 1980 Brazil vs. South Africa, one could conclude such a war didn't just come out of no where and that the opponents studied up on each other before the shooting started. The encyclopedia and "right click" allow us to know what we probably would know if we were actually living and fighting during those time periods.

Looking at it another way, we have cases where the fog is denser than it should be. Consider an advanced scout next to a field. An enemy tank company moves out from a hidden position, across the field to another hidden position and no shots are fired. The replay won't show us a thing, even though the scout clearly saw the whole enemy unit go by. It shouldn't be that way, but again, it just is.

Overall, we probably know more and less than we should at the same time. There is no perfect answer. Eliminate the "right click" so you can tell if a unit is caring a small AT weapon such as the LAW and you don't get to see the TOW missile launcher which is big enough to be visible. You have to start trying to decide if a weapon is big enough to be seen or not. No "right click" and people will start complaining that they should have been able to see this or that. If the game had started without the "right click", people would be complaining the other way around.

Re: Fog of war
 

Gads hes still alive.

Re: Fog of war
 

Yup. Life has been frantic and I disappeared into the "fog of war", for a while. :D

Re: Fog of war
 

The only fog I seem to disappear into is alcohol induced, note to self probably wise to reduce consumption of said products, shame though.

Re: Fog of war
 

I would like to offer my two cents. There have been multiple issues that have come up over the course of this discussion but since I'm a late comer to the tread, I'll only address the ones that I feel are relavent at this stage of the discussion.

It seems the fog of war can be thick or thin, depending on who you are and what you like. There has been a lot of discussion that has occured, most of it good. I am all in favor for establishing "Gentlemen's Agreements" between players on a game per game basis. It makes sense that some of the ideas put forth will never happen for one reason or another. But players who feel strongly about one thing or another can request that an understanding be made in regards to unit names, information screens, etc.

I personally have never switched unit names or refrained from using the info screen, but am open to both ideas assuming the other player was o.k. with that. I would accualy like to play a game where the info screens are prohibited. I think it would be interesting.

All I ask of the SP generals across the world is that consideration be taken towards each other. We don't have to hate our opponent in order to beat them. As Cross has advocated in his signiture To put it another way, as one of my opponents said, My cents. Looking forward to playing any and all of you.

Re: Fog of war
 

Whenever you play against someone, just make sure all the ground rules are set up first. If it is a personal concern, bring it up and agree on it. Items/options not mentioned can be construed as fair game. Take nothing for granted. Once agreed upon, I would expect my opponent to uphold their end of the bargain.

I've never personally changed unit names with the intent on confusing/misleading anyone. If one is careful, renamed units doesn't really work. It's a chore to do anyhow. I went through that phase in my games against the AI to visibly group my units by name. Obviously, it's not going to confuse the AI. The last thing I want to do anymore is rename 100+ units in the hopes that I might confuse my opponent. With proper tactics, they can be defeated anyhow.

I'm not sure name changing really falls in the realm of "fog of war". Not much fog if a SABOT round whizzes by your tank. Seems to be more along the lines of "deception". It might be splitting hairs, but I view "fog of war" as just natural consequence of a confusing battle where as changing the unit name is an intentional attempt to deceive your opponent. Before long, we will be including Quaker guns and Patton's inflatable army in the game :)

Re: Fog of war
 

Depends on if you want to see what is beyond the fog :eek:

Re: Fog of war
 

I was under the impression that a right click just gives one the unit information screen, which would list the possible ammo load out for all units of that type, NOT what that particular unit has left on board. As far as renaming units, Greybeard over at the Blitz is famous for that. I asked him why once and he said because he could. He didn't do it to gain an advantage because he knew he wouldn't. The one time I tried re-naming a unit, my reward was a load of ICM and a burning FIST-V. It turned out that opponent shot at EVERYTHING, so he didn't care what the name was or prolly never even noticed.
There are some things you can do that you just can't ask your opponent about in the first place, since asking about them makes them not worth doing, so you might as well not do them.
I would never do my offsides play on a newbie, or even an old hand that I was playing the first time. Even though they would never know I did it. After I got to know them by playing a few games, then I might, IF I thought they would be cool with it and the circumstances warranted it. Gen SP at the blitz caught me one time. It was a map with lots of little hamlets and one big town just across the line on his side of the map. I went 90% infantry, since I was playing the Soviets and my plan involved denying him easy kill points while my soviet hordes advanced slowly thru the small town. About half way thru he wanted to know how my infantry got so far so fast, since he had the roads covered from the game start and was pretty sure no transport got into town. So I told him. He wasn't upset, but I was pretty sure he wouldn't be before I did it.

Re: Fog of war
 

You are correct in the fact that the "right click" gives you the full payload for that unit, but doesn't give you an up to date tally of what it has left during a battle. The problem is, it does give you the payload.

**********

Here is an example:
October, 2020
US M1A2 SEP Abrams
Urban MBT Co

Two different guns (both 120mm), but otherwise the same tank. Both have 30 rounds of HE. The difference is one has 10 rounds HEAT, no SABOT and the other has 10 rounds SABOT and no HEAT. Without being in the tank, you shouldn't be able to tell one from the other. The "right click" allows you to tell them apart and you are likely to be more aggressive against the one with just HE and HEAT.

**********

Greybeard is a good player. I learned a lot from him, but I've worked around the renaming thing. Some people do it to try to catch you being careless. If a hex has a group of trucks and M1A2 tanks, but they are all named M1A2, just determine which one in the stack you want to hit. Using the target option and cycling through you can pick out your target. If there are five vehicles in the hex and the middle one is your desired target, the first time the target cycle goes through, it will pick the one closest to the top of the hex, second time it will pick the second from the top, third time the third from the top (your desired target), etc. Targeting sometimes bounces around so you have to pay attention while you are doing this. This works because the game stacks the units in the hex in ID order and targeting cycles through similarly. If one whole 4-tank platoon (group B in this case) is in the hex, from top to bottom, they would be listed B0, B1, B2 and B3.

Now, I would find it quite disconcerting if you could rename your weapons. If someone fired a 120mm SABOT round at my tank and it said "Bottle Rocket" was fired at it, that would bother me. As it is, if I see that a "Truck" fired a 120mm SABOT round, even if I can't see the "Truck", I'm going to respect the capability of the gun.

One tactic or trick (depending on your perspective) is to plot artillery where I think/know someone going to eventually be. If they aren't there yet, I walk the plots around to keep them where I want them. It creates a delay since you don't want rounds to drop if they aren't likely to be there when the steel rain starts. This may be considered to be gamey, but I prefer to think of it as an "At My Command" artillery call where they are waiting back at the guns for the "Fire" command. This would be contrary to Weasel's artillery rules, so it is important to determine what the ground rules are. There is no guaranty that your enemy will walk into the impact zone, but it increases the possibility of hitting a group on the move. When it's use is permitted, I find the tactic quite effective and deadly.

Re: Fog of war
 

I use that "trick" too. I call it "hovering shells", as it may come down to the enemy at any moment. It is particularly useful for me when deployed far behind on the enemy arty's park zone.
In meeting engagements, when we only acquire 1 quick-arty-hex (TRP), we can't plot our arty quickly to "important" target areas if done in post-turn 0. So I'm relying much on the turn-0 bombardment setup where the arty can be called quickly in any decisive moment (delay it to turn 1 first). I'm grouping my arty into two if in ME:

1. is the arty rolling barrage in front of my forces or enemy's. It sure will delay his advance (or atleast making him to choose another route)

2. the "hovering shells" on the enemy rear areas. Once the enemy's arty has popped out it's smoke/dust (after doing some shelling) then my "hovering shells" can unleash it's fury all the way till the guns silenced.

I consider attacking first the enemy's arty (with as much little delay as possible) as a first priority due to my habits of purchasing on-map arty. Once his arty silenced, I can freely move up and down all the fury of my arty.

Have no idea if this one is gamey, though

Re: Fog of war
 

The practice of plotting artillery for future strike at a specific place is realistic, not gamey. The FOO makes sure his guns are sighted in, then they just wait for the order to fire.
There may have been a couple of ranging shots (depending on nation and era) that aren't seen in the game

The FOO can adjust this plot without having to stonk a target.
And as a player you pay the price of delay each time the target is adjusted.

You have also committed your guns to a target location where the enemy may not even appear.

Re: Fog of war
 

I agree with Cross and use the 'hovering' arty EVERY game.
I was thrown off the Blitz for proving Weasel to be wrong on this issue.
My theory is that if it is a technique (AKA tactic or trick) used in the real world and I can cite instances and give historical references to it's use, it ain't gamey.
Other players go by the Sgt Rock rule, which is if they didn't see it happening in Sgt Rock, then it is gamey.
Oh well, different strokes for different folks.

Re: Fog of war
 

Always a risk with artillery unless you are plotting against an immobile or pinned down target. The way I view it, if the arty has nothing better to do, it might as well be plotted against something. If nothing shows up, they don't fire, no ammo wasted and no need to relocate.

Re: Fog of war
 

Nothing at all gamey about this.
I was trained as an FO and since WinSPMBT doesn't allow you to plot a fire mission and hold the guns in readiness to fire on command you have to adjust them every turn so they don't actually fire until you want them to. It's simply side stepping a situation where game mechanics won't allow you to do something that would be, and is, commonly done.

Situations like this are no fault of the game design, just a matter of programming limitations.

Re: Fog of war
 

A another thought about the right click unit info.

Being able to see the number of crew, to determine if the tank is damaged, may not be an exploit. In real life we'd probably agree that sometimes tank damage is visible, sometimes not. The more seriously the tank is damaged, the more likely the damage is visible.

In SP you can damage a tank without any crew becoming casualties; so crew losses are not a foolproof way of determining if a tank is damaged. But the more the tank is damaged, the more likely that crew will be missing. Therefore, checking unit info for missing crew could be considered a 'realistic' reflection of whether you can tell if the tank is damaged or not.

However, I do think unit info gives away too much weapon info, especially for infantry sections.

While on the topic of AFV damage and FoW. I like the damage notification ** or **** . It's possibly not the most realistic aspect of the game, particularly as it even lets you know the likely extent of the damage, but it's very satisfying :D Though I'm sure a case can made that experienced gunners can guesstimate how hard they just hit something.

I lean well towards the realism side of things, but in the end this is a game, and it has to be fun.

It's not like the old SPWaW spidey sense * that let you know when you were spotted. That was unrealistic and annoying.

cheers,
Cross

Re: Fog of war
 

With infantry weapons, eventually you will get to a point where you can tell pretty much what they have. The major issue seems to be with infantry AT weapons and there it depends on the weapon. There are some that probably can be spotted a click away and other won't be seen until they are prepped for fire. The Russian RPG-29 is basically a bazooka with a 6 foot long tube and readily more visible than the RPG-22 or US M72 LAW are easier to keep hidden. There is no real way to make that realistic without gutting the code. At least you have the FOW element of not knowing if the unit has any left.

I don't think people worry about small arms. They all generally have the same basic range and have the same basic capability. All squads/sections seem to have some sort of integrated machine guns and they all seem to have grenades. There to tend to be a few twists in there, but I treat them all the same; they are all dangerous and need to be destroyed as quickly as possible. Even if they don't have anything but a pistol, they have that hot line to the player who can bring in artillery if desired.

I try to keep my armor over 500m away from enemy squads/sections and it generally won't matter what they are carrying. If they get to point blank range, you might run into Rambo with a grenade.

The subject could be beat to death all day long, but I think we pretty much have what we are going to get.

Re: Fog of war
 

One thing you could do if you think such units should be easier to spot is change the unit size.

Normally 2-3 man AT teams are size 0.
As a standard part of the code such units are harder to spot (even with the automatic spotting bonus you get when an ATGM fires).
If you make them size 1 they'll be more easily spotted both before and after they fire.

Just an idea for what it's worth.

Re: Fog of war
 

Not meaning to be difficult, but the men will still be larger than whatever they carry so the unit should still be visible at the same point.

What really needs to be done, and it won't happen, is unit spotting needs to be independent of weapon identification. Someone has mentioned it in this thread before. Weapons would have to be assigned a "size" beyond just "warhead size". In this case "size" would represent the physical size of the weapon. It would be nice to use warhead size as a reference, but a grenade has WH=3, where a rifle has WH=1. Obviously, the rifle is larger and more visible than the grenade so that won't work. Once the "weapon size" is decided on, then it is just a matter of deciding at what range such weapon sizes could be identified. I figure weapon identification would be automatic if it was fired or used.

The big problem is the code base is complete and anything done has to be integrated into the existing code. It would effectively have to be gutted. Many suggestions by people would probably be considered if they were starting to program from scratch.

One interesting thought on unit size, does anyone know if there is a cumulative size count of units in a hex? Basically, if you have 100 snipers in one hex, would they all be unspotted (given that at that range one sniper normally would remain unseen) or would the fact they are having a "sniper convention" give away some of them? :dk:

Re: Fog of war
 

I seem to remember reading that the more units in a hex, the greater the chance of ONE of them getting hit by shell fragments. Also you can damage your own unit by same hex combat with grenades, HEAT rounds from AT weapons, etc. So there is at least one subroutine that "looks" at unit density in a hex. You might want to try that. Set up a test and buy 100 snipers, put them in a hex, if you can and then direct fire a 100mm shell into that hex. Then run and hide before the UN shows up with a war crimes warrant.

Re: Fog of war
 

I don't doubt they can be hit, if you know to fire there to begin with. If the "sniper convention" is in a hex and no one moves, would the likelihood of them being spotted be increased by the shear number of them in the hex. It would be hard to target the convention if you don't know where it is.

Re: Fog of war
 

To the best of my knowledge the unit size of each individual unit stacked in a hex is checked individually for spotting purposes. There is no cumlative effect. However multiple units in the same hex mean more checks to see if someone is spotted so there is in effect a sort of cumlative effect.