Vehicle facing
 

Hi all

I can't find the info in the instructions or through a search but when a vehicle is fired upon, is the facing taken into account ? Also, can I change the facing as many times as I need by right clicking or is it limited ?

Regards

SPG

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Good question. Wondered about that myself. Like, if the front silhouette is narrower than the side won't it be harder to hit?

And yeah, you may change the facing as many times as you want without penalty.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

As I understand it facing doesn't make any accuracy difference but obviously the armour of the side hit is taken into consideration for penetration. (Infantry squads have no "facing").

Changing facing manually (right click) is not penalised and can be done as often as you like. The only time this can be different is during your opponents turn when your units will automatically attempt to turn to face incoming fire (if they havent used all their movement I believe).

Re: Vehicle facing
 

1 You can change the vehicle facing freely at any time in your turn
2 Facing has no effect on targeting, the size statistic for the unit determines that.
3 If the unit has armour the facing determines the area that's hit.
4 Units fired on will attempt to angle themselves to present their front facing.
Its in the guide update notes somewhere but & this is from playing.
Units are less likely to react & change facing if suppressed, moving quickly, the firer is hidden.
Also SP Guns (No turret) are inherently slightly worse.

I think that's incorrect they still can just slightly less likely to, that said using all a vehicles MP is a risky business in combat. You cant pull back if you take fire in the last hex you can enter.

Simple rule of thumb is never move vehicles quickly in a hostile environment, detection, firing accuracy & reacting to incoming fire all suffer.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Its one of the weaknesses of the SP game engine, in that facing changes cost nil MP (not even fractions of an MP).

Also, loading and unloading originally had no MP impact, and you could load from an adjacent hex. That lead to the relay cheat whereby a squad could load onto one vehicle at the far end of a chain and then offload, jump onto the next and so on to the head of the chain. Or a relay of moving APC could do similar to move a squad crazy distances from the rear and then drop it off beside a stunned enemy and finish him off.

We nixed the loading and unloading relay cheat by charging points for the transport and passenger to load and offload. And you have to be in the APCs hex to load as well, unless loading to a barge (which would be in water too deep to go into, usually).

It may be a good idea (tm) to charge for a hull position change if not actually moving the vehicle, say 1 MP?.

Turret moving (by left clicking) is probably too difficult to do as it would require fractions off, and the game works on integers (wole numbers), not floating point. However -

One thing that I think may (also?) be a good antidote to taking a free "hull shuffle" or turning the turret or a squad to face a new direction, might be to treat that as a "trigger" for opportunity fires?.

So - proposition:
A) A manual turn to face a new hex side needs 1 MP. (Vehicles which have no MP remaining thus would be stuck in the current orientation).
A.1) A manual turn to face will also be a low-order trigger for opportunity fires.
A.2) Might require 2 MP for a pinned/buttoned unit to voluntarily turn. (A vehicle, as pinned infantry cant turn until rallied).

B) A manual turret traverse (or squad to face new hexside) costs no MP as before, but can trigger an opfire event as in A.1

C) None of the above will affect any turning done by a request to fire at something, which happens as normal. (Code too difficult to change there methinks!).
- Nor does it affect units reacting to fire by an enemy - that has its own chance to occur, and takes speed and suppression into effect already.
- Nor does it affect turns done as part of regular movement of 1 or more hexes. Again, too difficult to incorporate into the existing code.


The simplest change of course is just to treat a turret, or hull turn to face done manually as an opfire trigger as in proposition A.1 above - that alone should stop players spinning units like tops when in front of the enemy :doh:!

Let's see what thoughts the above provokes.
(It may be the best thing since sliced bread to some of you - or it may be that I haven't had enough coffee to think of the unfortunate consequences as yet:eek:)

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Andy don't take this the wrong way ;), but option A1. alone seems to be be the best compromise here. It allows you to be the diplomat and at the same time maintain the maxim of "KISS" or if you will Keep It Simple Stupid especially as I feel there might be other process issues down the road to deal with. Just my two cents.

Regards,
Pat

Re: Vehicle facing
 

I think worrying about turret rotation is a micro-management step too far...

I DO, however, like A and A1.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Gameplay's already been tweaked to near-perfection and further fiddling might have unintended consequences, as FT notes. So KISS is the best policy IMHO.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

I like both however some thoughts from a game mechanics point of view regarding A.1)
"Spinning" units is a gamey thing to try & detect concealed units so.

1) This will not apply to infantry? Could benefit them by drawing fire & hence revealing a unit that would not have triggered otherwise.
2) Versus vehicles I see that as being fine, you put some fire in the general direction with other units, turn your vehicle to see if you can detect them & draw fire.

If you went for A) to wider differentiate between tanks & SPGuns you could make the cost 2MP for SPGs

Re: Vehicle facing
 

OK - Consensus seems to be that a manually initiated turn to face should draw opfire (A.1). Should be simple to do in the right-click on map event handling code.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Sounds good to me.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

OK - Now have this incorporated into both games for testing. seems to be working fine.

One thing - there were two right click events to handle, one on the map with no detected enemy there (turns turret if it has one), and one onto an enemy unit (the latter shows the enemy info, and also aligns the hull). Now, the latter has an option to SHIFT+RIGHT_CLICK if all you want is target info, unit does not turn to face the enemy then, possibly drawing fire.

I have also limited it to a maximum range of a kilometre or so, half that if it's an infantry unit, as only close-by enemy may notice. Chance of popping off an opfire shot is also higher closer than far away.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

OK, I agree with having the turn to face trigger op fire, but is there now a way to see what a unit's field of view is without using up movement points? As I understand this change, any right click could use up a movement point unless it doesn't cause a change in facing.

Unless it's a shift right click on an enemy unit.

So what happens if you shift right click on a blank square?

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Click the "Unit View" button...
(between preferences and rally hex at the bottom of the icons)

Re: Vehicle facing
 

None of this uses movement points, as we decided to go for KISS, option A.1 only - see the thread above.

Voluntarily changing face may now trigger an opportunity fire or even several. It does not cost move points. And as stated, there is already the Unit View button, which shows all hexes a unit can see but without moving it.

Been testing this in an ongoing WW2 LC, and it really doesn't cause massive bursts of fire, even when I forget and swivel a unit just to see if it can see something. A habit I'll simply have to grow out of:)!

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Ok, thanks for clearing that up. I read A.1 as a subset of A, ie costing MPs.

I have to admit, I thought that turning to face already triggered opfire, but I must not have been paying attention to what was going on.:doh: I've since tried that out in the tutorial, and found I was wrong.

What a great game. What is it, 20 years old now? And still going strong. I started with SP2, which had been out a year when I got a computer fast enough to play it.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Not only is a great game and 20 years old (and still improving), it is just simply the BEST, top notch, these combat simulations (WINSPWW2 & WINSPMBT) remain unmatched in the Tactical subgenre of wargames from Brigade to single man size turn based.

You don't need fancy graphics and eye candy to have a good combat simulation do you? :fire::fire::fire:

Re: Vehicle facing
 

Just throwing an idea out there... Couldn't this be used as a tactic to soak up all op-fire from a group of enemy unit? (For example, I can use a tank to soak up all op-fire from a group of infantry unit, after which I can advance my own infantry without risks.)

I liked to idea of expending movement points to change facing of a vehicle, on the other hand.

Infantry should not expend movement points to change facing, because at this scale an infantry unit shouldn't have a facing. Different guys in a unit of 8, 9 or 10 soldiers could be covering different arcs, etc.

Anyway, congratulations on an amazing game and thanks for the continued support!

Re: Vehicle facing
 

This would make perfect sense with a squad of 8 or so, but what about a 2-man scout team? Tho one could argue in the course of a turn that could look around easily enough.
And how about ambush type situations?
Infantry having 360 vision/facing is sort of a six-a-one half-dozen-of-the-other situation.

Re: Vehicle facing
 

You make a very good point, and I see how maybe having an explicit facing would make sense for emplaced infantry (like an MMG for example); but I still believe that mobile infantry should have 360 vision. The way I see it, the ambush situation you mention would make sense only if it happened within the same hex, with a squad being jumped pretty much on their backs by the enemy. If the enemy is one hex away, though, we are already talking 50 meters away. I think in this case an inf unit or a scout unit (which by definition should have good vision and mobility, even though they have lower numbers) should have 360 vision.

I can see how a case can be made for giving all inf units explicit facing, but wouldn't we be getting to almost uncomfortable levels of granularity at that point?

Re: Vehicle facing
 

All units have a primary spotting arc of the direction they are facing, with limited arcs elsewhere. e.g. in the turret arc of a tank. The limited arc goes 360 degrees, but of course with a lesser chance.

Units that are stationary do have a better chance of spotting someone coming up from behind. Especially if they are not pinned. And infantry has a better chance outside the frontal arc than vehicles do.

There are many variables as to what spots what, and we wont be specifying those in any detail since its not a simple look-up table like in the old cardboard shuffling games but an intermingled set of routines that call other routines with lots of ifs and buts.

However the best way to stop things coming in from the flank or rear unspotted is to have a secondary line of stationary unsuppressed spotters watching your flanks/rear from reasonably close, and its better if they are infantry than vehicles. Not easy to do in a wood or buildings, other than say having a flanking element positioned at each end of your line but pulled back a hex. A useful role for little scout teams, or AT rifles etc.

Of course the best way to advance in such close terrain is firstly to stonk the area you wish to advance into with your artillery. Rally up any of yours that were too close to the barrage and got pinned, then hopefully as you go in you will find stunned enemy elements that are too pinned or worse to spot your guys and then you blast them at 1 hex.