Illuminating artillery rounds
 

Hi

I've been looking for "illuminating round" using the forum search but it didn't show any hits.
Maybe someone have commented on this particular before in the forum.
Does SPMBT support any kind of illuminating rounds (mortar, arty, naval, aircraft dropped, etc.)
If it doesn't, is it feasible to consider development of something alike for future patches?

thanks

Patricio

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

Hi Patric,
No, neither WinSPMBT or WinSPWW2 has illuminating rounds of any sort.
Regards,
Warwick

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

And i would guess that it's not in the plans...

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

There's no real weather or lighting conditions modeled in the game iirc. You can replicate low light/visibility situations by using the visibility setting but thats about it.

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

I cannot speak for Andy & Don, but I have programed computers for a living and have some idea how incredibly difficult something like this would be to add to the game.

A) Would have to add a new field to the entire data base for the illumination ammo type so it could be added to the ammo loadout.
B) Obviously the illumination radius would vary, a 152mm artillery round would illuminate a much larger radius then a 60mm mortar. So code for this would have to be created/added.
C) Every existing OOB and scenario would have to be updated to add illum ammo.
D) Artificial Intelligence would have to be created/added to allow the computer to use illum ammo.

Those are just 4 complications I thought of off the top of my head. There are at least a dozen others that would have to be delt with.

As iCaMpWiThAWP said, "I would guess that it's not in the plans".

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

Here's a couple of threads that mention 'flare', star shells etc:

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ighlight=flare

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ighlight=flare

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...ighlight=flare


Cross

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

Suhiir is correct. It's a coding issue. In night scenarios that historically have illumination capabilities, I increase the visibility to 600 or so meters to simulate the use of flares or starshells.

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

What is the visibility settings you use when night fighting?
i tend to play between 2 and 10, not sure if that's anywhere near reality, i find it hard to believe i could see things 500meters into the dark, living in a city doesn't help much with that...

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

Yeah, 2 hexes are the minimum vision in the game concept, since 1 hex won't do it right (adjacent fires/contact). Sure this excludes the application of NV devices. Edit: but in some "extremely serious" situations, 1 hex is required.

But don't forget that you can also reduce some preferences settings like Searching, Rout/Rally, Hitting, etc. When fighting in the night I would reduce those to 70 or even 60 to compensate for that 2 hexes bottleneck.

Re: Illuminating artillery rounds
 

Up to 10 hexes is quite reasonable full moon or city lights in the background, no moon middle of nowhere so no man made light for miles try you might be aware somethings there at 10' but no idea what it is. If it moves then can detect further out & your brain can guess what it is from cues how it moves sound etc & fill in the blanks. Modeling night combat well would be very hard apart from IR rounds muzzle flashes will make you visible at greater range or at least give a good idea of local. Tank firing its maingun will illuminate the area around it suddenly exposing anyone nearby etc etc.
As suggested lowering search a bit seems to work well having little effect on vehicle detection but making finding troops harder.
Night attacks are tricky things I think following terrain features is bad cause can silohette you but if dont use them many units got lost & ended up attacking somewhere quite diffrent to the intended target I believe.