[Mobhack]

I could code the game so that if you select Bill, then only the units known to Bill would show on the map, swap to Fred and only his contact list appears. Save games would then jump by 2000 bytes times 2000 to add an individual LOS list to all units, or thereabouts. We would then have to code in some fancy contact-passing rules so that Bill could eventually tell Fred about his contact #121, say faster if they were in the same platoon, and neither was suppressed, or whatever.

However, the player is free to jump around the units to his hearts content for as long as he feels is necessary to build up a picture. As he does so he will integrate each unit's displayed target list in his brain Mk 1.0. And then he will happily jump to Observer Pete, who has none of Fred's or Bill's targets in his LOS list (yet) and plot a bombardment on what looks like empty space to Pete when he is selected, but the player knows is occupied by Fritz in his Tiger.

Hence the simple model used by SP - once detected and in LOS, the target is available to everyone. No vast amount of extra saved data, no fancy target-passing rules. Because the player will effectively bypass all of that stuff. And the AI does too, because individual LOS lists would add layers of complexity, and its having a hard enough time as is.

Now if there was an option to turn it off and use the "one sees all sees" basic model then 95+% of end users would.

Same as the optional orders system of SP3 - 95%+ of end users never bothered to even switch it on. Which is why it never made it here, as the coding effort is not worth the hassle for what would be a niche option that just a few die-hard grognards would utilise. But I rather liked it, as it was a system that showed off the advantage of the Germans in 1940 vs say the French, with the Germans able to switch the target marker about much more readily than the staid French player, the latter therefore being more tied to his "grand battle plan" pre-laid out at the start. But 99% of end users just want to charge around the battlefield as they wish and blast stuff..