Fog of war

[RERomine]

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.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by RERomine

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.

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.

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by Suhiir

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.

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?