Question: Vehicle facing

[stepheng98]

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

[jivemi]

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.

[scorpio_rocks]

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).

[Imp]

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.

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).

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.

[Mobhack]

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 !

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)

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

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

[scorpio_rocks]

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

I DO, however, like A and A1.

[jivemi]

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.

[Imp]

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

[Mobhack]

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.