Line of sight.

[CmdGren]

A LOS straight line A to C going through B : you can shoot C from A but you can't shoot B from A which is absurd.

the field is at 75 meters above the sea
the road is at 74.5 meters above the sea.

(see attachment for screenshots )

I ofter see problems with the LOS from or to corn fields.. But this one seems pretty impossible to explain.

[SteveMcClaire]

Hi CmdGren,

I'd have to check the exact spot on the map in question, and the terrain of the field, road, and the area beside the road to confirm, but I don't think there's a bug here. Can you tell me what map that's from?

I suspect the road there is a "Raised Dirt Road" which has a terrain height of 1m. So elevation of the road is 75.5m and the troops are in fact looking over the top of the crops to spot the road in the first picture.

In the second picture, it's possible that there is a ditch beside the road, and that the end of the LOS line happens to be on the terrain that is coded as a ditch. So line of sight from the troops to a lower feature is hitting the ground mid-way.

There can be some oddities in LOS due to the way the underlying terrain data (which is a square grid) matches with the image of the map (which is a hand-crafted graphic and not constrained to a grid layout) but these tend to be fairly rare. It can also be hard to visualize the 3D nature of the CC terrain given the game uses a top-down, 2D view. You can check the terrain heights by looking at the file "elements.txt" in the game's data\base\ folder -- the first column of data after the name of the terrain is its height, in 0.5m increments (so a height of 2 = 1m.)

Steve

[CmdGren]

The map is Cheux (highest VL on the left side of the map : you'll see the triangular hedgerow and the corn field on its right)

In this case, I checked and it says "muddy road" with a height of 0 in the elements.txt.
There is no apparent ditche (from info available with right click).

There's also random line of sight through this corn field : I can see the other side of the road with very thin angles and 0 obstruction.

On caen Fontenay road map, I also had various issues with the corn fields...That is, red LOS and light green LOS a few degrees aways on the same target terrain.

A possible idea : if the LOS rely on a grid map, maybe the "corn field type" was coded with the idea of "rows and gaps" and some adjacency in the "gaps" causes those LOS.

Well, I'll wait for your reply about this particular instance.

This CC is easier to "read" than the old "a bridge too far" (except those surprises with corn fields), however I would suggest to add the height of the features to the "right click" information if there's a bugfixes patch. I don't see any reason not to. Do you ?

[SteveMcClaire]

There is no special handling for the 'corn field' element, so that is not the cause of the issue. I will look at it in greater detail when I have time, but from the example it looks like the LOS to the road is being traced to a higher 'level' (possibly the height of crouching or standing soldier) than to the corn field or tall grass. So it is able to see above the vegetation.

Steve

[Cathartes]

Corn fields are a new element in Gateway to Caen and they have limited LOS. They are mentioned in the manual. You can't expect to have unlimited field of fire through a corn field because of the taller foilage associated with these crops.