odd thing about spotting ...

[ruxius]

You are right but only for a first or maybe two disappearings because that soldiers are there for looking at the enemy not ot live in distraction..they know that enemy's firing at them catch their lives !! .they can't be joked too many times and we are talking about people who is able to watch , I am not talkking about night where I do agree with you..

[Charles22]

pbear: Yeah, you must have some pretty big slackers if they can't keep their eye on an HMG that close. OTOH, I don't know what the specific suppression level it takes to achieve it, but if I were the AI I would at least suppress them enough that I would hope that the HMG wouldn't be spotted. From my playing experience I never would've let them get that close, and if they did I wouldn't expect that my HMG would remain unspotted. Even so, at that point, there's a lot of things I'm trying to conceal, not only the HMG, but in my opinion the neat tricks I might be able to still pull with a disappearing HMG, is very secondary to keeping my other covered things secret, so the HMG will have to blaze away at that point.

[JTGEN]

I have a bit different disappearing. My panther lost sight to a T34 after shooting at it and it was not moving. It stopped in a hex with smoke in it. In my next turn I went to the Panther but the T34 did not appear on the map. Still the panther indicated that T34 was at its sights. I experimented and just used the fire button and the panther destroyed the tank that did not appear on the map. So how was that possible. My panther was not fired at atall.

[Charles22]

I'm not an expert at this suggestion, as to trying it very much myself, since usually I play Gerry who has little or no spotting problems, but I would suggest keeping some mortars or field howitzers in your core, for the simple reason of this type of situation. If the gun disappears on you, and you, yourself, KNOW where it WAS, anyway, and you see puffs of smoke there, the whole bit, then lob some bombardment into that hex. Bombardment has been known to reveal minefields, but I suspect that every unit can be spotted due to enough bombardment, it's just figuring out what that level is that's the problem, and also, would it be worth spotting that one unit if it takes a ton of fire away from other spotted units?

Certainly, there is a cross-section, where the type of scenario envisioned can be dealt with rather easily. The scenario was that we allege that three units are within what we think is a spotting distance for the HMG. Firstly, the more we reduce the suppression of the troops the better off we are. Secondly the more it fires the easier it's spotted. Thirdly the more IT'S suppressed the easier it'll be spotted, which, even if all the suppression in the world doesn't reveal it to us, when it fires it will reduce the number of fire attempts it can make before it's spotted, and even if that were not so, if the unit is suppressed enough it won't be able to fire, therefore removing our immmediate concern as to what it can do while we cannot see it, to say nothing of how much easier it will be to spot if it retreats.

[Flashfyre]

The interesting thing is that even if a unit you spotted "disappears", as long as you have maintained target acquisition, you can fire on it, and kill or suppress it. I have, an many occasions, lost sight of a unit, and subsequently fired on it with units that still had it targeted. I have killed "invisible" tanks, caused "hidden" crewmen to break and pop smoke, and sent "phantom" infantry retreating with casualties.


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The Motor Pool
http://www.geocities.com/aurion_eq/index.html?976419304550
kmcferren@cvn.net

[Larry Holt]

Originally posted by JTGEN:
I have a bit different disappearing. My panther lost sight to a T34 after shooting at it and it was not moving. It stopped in a hex with smoke in it. In my next turn I went to the Panther but the T34 did not appear on the map. Still the panther indicated that T34 was at its sights. I experimented and just used the fire button and the panther destroyed the tank that did not appear on the map. So how was that possible. My panther was not fired at atall.

This is what we have seen before, with one twist, the target unit's icon was not showing. Specifically, your Panther did not lose LOS but other units did. For some reason sometimes the icon does not show. I think that this is a display bug. It just shows that its important to look around before acting. Kind of like real life, no?


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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.
OK, maybe just a bit faded.

[Charles22]

Flashfyre: That's a very interesting point, but frankly, isn't that cheating? Since we don't have unlimited assets to remember where a once spotted position is, I can see using it for indirect fire, but never for direct fire as though it's spotted. I don't know you could actually destroy a unit using direct fire that way, but I don't intend to either.

[Larry Holt]

Originally posted by Charles22:
Flashfyre: That's a very interesting point, but frankly, isn't that cheating? Since we don't have unlimited assets to remember where a once spotted position is, I can see using it for indirect fire, but never for direct fire as though it's spotted. I don't know you could actually destroy a unit using direct fire that way, but I don't intend to either.

Charles22, I have to agree with Flashfyre on this. As I mentioned in my response to him, this seems to be a display bug where the target is intended to be seen by the Panther but for some reason it the icon is not shown. I do not think that this is a targeting bug where the Panter is intended to not be able to shoot but can. I say this because I recall this coming up as a display bug noted on the forums months ago. I don't recall the details myself. Anyone remember the original posts?


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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.
OK, maybe just a bit faded.

[Flashfyre]

Consider this possibilty:
Your Panther crew laid the sight on a T-34, fired, and missed. The T-34, in smoke, was obscured now, but your gunner's sight was on the last place he saw the tank. Firing again, he gets a kill.
This does not mean the target was "illegal", or that it constituted "cheating". This is correct fire discipline for tank crews; keep the sight on the last known position, and keep firing. Most AFVs, when taking fire, will stop, or manuever in the 'hex' seeking cover. If your crew keeps the gun trained on that spot, you stand a good chance of hitting the target, even if it's "hidden" by smoke or foliage.
Also, you have to consider the luck factor.

To clarify my previous comments on kills, most of the "hidden" troops I fired on were in a smoke hex.

And I agree with Charles22.....after you get plastered with onboard arty (mortars, FHs, etc.) look around the rear areas of the enemy. Chances are, you'll see smoke from the previous fire, and can drop arty on the areas. I've knocked out/routed any number of mortar teams and SPAs this way. Think of it as localized counter-battery fire.

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The Motor Pool
http://www.geocities.com/aurion_eq/index.html?976419304550
kmcferren@cvn.net

[Charles22]

When I speak of cheating, though what Flashfyre says is possible, I envision the game deliberately 'wanting' us to lose the target; in other words the opponent goes through the same circumstances and I don't see it as an anomoly. What Larry says further complicated the matter, but then again, I've never seen a unit that I've seen, and fired upon, disappear between that same unit firing the following volleys. That may be because I don't fire one volley of one tank, then do the same with the next tank (alternating fire between units), and so on and so on. I have done it, but it's 'extremely rare'. If that's the case, I can see how the target could be lost, though I don't think it's that much of a tightrope. What I'm trying to say, is if a tank fired on a newly acquired target, the unit should stay there IF you continue to fire with that unit, but, if you fired a round with that tank, and then that tank was fired at by opfire, there is the possibility, though small, that this tank would lose it's target due to suppression, just as if all three opfires had resounding hits from big guns. Technically, such a tank might still have the target acquired, but it disappeared nonetheless. That of course is a very remote possibility, but as per the way I play, I'm not generally going to fire on newly discovered units with what could pass as my spotter, in this case this tank. No, I will leave him or any spotter alone, and then let him be the last to fire, while my other units take advantage of his spotting, which even if the spotter is destroyed, we could arguably wonder whether he was the only one able to see the target. There is something to be said, also, for when a target gets fired at, or more particularly gets hit, be the hit effective or not, that such a thing might cause units to take notice and then actually spot a unit they otherwise might've missed. phew

[Paul Vebber]

The "unit stays locked at the last know positition is one of those "bug/features" It was an artifact of some of teh FOW mods, but many liked it (at least I did:-) as a situation where the "collective hive mind" losses track of where something is, but the guy who saw it last could still get a shot of at it, just in teh heat of battle was not able to confirm that position with the "high command net"

You really need an "information model" to account specifically for "who knows about what" and how that info gets passed around. Lacking that we decided to have some "oddities" occur regarding what information is known to the "collective hive mind".