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Stupid question - do negative concealment values mean better concealment? On the bootcamp 2 map, the village hexes are -3 concealment. I am assuming the lower the value, the better concealment and harder to spot. But, the manual says the higher the concealment value the less likely the units will be spotted.

So, I'm just checking with the pros.

Take a platoon of large tanks with a concealment of 5 in open terrain.

That means they will likely be spotted during Line of Sight checks at the beginning of the turn.

But, if you put them in a village with -3 concealment, that 5 reduces to 2, making them less likely to be spotted.

Jason Petho

Aha! So each unit has a default concealment value, that is modified by the terrain. Is that right?

So, in effect, the lower the concealment value of a unit the better. Negatives are good.

Where do I see the default concealment value of each unit, as in your example of the tanks having a 5? I don't see it on the F2 unit details.

Thanks!

You can view that information in the Unit Viewer (F3).

Jason Petho

Thank you. That seems like a useful stat that should be in the F2 viewer screen. The F3 unit viewer is not as intuitive, because it doesn't display the details for the currently selected unit. I have to know what nation and exactly what unit I want to look at.

Or am I using the F3 viewer wrong. It seems like it should come up with the currently selected unit.

It will display the proper unit in the 1.01 UPDATE coming out later this year.

The F2 viewer is mainly for generic information, mainly pertaining to movement, weapon ranges and some basic information. Hence the desire for Arkady to build the more detailed F3 Unit Viewer which explains more of the unit statistics.

Until the 1.01 UPDATE, you'll have to pick a country, then find the unit in question to get the stats on it. I highly recommend spending a few hours and just flipping through the units to become familiar with some basics. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different platoons.

ORIGINAL: Jason Petho

Take a platoon of large tanks with a concealment of 5 in open terrain.

That means they will likely be spotted during Line of Sight checks at the beginning of the turn.

But, if you put them in a village with -3 concealment, that 5 reduces to 2, making them less likely to be spotted.

Jason Petho

Jason,

Is there any correlation between the distance to the nearest spotting unit? I.E., does the die roll to spot a unit have anything to do with a "spotting unit", or is it just a die roll to check whether the spotted unit has "exposed" [X(] itself? My guess is it's the latter.

I ask because, since the changes were made to spotting rules, I've never clearly understood them. While I think the changes have been excellent, sometimes I've felt they've gone a bit overboard. My example has to do with smaller caliber AT guns, which can fire several times with units in an adjacent hex without being spotted. Passing a concealment roll, they can continue to go unspotted into the next turn until a unit tries to enter the hex.

I'm not trying to say that this is wrong or right; it sometimes just doesn't "feel" right. I get that, with hexes 250 meters across, the units could be as far as 500 meters apart and still be in adjoining hexes. Then again, they could also be ten meters apart...

I guess what I'm asking is if there's some way to re-work the concealment/spotting rules to take distance into account, if the rules already don't.

This whole question came about because of something else I've been thinking about which would be some way for a unit to move into a (concealment) hex with a chance of not being spotted. While this would be quite unlikely for larger vehicles, like the tank platoon you used in your example, I think some sort of "stealth movement" for certain types of units (think recon) could add some new flavor to the game. Again, I think this would necessitate having the chance of spotting being a function of the distance to the nearest unit with LOS to the hex.

For the moving unit, it would take, maybe, all of the units AP's to move into the new hex... possibly even incurring fatigue for the option of trying to remain concealed.

Anyhow, I love what you guys have done (for the most part [;)]) with CS and look forward to the future improvements.

I ask because, since the changes were made to spotting rules, I've never clearly understood them. While I think the changes have been excellent, sometimes I've felt they've gone a bit overboard. My example has to do with smaller caliber AT guns, which can fire several times with units in an adjacent hex without being spotted. Passing a concealment roll, they can continue to go unspotted into the next turn until a unit tries to enter the hex.

These smaller caliber AT guns are flagged with a hidden shooter flag, giving them extra concealment, but it doesn't last forever and everytime it fires it will run the risk of being revealed.

Sniper teams are also given the hidden shooter flag.