Matrix Games Forums

Am I correct to understand that amphibious units can't cross canals? Assuming that there are no natural entries for the vehicles into the water?

William will need to chime in, but I don't think we have or model canals at the moment.

Sunbather wrote: Sun Jan 14, 2024 8:28 pm Am I correct to understand that amphibious units can't cross canals? Assuming that there are no natural entries for the vehicles into the water?

No, amphibious units are able to cross canals (and other water obstacles) provided there is no steep cliff on the near or far side of the crossing. Steep being a 3 hex step (150m altitude difference).
The assumption is that somewhere along the 500m hex side, there is a sufficiently shallow way to enter or exit from the water.

This is one of the areas where public data falls short; we had access to 1989 maps, digital elevation data, historic weather, etc., but no way to tell which river / canal banks are sufficiently solid and shallow to allow amphibious entry and exit.

I am very curious then why I wasn't able to cross the Main-Donau-Kanal nowhere in the "High Sticking" scenario.

I also had some other gripes with that mission: visibility stayed at 60m even after sunup which was very odd. Yes, there is light snow involved but light snow shouldn't limit visibility to 60 meters, should it? In fact, visibility should have gone up slightly already before sunrise. Illumination at the time of the screenshot is 80% as you can see. I can only assume (and hope) that this is a bug.

M150s decimated my units by magic. A Canadian AT section has 3 M150s in it. They all have a TOW launcher that has 1 missile in it, so once could assume they can fire 3 missiles every 2 minutes. And yet, the combat log showed they fired much more missiles in that time, about 6 every time they shot at my units and they attacked 1 unit 2 times in 2 minutes. Is it intended that M150s have basically no reload time?

I've found that often certain procedures must be followed to force a unit to use its amphibious capability rather than seeking a bridge crossing. To cross a major river, at least one waypoint should be in a full water hex at the intended amphibious crossing location. Other waypoints may also be required at riverbank hexes on each side of the major river to further constrain how the unit crosses. For minor rivers, it may also be necessary to put waypoints at the adjacent riverbank hexes where the crossing will take place.

For either major or minor rivers, I normally turn off both the "Concealment" and "Roads" SOP settings at the crossing itself. These movement SOP settings often cause units to avoid amphibious crossings unless no other alternative is available.

rmeckman wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 8:35 pm I've found that often certain procedures must be followed to force a unit to use its amphibious capability rather than seeking a bridge crossing. To cross a major river, at least one waypoint should be in a full water hex at the intended amphibious crossing location. Other waypoints may also be required at riverbank hexes on each side of the major river to further constrain how the unit crosses. For minor rivers, it may also be necessary to put waypoints at the adjacent riverbank hexes where the crossing will take place.

For either major or minor rivers, I normally turn off both the "Concealment" and "Roads" SOP settings at the crossing itself. These movement SOP settings often cause units to avoid amphibious crossings unless no other alternative is available.

Great tips, and correct observations. Thanks!

In order to make units not arbitrarily cross water obstacles, the pathfinding applies a significant penalty (preparation delay for amphibious crossing). The downside of that is that it takes additional waypoints to force the unit to cross a water obstacle. We are having discussions in our team to give you more control in these cases.

Sunbather wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 4:24 pm I also had some other gripes with that mission: visibility stayed at 60m even after sunup which was very odd. Yes, there is light snow involved but light snow shouldn't limit visibility to 60 meters, should it? In fact, visibility should have gone up slightly already before sunrise. Illumination at the time of the screenshot is 80% as you can see. I can only assume (and hope) that this is a bug.

Maybe this helps: visibility is how far unit can see optically. The sun up and 80% illumination means that it is dawn, almost day (but not that it is sunny or clear). Wind is minimal, temperature is very low, which typically means ground level morning fog, and poor visibility. Light snow just makes it worse.

Sunbather wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 4:24 pmM150s decimated my units by magic. A Canadian AT section has 3 M150s in it. They all have a TOW launcher that has 1 missile in it, so once could assume they can fire 3 missiles every 2 minutes. And yet, the combat log showed they fired much more missiles in that time, about 6 every time they shot at my units and they attacked 1 unit 2 times in 2 minutes. Is it intended that M150s have basically no reload time?

The game indeed allows the iTOW launcher to fire twice during an engagement. Not sure the reload time is 2 mins, nor that it is 30s. I'll raise this in the developer team.

rmeckman wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 8:35 pm I've found that often certain procedures must be followed to force a unit to use its amphibious capability rather than seeking a bridge crossing. To cross a major river, at least one waypoint should be in a full water hex at the intended amphibious crossing location. Other waypoints may also be required at riverbank hexes on each side of the major river to further constrain how the unit crosses. For minor rivers, it may also be necessary to put waypoints at the adjacent riverbank hexes where the crossing will take place.

For either major or minor rivers, I normally turn off both the "Concealment" and "Roads" SOP settings at the crossing itself. These movement SOP settings often cause units to avoid amphibious crossings unless no other alternative is available.

These are indeed great tips! I did try to manually adjust the waypoints but didn't think about the SOP, especially since I thought the issue on this specific map was caused by the river being a canal.

WildCatNL wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 9:29 pm
Maybe this helps: visibility is how far unit can see optically. The sun up and 80% illumination means that it is dawn, almost day (but not that it is sunny or clear). Wind is minimal, temperature is very low, which typically means ground level morning fog, and poor visibility. Light snow just makes it worse.

As you can see in the screenshot, the optical visibility is still at 60 meters despite it being already 1000 hours, so way past dawn. From real life experience, there is no way that visibility is reduced to 60 meters just because of light snow. "Morning" fog at 1000 hours should also no decrease visibility to 60 meters.

EDIT: Currently I am playing "Regulars Forward", a regular 1989 summer scenario, going from early dusk to 0100 hours with sun setting at around 2200 hours. The whole time the visibility in the UI just says "- m". It increasingly feels like that specific part of the game is a bit bugged.

WildCatNL wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 9:29 pm The game indeed allows the iTOW launcher to fire twice during an engagement. Not sure the reload time is 2 mins, nor that it is 30s. I'll raise this in the developer team.

I am by no means militarily trained, but common sense would suggest that it takes more than 30 seconds for: having just shot a missile, waiting for the missile to reach target, assessing what happened (hit or miss?), getting a new missile from the storage, opening the hatch, lowering the launcher, discarding the tube, putting in the new tube with missile inside, closing the hatch while the gunner reacquires the target, then another 30 seconds till hit. Now that I am writing this down, it seems more like even 2 minutes is a bit of a stretch.

Sunbather wrote: Thu Jan 18, 2024 1:06 pmAs you can see in the screenshot, the optical visibility is still at 60 meters despite it being already 1000 hours, so way past dawn. From real life experience, there is no way that visibility is reduced to 60 meters just because of light snow. "Morning" fog at 1000 hours should also no decrease visibility to 60 meters.

60m is the cloud ceiling. Right above that where it says visibility 5500 is the visibility. I don't think the 5500m takes into account the fog though. If you forget, the mouse over tooltip is there to remind you:

SgtZdog wrote: Thu Jan 18, 2024 3:33 pm 60m is the cloud ceiling. Right above that where it says visibility 5500 is the visibility. I don't think the 5500m takes into account the fog though. If you forget, the mouse over tooltip is there to remind you:

I see! That solves a lot of mental problems, haha. And especially clears up why there was simply a minus symbol in the "Regulars Forward" scenario. Thank you for clearing that up and sorry for being confused about such a thing. But just to be sure, I don't get a tooltip when I hover over the cloud symbol or the meters.

We have a low-priority feature request in our tracking system to help better show fog/low ceiling on the map and on the panel. Not sure when/if we get to it.

Having 5500m visibility under a 60m cloud ceiling has its own set of issues. In the real world, cloud ceilings are normally measured at airports, which are usually located in valleys rather than high terrain. If a widespread stratus deck is located 60m above the valley hexes on the map, many of the higher terrain hexes will be above cloud base and shrouded in fog. Since the game does not include hex-to-hex variations in visibility, one way to interpret the game's ceiling is that the cloud base is 60m above the highest hex on the map.

rmeckman wrote: Thu Jan 18, 2024 7:57 pm Having 5500m visibility under a 60m cloud ceiling has its own set of issues. In the real world, cloud ceilings are normally measured at airports, which are usually located in valleys rather than high terrain. If a widespread stratus deck is located 60m above the valley hexes on the map, many of the higher terrain hexes will be above cloud base and shrouded in fog. Since the game does not include hex-to-hex variations in visibility, one way to interpret the game's ceiling is that the cloud base is 60m above the highest hex on the map.

Mostly correct (the game uses historic data from Germany's weather data service (DWD), sourced from 500+ weather stations which include many weather stations at altitude).
Regardless, cloud ceiling presents a problem in combination with significant altitude differences in the map for the reasons you describe. And there is no perfect solution, especially not for game like ours (not a flight simulator) where we just want to convey the limitations Germany's weather could impose.

The game uses cloud ceiling information not for the visibility / line-of-sight information but in order to allow or prevent air support (and not in a very strict way).

rmeckman wrote: Wed Jan 17, 2024 8:35 pm I've found that often certain procedures must be followed to force a unit to use its amphibious capability rather than seeking a bridge crossing. [...]

I just wanted to thank you again. With your tips I finally was able to 'force' my units to cross the canal. It makes sense that the AI chooses waypoints that are much faster than a river crossing. However, this certainly isn't always the safest option.

CapnDarwin wrote: Thu Jan 18, 2024 6:21 pm We have a low-priority feature request in our tracking system to help better show fog/low ceiling on the map and on the panel. Not sure when/if we get to it.

Definitively keep it low priority. After all, it was my own brain that wasn't able to figure out that the "visibility" is actually the cloud cloud ceiling. I think I can somewhat triangulate now what the actual visibility overall looks like when I take into account visibility cap (e.g. 5,500 meters), LOS of units, illumination and common sense when it comes to the time of day (quadrangulate if you will). And I think I was just too concerned with visibility anyhow which isn't a precise thing in this game anyway because spotting depends on a lot more than just the theoretical visibility.