When Does the AI Give Up???

[narwan]

Arty units that are firing indirectly can become spotted by themselves when they've been firing for a bit.
Think of it like this; your spotters see some smoke or flashes (also represented by the smoke) in the distance at a certain spot. A bit later mortar rounds fall. It doesn't take them long to notice that everytime they see the flashes at that direction a bit later those mortar rounds land. Some smart guy figures out they're 81mm's and by the time difference between the flashes nad the arrival he figures out the distance. Presto, 'spotted' arty unit on the screen.

Narwan

[chuckfourth]

Hi Narwan
RERomine is talking about artillery units appearing beyond the visibility range, so when you say

Originally Posted by narwan

your spotters see some smoke or flashes (also represented by the smoke) in the distance at a certain spot.

Your spotters cant -see- any smoke or flashes. The appearance of your rear area artillery to the opponent is a bug. or in any case unrealistic. The same goes for smoke. In-game you can -see- the smoke from a 50mm mortar 10 kilometres away even if theres a mountain between it and you and your deep in a forest with a LOS of 1 hex. Your abandoned trenches also appear to the enemy after a while. This is a problem if you have a large infantry force that has a long march ahead of it and the enemy has artillery.
Best Regards Chuck.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by chuckfourth

Hi Narwan
RERomine is talking about artillery units appearing beyond the visibility range, so when you say

Your spotters cant -see- any smoke or flashes. The appearance of your rear area artillery to the opponent is a bug. or in any case unrealistic. The same goes for smoke. In-game you can -see- the smoke from a 50mm mortar 10 kilometres away even if theres a mountain between it and you and your deep in a forest with a LOS of 1 hex. Your abandoned trenches also appear to the enemy after a while. This is a problem if you have a large infantry force that has a long march ahead of it and the enemy has artillery.
Best Regards Chuck.

No Chuckie - Narwan is of course quite correct, and you are showing your usual lack of a clue.

And of course you know it is not a "bug" since the spotting of on-map arty has been discussed many times in these forums and the previous Yahoo discussion groups.

Andy

[RERomine]

It actually seems rational that the locations of units could be pin pointed without being able to visibly see them. The visibility conditions would be a factor as to how this occurs. WinSPWW2 provides visibility in hexes, but not what conditions cause limit the visibility.

That being said, conditions could be assumed to be just levels of light and darkness rather than dust storms, rain, snow storms, etc. On a dark night, it would be possible to pin point the location of a unit beyond normal visibility ranges based on muzzle flashes. Muzzle blasts realistically kick up more dust than they generate smoke, but who's to say what the cloud over a firing unit actually is?

The reason I brought it up in the first place was it wasn't clear if the mortar had fired at all since when I saw it there was no smoke and it was oriented straight ahead. I did have units the could have seen the location if the visibility had been higher than 9. More than likely, the mortar had fired and enough time had passed and the smoke dissipated. I had mentioned a location directly ahead of the mortar had been hit earlier in the battle. At the time, I was more enjoying the fact the mortar was hitting their own men than trying to figure out where the fire was coming from.

As for being a bug, Andy indicates it's not. By definition, a bug is code that isn't working as intended and this evidently it is working just fine. I'm content with that. It may not work how everyone would like it to work, but as long as it works properly, that's cool. Being a game programmer is like being a politician; you aren't going to make everyone happy.

[chuckfourth]

Hi Andy
Quite the reverse Im sure,
Ok there is a small chance you can identify a particular piece of on-board artillery if you string together a large number of unlikely 'ifs' and its a mortar and its close but unlike what Narwan says it has to be within your LOS. But this only happens rarely so wether bug or bug masquerading as feature not such a big deal.
But
To illustrate my point about smoke, Japs fighting Brits in Malaysa, entire board is Jungle, -Nobody- can see more than three of so hex's. Nevertheless as soon as the enemies onboard artillery opens up you can see each and every artillery piece's smoke signature and then allocate air or counterbatterie to take it out, hardly realistic methinks.
In the vast majority of cases on-board artilery smoke signatures wouldnt be visible, but they all always are, why?
When I brought up this subject previously it's been ignored rather than dicussed, other than that I cant recall it ever being a topic of discussion.
But Id be most happy to read these discussions you mention any chance of a link?
Best Regards Chuck.