Forums

Does NATO receive the thermal bonus on dusk turns, as well as night turns. Just asking because the rule in the manual seems kind of vague on this

It specifically states that any firing by a TIS capable unit at maximum visibility, against a non-TIS unit, gets the bonus. At least for D'85 - that seems very clear to me, depending on the unit's max range, if it is firing at whatever the vis range is at that point, it will get the bonus- dusk or even day. If the max vis is 2 for example , during a day turn, and the firing is at 2 hexes, the bonus/penalties apply.

Rick

Ok thanks. I just associated thermal with nighttime.

Me too, but it does make logical sense - if there is an impact on visibility enough to limit it to short ranges, thermal sites should help with spotting/firing.

I've never seen it apply anytime except dawn/dusk and night turns.

If you aren't paying attention you may not notice - for example, if vis dropped to 2, you would have to fire your TIS units at 2 to get the benefit, and if you only fired a few might not notice it as then the range modifier would reduce the effectiveness. And I am not sure the normal settings in the MC games have vis as low as 2? Would have to check that out, but it normally seems like vis is at least 3 from the relatively small group of games of MC I have played. And at 3 hexes it would be very unlikely to be noticeable, the standard games don't have any units that can fire this far, not sure if anyone's mods allow fire at 3 hexes?

At VIS 2, the TIS bonus and the penalty for firing at 2 hex range cancels each other out. In other words a unit w. TIS will hit as hard as if it was adjacent, while the opponent (provided he has 2 hex HA range) gets doubly penalized (halved for firing at 2 hexes, then halved again for firing at a TIS unit). The real winners here are Guided units, who retain their full HA at range and then gets the 50% TIS bonus. Suddenly those small 10-12 vehicle ATGM companies get some real punch. The AH64 Apache is especially deadly, since it has HA 45, range 3 and TIS (and VIS 3 might conceivably be encountered a lot of times during the day, meaning that it will hit w. HA 45+50%!). As for visibility, I have had MC games w. VIS of 2 and even 1, even during daylight hours (inclement weather etc.)