One Month On...

[Dog Soldier]

One thing I would like to see adjusted is our ability to know which units on our side have not fired on the enemy and which ones have. It is very hard to execute a ambush or a "surprise" for the advancing enemy if you can not tell which units of yours has already fired and those who are still possibly hidden.

We really wrestled with the subject of spotting hidden units during play testing. If the player sets the AOF for the hidden units to never, they will not fire. (see below)

The problem we ran into with the PzC 'binoculars' showing that your unit was spotted is that it works both ways. If I am certain my unit is spotted, then I can click on that hex, and turn on the LOS display to see what hexes I can see from that hex. If all the hexes I can see from by the 'known spotted unit' are empty, then I know there are hidden enemy units. A little clever positioning in the opening moves or in larger scenarios after the battle moves from the 'at start' positions can greatly reduce the effectiveness of hiding one's units on defense to ambush the enemy. In the screen shot below, There is an example where the attacker (German) will not know exactly where the Soviets are, but can make some reasonable guesses before exposing his troops.

It was decided by the design team that the use of certainty that someone had eyes on you was not realistic. How can one really be certain they were spotted?

In this image the German scout car does not have enough MP left to perform a recon spotting. I have highlighted the LOS for the hex the scout occupies. Note the difference that all the Soviet units are hidden in the first image. In the second image note the actual positions of the Soviet units hidden in the village.




Now I move a second German scout car to either of the two positions below. Note the differences in the LOS with the first scout car.




If I receive information from the game that the second German scout cars positioned in either hex are not 'spotted' but the first one in the field at the foot of the hill is 'spotted', I can deduce from process of elimination that the only places the hidden Soviet units could be is in the village hexes I can spot with the first scout car unit.

This clever use of knowing if your unit is spotted, can triangulate the LOS of two units , (neither has to recon capable I might add) to determine unfairly where the enemy is or is not thus defeating the whole purpose of persistent hidden concealment.

I think revealing that one's units are 'spotted' cuts both ways. It can help the defender know they were detected, when in reality how would they really know? Finger pointing?
Attacking forces can move units to different positions sequentially checking when they are spotted, then use a second unit to eliminate some positions as potential hexes the first unit was spotted from.

Since most successful ambushes in this game system occur in map choke points, such unfair triangulation would give the attackers and advantage they really should never have in the first place.

I hope this explanation better informs players why we decided not to let players know for certain their unit(s) are spotted or not.

Me personally, I'm not thrilled with hidden units not firing and not being discovered until you have to decide to assault or not. At times, I do, but find it hard to think all these Russian units have that kind of fire discipline. I wouldn't think the Germans would either. Recon hasn't gotten me anywhere yet. Quite often, arty seems to have little effect.

Kursk still wouldn't have been my first choice. Then again, I'm more a WF/Med fan. Looking forward to more as well as the modern stuff.

I know the idea that the troops with orders to hold fire should not be absolute is raised. On the surface I can agree with that assumption. If we introduced a random factor, however small, that the troops would break the fire discipline, would it not be seen more often than not as a bug than a feature?

In Squad Battles if commanded to hold fire, a unit does this absolutely to remain concealed. I do not recall any complaints on the Squad Battles forums about this aspect of the unit's behavior being too tightly controlled. (I know in Squad Battles it actually the weapon counter that is set to hold fire, but the point is the same.)

In PzB we have created the Assign Opportunity Fire (AOF) dialog which allows the player to determine under what circumstances the hidden units will break the hold fire order. There is a lot of flexibility in the AOF as to what type of unit the hidden unit will engage and at what range.


Dog Soldier