Something about 1.03 I'm worried about

[Huib Versloot]

Well I like it
Huib talks of unrealistic.
Well how realistic is it to check out an hex for visibility without actually moving a unit into it. I can't think of anyway that could have been done in WWII, you could have an educated guess but that's it, a guess.
Yet in the game all you have to do it left click on the hex you want to check out, then select hot key V and there you have it. The visibility and LOS from that hex is revealed to you, not at all realistic just a game facility.

I tend to agree with Gordons HQ's asessment, and I'm looking forward to trying out some of the old scenarios. Visibility is best represented as an incremental degradation, not a black and white can/can not see situation like it is shown in pre-1.03 CS.

In a way this feature represents the variability of things like "that tree was in the way a minute (or 6 minutes) ago, but I scooted a few inches and now the whole ridge is visible across the valley".

IMO all "realism" bets are off anyway with the ubiquitous "borg-spotting" that is endemic to tactical level wargames. Even considering the 6 min. turns, this feature should be considered an abstraction of real life visibility and the uncertainty of accurate battlefield assessment.

Any feature that adds an element of fear and uncertainty (like the new AT gun spotting rules) is OK in my book, and I wouldn't mind if it stayed as a hard wired feature.

I understand those that want to retain the nostalgia of the before times, and those that feel it may ruin their favorite scenarios. I guess it's lucky for them that my opinion is part of the vast minority.

The problem is that this feature has the greatest impact on scns with low visibility and mostly in these scns this low visibility is the (historical) key factor. A visibility change from 25 hexes to 27 hexes has much less impact than a change from 1 to 3 hexes. Over the years I have tended to use visibilities that are on the low side. I did so because IMO the bird's eye view of the player revealed too much. Long visibility allowed units to fire in support of other units over long distances in an odd kind of way; the same goes for arty spotting that can be done by all units. To exlude undesired effects of long visibility, I rarely use visibility longer than 10 hexes. Therefore, this new "feature" is very much undesired for in my scenarios.