JTCS Night rules

[Ragnar]

Hello

actually I consider myself as a jtcs veteran but maybe someone can explain the night rules to me please.

I understand the rules as follows:

- firing at a gunflash  -> attack value 50%
- firing indirect with artillery on a target in LOS --> attack value 100%
- firing at a target in LOS with direct fire--> attack value 100%
- firing at a target enlighted by a start shell --> 100%

Am I right or where I am wrong....I think I am wrong!

To me it makes no sense that you can attack a target in the night with 100% of your attack value. In the army we also had night fire excerises and I can say it is defintly more difficult as in daylight!

Why should I use star shells if they does not have an effect of my attack value? I read they just extent the range of the LOS

[Big Ivan]

Hi Ragnar, hope all is well in Germany!

My understanding is anytime you fire at a target that is in your night LOS range but not illuminated its half firepower. If its adjacent its full firepower I believe. Any target beyond being adjacent can only be fired on if it is marked with gun flashes, is illuminated or is in the night visibility range of your unit. 

If the target is illuminated regardless of range its full firepower.

Hexes with 6 or more wrecks are considered an illuminated hex and units in there can receive full firepower always unless wrecks are removed to bring the total wrecks down below 6.

Artillery (indirect fire) functions the same way I believe. Its always half firepower unless adjacent or illuminated.

Hope this helps.

Ivan the Big

[Ragnar]

Hallo Ivan

all fine thanks.

Thanks for the explainations! They really make sense. I only doubt that you have full firepower if the hex is adjacent. This is just my feeling. I currently play a huge scenario* where we are locked in a furious night fight at the moment. For the soviets it seems nearly impossible to inflict any casulties in the axis defenders not illuminated.

So regarding artillery the best tactic would be the observer on the front fires a star shell over the target and calls in the artillery strike to get the full firepower from it.

*The scenario is called "Black se black death" which I like to push a bit.....because it' made by me.
You can find it in the testing area.
By now we only found some minor mistakes. The only bigger issue it, that I reduced the LOS in the night to 3 hexes. Looking back this it nuts and will be reduces to 1 for the final version.

[Herr Straße Laufer]

To me, this should bring up the discussion about scale and what the game was intended to do.

As far as night John was spot on with how the rules work.

Where scale breaks down is in the amount of turns and how it should effect the scenario.

If we take pure scale and say six minutes per turn the scenario covers a 9.4 hour period?
If we look at the view of a turn is roughly fifteen (to thirty) minutes then the scenario would cover a 23.5 (to 47) hour period?

We have an issue with daylight, daybreak, day, dusk and night? Almost of third of the time covered at six minutes a turn and almost all of the time at fifteen minutes a turn (twice at half an hour per turn).
The CS team has put in ways to artificially adjust visibility reflecting night to day. I think they are developing the algorithm for it in the EFIII version? (Jason correct me if I am wrong.)

Unless playing it as a team game this is one where I would not be playing. As most know I am not a fan of large and "out of scale" scenarios.
That said, I will say that I appreciate the effort you put into it.



HSL

[Crossroads]

The Dynamic Day/Night/Visibilty setting feature has not much changed from JTCS 2.02 I believe. I downloaded the scenario, and the sequence is there from day to night to day.

What's said before is correct. As far as the night rules are in play, they require the setting for a specific turn to be Night (n), regardless of visibility. Unless illuminated, the attacks are halved rounding up unless firing to an adjacent hex in which case they are 100% even when not illuminated. To be honest I don't know if indirect differs from direct in this case, but have no reason to doubt what's said before.

You can also fire at a gun flashes hex, the target is chosen randomly iirc, and you can only fire at gun flashes from within a six hex radious, ie. the units are not seeing gun flashes from farther away regardless of visibility setting for night turn. Hardcoded in other words.

I don't believe there's changes planned as of now for this for the coming Vietnam or East Front III game, and Vietnam is pretty close to feature freeze although minor or specific changes are all possible.

If you guys spot something regarding night combat, or have specific wish list items, please give us a shout at one of the wish list threads for instance.

[Ragnar]

@Herr Straße Laufer

I know from various other threads your oppinon about the "6 minutes per turn" and respect this.
Yes I "bend" the rules a bit to fit everything into what became a great scenario. Instead of explain all of it here I suggest you read the 20 pages readme-file. I think chapter 3.3 and also the FAQs will awnser your questions.

No hard feelings if you don't want to play it. No one tried it as a team game yet but several friends play it 1 vs 1.

[Ragnar]

@Battle Kat Thanks a lot for "enlighting" me. :-)

[Herr Straße Laufer]

@Herr Straße Laufer

I know from various other threads your oppinon about the "6 minutes per turn" and respect this.
Yes I "bend" the rules a bit to fit everything into what became a great scenario.  Instead of explain all of it here I suggest you read the 20 pages readme-file.  I think chapter 3.3 and also the FAQs will awnser your questions.

No hard feelings if you don't want to play it. No one tried it as a team game yet but several friends play it 1 vs 1.

Hard feelings?
Hardly. I hope no one has hard feelings if I do not play large scenarios.
I personally find them out of scale and too large to have fun while playing.
Reading a file is not going to change my mind.

That is my personal choice and opinion. I never try to stop anyone from doing what they want.
As they say, "it's all good."



HSL

[Ragnar]

Agree "it's all good."