Hidden units

[Mowgli]

More findings:

- Changing formation (from deployed to travel mode and vice versa) is not safe and will reveal your unit to the opponent.
- If you move adjacent to enemy units that are positioned in clear terrain, they are immediately revealed. (they need to be in cover in order to stay concealed adjacent to you)
- Units in travel mode can be concealed.
- UNITS POSITIONED IN OPEN TERRAIN (all terrain they're not able to hide in?) - even if yet undiscovered by the opponent - IGNORE CUSTOM OPPORTUNITY FIRE SETTINGS?*
- Once discovered by the enemy, a unit ignores all custom opportunity fire settings. But you should be able to re-conceal the unit (making it use the custom opportunity fire settings again) by breaking all your enemy's line of sight to it and positioning it in proper terrain (but be aware that you usually can't see all enemies either, so you don't really know if you are successfully re-concealed...).
- If a unit opportunity-fires from a hex, the firing unit and additionally all units who are in the hex and cannot hide in the terrain of the hex are immediately revealed to the opponent.
- It can happen that only some units in a hex are revealed to the opponent while others remain concealed. As mentioned in the first post, the hidden units can get hit by attacks that target a random unit in the hex (e.g. air strikes, mortar strikes) or all units in the hex (artillery strikes). I have not figured out yet whether the fire effectiveness against the hidden units is reduced to only 25% (as in Squad Battles). This would be quite important to know.


* In Kursk scenario #070511_Hill 225.9 hypothetical, if you move the Soviet tanks back a bit in order to conceal the german tanks in (5,4) and (6,2), then set all german units on "hold fire", then move the Soviet tanks forwards towards the germans again, the german tanks will open fire at long range (ignore custom opp. fire settings). I suppose it's because they're positioned in open terrain? THe same was true for infantry, which - if positioned in open terrain - also opened up ignoring its opp. fire settings.

SIDENOTE ON ARTILLERY & MORTARS:
- Mortars seem to always target a random unit in the target hex (including concealed ones?). Firing costs 1/2 of the movement allowance (2 shots per turn). Fire effectiveness is affected by the hex density multiplier (the higher the stacking value in the hex, the stronger the fire power) and the unit size modifier (the smaller the randomly targeted unit, the weaker the fire power).
- Artillery strikes hit ALL units in the target hex, including concealed ones. Firing costs the full movement allowance (1 shot per turn), but fire effectiveness is doubled to compensate. Fire effectiveness is affected by the hex density multiplier (as above) and the unit size modifier (as above).

-> Looking at this, it seems to me that a stack of three platoons in a hex is much safer under mortar fire than a single company unit? Simply because the mortar strikes only one of the three platoons and the platoons are small units, thus profit a lot from the unit size modifier.

[Mowgli]

I had another situation I didn't quite understand: As the sun rose (from a dawn turn to a normal turn, visibility increased from 2 to 4 hexes), I was immediately able to spot an enemy vehicle and gun unit positioned deployed in a village + bunker hex. I had the first turn, so they had no chance to fire at me yet (as I was the first to have the increased visibility). I found this odd, since village has a height of 3 so both should have remained concealed?

If the description is not clear, I can upload a video (I'm recording a Let's Play of the match).

Can it be that units who are not given any opportunity fire settings don't even "try" to conceal themselves and are thus automatically spotted?

[Strela]

I had another situation I didn't quite understand: As the sun rose (from a dawn turn to a normal turn, visibility increased from 2 to 4 hexes), I was immediately able to spot an enemy vehicle and gun unit positioned deployed in a village + bunker hex. I had the first turn, so they had no chance to fire at me yet (as I was the first to have the increased visibility). I found this odd, since village has a height of 3 so both should have remained concealed?

If the description is not clear, I can upload a video (I'm recording a Let's Play of the match).

Can it be that units who are not given any opportunity fire settings don't even "try" to conceal themselves and are thus automatically spotted?

Hi there,

I had a quick look and created a test scenario with exactly the conditions you called out and both units remained hidden. I assume you had AI turned on etc.

Can you tell me which scenario and I can have a closer look.

Thanks,

David

[Mowgli]

I had another situation I didn't quite understand: As the sun rose (from a dawn turn to a normal turn, visibility increased from 2 to 4 hexes), I was immediately able to spot an enemy vehicle and gun unit positioned deployed in a village + bunker hex. I had the first turn, so they had no chance to fire at me yet (as I was the first to have the increased visibility). I found this odd, since village has a height of 3 so both should have remained concealed?

If the description is not clear, I can upload a video (I'm recording a Let's Play of the match).

Can it be that units who are not given any opportunity fire settings don't even "try" to conceal themselves and are thus automatically spotted?

Hi there,

I had a quick look and created a test scenario with exactly the conditions you called out and both units remained hidden. I assume you had AI turned on etc.

Can you tell me which scenario and I can have a closer look.

Thanks,

David

Here is a video to show the two situations I was wondering about: 

https://youtu.be/RLx7n22EOBA

PS: I also noticed that the second unit I point out in the first part of the video is in "industrial" terrain, not in clear terrain. So here, too, it seems strange to me that the unit was revealed to me.

[Mowgli]

Another strange situation I can't explain from my PBEM. I was recording it as a Let's Play in german, trying to explain some of the game's rules in the process. But then I don't seem to understand the rules myself. :)

Short version: I thought I was making a clever concealed movement with my infantry unit, carefully shielding it from enemy sight by deploying a smoke screen and blocking the enemy LOS with one of my stacks (with stacking above 50% of max. stacking limit). Everything looked safe on the "visibility overlay" - the target hex of the move was not visible to any known or potential enemy position. Turned out it did not go unnoticed. But I can't explain why. (My unit had orders to hold fire and never did anything suspicious after the movement).

https://youtu.be/g146CZPtdYM

[Strela]

Thanks Mowgli.

Apologies for the delay, but I will try and look at these in the next day or two.

David

[Mowgli]

Regarding the second video my opponent gave me some additional information: He was not able to see my unit when it moved. It was only revealed to him when I moved back some of my tanks (from the LOS-blocking stack) through the infantry.

Hypothesis: When a unit moves into a hex that the opponent can see, some kinds of units are automatically revealed there: 1) units that are unable to hide (because the terrain is not high enough), 2) units that have been moved in this turn (?).

[Strela]

I had another situation I didn't quite understand: As the sun rose (from a dawn turn to a normal turn, visibility increased from 2 to 4 hexes), I was immediately able to spot an enemy vehicle and gun unit positioned deployed in a village + bunker hex. I had the first turn, so they had no chance to fire at me yet (as I was the first to have the increased visibility). I found this odd, since village has a height of 3 so both should have remained concealed?

If the description is not clear, I can upload a video (I'm recording a Let's Play of the match).

Can it be that units who are not given any opportunity fire settings don't even "try" to conceal themselves and are thus automatically spotted?

Hi there,

I had a quick look and created a test scenario with exactly the conditions you called out and both units remained hidden. I assume you had AI turned on etc.

Can you tell me which scenario and I can have a closer look.

Thanks,

David

Here is a video to show the two situations I was wondering about: 

https://youtu.be/RLx7n22EOBA

PS: I also noticed that the second unit I point out in the first part of the video is in "industrial" terrain, not in clear terrain. So here, too, it seems strange to me that the unit was revealed to me.

Hi there,

i have recreated the situation you have seen. I am going to get Berto to look over this, but my guess is that the program is using the 'base' visibility which is 4, before it is halved to 2 for dawn. You would have moved the guns forward in turns 1 & 2, and the hexes that you highlighted were in the 'base' visual range in those turns.

This is obviously a bug.

Thanks,

David

[Mowgli]

Thanks for the update! Good to know I'm not totally mistaken.
Do you have any idea what happened in the video I posted in post number #25 above?