Variable Visibility

[Von Earlmann]

Firstly, I hope all who come here have a good 2011.

I see a few mentions of variable visibility on this forum, usually in the context of game options.....specifying NVV!!
I would like to see a different approach based on the most striking and commonest manifestation of VV..Night and Day.

CS started off as a vehicle for regiment-sized wargaming. This small scale was due, I understand, to limits on processing power. For some time now, this problem has gone away. Games of army level are feasible.
Historically, many of these larger scale battles lasted more than one day. The "Crusader" operation ..... a complex series of interlinked fights in the Western Desert in late 1941 lasted nearly six weeks!

Huib Versloot showed me a way to change from day to night to day by a code change in the battle file itself....a simple enough procedure even to an analogue-era bloke such as I. However, it needs to be manually performed each daybreak/nightfall, and requires something like a set of notepad instructions. And the players need to remember to do it. Would it be too much to ask for a facility in the scenario editor to automatically change as specified by the designer?

Another issue...perhaps that which VV was meant to simulate..... is the issue of changing visibility during daytime....a desert afternoon duststorm, visibility approaching zero, but lasting only an hour; a morning rainstorm clearing up to a brilliant day on the steppe. A designer building a historical scen cannot reproduce such documented historical conditions. Would it be possible to have a facility whereby the visibility changes iaw a schedule set by the designer according to historical knowledge?
It might also work at night...moonrise/set.

Most of the VV you have mentioned is already in use in my campaigns. It works pretty well (just my opinion). I am not a fan of encouraging players to open and edit the .scn file. I fear it could lead to other abuses. Again just my opinion but based on seeing some funky things over the years.

VE