Fresh meat

[A Canadian Cat]

I want to check out woods again so I deployed 4 Russian rifle squads on 'Hide' with short covered arcs along the red line about 18 metres inside the woods,

I hate to say it but that does not look like you have created woods at all. :sad: Trees alone do not create woods. Trees on grass (or default squares as this looks like) are like tress on a lawn. It would be like fighting on your local park where the grass gets mowed under all the trees regularly. Not much concealment there.

So your men are *not* in woods. For woods you need to add the light or heavy woods tile under the trees you have. Also further in should have more heavy woods and it would be good for the tree line to have some smaller trees and then some bushes before giving way to grass.

If wild woods are what you are looking to test with.

they can clearly see the Germans at around 200m even though they're on Hide, so we can conclude that Hiding doesn't interfere with spotting ability..

I strongly urge all readers to not reach that conclusion. It is true that when hiding they do not totally stop spotting but very few soldiers will be poking their heads up. I can tell you from experience that small teams on hide spot ridiculously poorly. Hence my mantra hide = death

[PoorOldSpike]

For woods you need to add the light or heavy woods tile under the trees you have.

Thanks for the woods info mate, there are dozens of ground textures and tree types so I'll put some really thick heavy stuff on a map and run tests in my Tactical thread here-

https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=63492

[PoorOldSpike]

they can clearly see the Germans at around 200m even though they're on Hide, so we can conclude that Hiding doesn't interfere with spotting ability..

I strongly urge all readers to not reach that conclusion. It is true that when hiding they do not totally stop spotting but very few soldiers will be poking their heads up. I can tell you from experience that small teams on hide spot ridiculously poorly. Hence my mantra hide = death

My tests were done with 11-man squads, so it's possible they can spot better than small teams because there are more eyeballs to go around..:)

[PoorOldSpike]

Sorry, perhaps I should have introduced myself so newcomers wouldn't think "who the hell is he?"
Try clicking my name at the top of my posts and this panel should come up, I've been playing the CM series for 14 years at 7 different clubs and managed to top the Rugged Defense, Appui Feu, Wargame Players Club and Few Good Men CM ladders along the way, but I don't pretend to know everything, that's why I often ask for other peoples opinions and feedback because this is a discussion forum so let's discuss, haha..:)



PS- does anybody know if the Red Thunder game system is exactly the same as the CMBN system?
I've got a CMBN/RT thread here-
https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=63492

and CMBN-
https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=60920

And if anybody's interested I've also got this CM Black Sea thread-
https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=67599

I don't know how many people still play CMx1 but for the record my tactical threads about it are here-
https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...php?fid=31


I'm currently a Mod at the Mission4Today aircraft forum-



And before that I was Admin/Mod/Second in command at the Few Good Men-

[PoorOldSpike]

I see Google Street view has got some good Russian pictures which will help CM mapmakers, for example here's the road into famous Prokhorovka, I know it was a 1943 battle, but CMRT is flexible enough to cover several years-

[PoorOldSpike]

INFANTRY IN HEAVY FOREST
This time I created heavy forest with 'Foliage Tree 'E', and 'Ground 2 Heavy Forest', and as Canadian Cat predicted, it gave better concealment because this time the Germans had to get within about 50 metres before they spotted the Russians and began firing. (it was about 100m in earlier tests with thin forest)

1- The Russian 11-man squads are in the forest on 'Hide' and short arcs.
As before, they easily see the Germans walking on 'Move' at over 200m but I hold their fire for the whole test to see what happens. The Germans haven't spotted them yet..



2- The Russkis are about 20m back inside the trees. I could have deployed them deeper inside but then they wouldn't have been able to see out..



3- zoom view..

[PoorOldSpike]

4- the Germans continue walking but haven't spotted the Russians yet..



5- but at about 50m range they spot the first russian squad and begin firing..



6- The Russian view, they didn't return fire because of their very short arc and routed soon after this screenshot was taken, but in a proper game you'd remove or expand the arc as soon as you want them to start shooting..


Conclusion- In heavy forest on Hide, you won't be seen until the enemy closes to about 50m, but in thin forest you'll be seen at around 100m.
Of course for total concealment you could deploy your infantry deeper inside forests if the tactical situation calls for it, but the the disadvantage is that they won't be able to see out into open ground.
Reminder-the tests were conducted on a bright sunny day, so we can assume spotting distances in all terrain would be much less at dusk/dawn/night and/or bad weather.

[PoorOldSpike]

Squads on Hide will still take peeks
I should have noticed this earlier, duh! This Russian squad is on Hide in thick woods, and if we monitor the status of individual men on the readout at bottom left, we see that the status of some of them changes from 'Hiding' to 'Spotting' every few seconds at random.
So in a typical 11-man squad like this on 'Hide', there'll always be about 3 men (white arrows) who'll keep raising their heads above the weeds to take a peek at the enemy to keep tabs on his whereabouts.
It also explains why squads laying on the floor on Hide in buildings can still spot the enemy as some men raise their heads to peep out the windows..:)
And it explains why Hide never gives total concealment, because heads keep popping up and the enemy will spot them sooner or later as he gets closer.

[A Canadian Cat]

INFANTRY IN THICK WOODS
This time I created thick woods using 'Foliage Tree 'E', and 'Ground 2 Heavy Forest',

2- The Russkis are about 20m back inside the trees. I could have deployed them deeper inside but then they wouldn't have been able to see out..

Here is the kind of thing I recommend doing. If your plan is to ambush the Germans crossing the field. No hiding. Just split off two or three scout teams and have them 20-25m into the woods with cover arcs. No hiding. The bulk of the platoon goes deep into the woods to wait. Once the scouts determine that the Germans are getting close you can quick the platoon to 20m inside the woods and let them open up when they have something to shoot at.

[weapon2010]

also I would like to see testing done on green squads vs elite squads hiding, Im sure elite squads are better at not being spotted, and +2 leadership should help as well