TIS questions, is the modification fair?

[vionville]

Istn't current TIS rule a bit too aggressive?

TIS rule means TIS units fire at 200% normal strength and non TIS units suffer a 50% defence strength loss. That means TIS units fight at 400% of their normal strength in night or under other low visibility environment, compared with non TIS unit.

In classic good vs bad guy scenario that means bad guys cannot even offer an effective resistance in the night, let alone launching their own attack.

While I agree the great adventage brought by TIS technology, a 400% boost of combat strength during significant amount of game turns seems a bit too much.

It is OK that it was applied to vehicle vs vehicle combat, but a vehicle, i.e tank, could hardly detect infantry first in the night, before it was detected by enemy infantry first, TIS or not. This is especially true in difficult terrain or in urban area.

Perhaps the rule should be changed that current modification applied only to vehicle vs vehicle combat. A reduced modification ( perhaps 1.5x factor) should be applied to infantry battles. And non TIS modification should be applied, if attacker is vehicle unit (especially without infantry escort) and defender is infantry unit.

Or maybe more complex rules should be considered, taking consideration other factors, for example armors with or without infantry escort, the place of combat is urban or woodland or flatland, etc.

[P.Ako]

What does TIS stand for?

[Ivan]

Glad I'm not the only one scratching my head tring to figure out what TIS means.

[Volcano Man]

Thermal Imaging System. And yes, it does make sense to have TIS equipped vehicles at the effectiveness in which they are represented. TIS is an extreme advantage, if your enemy has one and you do not then you are essentially helpless in low visibility conditions, regardless of if you have IR sights or illumination flares -- you are just a sitting duck, no two ways about it. The enemy can essentially see you at long ranges, avoid you, and maneuver to a position to put effective fires on your while you are helpless. This is why (of course) Western armies prefer to fight at night.

The argument that TIS cannot detect infantry easy is totally false, you use TIS (in real life) to find the infantry because they stick out in the open terrain like sore thumbs. They are visible in windows and in forests as hot spots and they show up even at long ranges. In other words, a tank equipped with TIS will have it on at all times, even in the day time, in order to find and locate infantry (and vehicles) quickly.

As far as how much of a multiplier the TIS adds to the attacking power is, as with everything else, open to everyone's opinion. It has been like this since FG85, and I don't think there is a problem with it. To me, "400%" (4x) effectiveness certainly represents a situation where one side is helpless and easy pickings, if it was lower than this then it wouldn't be effective enough. Low visibility conditions is when these TIS equipped vehicles would get their 4 or 5 : 1 kill ratios in, and it is the only way to allow the west to counter attack on night turns while the east attacks in the day. It is the ONE AND ONLY qualitative advantage that the west has, and is the only real thing that can offset the numbers of Warsaw Pact / North Korean hordes. Having said that though, the only real ideal approach would be to have the multiplier be something you can set in the PDT file, with 400% being the default, but anything less than this default (again, IMO) would not be a realistic enough advantage.

[vionville]

ONE AND ONLY qualitative advantage

???

That is false. I see most scenario with West units having at least 1 level quality adventage, not to mention their vehicles and infantry units generally have significantly higher hard soft attack values as well as vehicles with defend values.

400% modification is no small value, it is huge. NO OTHER GAME in the market provide such modification for so many units for such long duration of the game. It renders opposite units almost like sitting ducks. I say this only ruin the fun of the game. You could give West side other adventages, instead of giving their units suddenly 400% combat value boost during certain turns.

Another problem is with weather. If so, weather plays too much a role in the game. Of course you could use pre defined weather file, however this makes the game less realistic.

---

Even with TIS could armored units slaughter infantry units in forest or urban like sitting ducks as that happens in the game? I hugely doubt that. If so the afghanistan war should be over years ago.

And I dont believe soviets are totally ignorant of such technology. TIS, after all, is not complex (as a huge system, i.e. modern fighters) nor concept revolutionary as atomic weapons. It is just add on devices on conventional weapon systems such as tanks. If such devices could render their huge armored formation almost useless in perhaps most parts of the war, do u think soviets would not try to steal it or design some tactic to avoid this problem?

This rule significantly disrupt the balance of the game.

[Volcano Man]

Ok, I'll bite.

Firstly, I was typing in haste and I was not speaking literally when I said it was the West's ONE and ONLY qualitative advantage, I was referring to the specific case of tank on tank combat, and that the thermal imager was the only real, non marginal, qualitative *technological* edge between the two. Yes they had different armor, firepower, speed and so on, but the TIS was the one thing that was present on one side and not on the other. The other differences are like splitting hairs when it comes down to the comparison of numbers.

And I dont believe soviets are totally ignorant of such technology. TIS, after all, is not complex (as a huge system, i.e. modern fighters) nor concept revolutionary as atomic weapons. It is just add on devices on conventional weapon systems such as tanks. If such devices could render their huge armored formation almost useless in perhaps most parts of the war, do u think soviets would not try to steal it or design some tactic to avoid this problem?

Where to begin. To say that it must not have been that big of an advantage because if it were, then surely the Soviets would have stolen it, copied it, or tried to avoid it -- that is an interesting statement. The answer is, they did all three. They avoided it by choosing not to attack at night, and instead sought to hold what they had at night and push during the day. I recall many an hour of "stand to" at in the morning, waiting for the early morning Soviet attacks in training where the OPFOR fought based on Warsaw Pact doctrine. The Soviets did have their own such devices too, the device wasn't secret per se, and it was certainly not something they were ignorant of. The simple fact was, they did not have the technological or financial capability to create the device on a large scale in the small component size needed to fit in their massive fleet of tanks and once they did create the device small enough and could afford to employ it, only company commander or battalion commander vehicles would have the device, if they had one at all, and it wasn't until the mid 1990s when they started to see widespread use *in that role* (on command tanks). Needless to way, I am talking about the 1970s to the 1990s here when thermal imaging devices where hundreds of thousands of dollars; you can probably purchase one for hundreds of dollars now days for all I know, but back then it was a high dollar luxury item for a tank. Well, maybe I should rephrase that. It wasn't as if they couldn't afford the device or technology, but the Warsaw Pact operated under the acceptance that they would suffer high losses. It wasn't so much the cost per individual unit per tank, it was the cost of a massive number of units for the entire tank force. Maybe that makes more sense.

You are correct though, the TIS was not a revolution like an atomic weapon, but it was something similar to the introduction of the machine gun on the WW1 battlefield, or (in their own times) the gladius, the longbow, and so on. It, in itself, was not a paradigm shift, but it was a leap forward in effectiveness that, when applied properly and in sufficient numbers, gave (and still gives) a massive combat multiplier. I mean, what good is the longbow in medieval times if you engaged your enemy at close range all the time? What good is a single night vision device on a Taliban's head if the rest of their force cannot be equipped with them? What good is thermal imaging if both sides field it in large numbers (which, BTW, you will notice that if both sides have TIS in MC then they essentially cancel each other out)? For these combat multipliers, it all depends on the application of a device or weapon and the numbers in which you can employ them, rather than "how revolutionary" (which is totally subjective) the device/weapon is or was.

Referring to the effectiveness of the device itself, you keep referring to how you don't think a thermal imaging system is that effective. I assume that you have extensive first hand knowledge and experience with thermal imaging devices? Perhaps you were a member of a tank crew which was equipped with a thermal imager like I was? The short answer here is that you cannot fully understand the advantage that a thermal imaging system would provide until you have been on vehicle that has one, and pitted against (in training or in real life) against vehicles that did not have any. A perfect example of this is Desert Storm. Although the entire war was not fought at night, that clash was fought almost exclusively at night, where the Iraqis were all but defenseless, and it wasn't just because it just so happened to be at night every time the coalition struck (either in the air or in the initial battles on the ground) the western forces specifically chose the time and place to give battle, and naturally it was during a time of day when they would be able to see the enemy and the enemy was unable to see them. In that type of match up, the enemy was essentially helpless targets on a range. It is also, in a large part, because of Desert Storm that the Russians and Chinese have shifted away from the quantity preference and, in this case, has fielded thermal images in large numbers on MBTs (which is also due to the affordability of the technology these days as well).

Even with TIS could armored units slaughter infantry units in forest or urban like sitting ducks as that happens in the game? I hugely doubt that. If so the Afghanistan war should be over years ago.

Well, just my opinion here, but the length of the current conflict does have something to do with it being an insurgency, not a conventional war, the ruggedness of the terrain, the broad spaces, the relatively thinly spread coalition forces, the difficulty in telling foe from civilian, and so on. The real reply to this statement, I guess, is that the thermal and night vision advantage has helped, with the other advantages, to allowed coalition losses to be a fraction of that of the opposing side. There are no real parallels here to the subject matter of this thread though, or at least I don't see the connection. It is like saying that if the Leopard 2A5 or AH-64 Longbow is so effective, then why aren't the Taliban all eliminated and the war won? It hasn't been won yet, therefore those weapons must not be effective. It doesn't make sense. The inverse of this would be to say that the Thermal Imager was so effective that the Soviets never bothered to attack across the East/West German Border in 1985, which probably makes more since being the historical case.

But really, why don't you just turn off the TIS flag in your OOB and play without it? It would certainly turn it into a closer run thing for NATO if you did this, but they would probably be totally unable to do much to the massive numbers of the WP if you turned it off. Still, the solution here seems simple: edit the OOB, turn off the flag for all the vehicles that have them and save the components, then update the values so that all the flags are removed on those vehicles and voila, no more TIS.

Also, I seriously recommend that you purchase Steel Beasts Pro PE, not just shameless plug here (well, OK, maybe a little shameless plug). In it you could directly see first hand any advantage of a TIS equipped vehicle versus a non equipped one during darkness. ;)

edited: typos

[alaric99x]

We may all study war, but there are some among us who study it and also practice that study. A very clear and eloquent response, Herr Feldwebel Williams. How well I remember trying to explain similar concepts to civilians, or to those in my own Army unfamiliar with the practice of those concepts.

[Indragnir]

Brilliant Ed, as usual.

Take a look at the (stock) scenaro DB: even with TIS turns (not only at Night but also at Dawn/Dusk) 90% WP victories, half a dozen thought it was pro WP side.

Bests
César

[Taffy6]

In my opinion, the TIS modifier is likely spot-on. The most recent large East vs West tank battles were in the Gulf War/Desert Storm in 1991. The battle at 73 Easting pitting the US 2nd Armored Cavalry Rgt against a brigade of the Iraqi Republican Guard was fought at night, US M1/M3 type AFV's vs Russian T72/BMP AFVs. Even the movement to contact in the afternoon was in crappy weather. Fog, mist and oil-well fires choking out any chance of sunlight.

E Troop alone (10 M-1's and 13 M-3's, all with TIS) destroyed at least 20 T-72's plus other vehicles at no loss to themselves. 2nd ACR, a formation without significant infantry, effectively destroyed two entire heavy Iraqi RG brigades. These Iraqis actually fought valiantly and agressively until they were killed or rendered hors de combat. They just couldn't overcome thier inability to accurately shoot at Americans they couldn't see in the night, Americans who could see and shoot accurately at them first.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_73_Easting



I believe the historical record supports the TIS modifier as realistic. It may not be "fair". but war is what it is.

Taffy

[JDR Dragoon]

Another point worth bearing in mind, is that not all NATO units have TIS. In the stock FG/NGP/DF 85 timeline, only the US really have uniform TIS equipment on a majority of units (M1, M60A3, M2/M3 and M901 equipped units, with M113 equipped infantry units lacking).

The W. Germans have TIS on their Leopard 2s (about 50% of their tank fleet in the game) plus their Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar (one company per brigade, although only the TOW equipped Jaguar 2s had TIS before the 1990s IRL, with the HOT equipped Jaguar 1 lacking, but the stock game doesn´t discern between the two).

The Netherlands have their Leo2s (about 33% of their total tank fleet)

The British have all of their tank fleet (Chieftain/Challengers) w. TIS.

The French army only have their HOT equipped ATGM units w. TIS.

The Austrian, Danish, and Belgian armies have no TIS equipped units in the game. Afaik the belgian and austrians didn´t get these systems into service before the early 90´s, and the danish units that would have had TIS in a 1985 setting, were a part of LANDZEALAND, not LANDJUT.

So in conclusion:
The only country with a marked TIS advantage is the US, especially if playing NGP or FG 85, where the US units are uniform B and A morale (but are lacking M2 IFVs, which they have in DF85, at the cost of lower morale). The British come in at a close second, with the germans and dutch trailing somewhat behind. The rest of NATO has no marked advantage here.