D85 Thermal sights question

Mafooo · 09-02-2011, 09:17 AM,

Does NATO receive the thermal bonus on dusk turns, as well as night turns. Just asking because the rule in the manual seems kind of vague on this

**Ricky B** · 09-02-2011, 09:23 AM,

It specifically states that any firing by a TIS capable unit at maximum visibility, against a non-TIS unit, gets the bonus. At least for D'85 - that seems very clear to me, depending on the unit's max range, if it is firing at whatever the vis range is at that point, it will get the bonus- dusk or even day. If the max vis is 2 for example , during a day turn, and the firing is at 2 hexes, the bonus/penalties apply.

Rick

Mafooo · 09-02-2011, 09:29 AM,

Ok thanks. I just associated thermal with nighttime.

**Ricky B** · 09-02-2011, 10:54 AM,

Me too, but it does make logical sense - if there is an impact on visibility enough to limit it to short ranges, thermal sites should help with spotting/firing.

Nitram Draw · 09-03-2011, 03:28 AM,

I've never seen it apply anytime except dawn/dusk and night turns.

**Ricky B** · 09-03-2011, 03:38 AM,

If you aren't paying attention you may not notice - for example, if vis dropped to 2, you would have to fire your TIS units at 2 to get the benefit, and if you only fired a few might not notice it as then the range modifier would reduce the effectiveness. And I am not sure the normal settings in the MC games have vis as low as 2? Would have to check that out, but it normally seems like vis is at least 3 from the relatively small group of games of MC I have played. And at 3 hexes it would be very unlikely to be noticeable, the standard games don't have any units that can fire this far, not sure if anyone's mods allow fire at 3 hexes?

JDR Dragoon · (This post was last modified: 09-03-2011, 06:25 AM by JDR Dragoon.)

At VIS 2, the TIS bonus and the penalty for firing at 2 hex range cancels each other out. In other words a unit w. TIS will hit as hard as if it was adjacent, while the opponent (provided he has 2 hex HA range) gets doubly penalized (halved for firing at 2 hexes, then halved again for firing at a TIS unit). The real winners here are Guided units, who retain their full HA at range and then gets the 50% TIS bonus. Suddenly those small 10-12 vehicle ATGM companies get some real punch. The AH64 Apache is especially deadly, since it has HA 45, range 3 and TIS (and VIS 3 might conceivably be encountered a lot of times during the day, meaning that it will hit w. HA 45+50%!). As for visibility, I have had MC games w. VIS of 2 and even 1, even during daylight hours (inclement weather etc.)