Some general spotting tests

P

PoorOldSpike

Guest
Spotting the enemy

This Editor test mission examines how easy/difficult it is for us to spot enemy infantry, and vice-versa. (Incidentally this test was conducted at the 'Regular' difficulty setting and is vanilla Comb Ops 1.08/1.57, Chernarus map)

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PIC 1: The Editor setup, I place my blue rifleman guy behind a house at bott left, and I place 5 Russian riflemen in the woods up the slope 125 metres away-
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PIC 2: I begin the game, here's our blue guy safe behind the house..
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PIC 3: And a quick glance at the map shows the enemy are invisible-
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PIC 4: So I crawl blue guy out to peek up the hill, but he sees nothing with his eyeballs..
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PIC 5: However, a glance at the map reveals there are 3 enemy up there!
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PIC 6: I leave him out there prone for over a minute but the enemy haven't started shooting so I crawl him back behind the house. So far there's been no shooting by either side.
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PIC 7:- Let's analyse this enlarged section of Pic 4 to explain things, and we see all 5 enemy units plain as day!
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So even though we (as the player) couldn't spot the enemy in 3D on our monitors, blue guy DID spot them (well 3 at least which is pretty good), making them show on the map..:)
Obviously we (as player) would have needed a telescopic or thermal sight or binocs to see them, but all our blue guy had was iron sights.
The good news is that THEY DIDN'T SEE HIM even though he was lying prone in open ground, otherwise they'd have started shooting instead of allowing him to crawl back behind the house.
Obviously THE PROGRAM REMEMBERS AND DISPLAYS LAST KNOWN ENEMY POSITIONS for a while even if your units lose their line-of-sight to them, making the map a very valuable life-saving tool.
So far there's been no shooting from either side


Just for fun I decide to hot things up by crawling blue guy out to take some shots and hopefully pick off all 5 enemies in quick succession. Here I nail the first one-
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But a storm of fire from his mates quickly finishes me off before I can even draw a bead on any others..
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Incidentally in a followup test I crawled him around in plain enemy view for a while again, but they never spotted him for over a full minute just as before,
But when I crouched him or stood him up, he was quickly spotted and shot both times.

CONCLUSIONS (based purely on this test, but results may vary in other missions depending on visibility/day/night/weather etc, and enemy type/equipment, eg sniper scopes etc)

A- Your prone, non firing guy won't be spotted for at least a minute even if he's in open ground, even if he's crawling.
B- But the instant you crouch or stand up, or open fire, the enemy will return fire within a few seconds.
C- Keep regularly glancing at the map for enemy icons, to get valuable intelligence on where they are.
D- Spotting the enemy in cover on your monitor is difficult, but that doesn't mean he's not there, so look very carefully, preferably with telescopic or thermal sights if you have them.
 
The secret lab has resumed its activities, Herr Doktor !!
Playing "regular" against the poor vanilla AI is not much of a challenge for an experimented player like you with all this knowledge...lol
 
Also note that two of the russians are silhouetted against the sky which makes them a lot easier to spot. The AI also spots the player easier if he is in a similar position.
 
Thanks Pos as usual very informative post. I have been only doing AI missions as well and the spoting thing bothers me alot sometimes this helps.
 
Scotty471 said:
Thanks Pos as usual very informative post. I have been only doing AI missions as well and the spoting thing bothers me a lot sometimes this helps.
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I visit the Bohemia AA2 forum regularly- http://forums.bistudio.com/

to monitor the chat and stuff, and believe me a lot of people are having problems in one way or another, so you're not the only one..;)
AA2 is a big complex game with zillions of versions, mods, patches, fixes, addons, expansions, preferences and settings etc with new ones being released all the time, so no wonder people are confused with all the incompatibility and instability and occasional glitches.
By comparison, Cmbb and Cmak have been stable version 1.03 for many years..:)

I find with AA2 that the secret of enjoying the game is to adopt the old military axiom 'KISS' (keep it simple stupid) with small missions which we can easily create for ourselves in the editor, and not get involved with huge slowmoving monstrosities full of pain-in-ass scripting and convoluted storylines.
After all AA2 is a wargame, not a bleddy soap opera..:)
 
Corsaire31 said:
..Playing "regular" against the poor vanilla AI is not much of a challenge for an experimented player like you with all this knowledge...lol
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Are you an AA2 player mate?
Lots of people are saying in the Bohemia AA2 forum that the accuracy of AI gunfire is unrealistically too good, even on the 'Regular' difficulty setting,and I agree with them.
It's as if the enemy have eyes like hawks, able to spot you and shoot you much too quickly.
For that reason, many people use the 'Novice' setting to try to reduce the AI's accuracy.
Not me though, I stick with Regular..:)

If I get hit and wounded by a shot, I just carry on and think- "It's gonna take more than one sonny"..
 
The AI used to have "super" vision and hearing but it was patched.

The more I get into ARMA the more I love it, I used to avoid the large complicated missions with AI squad control like the plague but now with the patches and experience I control it easily and love every second.
 
And post screenshots of how you get on, that's part of the fun, discussing what tactics we used or didn't use..:)
PS- And try Bootie's excellent 'New Dawn New Day' too..

At the moment we've only got about 3 FGM-created missions for download, so you could create some of your own to add to them, I keep meaning to create more myself..:)
 
Bootie said:
Ive got one half finished but they require so much work!!
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Well keep 'em simpler..:)
For example my 'Grenade Launcher' test which I just posted only took me 10 minutes to create in the editor, no kidding.
I could add a few more units to it to beef it up (eg a couple more fuel trucks and an escorting armoured car, and an extra man on my side with a bazooka) to turn it into a proper scenario which would only take another 10 mins.
Then after playtesting it and polishing it up the whole caboodle would be finished within an hour at most.
So I'd say to all noobie would-be scen creators-"just DO it, it's not a bit scary, it's FUN"..:)
 
A guy at the AA2 forum said "Wow thanks!" to me the other day after I told him how to get into the simple little Armory missions, and earlier another guy said to me "Thanks, why didn't anybody tell me about Armory missions before?".
The moral- small simple missions CAN be exciting..:)

Believe me, I've tried a lot of bigger stock missions and they tend to be too complicated for their own good, containing assorted tasks to be worked through, other men to control, vehicles and helos to fly, and so on.
Most of the time the briefings are insufficient and i've lost count of the times I've gone into a mission, studied the map and briefing and thought "what the hell am I supposed to do?", so I just Exit out with my head spinning to have a lie down.
 
Another thing about spotting-
If you're being shot at by small arms and dive behind soft cover such as a bush or into long grass, the enemy AI will simply continue to shoot through the bush/grass at your last known position even though he can't see you, which is realistic and is a real-world tactic, and you're quite likely to get zapped.
But if you dive behind 'hard' cover such as a stone wall or boulder or other solid object, you're usually quite safe against small arms and will get a bowel-churning thrill out of hearing his bullets crack into the wall, knowing you're safe behind it.
That's why the real-world military don't regard 'soft' cover as cover at all, they call it 'concealment', and it only works if the enemy didn't see you moving behind it, otherwise he'll nail you by shooting through it.

PS- I've found by experience that not even a stone wall will protect you against heavier weapons; i once dived behind a wall but a ZSU Quad-23mm AA vehicle simply blasted me through the wall, demolishing it in the process.
Another time, an enemy tank actually drove clean through the wall, crushing me under the debris and its tracks, it was one of the 10-foot tall variety of walls and I could hear the tanks engine and gears growling just on the other side as it vainly looked for a gate to get through, and I had a smile on my face bigger than a wave on a slop bucket until it smashed through..
What did I do wrong master?

"You should have expected the unexpected, grasshopper, just as the innocent duckling paddling on the sacred lake of Ho-Wah must be wary of the hungry piranha beneath"
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(Vanilla Comb Ops 1.57 Desert map, Regular difficulty, )

First test, 200m
I place a Blufor Rifleman (player, standing) and a 12-man Opfor squad 200m apart-
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I start the game and the Opfor squad instantly sees me and cuts me down within about 5 seconds-
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Second test, 300m:-
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I'm standing stationary (not firing) but they can't see me!
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Holding the right mouse butt zooms them close-
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After 2 minutes they still haven't seen me so I begin firing-
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and am cut down by a storm of return fire about 10 secs later-
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