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Charles2222 -> (10/9/2001 10:19:00 PM)
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I used to theorize that the phantom target had moved but that the firing unit hadn't updated that, but I've yet to see this to be true. The idea of scrolling through all the units in targeting, and it not appearing seems to confirm that it has moved on, but if you don't select any of those you've scrolled through, and hit target again, it's still there.
Every single time I've fired at a phantom unit, the fire is indicative of a unit that is there. The only thing that flaked me out any, is if the unit is infantry and one of the hits knocks it out. Because when firign at infantry, you usually knock them to dispersal instead of outright destruction, it doesn't display or show the dispersal, but instead the firing unit no longer has any targets.
The fact of the matter is that when units cloak, they have to cloak at a specific instant, which I take to be between player turns. Let's say that you know with absolute certainty, that infantry C1 was 3 hexes away from your KTiger, which you in turn fired on the infantry with that unit. End of turn. So, we figure, how can a unit that just fired on it, lose track of it, since timewise it just fired on it, and the opponent did nothing else? The problem is, that the KTiger in a sense didn't actually see it, when it did. Something else was seeing it.
I'm not too sure of the benefits of this spotting routine, but what often happens, as I said, the KTiger doesn't actually see it, when it fired, and so maybe the next thing you do is grab that KTiger to cream it. Only problem is, that the unit, probably infantry, whcih had spotted the enemy infantry during the enemy turn, hasn't been touched by the player yet, so that that unit 'cannot' spot it. This is one of the annoying things about 'spin-dancing', you have to get the unit possibly spotting it, and spin it toward the direction of where units may have been lost track of. This rather shadowy aspect of gameplay, isn't helped any if the unit that did the spotting during the enemy turn, gets heavily surpressed itself, and worse yet if it cannot rally. So how this works out, the phantom unit cannot be spotted, unless, the prior spotter is present in the same hex it was before, in th esame status, which means that if it had retreated and had been knocked back a hex, then rallied to 1, and moved back into the hex, there is a chance it still will not spot it (because a unit stationary with no suppression, as the spotter may had been when the spotting was done, may be enough of a difference to not spot a unit after rallying it back up and moving it in).
As you can tell this spin-dancing doesn't sit well with me, but then I can't remember the advantages either. It kind of burns me that if I go through my units alphabetically and rally the ones that need it, and fire straight through like that, that there may be units I couldn't spot because of two reasons and therefore used fire that I otherwise wouldn't have (though fighting locally on occassion gets around that somewhat). The first problem is rallying. We have to rally them in the order of units that are spotting first. Perhaps with CL a feature used could be something of an auto-rally for the 15 units closest to an enemy unit, or perhaps with units closest to the enemy map edge.
The other problem is the spin-dance. Another thing that might be nice would be an automatic spin-dance command for all foot units, therefore if they had been rallied in advance relatively all spotting could be done, that can be. I don't say all units spin-dancing (unless they stopped the spin-dance where they started it [same degrees]), because you probably wouldn't want armor facing in different directions than they were left in after the enemy turn. Such a feature would be something of an en masse search feature or a search with limited units.
Anyway, just a few ideas.
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![]("smile.gif")
This is about enemy icons that turn invisible even though I still have LOS and acquisition.
Sometimes when I cycle a unit through it's available targets it will 'see', provide info on, and can engage an 'invisible' enemy unit (that I can't see) even though that unit appears to be targeting an empty hex.
![]("biggrin.gif")
(some bug i guess??)
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Also, am fighting the WWII campaign as the US and against the Germans it isn't too bad, they have a reasonable number of units. But against an Italian attack, with their hordes of infantry, it's a real pain--invisible 13.2mm HMGs keep popping up which is rather hard on my Halftracks, AT guns and AD guns, not to mention my infantry.
I assumed this was a known bug--I was just wondering if there was a fix or workaround or if it will be fixed in 7.0
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Let me explain the problem further...
I loaded my savegame from the beginning of the turn in question and had the M10 cycle through all it's targets using the 'T' key and, sure enough, the M10 could target the 'invisible' (to me) Stug:
* The game drew a red outline around the hex the 'invisible' Stug was in and drew a red line from the M10 to the target hex.
* In the text window at the bottom of the map it had:![]("confused.gif")
If several of my units can 'see' (target) an enemy unit, I should be able to see it on the map (at least in SPWAW.)
What I am reasonably sure is happening is that something is causing the Stug icon to be erased or painted over and the icon is not being refreshed/redrawn.
Again, I've noticed this with other enemy units--the Stug was just the worst case (at least for the M10 crew ![]("wink.gif")
) I've seen so far.
BTW: I'm a retired US Army Armor officer whose service included almost 2 years commanding a Soviet-styled Motorized Rifle Battalion as part of the OPFOR at the US Army's National Training Center. I've also been playing computer wargames since Kampfgruppe and Mech Brigade (both by SSI, 1985). I understand Fog of War 