Section Leaders:
Fionn Kelly  & Madmatt

Fog of War & Anti-Tank Guns
Page 1 of 5

Well, I noticed some posts on the Combat Mission forum about anti-tank guns and fog of war issues and decided that the best way to try to explain them was to actually set up a simple scenario myself to illustrate how anti-tank guns are virtually invisible until they start firing (unless, of course, you site them in the open or something equally insane).

So, what I did was make a quick map which features woods on either side of a road. The map has a hill in the centre to act as a LOS obstructor but apart from that is very simple.. It took me approximately 40 minutes to make the 1km by 1km map, set the elevations, choose and place the units etc..

So that's 14 tanks versus 3 AT guns and 1 King Tiger. In this scenario I've placed the AT guns within 200 metres to 400 metres of the road to demonstrate that they can't be spotted. It should be noted that doing so ensures that once they are spotted they will be quickly knocked out by massed HE fire but this is a LOS, FOW example and not intended to explore optimal ambush dispositions.

I have played both sides of this scenario via hotseating so that I could ensure getting the exact shots I wanted of the various views to illustrate the nature of FOW in CM.

 In the picture you can see the red circles around two 88s which are sited to cover the hill and the road leading from it. One more 88 and the King Tiger are sited "in reserve" to cover the kink in the road.

I've placed some boresight markers on the map in likely ambush zones to represent "zeroed in" ambush locations which should help increase my first round accuracy and placed a few mines to kill Americans if they should try to venture off the roads. I've also ordered my AT teams to "hide" to reduce the chances of them being spotted AND to ensure they don't fire until I want them to.

This shot is taken during the German Perspective Action Phase Replay. During the first action phase I hear the sound of oncoming armoured vehicles and an unidentified light armoured vehicle is heard and located somewhere in the forest to my left (circled in blue).

This shot is taken during an American Perspective Action Phase Replay. What I actually identified as a half-trackish sound during the German action phase was actually a Stuart which is moving slowly through the scattered trees in an attempt to gain recon information whilst still remaining out of sight of the Germans.

The blue lines denote American concentrations and for the duration of this article blue circles will denote American units whilst red will denote German units.

This shot is taken during a German Perspective Action Phase Replay. As my 88s remain hidden the American vanguard advances over the hilltop. Here my 88 team has made contact with what is vaguely identified as a half-track. Since I've designed the scenario I know this is most probably a Stuart. Light tanks are often mistaken for half-tracks and vice versa. Note that the locations of mines etc remain known to the Germans throughout the whole game as they are the people who set the mines etc.

This shot is taken during an American Perspective Action Phase Replay. This is the reverse of the view above. Here, I have taken a shot from the location of the Stuart of the woods the 88 is in (its location is circled in red) to show that, during the Allied Action Phase the German gun is still invisible.

This shot is taken during an American Order Phase. In this shot you can see the movement order I am giving the Stuart. As you can appreciate it is very easy to estimate LOS visually using the 3 dimensional nature of CM's engine. Since I would generally try not to be exposed to LOS from units arranged on that long straight line in the north I have stopped the Stuart in such a location that it can't be spotted from that road. As you can see simply drawing a line down the road shows exactly where the LOS cut-off is. There's no more counting of hexes or intervening terrain. Pretty much the 3D engine removes all the arcane rules from a commander's decision-making process. If it LOOKS like the enemy can get LOS to a position from the road then they can. If it LOOKS like they can't then they can't. CM lends itself much more to "instinctive generalship" by doing this which is a good thing in my book.

This shot is taken during a German Perspective Action Phase Replay. The 88 unit in the woods to the south of the main road is doing a good job spotting all these enemy tanks. It can now see two possible tanks and two possible half-tracks (in actuality these are the two Stuarts). The Stuarts are the units at the extreme left and right of the picture.

This shot is taken during an American Perspective Action Phase Replay. This shot is taken from the perspective of the US southern flank. I have drawn LOS from the Stuart to the location of the German AT gun in the woods to the east BUT as you can see, even though it can see into the woods it can't see the AT gun since it is still camouflaged and hidden.