American Civil War Game Club (ACWGC)

All,

This screenshot is from Gettysburg. The hotspot is on Buford and some arty in (67,141). Playing hot seat with just regular FOW and currently "show visible hexes" is selected. As can be seen I can see the entire road between the reb regiment and the leader that is circled in the screenshot. That road is lined back to back with reb regiments. Why can I not see the regiments even though the hexes are highlighted? They are all at the same elevation as the visible leader and regiment. The hexes in the row to the right of the units that I know are there are greyed out because the "invisible" units are blocking the LOS to those hexes. Is this a bug? Thanks in advance.

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Loudscott
Major
Army of the Tennessee

Interesting situation. I suspect that the situation you have shown highlights a limitation in the WDS LOS algorithm. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that WDS does a check between the center of hexes. If the path between the center of the observers hex and hex that is trying to be viewed passes through any part of a hex that blocks the LOS, the hex that is trying to be viewed is also completely blocked. In your situation, the first Confederate unit in the column of units along the Pike is not blocked, so it is visible. Each successive unit behind it is blocked by a unit in front of it, even if the unit in front of it is not visible, so none of the regiments behind the first are seen. In real life, we would see part of each unit along the Pike behind the first unit and be able to infer that there are complete regiments marching along the road in column.

As an experiment, I took something similar to the situation that was shown and moved every other CSA unit off the road to the NE. I added yellow lines to illustrate LOS. Most of the CSA units are still hidden, but one did appear. Note the last unit in the marching column is still not visible.

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Brig. Gen. Wallace Welder
3/1/II AotP
UA Cabinet Secretary

Wallace,

Thank you for joining the discussion. I would be VERY interested to see the Union POV screenshot with the V key "visible hexes" on and see what hexes are highlighted. Thanks.

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Loudscott
Major
Army of the Tennessee

Here you go.

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Brig. Gen. Wallace Welder
3/1/II AotP
UA Cabinet Secretary

So something else a little interesting here. I have attached a save file which is the beginning of the USA turn. If you watch the replay of the CSA turn you can see all the regiments marching down the pike, because I assume those hexes are visible. But when the replay ends the units disappear and you can only see the first in line and one at the end which is at a higher elevation. All the ones in between vanish. At the end of the replay you'll see that there is a gap in the line and no Reb unit is at (52,130) nonetheless the unit behind him on the pike (51,130) vanishes as well. I would really like to understand what is happening here.

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Loudscott
Major
Army of the Tennessee

So in your case Wallace, the units that can't been seen from Union perspective are not on highlighted and therefore visible hexes. That I get. In the case I'm showing the units are in fact on highlighted...so visible hexes. That is were I'm getting stumped.

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Loudscott
Major
Army of the Tennessee

I've been doing some testing to better understand your concern about the "visible" hexes. I think I see what's going on. I'll try to post a description of the results later today or tomorrow.

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Brig. Gen. Wallace Welder
3/1/II AotP
UA Cabinet Secretary

Again, thank you for joining the conversation. According to WDS everything is WAD.

https://forum.wargameds.com/viewtopic.php?p=24675#p24675

But I'm not on board just yet

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Loudscott
Major
Army of the Tennessee

I don't see a WDS response. If you're referring to my comment, I'm not WDS and I haven't tried to run any tests. I can only add that this series is long standing and that a LOS issue would be unlikely, but not impossible. Just be aware that because a unit moves into an area where LOS should show units in that area, they will not always become visible immediately. Sometimes a trigger mechinism is required. I do not know all the nuances.

But bugs can still be identified. I did report a bug today that concerns units in Line that can retreat across a creek bridge. In this situation, only a unit in column should be able to retreat across the bridge as only units in column can cross.

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Brigadier General Richard Walker
II Corps, 4th Division, 6th Brigade
Army of Tennessee
(JTS/WDS Scenario Designer)

I did a number of tests and have a bunch of pictures showing what happens in different situations. Here is my attempt to put the results from the pictures of the testing into words.

Visible units or terrain cast a visibility "shadow", blocking the Line of Sight from an observing unit. The visibility "shadow" from a specific observing unit can be displayed on the map by using the Visible Hexes (V) tool icon or Hot Key
-If FOW is on:
- Units in the visibility "shadow" can not been seen
- Only the visibility "shadows" from visible units are displayed on the map
- Units blocked (not visible) from view by a unit casting a visibility "shadow" can also cast their own visibility "shadow". This can also block the LOS from an observing unit.
- If FOW is off:
- Units in the visibility "shadow" can be seen, but will appear darker since they are in the "shadow" of a unit blocking the LOS with the Visible Hexes function/tool
- Visibility "shadows" are displayed from all units involved in the LOS observation, not just the "shadows" from visible units

...my original formatting (for clarity) didn't work. I'm trying something different...

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Brig. Gen. Wallace Welder
3/1/II AotP
UA Cabinet Secretary