[Incantator]

At first, I thought it is just armors have poor sight that they cannot spot anything inside a building 50m in front of them even though something is shooting at them with all the smokes and sounds, but it's really not funny when an infantry is being attacked before 20m and still cannot locate the enemy's position. I tried lowering the cover values in element.txt, but it only makes units more prone to be visible in general and does not directly make the attacking enemy's position revealed easily.

Is this behaviour hard-coded (I suppose) or is there any other way to at least work around this? Is this problem also prevalent in later CC games? It's tiring me to locate all the positions manually by looking at the monitor closely especially when the fires are coming from everywhere; it's so stupid and unnecessary.

[ScnelleMeyer]

You should adopt a techique that is used in real life: Its called observation by fire.
This means a covering unit will fire at suspected enemy location to seek a reaction or to make them disclose their position.
It is a very smart technique to use in CC as well because it works. Also with a human opponent.

If fires are coming at you from everywhere you might have a problem with your maneuver and use of terrain and covering units. - Try not to bite off too much terrain in one go.

[Incantator]

I myself served in the army before and also played CC2 so I know the tactic well enough. The point is that not identifying a huge gun shooting from a building 20m in front of a soldier with all the sound and smell coming from it is just ridiculous and way too far from the reality; even an ordinary rifle fire is very easily detectable in that range. Actually CC2 didn't have this problem, but in CC3, it seems like the function which makes the position of the attacking unit more easily revealed is omitted. Also, even when other units are near the area and shooting the building, the location is still not revealed; it only depends on the cover values, hence only on the distance and some probability, I suppose.

I said fires are coming from everywhere but even 2 makes playing the game very cumbersome; you just have to look at the monitor for two different areas in an alternating fashion until you figure out the areas and start firing. From the CC3 Data Workbook by Senior Drill, the units on the cover are anyway regarded as receiving 'area hits' for the corresponding values, so there's no reason not to automate this procedure once their locations became clear.

BTW the terrains have higher cover values in CC3 even including the plain normal field (150->256), so using a concealing terrain is less rewarding than before. The biggest beneficiary is the AI whose infantry units are often just lying in the plain field; this happens in CC2 too, it's just that they survive much better now. I actually lowered the cover values overall a bit by some percentage and the game became much more playable. I've heard people saying their AT guns taking out numerous tanks without being noticed once, and that happens less now (still the main function not working means it's not due to the units noticing the fires but rather due to the distance). I'm also suspecting if the cover values are applied differently in CC3, favoring for more concealment; the cover values of buildings are almost the same in both games but the latter seems to offer better concealment, not counting the fires but from a purely distance-wise standpoint, almost about twice.

Anyway, at least reducing the cover values possibly more for the buildings might be helpful, but still the fact that the units are spotted not because they shot fires but only because an enemy unit is close to the location is weird to say the least. I personally couldn't find any other relevant values that I can modify, unfortunately.

[ScnelleMeyer]

Its probably as you say: There is some hardcoding involved here. I think I read somewhere about guns being especially hard to detect in CC3 compared to other versions.

To make guns easier to spot you could try increasing their size in vehicles data. - Dont know if it will work as intended but worth a try.

[Incantator]

Thx for the suggestion. I increased the size of the guns but it only seems to affect their literal size, i.e. whether they are small enough to be placed inside a building. Also the infantry has the same problem as well, so I might just have to adjust the cover values for buildings as a band-aid.