Line of sight

[Davie]

So this might have been tackled in the beta, if so: I'm sorry but I cannot remember anymore.

If one Model is Standing on a Piece of Terrain ( blocking, height 4) and another model is Standing in front of the Terrain Piece (and outside of its shadow) at which Point do they have Line of sight to each other? the whole time? even if the model on top is standing 4 Inches away from the edge for example? Since we draw line of sight from the top down view, the distance to the ledge should not play any role, right? (onle in the case if the other model is Standing in the shadow) or am I missing something? (evelation rules from M2E are gone)

 

 

[Clement]

LoS questions.  It MUST be a new edition

Ok, so let's establish some ground rules and reference so we don't run into trouble.

1) Model on the right is effectively Sz 6 for determining LoS (pg. 18)

2) This means it "ignores" the building itself for determining LoS (pg.17) and can therefore see stuff at ground level assuming Shadows don't get involved.

 

With the trivial pieces handled, let's get into how the Shadow makes this more complicated (But nowhere near as complicated as 2e)

1) Shadows extend *out* from terrain.  Your terrain piece here is a building, so the black area in your diagram is the shadow (Pg 18).  You goofed a bit in that the Shadow is a Max of 3" though.

2) Because Left model is not in the Shadow at all, currently he's wide open and both models can see each other. (Pg 17 again, point 2 above)

3) as soon as Left Model moves even partially into the Shadow of the building, suddenly the building no longer gets ignored for LoS purposes.  This means that suddenly Left Model is out of LOS.  (Pg 18). That continues as Left Model moves closer to the wall.

4). Right Model has an answer though.  Because it's standing ON the terrain that's casting the shadow (and thus blocking LoS), if it gets within 1" of the edge of the building, suddenly the building (and it's shadow) get ignored and Left Model is exposed again. (Pg. 18).

[Davie]

thanks a lot, that was our consesus as well but we wanted to make sure.

so just to clarify: the distance of the model on top to the ledge of the Building does not matter as Long as the model in front of the Building is not within the shadow?

[Clement]

5 minutes ago, Davie said:

thanks a lot, that was our consesus as well but we wanted to make sure.

so just to clarify: the distance of the model on top to the ledge of the Building does not matter as Long as the model in front of the Building is not within the shadow?

Correct.  That particular part of the LoS logic was how we got the suggestion about buildings not being wider then 6".  This system gets strange if you apply it to a 10" or 20" wide building.

[Morgan Vening]

2 hours ago, Clement said:

Correct.  That particular part of the LoS logic was how we got the suggestion about buildings not being wider then 6".  This system gets strange if you apply it to a 10" or 20" wide building.

Which is also why IIRC they recommended (not sur if in the rulebook or just in the beta) not using large footprint buildings, exactly because it makes the LOS look screwy if you're 19" from the edge, and the opposing model is 4" from the base of the building and you can tag him with a sniper rifle.

[Myyrä]

42 minutes ago, Morgan Vening said:

Which is also why IIRC they recommended (not sur if in the rulebook or just in the beta) not using large footprint buildings, exactly because it makes the LOS look screwy if you're 19" from the edge, and the opposing model is 4" from the base of the building and you can tag him with a sniper rifle.

That just sounds like the LoS rules they designed are not very good.

[Morgan Vening]

23 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

That just sounds like the LoS rules they designed are not very good.

Most LOS rules that don't use true LOS have to fudge things (and true LOS has it's own issues). Making exceptions for excessively large terrain just complicates things. Especially in a game where you're only playing on a small table.

[solkan]

39 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

That just sounds like the LoS rules they designed are not very good.

If you're old enough to remember 1st edition's line of sight system, that's the style that it went back to.  🤔

What with all of the measurements being done in a top down manner, it does seem more consistent to have a line of sight system you can resolve from a top-down manner.  Doesn't it?

 

[Myyrä]

17 minutes ago, solkan said:

If you're old enough to remember 1st edition's line of sight system, that's the style that it went back to.  🤔

What with all of the measurements being done in a top down manner, it does seem more consistent to have a line of sight system you can resolve from a top-down manner.  Doesn't it?

 

Other systems that facilitated top down measurements were suggested as well. They were not implemented or explored.

I'm not at all confident the LoS rules are better than in the second edition.

[solkan]

5 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

Other systems that facilitated top down measurements were suggested as well. They were not implemented or explored.

I'm not at all confident the LoS rules are better than in the second edition.

Want to make it an experiment?

Give it a few months, and compare the number of threads where people either gave up on the 2nd edition combined flat and vantage point mechanics or deliberately play it using different rules, to the number of threads where people do the same with the shadow mechanics.

 

[bedjy]

48 minutes ago, Myyrä said:

Other systems that facilitated top down measurements were suggested as well. They were not implemented or explored.

I'm not at all confident the LoS rules are better than in the second edition.

Actualy, it works.
I was one of the most virulent member against that shadow rules in the close beta, and since they were not ready to get rid of it, we tried our best to have something working.
It's not the perfect system I'd have voted for, but it actualy works very effectively in a game and once we have understand it (not that hard !), things become easy.
Sure, some things will be awkward. But every LoS system does have some awkward situation to deal with.

So in the end, I'm ok with it.

[Myyrä]

12 minutes ago, bedjy said:

Actualy, it works.
I was one of the most virulent member against that shadow rules in the close beta, and since they were not ready to get rid of it, we tried our best to have something working.
It's not the perfect system I'd have voted for, but it actualy works very effectively in a game and once we have understand it (not that hard !), things become easy.
Sure, some things will be awkward. But every LoS system does have some awkward situation to deal with.

So in the end, I'm ok with it.

I'm okay with the new rules as well. I'm just not super hyped about the fact that the system was changed and the end result is about as confusing as the old one.

Also, many of the problems the old system had, had to do with how the rules were written. If the new edition had just rewritten the same old rules more clearly, that could have turned out pretty well.

[Franchute]

6 hours ago, Clement said:

Correct.  That particular part of the LoS logic was how we got the suggestion about buildings not being wider then 6".  This system gets strange if you apply it to a 10" or 20" wide building.

Can you give more details about this? Is this because the guy on the right is suddenly height 6? Implying that vertical distance do not matter?

[Clement]

1 hour ago, Franchute said:

Can you give more details about this? Is this because the guy on the right is suddenly height 6? Implying that vertical distance do not matter?

Not sure the point of confusion, so I'll just lay out all the logic on it.

• Guy on building is Sz 6 for determining LoS (because models and terrain positioned on top of buildings add the building ht to their Sz/Ht)
• Guy on ground is *not* in the terrain shadow extending from the building (because he's not within 3".   Shadows extend to max 3", diagram is wrong here)
• Because Guy on building is "taller" then the building (Sz 6 vs Ht 4), the building is ignored for purposes of determining line of sight.
• Guy on Ground doesn't have any way of overriding that and making the building count again.

Generally speaking, people standing on tall buildings are going to have LoS over pretty much anything with a Ht/Sz.  If you don't want to get shot, either hide in terrain shadows (so get close to the thing you're hiding behind) or behind dense/blocking terrain that *doesn't* have a Ht stat.

The part about adding Ht is sort of one of the fundamental assumptions to how the LoS system deals with vertical terrain.  Without it, the LoS system gets a BUNCH of weird bugs, or you have to rebuild the rules from the ground up (sorry) to work with however you approach "ht 2 model is on a ht 3 box".

[solkan]

One of the important things to note about shadows is that a model just needs to be in the shadow of terrain that's as tall (or taller) as it is.

If you took the diagram in the first post and stuck a Ht2 wall just to the right of the Ht2 figure on the ground, that would create a shadow that would block line of sight between the figure on the ground and the figure on the roof.

So if you have, for instance, a bunch of buildings or walls on the table, that creates a lot of shadow areas to hide from people camping on rooftop edges.

[DumbLuck]

How does it all work out from the model on the grounds perspective?  Can the ground model always draw LOS to the building model because it's Ht 6?  Or does being in the buildings shadow limit the ground model from seeing onto the roof as well?

[solkan]

I swear the problem with the shadow zone rules is that they're explained in words without having three diagrams illustrating the situation.

• You draw line of sight from A to B, and the line of sight goes across Building.  B's taller than Building, so A and B can see each other unless the shadow zone rules interfere.
• If A's in Building's shadow zone, then the shadow zone rules interfere and there's no line of sight between A and B unless ...
  • If B is standing on Building and the line of sight crosses an inch or less of Building, then then Building's shadow zone gets ignored.

The line of sight rules work both ways, if A can draw line of sight to B, then B can draw line of sight to A:

Quote

If at least one of the sight lines between two objects is unblocked, the objects have LoS to each other.

and none of the shadow rules give either of the models choices like "may ignore" or "may draw line of sight".

[Kisada]

Ok, question about this.

Model A is on a building and has effective ht 8.

Model B is outside of the buildings shadow and is ht 4.

Model C is positioned in base to base with model B such that model B is between itself and model A. Model C is ht 1.

Do model A and C have los to each other?

[Clement]

3 hours ago, Kisada said:

Ok, question about this.

Model A is on a building and has effective ht 8.

Model B is outside of the buildings shadow and is ht 4.

Model C is positioned in base to base with model B such that model B is between itself and model A. Model C is ht 1.

Do model A and C have los to each other?

models don't generate shadows, so yes.

edit:  to be complete.   Models do not generate shadows, so none of the shadow rules apply.  Because Model A is effectively Sz 8, it ignores the Sz 4 model B for determining line of sight.  Thus, it can totally see Sz 1 Model C.  

Edited August 8, 2019 by Clement
added more detail

[Kisada]

Perhaps I’m crazy but that seems like Garbo. Perhaps models should generate shadows to models that are elevated compared to them... or something. If I put I height 2 model on a ht 1 box no ht 2 model can block LOS.... I don’t like it one bit

[Paddywhack]

30 minutes ago, Kisada said:

If I put I height 2 model on a ht 1 box no ht 2 model can block LOS.... I don’t like it one bit

It can be a little weird as in the OP, but overall it works just fine. Would you have a problem with a Ht3 model seeing over the Ht models? If not, why does it matter if the Ht2 jumps on a ht1 box and can now see over Ht 2 models? 

LOS is always tricky, but I still think this version works pretty well. I've yet to play a game that didn't have some weird LOS issues. 

[Kisada]

It’s more that a ht 3 model can shoot a ht 1 model standing directly behind a wall of ht 2 models. Or another ht 2 model behind the same wall... feels off that it’s impossible to block line of sight to anything above your height. 

 

My ht 4 grave golem won’t block los to anything, midgets included, if someone is above him, and that feels very off. I get it’s a rules set and simplifications need to be made but elevated snipers are going to be silly.

 

Either way thanks for the clarifications guys. I don’t like it, but I guess it is what it is right now.