(In)visibility of rockets

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    • (In)visibility of rockets

      Why are rockets so hard to spot? Everything important in this game is marked fairly well. Nuclear Bomber? Battleship? Gignatic icon on the map, impossible to miss. You can see it at first glance. There is a Battleship approaching your Destroyers? You can see it, its the first thing you see if you even glance over the region.

      Rockets on the other hand, are really camouflaged. The game has become "where is waldo":


      In this screenshot, there is a rocket attack against me. I can see the rocket after I went looking for it. A rocket attack is potentially very dangerous, I need to know where the rocket attack is. Can you see the rocket? Or do you have to actively look for a tiny icon?



      In this image a rocket attack is imminent. I can tell because there is a tiny red point (attack order) on one of my provinces/cities. Can you spot it? Was it hard to spot? Were you able to see something that important at first glance?



      If I see a great threat coming at me, I want to see it. If I take a look at my fleet, I don't need to spend many minutes looking for a threat. I take a glance, see enemy battleships approaching? I retreat my fleet. On ground though, I have to actively look for any rocket attacks. Bytro is forcing me to play "Can you find the rockets before they hit your units?". Every few minutes I have to take a very close look at every single province and see if there is a tiny red mark. I spend more time looking for tiny rocket icons and tiny red marks than actually playing the game.


      Please make the rocket icons bigger and the attack indicators for rockets also bigger so I can tell that "hey, there is a rocket flying at me" without having to spend minutes finding that attack. Btw, new players might not know that the red attack marks may indicate a rocket attack, making counterplay to rocket even more frustrating.


      For reference, here is how visibile a missile is in CoN:

      (See the big red flightpath? Its one of the first things you notice, after the big unit icons.)
      #Cake FTW
    • killingone wrote:

      what you can try to do to increase visibility is to turn off the province names then when you want to spot for enemy units turn off advanced graphics for a while as normal graphics make spotting enemy units more easier.
      Yeah, check out my recent thread on invisible armies in normal graphics if you think spotting armies there is easier. I find advanced graphics hurt my eyes, I don't know how you follow anything with that setting on.
    • @Mc_Johnsen That is unfortunate for you because the map is fairly messy. For your information, you cannot avoid rockets. Even if they are coming, you do not have enough time to avoid them. Don't worry about the graphics because @freezy once said that they will change all unit graphics which I am sure that he will probably change the rocket to a bigger one too.

      In the CON game, the rocket that has been fired also looks ridiculously small like COW but you pressed on it and you see it.
      BeaveRyan
      Moderator
      EN Community Support | Bytro Labs Gmbh


      Training Alliance United Leader
    • Ryan04px2025 wrote:

      In the CON game, the rocket that has been fired also looks ridiculously small like COW but you pressed on it and you see it.
      Difference is that in CON rockets are in general also shown with this big red line makng them extremly obvious

      prntscr.com/r5y9k8 like this; see how easy it is to spot it?

      Ryan04px2025 wrote:

      For your information, you cannot avoid rockets. Even if they are coming, you do not have enough time to avoid them.
      unless its a nuclear one you can still try to move units away from the point of impact/take off with planes?
      Teburu

      GER/EN Forums
      Conflict of Nations Veteran
      I suck at COW
      idk what else to put here :D

      The post was edited 1 time, last by Teburu ().

    • @Teburu I think there is a line here but you will have to move your mouse over it to see. Rockets have a radius which means that things inside that radius will be destroyed same with the nuclear rocket.
      BeaveRyan
      Moderator
      EN Community Support | Bytro Labs Gmbh


      Training Alliance United Leader
    • Ryan04px2025 wrote:

      @Teburu I think there is a line here but you will have to move your mouse over it to see. Rockets have a radius which means that things inside that radius will be destroyed same with the nuclear rocket.
      true; but that brings us to the point made by @Mc_Johnsen : you have to spot that tiny dot to begin with
      Teburu

      GER/EN Forums
      Conflict of Nations Veteran
      I suck at COW
      idk what else to put here :D
    • In WW2 there wasn't much for early warning systems when it came to rocket attacks. No over the horizon radar or satellite observation systems. Rocket attacks on the battlefield were not actually all that visible until the sound reached the target, and by then it was too late.
      War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin keep out of the way til you can. - Winston Churchill



      VorlonFCW
      Retired from Bytro staff as of November 30, 2020.

      >>> Click Here to submit a bug report or support ticket <<<
    • Gameplay <-> Realism

      But that isn't even the point, rockets are visible, you can see a rocket attack incoming. Its just that you have to actively look for them. Is this a strategy game of killing units or is this a puzzle game of finding unit and attack icons?

      If you want rockets ingame to be "stealthy", either make them invisible or change the way they can be spotted. But giving them a tiny rocket icon is certainly not the solution. Its easier to spot a barrage of artillery than a rocket attack.

      Can you imagine scaling the unit icon of commando forces down to 10%, instead of giving them stealth in CoW 1.5?

      Subs are also stealth, yet they have a large unit icon and can be spotted fairly easily, despite their blue-ish colour.
      #Cake FTW
    • Mc_Johnsen wrote:

      Gameplay <-> Realism

      But that isn't even the point, rockets are visible, you can see a rocket attack incoming. Its just that you have to actively look for them. Is this a strategy game of killing units or is this a puzzle game of finding unit and attack icons?

      If you want rockets ingame to be "stealthy", either make them invisible or change the way they can be spotted. But giving them a tiny rocket icon is certainly not the solution. Its easier to spot a barrage of artillery than a rocket attack.

      Can you imagine scaling the unit icon of commando forces down to 10%, instead of giving them stealth in CoW 1.5?

      Subs are also stealth, yet they have a large unit icon and can be spotted fairly easily, despite their blue-ish colour.
      @Mc_Johnsen The chance of you running away from a rocket is the chance of you dodging a bullet fired 5 feet away from you.
      BeaveRyan
      Moderator
      EN Community Support | Bytro Labs Gmbh


      Training Alliance United Leader
    • Example:

      A lv1 rocket is shot at me from max range. The rocket takes 41 minutes to reach his target. In 41 minutes, even a standard infantry / AA / artillery /AT stack with a speed of 20 can travel 27 km.

      -> If I spot a rocket early enough, I definivetly have time to get my units away from impact.


      Even if the rocket is upgraded, faster, not shot from max range, there is still a chance to get my units away. Maybe my tanks are on plains, or my units are on a province with infrastructure, then I have a good shot at evading the rocket.
      #Cake FTW
    • What if I can see it?

      Right now, I can see rocket attacks incoming because my province centers are marked with a red attack symbol. So yeah, I can "see" it coming. Maybe I have naval vessels or airplanes nearby seeing the rocket launch? Maybe I am deep inside my territory? There are cases where I can see rockets coming from a far and if I know the enemy has rockets, I will make sure that there is no case where I can get blindsided by a rocket.
      #Cake FTW