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Basic night vision was widely available in 1979.


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Speaking from a personal experiance viewpoint, I had the opportunity to use both the AN/PVS-4 and the AN/PVS-5 as an infantryman in the United States Marine Corps from 1988-1992. We used the AN/PVS-4 in the field, but the AN/PVS-5 we only used in the rear a couple of times during specific classes.

It would be my opinion that introducing either of those two devices would be a waste of time and effort, and would not enhance the game at all unless they were implemented in a non-realistic manner.

The ANPVS 4 mounted on an assault rifle was a terrible idea. It was heavy, bulky, ungainly, and the battery consumption was ludicrous.

It was impossible to shoot accurately unless you were only a few meters away. It was almost useless as a spotting device because any amount of foliage blocked LOS. While sweeping with the scope to scan an area, any change in ambient light would render the image in the scope unreadable for a few seconds while the contrast adjusted. I'm talking very minor changes. You have zero depth perception with this scope. The only way you can tell distance of a person is through deciding the person is close because he fills the scope, or he is not close because he doesn't fill the scope. Other than that, you have no depth perception and have to rely on a spotter to give you a direction to scan. A spotter WITHOUT night vision.

The goggles are afflicted with the same deficiencies.

I cannot imagine professional troop handlers recruiting elite troops and then insisting that they use this hardware in a real world situation.

I much prefer the current flare system.

Edited by xcorps
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Maybe introduce a flare gun, with a good range that could illuminate a specific area, As i stated in another post, i don't go on missions until its day, because its not just dark, its complete black, and i cant see a thing ... any kind off illumination would be a blessing, Obviously the weapon would have to be wielded and ammo consumed, but .. it would add a little more tactics too ... and wouldn't involve having to work on night vision items.

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Every soldier deploys with an unlimited supply of flares. I don't see the problem. You illuminate the infil site, smoke for concealment move to cover. Illuminate and smoke, move to cover. Illuminate, smoke, move. The flares burn off, which is nice because it gives you unilluminated safe areas to set as fallback points for exposed soldiers. I think it's just fine as is. My casualties are no higher in night missions. All it impacts for me is the mission speed. I move in smaller increments, throw more smoke, and spend more turns waiting. Kinda like you would be doing at night.

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Maybe I've not gotten far enough into the game, Only options I have are Frag, Flash and smoke grenades, Unless I'm totally missing the obvious lol
The flares are automatically equipped when you deploy in a night mission. They are in fact the default throwing item in the quick grenade slot, right above the magazine button, between the soldier portrait and the weapon portrait.

Right click to change the grenade type, left click to throw.

Edited by xcorps
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I'll take a look then, I've been avoiding night missions because I cant see a thing, and If i didn't see flares under the equipment screen, Its not something I would have been looking for when in the mission ... Ill take a night mission and see and get back .. thanks!

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I'll take a look then, I've been avoiding night missions because I cant see a thing, and If i didn't see flares under the equipment screen, Its not something I would have been looking for when in the mission ... Ill take a night mission and see and get back .. thanks!
That's actually a pretty smart idea. I avoid night missions like the plague. You can usually time your arrival 'til daylight on most missions.
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Maybe I've not gotten far enough into the game, Only options I have are Frag, Flash and smoke grenades, Unless I'm totally missing the obvious lol

Don't feel bad I completely missed them too and was wondering what all this flare talk was about! Flares will certainly be helpful! :)

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Just because real world NVG's in 1979 was useless as xcorps says doesn't mean that the game version must be. After researching alienium you could have NVG's that have batter that could last as long as the mission needs to.

I don't understand the point of it though. Why use the resources needed to add an item that will at best give you a marginal effectiveness increase in limited circumstances when a method to overcome the deficiency already is implemented?

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I agree with SlinkyTWF that nightvision gear should be added because I felt that the enemy units sight range in the dark was somewhat over done it felt like they have twice their normal sight range and the fact that flares while nice that you never run out I was never able to get one on top of one of the enemy units It took 3X the amont of time as normal and I think I lost all the NPC's in that fight from plasma fire from shooters I could not find.

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Flares in the original X-Com vein are a little weird. I'm not sure I know of any modern military that uses handheld flares in a tactical role. Maybe to mark something, but flares are more often M203 grenades or flare guns. I think having a flare gun of some sort that would illuminate a wide area of the map would be far more realistic, but also more entertaining than the original X-Com flare system.

Upsides in my mind:

1) Not having to micro manage flares. (This was such a pain and soooo boring in X-Com)

2) Makes keeping soldiers who have flare guns/M203-type flare launchers alive much more important.

3) Makes gear selection more important (having to decide who has flares/flare guns since that adds weight instead of weightless unlimited flares now).

4) More how a modern military would handle night combat (since Xenonauts obviously has a bit more modern military style this would fit perfectly).

Edited by Crowst
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I agree, flare guns would be nice. Maybe get rid of unlimited flares, give each soldier 4 or so, but add a dedicated flare gun, or simply a starlight rocket that illuminates a decent area above where you direct-fire. Like, you fire the round and it goes up and explodes above the targeted area.

Perhaps that would be too hard to implement properly, and we should just make it a rocket launched flare that has a large lit radius and a longer time to expire than handheld flares. It would have to be lighter than regular rockets for balance purposes, I'd think. Maybe even a 1x1 item, because you'd want to have a lot of them.

Handheld flares would still be used for personal illumination, and for lighting up the insides of buildings, since the rockets wouldn't work too well indoors, and they don't need a huge amount of illumination radius generally.

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Well...the HE rockets do create fires...

I know. I've used them in a terror mission to get some badly needed light close to the aliens. They aren't very good for this purpose though. They are heavy weapons, slow to fire and have very limited ammo. Since fires never spread, the light dies out fast too.

It's not like having an autocannon loaded with 14 rounds of flaming goodness plus two extra magazines in the pack.

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I know. I've used them in a terror mission to get some badly needed light close to the aliens. They aren't very good for this purpose though. They are heavy weapons, slow to fire and have very limited ammo. Since fires never spread, the light dies out fast too.

It's not like having an autocannon loaded with 14 rounds of flaming goodness plus two extra magazines in the pack.

True, but that should be easily moddable. It's on my list.
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