Seeing and hearing

4.1. Each seat sees through devices. Which devices depends on hatches.

With his hatch open the commander stands head out with binoculars and sees all round, higher and better than anyone else in the tank; buttoned up he has a periscope covering a narrow arc forward of the turret and sees far less. The gunner sees only through his telescope, a narrow arc on the turret’s bearing, hatch open or closed. The loader sees nothing. The driver and the bow gunner see forward, head out, a wide arc but not well; buttoned up each has a periscope with a narrower arc and a worse view.

A tank buttons up in one tick. Unbuttoning takes one tick for the commander and two for the hull crew.

4.2. Each tick, each seat rolls once to spot each enemy entity that is in line of sight and inside its arc. The chance depends on what the target is (a tank is easiest, a soft vehicle or an infantry team harder, a dug-in anti-tank gun hardest of all), on the range (it falls away fast beyond a few hundred metres), on the concealment of the target’s cell (a hull-down target is harder again), on the quality of the device the seat is looking through, and on the man himself: an aware man sees more, a stressed one less. A moving target is easier to see, a target raising dust easier, and a target that has just fired much easier for the few ticks after its shot. Haze, rain or dusk cut every chance; smoke on the line blocks sight altogether.

A shot’s flash is a second chance on the shooter, taken by every seat on the same ticks the firing bonus applies, since a shot is first something to see the tick after it goes off. It depends on the range and the seat alone: concealment hides the gun, not its flash. An infantry team’s burst counts as fire. A dug-in gun in scrub at long range is seen on about half the shots it fires and seldom while it stays silent.

A contact is refreshed every tick that it is in line of sight and inside the arc of a device some living, unfrozen seat is using. When either fails — the target passes out of sight, or the tank buttons up or turns away so that no seat bears on it — the contact keeps its last position and loses confidence period by period until it is stale.

4.3. Seeing is not knowing. When a contact is gained the observer guesses what it is and where it is. He may misidentify it, more often at long range and more often if he is unskilled; the wrong answer is a vehicle of the same class from the table he has heard of, and green crews call any big tank a Tiger. He places it some way off its true position, farther at long range and farther if he is unskilled, in a random direction, and his range estimate is out by the same fraction, reported in the commander’s words.

Skill here is the observing seat’s skill. The error is fixed for that contact until the tank gets a better look: every few ticks of continuous observation halve the position error and reroll the identification with the misidentification chance halved each time, so a long look converges on the truth while the first call stays as unreliable as the first look made it.

4.4. Some things are perceived without sight, by everyone in the tank. A shell landing close by is felt by the whole crew, and so, more strongly, is a hit on their own tank and a penetration of it. Gunfire within earshot gives the whole crew a rough bearing, but it is a spotting cue, not a shock: it is what makes a gun that has just fired easier to see (the “fired” bonus in 4.2) and it is what gives the range at which a crew can tell a tank of their own has been hit. Hearing a gun go off somewhere raises no stress by itself: the stress comes from what the round does, by 9.1. A tank brewing up is a shock to anyone with line of sight to it.

A hull that has brewed up stays a thing to see for the rest of the battle: its column of smoke is sighted with certainty, no roll, by any tank with line of sight to it and a seat bearing on it (4.1), out to spotting range, and identified and placed with the errors of 4.3. So a kill that burned out of everyone’s sight is marked on the plot (4.5) the moment a tank comes to see the smoke. To whoever has seen it burn it is a wreck and not a threat, on either side: nothing to halt for, fire at, or count as being in contact with, nothing to learn against (9.5), and no Tiger sighting for the net however it was identified (11.2). An engage order on it is refused, whoever gives it. The contact is kept, under its handle, for the rest of the battle: a later look does not gain the same wreck again. A knocked-out hull that does not burn is seen only while its crew bails out; once they are gone it is a dead hull nobody marks.

4.5. The plot. The map shows a contact where tank one believes it is, inside a circle of the error the lieutenant can expect rather than the error the dice rolled: the error of 4.3 at the contact’s range for an average observer, halved for a contact watched a while, doubled for a contact that came over the net, never smaller than a few tank lengths. Two circles that overlap on a sheet at 1:25,000 or coarser draw as one with a count. Tanks of the platoon close together draw as one platoon sign at that scale. The objective is ringed on the plot in grease pencil, the one mark that is not tank one’s knowledge but his orders. A contact draws greyed as stale when nobody has confirmed it: a contact of tank one’s own eyes as soon as it passes out of sight, a contact that came over the net when no fresh report of it has come for a couple of periods. A contact the crew had in view when it was knocked out, or first saw afterwards with its crew bailing out, is struck through on the plot from that moment on, and one they saw brew up burns on the plot, a column of black smoke over the sign, for the rest of the battle. A report carries the kill only if its sender had seen it (11.4), and a kill that came over the net stays marked on the plot even when the report it came with is let go at that period’s end. Neither mark is made for a kill nobody saw: a gun that falls silent out of sight stays a gun on the plot, and a hull nobody saw knocked out or bailing stays whatever the crew last took it for. While a period’s replay plays, the plot’s contents are those of 11.6: what tank one knew as of the tick on screen. The after-action report lays this same plot over the truth, and it is the same plot: it shows exactly the kills the live plot marked, each from the tick it was witnessed, and never a kill nobody saw, however plainly the truth beneath shows the wreck, and it greys a sign of tank one’s own eyes on every tick his crew did not have the hull in sight, as the live plot did. The record of a battle carries those marks and those ticks in sight; a battle recorded before it did shows no kill marks on the report’s plot at all, and greys nothing by sight.

4.6. The screen. The whole sheet is the opening view. The sheet is viewed between 1:10,000 and the coarser of 1:50,000 and that opening view (a sheet taller than the window opens coarser than 1:50,000); the level-of-detail rule of 4.5 fires at 1:25,000. Pointing at a sign shows what the plot holds of it and no more: for a contact, who has it — tank one’s own eyes, or which commander’s report — and since which period, the range and bearing tank one believes, and whether it is stale, knocked out or burning; for a platoon tank, its status and damage as the plot shows them, and its commander, ammunition and crew as the card last carried them. Nothing the plot does not hold — and while a period’s replay plays, nothing it does not hold as of the tick on screen (4.5): a sign struck through at tick 13 reads knocked out from tick 13, not from the period’s end, an own sign whose status the plot flips at tick 5 reads that status from tick 5, while its ammunition and crew stay the card’s until the replay ends (11.6), and a contact’s range and bearing are measured from where tank one stands at the tick on screen.

4.7. The cards. Each tank’s card carries its crew as five bars in seat order — commander, gunner, loader, driver, bow gunner — coloured by wounds and stress band and hatched while the man is outside the tank. The commander’s seat label is shown in reverse, white on black, while his hatch is closed. Buttoning up costs him the arc and the quality of 4.1 and doubles his fire command in 6.1, so the card says so where his eyes are rather than among the ammunition.