simple enough idea.

stuff regularly gets owned from out of range, which makes howitzers etc very powerful. in rl, when big guns fire, they reveal their positions.

have a gadget that instantly reveals a unit firing (ie, arty firing from miles out of LoS is temporarily visible during/after firing)

this would make counter battery fire alot easier (since you could target the unit/ghost instead of the floor)

If you have an observer close enough they emit a (huge) seismic ping.

Admittedly, the system could do with some work.

This system has been in place for years - when big guns fire, you see a big ! show up on the map. And things shoot at it automatically (since its technically a radar dot). This happens regardless how close or far your observs are (flags have radar with epic range).

Oh, thought that was removed at one point. Did we get rid of the pings?

Nope, still in place. if its not working, I'll take a look, but the code/tags are still there.

encase I wasnt clear

I meant overhauling the pings with simple brief LoS of the unit so its easier to target/creates ghosts of fixed guns/units counter battery fire without needing force orders.

I reckon it would make tank combat alot more satisying too (less attacks from invisible locations.)

You figure tanks should become visible when they fire as well?

Anyways, yeah, its not a bad idea to update that old system with Los/alwaysvisible and ditch the hack that's currently in place. I'll do it at some point this weekend, perhaps.

i reckon anything that uses ammo should become visible when firing (except mortars because they use indirect fire)

I feel like that would give too much power to sheer numbers. Right now one really effective way to multiple your force power is to get LoS on the enemy without them getting it back.

If anything, our information game is too shallow right now (I think), and I feel like making every unit with a cannon visible as soon as it shoots would turn it into "who has more stuff."

I don't like the idea of LoS on distant firing units. Radar mark is ok (not 100% accuracy when firing on it), full LoS not. It will just make rocket arty totally useless, I feel Katyusha was nerfed enough as is with its short range and low damage power per-rocket.

Besides, while you certainly can detect artillery fire by its sound irl, you can even identify the type of gun this way, you cannot pinpoint it's position to the same level of accuracy LoS gives. Counter-battery is fully viable with radar marks, we just don't have the type of guns which are good at this task (with huge area of effect to quickly destroy 'soft' towed guns).