Mod for hedge "holes"

[Polo]

It is still a pain to find out visually the path across hedges, to find out where the men can cross.

Is there a way to have they visually enhanced? I remember someone making a mod for it, but cannot find it out in the repository or at GreenAsJade's.

By the way, does artillery or tank fire really is able to destroy hedge tiles? Even 150mm shells don't seem to manage it.

Thanks!

[womble]

By the way, does artillery or tank fire really is able to destroy hedge tiles? Even 150mm shells don't seem to manage it.

Yes, HE fire can make breaches in Bocage. It takes so much, though, that it almost never will be worth it. ISTR someone discovering through testing that it took the entire HE loadout of five Sherman 75s to make a vehicle-wide breach. Just think what you could do with that destructive power.

I don't think anyone's ever bothered trying HE out on Hedge, since it's no significant obstacle.

And just to head off a heap of misconceptions:

Hedge != Bocage. They are two distinct linear obstacles. "Hedge" is your usual farm or domestic hedge: crossable by infantry with a minor delay. "Bocage" is a much, much sterner obstacle, with a berm (that has, at its core, a stone wall), ditches, centuries-old trees and bushes twining their roots deep below the ground, and human management conspiring to make a very resilient overgrowth. It is worth keeping this in mind when considering what's going on in the game.

[Bimmer]

It is still a pain to find out visually the path across hedges, to find out where the men can cross.

Is there a way to have they visually enhanced? I remember someone making a mod for it, but cannot find it out in the repository or at GreenAsJade's.

As a scenario designer I always put a different terrain tile under any gaps in the bocage to make them easier to pick out.

[nik mond]

As a scenario designer I always put a different terrain tile under any gaps in the bocage to make them easier to pick out.

Great idea. Should be considered one of those unwritten rules for map design.

[Lt Belenko]

Originally Posted by YankeeDog

I've noted this before, but for those who weren't around for the original discussion, a easy way to quickly find the gaps in bocage:

Lower the game graphics level of detail (you can do this quickly by hitting SHIFT + [ repeatedly in-game).

Pop the camera up to a high level of view -- about "5" level usually works for me. At lower level of detail and high altitude viewpoint, Bocage is rendered as a 2-dimensional green wall, and gaps are very obvious.

Once you've noted the gap location, you can bring your level of detail back to normal by SHIFT + ].

[YankeeDog]

ISTR someone discovering through testing that it took the entire HE loadout of five Sherman 75s to make a vehicle-wide breach. Just think what you could do with that destructive power.

IIRC, it's not that much, but it definitely a fair bit. Been a long time since i looked at this, but as I recall it's roughly the full HE load of one 75mm Sherman to create a breach (i.e., 40-50 75mm HE shells). 105mm+ will do it in less, of course, but direct fire HE weapons of 105mm+ caliber are usually a pretty scarce resource on the CM battlefield. Do you really want to blow all of the ammo load of your M7 Priest just to create a couple of bocage gaps?

It's also very unpredictable how many shells it will take a because fair number of the shells will simply fly through the bocage and impact some distance behind it, doing absolutely nothing to help breach it.

Overall, it's not a tactic I recommend unless you are desperate and have no other option.

I have had fairly good luck with getting at least an infantry-sized gap from 155mm linear missions plotted along a bocage line -- you can't predict exactly where these gaps will be of course, but in my experience if you drop a few dozen 155mm shells along a bocage line, you'll get at least one or two gaps, somewhere along the line. Bigger stuff will probably do it even more effectively, but I very rarely play with anything larger than 155mm.

[winkelried]

IMHO instead of spoiling ammo to create holes in bocage the scenario designer should give the player an appropriate number of engineers/pioneers and scout teams with satchel charges to blow holes into the obstacle.

[Brindlewolf]

With Bocage it's fairly easy to spot the gaps,as previously said pull out til the bocage goes into shadow,voila.It's the different heights of hedges or bushline that's not so easy.On some maps your infantry can simply scamper over them.Then in another,what seems like similar hedge or bushline,your infantry go for a long hike to the next field or gap and get murdered.Confusing at times and damned annoying.

[Broadsword56]

Yes, this is one of those "best practices" topics for map makers.

It's always a designer's option how many bocage gaps to place and where/how to place them. But I think we have a pretty good consensus on the forums that gaps should be marked in some way.

Different mappers have evolved different ways of doing this. Originally I marked all gaps with a dirt tile. It's quite visible that way. But now I've evolved a bit into marking some with dirt, some with mud, and some with marsh.

I like using marsh, in particular, because it not only slows the infantry down and tires them a bit more realistically as they crawl through, but it adds a bit of its own vegetation to the tile. The marsh-marked gaps are slightly harder to spot, however -- from an elevated view they appear as slightly darkened ground.

If you download my Hamel Vallee map/scenario from the Repository, you'll see this variety of bocage gaps in it.

Also: Don't be afraid that by placing gaps that you're "nerfing" the bocage -- in practice we've found that the bocage is still plenty frustrating to move and attack through. During battle, the gaps never seem to be quite where you need them to be. And of course the enemy knows them too, so you have to assume the ones in contested areas are likely covered by enemy MGs, etc. When you're mapping, just try to think like a farmer and make sure every field, orchard or whatever has a logical gap to move into and out of it, and think about the likely movement paths that would extend out from your farms or hamlets into the surrounding countryside.

[MikeyD]

Remember the game is set in Normandy hedgerow country. Hedgerows are supposed to be a PITA. If there was an easy/convenient way to get around it then it wouldn't be the bocage of legend. Rather like deep snow in an eastern front game, it wouldn't be deep snow unless it was a confounded annoyance to fight around.

[mjkerner]

With Bocage it's fairly easy to spot the gaps,as previously said pull out til the bocage goes into shadow,voila.It's the different heights of hedges or bushline that's not so easy.On some maps your infantry can simply scamper over them.Then in another,what seems like similar hedge or bushline,your infantry go for a long hike to the next field or gap and get murdered.Confusing at times and damned annoying.

Again, though, pulling your view up high will easily show the difference between low bocage and a hedge...the hedge is much skinnier and the low bocage is the same width as high bocage. Also, up close, the low bocage is "messier" with branches shagging out, etc., whereas the hedge is pretty neatly trimmed.

Finally, modders can't do anything about changung the look of gaps. The bocage/hedge texture files (the .bmps) only show the branches/leaves; the ground tile they go on is done under the hood, and even though you can mod the ground tile, a modder is not going to know where in the tile the gap would be (plus, whether it angles across the tile or is perpendicular to it).

It's up to the scenario designers to give you hints.

[Polo]

MikeyD, you're right in principle. I have an idea of what would be bocage (even if the second half of the 20th century has seen the "bocage" liberally cut down), and I don't think it is so often so impenetrable for people. I think there is a definitive overuse of bocage type hedges in maps, especially in Caen area maps. (Just an opinion)

On the over-use of bocage, I would say you don't want your map to look like a maze or a riddle with just one answer.

I am a big fan of Paper Tigers's work, but as one, I happened to notice in several occasions the sometimes gamey (but often terribly realistic) way the use of those kind of elements tend to channel the troops towards well designed death traps.

Polo

[Polo]

By the way, thanks for your answer: no mod, unfortunately...