Improvement suggestions

[Mord]

My improvement suggestion is release SF2!

 

Mord.

[Mord]

Joking aside, actual fog when a scenario uses the fog setting. The highest fog setting in CM2 doesn't even look as thick or as good as the weakest setting in CMBO. It's one of the lamest of the environmental settings in CM2. The rest look pretty good and are atmospheric...fog just sucks.

 

Mord.

[Kaunitz]

I can’t help it! One (last?) time, I want to point out how much I miss proper fortifications. The lack of them keeps me from finishing my Gerbini scenario (and many more to come?) and puts infantry at a severe disadvantage, with the result of horribly exaggerated infantry casualty rates (at least if you consider the duration of a scenario) and the defender's system of mutually supportive positions being compromised very easily. Moreover, trenches are not only usefull for representing actual field-works, but also natural terrain features that you can’t create due to soldier-behaviour (soldiers are not positioning themselves in a depression where they’d be safe from arty, or in a way in which they don’t see anything, etc) and the size of the action grid (8x8m --> a 1 tile depression is still a 64sq.m target for arty).

I’ve created a beautiful visual comparison between the current trench fortification and the ideal slit trench, now give me some likes! As you can see, the slit trench beats the combat mission trench in all regards! What I've missed to point out: Because it stands out, tanks/direct HE can hit the CM trench more easily (causing an explosion that might still knock out soldiers in the trench). With a slit trench, this is much more difficult and unlikely. The almost inexistant silhouette of a trench might also make it harder to direct artillery onto it? 

Worries and doubts

1) Aesthetical: Lowering fortifications into the ground mesh is probably impossible (and if you could do it, the enemy would detect your fortifications by looking at the ground mesh). But what if we simply allowed the fortification (and soldiers in it) to clip/cut through the mesh. Yes, it wouldn’t really look good, but who cares?! I wouldn’t mind if that’s the price for proper fortifications!

2) Balance: Yes, it will be hard to knock out a trench line. But that’s how it’s supposed to be! You’d need to work much more with suppression and smoke. You won’t be able to knock out the trench with 3 mortar shells before you close in. You might still use the mortar to suppress it though. After all, that’s one of the main purposes of a trench: to protect you from arty/mortars! You need to take out a trench with the tip of the bayonet (or SMG, ... or flamethrower....or hand grenade). That's what rifle-infantry was actually usefull for (for any longer distances, you rather use your MGs). And tanks sucked at it (try to aim you hull MG down a slit-trench!).

A bright future!

Needless to say that while a slit-trench would be the most desirable starting candidate, it doesn’t need to stop there. I’m sure the community has plenty of ideas for field-fortifications, including gun emplacements (especially as long as guns can't be dis- and remounted to seek cover in a nearby artillery shelter; in FB, you do get ATgun-bunkers though!), hesco-walls (modern titles), pillboxes in different shapes (i.e. allowing for different firing angles/loopholes), hastily dug firing positions (for soldiers in prone position), etc.

 

http://www.oldhickory30th.com/119th Co G Entrenching Tool by Nolan.pdf

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1005/m1/2/zoom/?resolution=6&lat=4088.5&lon=5231.5

Edited September 25, 2018 by Kaunitz

[Bulletpoint]

On 9/24/2018 at 2:08 PM, Kaunitz said:

It would be nice to have a "typical only"-toggle for quickbattles, so that players cannot select the experience/morale/leadership of their troops individually but have to deal with what they get. I think that this level of fine-tuning is rather annoying sometimes.

+1

[DerKommissar]

I know I'm gonna get yelled at for suggesting this, but:

OrBat creator/editor for quick battles, and maybe even campaigns.

Make your own battalions, companies, etc. per point count and then use them -- like tabletop.

[A Canadian Cat]

37 minutes ago, DerKommissar said:

I know I'm gonna get yelled at for suggesting this, but:

WHAT!?!?!?

How's that?

On a more serious note this is not something that BFC hates it's just something that has a high degree of effort to implement and they feel will be used infrequently. They just made a value judgment that this is a lower priority. Note that they reject the concept as an idea. I put this last part in grey to signify whispering to off set my yelling.

[A Canadian Cat]

5 hours ago, Kaunitz said:

I can’t help it! One (last?) time, I want to point out how much I miss proper fortifications. The lack of them keeps me from finishing my Gerbini scenario (and many more to come?) and puts infantry at a severe disadvantage, with the result of horribly exaggerated infantry casualty rates (at least if you consider the duration of a scenario) and the defender's system of mutually supportive positions being compromised very easily.

You are coming at this from the wrong direction. The trenches (other fortifications are similar) are the way they are because they needed a way to implement them without deforming the terrain so that they could have fog of war. They are a visual abstraction and represent real trenches. As such they are intended to protect like RL trenches.

You might not like the look but they are that way for good reasons. Because of this any solution you might want to pitch cannot include a violation of the "maintain terrain mesh to support FOW" limitation. At least now, with the engine the way it is. They of course know they could change the engine but that is a lot of work and prioritized as such (i.e. way down the list).

Now back to the criticism you have. The existing trench is designed to offer protection from fire that is the equivalent to a real trench. This is supposed to be done as an abstraction so that the what you see behaves more like what should be there. So, you seem to be arguing that the protection is *not* up to that level. Therefore if you want to convince BFC that a change should be made you will get more traction with some testing and situations comparing guys in the open with guys in a trench and point out why you think the trench is not up to the job.

In other words showing diagrams of how you think trenches should be in the terrain mesh are not convincing because the current ones are supposed to be designed to offer the same protection as what you have in your diagram.

[RockinHarry]

6 hours ago, Kaunitz said:

I can’t help it! One (last?) time, I want to point out how much I miss proper fortifications. The lack of them keeps me from finishing my Gerbini scenario (and many more to come?) and puts infantry at a severe disadvantage, with the result of horribly exaggerated infantry casualty rates (at least if you consider the duration of a scenario) and the defender's system of mutually supportive positions being compromised very easily. Moreover, trenches are not only usefull for representing actual field-works, but also natural terrain features that you can’t create due to soldier-behaviour (soldiers are not positioning themselves in a depression where they’d be safe from arty, or in a way in which they don’t see anything, etc) and the size of the action grid (8x8m --> a 1 tile depression is still a 64sq.m target for arty).

I’ve created a beautiful visual comparison between the current trench fortification and the ideal slit trench, now give me some likes! As you can see, the slit trench beats the combat mission trench in all regards! What I've missed to point out: Because it stands out, tanks/direct HE can hit the CM trench more easily (causing an explosion that might still knock out soldiers in the trench). With a slit trench, this is much more difficult and unlikely. The almost inexistant silhouette of a trench might also make it harder to direct artillery onto it? 

Worries and doubts

1) Aesthetical: Lowering fortifications into the ground mesh is probably impossible (and if you could do it, the enemy would detect your fortifications by looking at the ground mesh). But what if we simply allowed the fortification (and soldiers in it) to clip/cut through the mesh. Yes, it wouldn’t really look good, but who cares?! I wouldn’t mind if that’s the price for proper fortifications!

2) Balance: Yes, it will be hard to knock out a trench line. But that’s how it’s supposed to be! You’d need to work much more with suppression and smoke. You won’t be able to knock out the trench with 3 mortar shells before you close in. You might still use the mortar to suppress it though. After all, that’s one of the main purposes of a trench: to protect you from arty/mortars! You need to take out a trench with the tip of the bayonet (or SMG, ... or flamethrower....or hand grenade). That's what rifle-infantry was actually usefull for (for any longer distances, you rather use your MGs). And tanks sucked at it (try to aim you hull MG down a slit-trench!).

A bright future!

Needless to say that while a slit-trench would be the most desirable starting candidate, it doesn’t need to stop there. I’m sure the community has plenty of ideas for field-fortifications, including gun emplacements (especially as long as guns can't be dis- and remounted to seek cover in a nearby artillery shelter; in FB, you do get ATgun-bunkers though!), hesco-walls (modern titles), pillboxes in different shapes (i.e. allowing for different firing angles/loopholes), hastily dug firing positions (for soldiers in prone position), etc.

 

http://www.oldhickory30th.com/119th Co G Entrenching Tool by Nolan.pdf

https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1005/m1/2/zoom/?resolution=6&lat=4088.5&lon=5231.5

 

What IanL said above. However... trenches can be modded to some extent and with bits of terrain alteration (ditch locking) these at least can be somewhat improved to look more like the real thing. The sandbags (on the trench edges) can be masked away and if put in -1m ditches it then looks something like that:

FOW issue remains, but personally I either don´t care (the AI does neither) or one can add a number of fake positions so at least a human player will have to guess whether that ditch is just a ditch or additionally holds a trench + anybody inside.

Edited September 25, 2018 by RockinHarry

[A Canadian Cat]

16 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

trenches can be modded to some extent and with bits of terrain alteration (ditch locking) these at least can be somewhat improved to look more like the real thing.

Oh I forgot about that. What you did was pretty cool. Do you have a link to that thread?

[Jace11]

26 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

 

What IanL said above. However... trenches can be modded to some extent and with bits of terrain alteration (ditch locking) these at least can be somewhat improved to look more like the real thing. The sandbags (on the trench edges) can be masked away and if put in -1m ditches it then looks something like that:

FOW issue remains, but personally I either don´t care (the AI does neither) or one can add a number of fake positions so at least a human player will have to guess whether that ditch is just a ditch or additionally holds a trench + anybody inside.

+1 mate, nice tip. I'd read about ditchlock in the CM-MG manual but seeing it combined with trenches looks excellent. I take it the sandbags are masked by blacking out the alpha of the sandbag texture? Doesn't this render sandbag wall invis or something? I'll leave them on for now, but I'll try the adding the ditch effect to a few scenarios that have trenches, see how it goes.

[Kaunitz]

1 hour ago, IanL said:

You are coming at this from the wrong direction. The trenches (other fortifications are similar) are the way they are because they needed a way to implement them without deforming the terrain so that they could have fog of war. They are a visual abstraction and represent real trenches. As such they are intended to protect like RL trenches.

You might not like the look but they are that way for good reasons. Because of this any solution you might want to pitch cannot include a violation of the "maintain terrain mesh to support FOW" limitation. At least now, with the engine the way it is. They of course know they could change the engine but that is a lot of work and prioritized as such (i.e. way down the list).

Now back to the criticism you have. The existing trench is designed to offer protection from fire that is the equivalent to a real trench. This is supposed to be done as an abstraction so that the what you see behaves more like what should be there. So, you seem to be arguing that the protection is *not* up to that level. Therefore if you want to convince BFC that a change should be made you will get more traction with some testing and situations comparing guys in the open with guys in a trench and point out why you think the trench is not up to the job.

In other words showing diagrams of how you think trenches should be in the terrain mesh are not convincing because the current ones are supposed to be designed to offer the same protection as what you have in your diagram.

I really don't know how the engine handles these things, but from some testing (I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make positions artillery-proof just by using terrain elevation*, I also did a lot of ditch-testing for my Gerbini scenario), I was under the impression that artillery doesn't work in a very abstract, but on the contrary in a relatively intuitive/clear way. If you can draw a straight line from the impact site of a shell to a soldier model, then that particular soldier can get hit (and vice versa - if the LOF from the shell to the soldier is blocked, he can't get hit). In fact, it totally amazes me how detailed the artillery impacts are modelled (if I my observations aren't totally off the mark...). Unless there is also some additional "cover" value that comes into play specifically for soldiers in a trench, I can't see how the current trenches offer any additional cover.  If a shell lands in the trench, it's game over. And a shell tends to land it very often because it's too broad. I did not get the impression that the trench was hit less often by artillery or that soldiers that were in the trench while it suffered a direct hit had a higher chance to survive. 

So, to put it short: I don't believe that that the trench offers any considerable "abstract" protection. But the only argument I can bring is my subjective feeling and the observation that I don't see any results in the game that can only be explained by an additional abstract "trench protection" factor. Again, I neither have the impression that trench-models are hit less often by artillery shells than the surrounding terrain nor that soldiers who are inside the trench while it gets hit have a magical survival bonus. So I need to ask myself where the abstraction would be? If there is an abstract cover bonus, I think it must be (too?) small.

If the current trench is meant to represent the more common WWII trenches in an abstract way, then indeed I think they don't offer enough protection. So far, I ascribed that problem to the actual design of the trench (too broad against indirect fire! Soldiers expose themselves too much over the embrasure against direct fire). By the way, I also think that direct fire is based on a very delicate intuitive and clear model (e.g. place a log in front of a prone soldier and his survival rate drastically increases! Buildings and windows are bit harder to understand though...). 

But I understand why you would ask for more proof. I will see if I can find the time for more testing and some real life stats, it might take a while. But I thik that one thing is already safe to say: the infantry casualty rates in a standard CM-match (45min - 1.5h) are through the roof. Of course now we could start to discuss whether and to what extent a game needs to be condensed in time in order to be fun - BF itself has also confirmed that we should not blindly assume a 1:1 time ratio, if I remember correctly...

 

53 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

 

What IanL said above. However... trenches can be modded to some extent and with bits of terrain alteration (ditch locking) these at least can be somewhat improved to look more like the real thing. The sandbags (on the trench edges) can be masked away and if put in -1m ditches it then looks something like that:

http://i67.tinypic.com/11gu3gn.jpg

FOW issue remains, but personally I either don´t care (the AI does neither) or one can add a number of fake positions so at least a human player will have to guess whether that ditch is just a ditch or additionally holds a trench + anybody inside.

I've been there (see this post: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/125278-highlanders-the-battle-of-gerbini/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-1748396). Creating ditches by shaping the terrain didn't work for me. Either your soldiers will all position themselves at the elevated edges of the ditch (so that they stay exposed to artillery fire), or they all crowd up in the ditch (so that they can't see or fire at anything). And the problem still remains that the ditches created in this way are too broad (the best you can achieve is a ca. 4-6m ditch, which is still a big target for artillery when it really matters). Also, soldiers when ordered to move, many soldiers move at the edge of the tiles, outside of the trench.

I've ended up with a trench that looks very similar to the one you posted to represent an irrigation ditch on my Gerbini map (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/125278-highlanders-the-battle-of-gerbini/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-1747980). But the problem still remains: The trench model is too broad and therefore gets hit by artillery (and particularly mortars) too easily. Every meter counts!

As I've mentioned in the post above, I think the best solution would be to just let the trench model (and any soldiers) clip through the ground mesh. Adjusting the ground mesh itself would look much cooler, of course, but would also draw the enemy's attention. )

 

----------------------

* e.g. http://community.battlefront.com/topic/123157-improvement-suggestions/?page=4&tab=comments#comment-1713167

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by Kaunitz

[Kaunitz]

Unfortunately, you can't even test trenches because the "let's leave this trench!" issue is still there. Even without having suffered any casualties or injuries, my soldiers leave the trench and die a horrible death as soon as their suppression bar rises. These are elite troops and their morale state when leaving the trench was "okay" ...

I think my troops in buildings suffered from a similar issue in my last H2H battle. When they were being shelled, they left one (stone) house to seek cover in another (stone) house ...

 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2018 by Kaunitz

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, Jace11 said:

+1 mate, nice tip. I'd read about ditchlock in the CM-MG manual but seeing it combined with trenches looks excellent. I take it the sandbags are masked by blacking out the alpha of the sandbag texture? Doesn't this render sandbag wall invis or something? I'll leave them on for now, but I'll try the adding the ditch effect to a few scenarios that have trenches, see how it goes.

Yes, all objects that make use of the sandbags.bmp file (with opaque alpha channel) are affected. Personally that´s not a problem for me as I heavily dislike seeing sandbags on any WW2 battlefield. At least not in CMBN or CMFB ones. The general cover effects remain as IanL described (abstracted). Trenches and foxholes are just looking more flat (crawl trench) but when sunk into the ditch locked AS´s they are more level to the surrounding terrain tiles. I put trenches into blue AS´s (IE blue 19m lines surrounded by black 20m in map editor) and foxholes into black ones (black 19m surrounded by either black or blue 20m). This all worked best in earlier game versions, likely before even 3.0 IIRC as currently the small scale mesh deformations in V4 appear to work or shift differently. Generally there´s more than 2 ditch lock combinations that can be used for different terrain deformations. You can both surround a ditch locked action spot (either a + or - one) by blue or black ones giving slightly different results. I have quite a lot of these small scale deformations (incl. the trench section shown above) on the CMBN map/scenario I uploaded at SD3 http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy/cm-battles-for-normandy/cmbn-v4-mg-vp-you-enter-germany-introduction/

IMO it´s the best you can make of the given assets unless BFC comes with a less abstracted solution.

[A Canadian Cat]

1 hour ago, Kaunitz said:

If you can draw a straight line from the impact site of a shell to a soldier model, then that particular soldier can get hit (and vice versa - if the LOF from the shell to the soldier is blocked, he can't get hit). In fact, it totally amazes me how detailed the artillery impacts are modelled (if I my observations aren't totally off the mark...). Unless there is also some additional "cover" value that comes into play specifically for soldiers in a trench, I can't see how the current trenches offer any additional cover.  If a shell lands in the trench, it's game over. And a shell tends to land it very often because it's too broad. I did not get the impression that the trench was hit less often by artillery or that soldiers that were in the trench while it suffered a direct hit had a higher chance to survive. 

You are correct that there is some amazing detail. By default the design of the game is based on actual geometry and tracking projectiles. But there is some fudge factors built in for some things. I personally don't know if artillery is handled shrapnel by shrapnel or by chances and factors with hard cover offering total projection . An example is terrain gives people projection based on a factor on top of any geometry like tress or vehicles that might block the path. So heavy forest will give a soldier more projection than light forest which gives more than tall grass. And since trenches are not quite what they should be in terms of geometry they have a factor of additional protection above what you would expect form the polygons. As I was explaining earlier - and you clearly have taken to heart.

 

1 hour ago, Kaunitz said:

So, to put it short: I don't believe that that the trench offers any considerable "abstract" protection. But the only argument I can bring is my subjective feeling and the observation that I don't see any results in the game that can only be explained by an additional abstract "trench protection" factor. Again, I neither have the impression that trench-models are hit less often by artillery shells than the surrounding terrain nor that soldiers who are inside the trench while it gets hit have a magical survival bonus. So I need to ask myself where the abstraction would be? If there is an abstract cover bonus, I think it must be (too?) small.

If the current trench is meant to represent the more common WWII trenches in an abstract way, then indeed I think they don't offer enough protection. So far, I ascribed that problem to the actual design of the trench (too broad against indirect fire! Soldiers expose themselves too much over the embrasure against direct fire). By the way, I also think that direct fire is based on a very delicate intuitive and clear model (e.g. place a log in front of a prone soldier and his survival rate drastically increases! Buildings and windows are bit harder to understand though...).

That is fair enough. There are other people who feel the same way. To be clear I have no opinion on that because I don't know how good projection should be. My only skin in the game is to help explain the way the game works and how changes to the game are made. Things like this do not move fast because even if you create some measurement of the difference between the projection from open ground and the trench then there has to be some determination of if the difference is reasonable. But one thing at a time. It is entirely possible that some statistical test will show something that seems goofy to everyone. I have no idea.

[A Canadian Cat]

33 minutes ago, Kaunitz said:

Unfortunately, you can't even test trenches because the "let's leave this trench!" issue is still there.

Yeah sucks. Here is what you do: make the troops fanatic so they will obey your orders at nearly all costs and give them a pause order. They will then stay a very long time for you to study the slaughter.

You can do the same for soldiers in open ground.

Also, some people might ask about the difference hiding makes. My personal experience is that hiding in trenches offers crazy good protection. I remember the scenario A Temple to Mars (I think I have that right), when I had my soliders hide in the trench works they were nearly un-kill-able, only shells that went into the trench caused casulties. After the artillery fire I gave them the un-hide command and they fought on.

[RockinHarry]

1 hour ago, Kaunitz said:

I really don't know how the engine handles these things, but from some testing (I spent a lot of time figuring out how to make positions artillery-proof just by using terrain elevation*, I also did a lot of ditch-testing for my Gerbini scenario), I was under the impression that artillery doesn't work in a very abstract, but on the contrary in a relatively intuitive/clear way. If you can draw a straight line from the impact site of a shell to a soldier model, then that particular soldier can get hit (and vice versa - if the LOF from the shell to the soldier is blocked, he can't get hit). In fact, it totally amazes me how detailed the artillery impacts are modelled (if I my observations aren't totally off the mark...). Unless there is also some additional "cover" value that comes into play specifically for soldiers in a trench, I can't see how the current trenches offer any additional cover.  If a shell lands in the trench, it's game over. And a shell tends to land it very often because it's too broad. I did not get the impression that the trench was hit less often by artillery or that soldiers that were in the trench while it suffered a direct hit had a higher chance to survive. 

So, to put it short: I don't believe that that the trench offers any considerable "abstract" protection. But the only argument I can bring is my subjective feeling and the observation that I don't see any results in the game that can only be explained by an additional abstract "trench protection" factor. Again, I neither have the impression that trench-models are hit less often by artillery shells than the surrounding terrain nor that soldiers who are inside the trench while it gets hit have a magical survival bonus. So I need to ask myself where the abstraction would be? If there is an abstract cover bonus, I think it must be (too?) small.

If the current trench is meant to represent the more common WWII trenches in an abstract way, then indeed I think they don't offer enough protection. So far, I ascribed that problem to the actual design of the trench (too broad against indirect fire! Soldiers expose themselves too much over the embrasure against direct fire). By the way, I also think that direct fire is based on a very delicate intuitive and clear model (e.g. place a log in front of a prone soldier and his survival rate drastically increases! Buildings and windows are bit harder to understand though...). 

But I understand why you would ask for more proof. I will see if I can find the time for more testing and some real life stats, it might take a while. But I thik that one thing is already safe to say: the infantry casualty rates in a standard CM-match (45min - 1.5h) are through the roof. Of course now we could start to discuss whether and to what extent a game needs to be condensed in time in order to be fun - BF itself has also confirmed that we should not blindly assume a 1:1 time ratio, if I remember correctly...

 

I've been there (see this post: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/125278-highlanders-the-battle-of-gerbini/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-1748396). Creating ditches by shaping the terrain didn't work for me. Either your soldiers will all position themselves at the elevated edges of the ditch (so that they stay exposed to artillery fire), or they all crowd up in the ditch (so that they can't see or fire at anything). And the problem still remains that the ditches created in this way are too broad (the best you can achieve is a ca. 4-6m ditch, which is still a big target for artillery when it really matters). Also, soldiers when ordered to move, many soldiers move at the edge of the tiles, outside of the trench.

I've ended up with a trench that looks very similar to the one you posted to represent an irrigation ditch on my Gerbini map (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/125278-highlanders-the-battle-of-gerbini/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-1747980). But the problem still remains: The trench model is too broad and therefore gets hit by artillery (and particularly mortars) too easily. Every meter counts!

As I've mentioned in the post above, I think the best solution would be to just let the trench model (and any soldiers) clip through the ground mesh. Adjusting the ground mesh itself would look much cooler, of course, but would also draw the enemy's attention. )

 

----------------------

* e.g. http://community.battlefront.com/topic/123157-improvement-suggestions/?page=4&tab=comments#comment-1713167

 

Yeah, I see you already attempted the same. Good work. It´s off course anything but a perfect solution and likely more a visual than practical enhancement admittedly. Beside that V4 introduced that odd leaving cover behavior which can be more than annoying and makes testing the more difficult.

From my experience you always need at least 2 connected trench sections and start zig zagging them at the earliest opportunity to get the most cover from them as in RL. If I need just a gun pit or covered crew position (HMG ect.) I´d rather use foxholes or sculpt the mesh by some trcky use of the ditch lock feature. Another useful terrain sculpting feature is using foot paths as a way to slightly raise or level AS that were already sculpted with ditch locks before. Counts for all terrain types from the "roads" section when combined with any ditch locked terrain.

Need to retest all that in CMFB as most my experiences come from messing with CMBN maps and older game engine versions. Could also deserve a different thread while it becomes more and more off topic here.

[Bulletpoint]

9 minutes ago, IanL said:

Also, some people might ask about the difference hiding makes. My personal experience is that hiding in trenches offers crazy good protection.

Yep, they do. Foxholes too. As long as you hide, you can even ride out nebelwerfer barrages with minimal casualties.

I think the argument is basically over whether trenches should provide good fighting positions, too. And about what level of protection against artillery they should provide while not hiding.

Edited September 25, 2018 by Bulletpoint

[A Canadian Cat]

9 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I think the argument is basically over whether trenches should provide good fighting positions, too. And about what level of protection against artillery they should provide while not hiding.

Yep, understood. My thinking around including hiding is it might help highlight the contrast. For example, for the sake of argument, say test show that trenches offer just a slight amount of protection for non hidden troops but near total for hidden troops compared to troops in the open. That might make people feel different about the results than if the testing just shows that trenches offer a slight amount of protection compared to being in the open.

[Kaunitz]

2 hours ago, IanL said:

Yeah sucks. Here is what you do: make the troops fanatic so they will obey your orders at nearly all costs and give them a pause order. They will then stay a very long time for you to study the slaughter.

You can do the same for soldiers in open ground.

Also, some people might ask about the difference hiding makes. My personal experience is that hiding in trenches offers crazy good protection. I remember the scenario A Temple to Mars (I think I have that right), when I had my soliders hide in the trench works they were nearly un-kill-able, only shells that went into the trench caused casulties. After the artillery fire I gave them the un-hide command and they fought on.

Thanks for the tip. I will see if it works tomorrow. I was planning to test the trench primarily with hiding enabled (you need to hide to get any protection from the current trenches).

I don't share the "crazy good protection" impression for units hiding in trenches. Yes, hiding ("taking cover") offers the protection you would expect from a trench against shells that land outside of the trench. If your head is below the ground level and you have a good helmet, arty can't knock you out that easily unless it lands really close or fuses/air burst ammo is used (more an issue in CM:BS were trenches are even more futile for this very reason). The suppressive effect and the effect on morale is modeled in the game though and I have no problem with it at all. My issue with trenches is that they're too big a target so too many shells score a direct hit and physically knock out your position. In fact, in the first test I ran, 3 shells (of 3x medium mortar tubes, heavy mission) directly hit the trench in the first minute of the salvo. I didn't mention it because it's not representative and just an anecdote, but it really confirmed my gut-feeling (there was at least one direct hit in the first round of all tests I've made so far). So, there is certainly no "total protection" for troops in trenches. My impression is that a trench can be knocked out in 1-2 minutes of accurate (direct mortar) and/or concentrated and/or very heavy calibre shelling. And that strikes me as unrealistic. Trenches (and by that I mean slit-trenches) should be harder to hit and require more shelling or be taken in an assault (with arty contributing suppression rather than physical damage). It will be interesting to take a look at more representative data (how many direct hits a trench suffers from battery type x in time y) once I figure out how to make my soldiers stay in the trench. The community can then discuss if the numbers are plausible. 

Another minor issue I have with the current trenches is that as they stand out from the ground so much, flat trajectory HE weapons (tank guns, AT guns) have a large target to fire at. If trenches were a smaller/lower silhouette target (as they should), these weapons would have a much smaller margin for error/inaccuracy and more of their shells would land farther off target (where they can't contribute to the suppression). Right now, tanks are incredibly effective against trenches as they can fire directly at the embrasure (which can sometimes - in rare instances - even take out soldiers that are "hiding" in the trench). need to test).

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Yep, they do. Foxholes too. As long as you hide, you can even ride out nebelwerfer barrages with minimal casualties.

I think the argument is basically over whether trenches should provide good fighting positions, too. And about what level of protection against artillery they should provide while not hiding.

As mentioned above, I don't think that trenches provide enough protection for hiding troops because too many shells land direct hits because the trench is not narrow enough. 

The second point is a different but also interesting topic. In some situations, CM makes you decide between staying alive (=take cover, be suppressed) or fighting.  

Edited September 25, 2018 by Kaunitz

[Zveroboy1]

- Having a bunch of slots you can use to save your quick battle force selections.

- In the editor/units selection panel,  when you click on a formation to expand it, the resulting display of the units belonging to this formation should be indented to the right so it stands out from the other formations below.

- In the editor when designing a scenario, it would be useful if you could have some units either locked in place (not just for the set up phase but the duration of the whole battle) or simply make it so the player can't give them any orders at all. The goal would be to simulate static units not part of the force commanded by the player, who would be manning a part of the front while the player is attacking another sector for instance.

- Flares.

- As far as trenches and foxholes are concerned, I couldn't agree more with Kaunitz. As it is now, it is one of the weakest feature of CM2. The previous posters have already mentioned how trenches are too wide and stick out above the ground too much but there is also the problem that soldiers inside have pretty much only their lower halves protected. I mean just look at the soldiers closely next time you play. In a game where fire is not abstracted but where the ballistic of bullets is modeled, they are way too exposed. Has everybody forgotten how trenches worked in CM 1? It took a lot more to get rid of a squad in a trench than it does now.

My memory is a bit hazy on this one, so it is entirely possible I am wrong, but didn't Battlefront slightly lower tank leaders models inside the tanks at one point to make them less vulnerable to small arms fire when unbuttoned? I have always thought they should try to do the same with trenches/foxholes and just lower the pixel truppen inside a tiny bit even if that means having their ankles clip through the ground. It is probably not as easy as i sounds but I'd like to think that if Battlefront tried to tackle this issue seriously, they could fix this and make trenches more realistic.

 

[Bulletpoint]

9 hours ago, Kaunitz said:

11 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Yep, they do. Foxholes too. As long as you hide, you can even ride out nebelwerfer barrages with minimal casualties.

I think the argument is basically over whether trenches should provide good fighting positions, too. And about what level of protection against artillery they should provide while not hiding.

As mentioned above, I don't think that trenches provide enough protection for hiding troops because too many shells land direct hits because the trench is not narrow enough. 

I agree with you. The width definitely has an impact. It's mostly a problem against direct-firing mortars though. Off-map artillery has a large spread, so I find few shells actually land in the trenches.

And even when they do, I don't think that's a big problem, because with a very narrow trench, you might get buried if a shell went off next to it. So even though the trench technically protected you from the blast, the end result could be the same.

 

9 hours ago, Kaunitz said:

The second point is a different but also interesting topic. In some situations, CM makes you decide between staying alive (=take cover, be suppressed) or fighting.  

Which is realistic in many situations, but with trenches, I think a major part of their purpose is to make soldiers able to both fight and be quite well protected at the same time. I think the biggest problem with trenches in the game is not that they don't protect against artillery, but that they protect too little against small arms.

Edited September 26, 2018 by Bulletpoint

[Michael Emrys]

16 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

It's mostly a problem against direct-firing mortars though.

But isn't that what they (the mortars) are supposed to do? Small and medium caliber mortars were issued to rifle companies to deal with emplaced enemies, and it was their ability to drop bombs right in the foxholes and trenches that made them effective. Granted they wouldn't achieve that with every shot, but even when they hadn't, the threat was always there.

Michael

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

23 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

It's mostly a problem against direct-firing mortars though.

But isn't that what they (the mortars) are supposed to do? Small and medium caliber mortars were issued to rifle companies to deal with emplaced enemies, and it was their ability to drop bombs right in the foxholes and trenches that made them effective. Granted they wouldn't achieve that with every shot, but even when they hadn't, the threat was always there.

Yes, correct - but that's where the limitations of the current trench system start to show, because in that case, the physical width of the trench is very important.

[domfluff]

14 hours ago, IanL said:

You are correct that there is some amazing detail. By default the design of the game is based on actual geometry and tracking projectiles. But there is some fudge factors built in for some things. I personally don't know if artillery is handled shrapnel by shrapnel or by chances and factors with hard cover offering total projection .

I think that I remember reading that the artillery has two effects - an explosion, and a number of generated "shrapnel" projectiles that issues from that point - the number, velocity and so forth will differ depending on the weapon. If that's correct, I don't know whether this is ray-traced or actually affected by gravity, etc. This won't be a realistic number of pieces (since there would be thousands in reality, most of which won't matter), but would be enough to get the point across.

In any case, that seems to follow my observations (and it sounds like a plausible way to do it anyway) - a small rise can offer significant protection from artillery, and sometimes a surprisingly far-off squad will get hit by friendly fire, if they have LOS/LOF to the impact point.

Terrain fudging seems to be a "saving throw", of sorts - with the above assumptions this means that trenches will not protect the poor chap from being hit by the explosion, or the simulated invisible shrapnel, but would get an additional chance at life. Presumably not when the shell lands in the trench.

In addition, we do know that the terrain tiles act conceptually similar to Advanced Squad Leader or Combat Commander - there's the cover from the actual tile (i.e., a wall or hill physically getting in the way), and also a hinderence factor based on the tiles that the LOF passes through. It's not clear right now precisely how that's modelled - whether that just spoils the spotting, disrupts the aim, or works as a saving throw.

[Kaunitz]

2 hours ago, domfluff said:

I think that I remember reading that the artillery has two effects - an explosion, and a number of generated "shrapnel" projectiles that issues from that point - the number, velocity and so forth will differ depending on the weapon. If that's correct, I don't know whether this is ray-traced or actually affected by gravity, etc. This won't be a realistic number of pieces (since there would be thousands in reality, most of which won't matter), but would be enough to get the point across.

Interesting. This also concurs with my "observation": Sometimes - not always - when you're zoomed in at an arty/mortar explosion, you can hear some bullet-whizzing sounds (might only happen if you use soundmods...). I suspect that this occurs when your camera is close to an actual "shrapnel projectile" that gets spawned by the explosion.  

It's also the reason why sandbags can work quite well in the game. Don't use them against direct fire (at the typical short CM ranges, the half-cover they provide is not really a good protection...). Use them to protect a position from shrapnel. E.g. if you place a sandbag behind a unit, then it will increase the survivial chance of your unit against artillery shells that land behind the unit (especially if the unit is prone, of course). I found sandbags to work pretty well in this role. 

I agree that directly sighted mortar fire should be your best chance to knock out an entrenched position (or parts of it). The problem that I see is that it happens too quickly/easily. I suppose that the best real life data you could bring as an argument would be to compare the area of mortar-shell dispersion and the width of a slit trench (according to field manuals: 0.6 - 2m). I've only found some data for modern mortars at ranges of 1000m & 1500m - I hope I haven't  messed up the scale -  I tried my best. Note that I placed the beaten zones directly over the target, and also, I don't know the wind conditions for this set of data:

Now, with 1.5m,  the trench in this diagram is already more on the broad side for a slit trench. But the trenches in the game look more like 3m to me which would quite drastically increase the chance of a direct hit. 

I suppose that mortars had a similar accuracy during WWII. The question is whether they became much more accurate at closer ranges. Supposedly not, as shells had to be fired at a steeper angle, which meant that they spend more time at relative low speed, "hanging" in the air at the peak of their trajectory, being more affected by wind etc. But I'm not an expert here. In the end, randomness/chance would play a huge role, but the fact that trenches are too broad still remains. From my experience in the game, trenches can be taken out quite easily by mortars. You don't need to assault a trench very often ... 

I'm sure that more detailed data must be available somewhere on the internet....

 

PS: Somewhat (but not directly) related topic: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/115702-killsuppression-radius-for-mortars/?tab=comments#comment-1541884 (It just tells us why you'd want your head to be below ground level ^^)

 

 

 

Edited September 26, 2018 by Kaunitz