Walls, Windows and other assorted MOUT problems

[birdstrike]

Concerning the climbing through windows issue, I put together a small cosmetical mod which might solve the WYSIWYG for as long as things remain as they are:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84664

[RSColonel_131st]

Interesting idea, Birdstrike. Gotta try that one - CMMODS?

[Thomm]

I am all for entering through windows where appropriate.

But to put the programming task into perspective: I am not aware of any First-Person-Shooter that allows for entering through windows. Heck, Brothers in Arms only allows vaulting over walls in its third incarnation! And all these games put the individual in the center of attention.

Personally, I think it is important to give the scenario designer means of controlling who goes where and how. Restrictions are a part of that. The "barred window" argument is also hard to beat.

Nevertheless, the idea of giving lightweight units these additional movement options certainly has its charm.

Best regards,

Thomm

PS: Usual shameless plug: if you want to see Syrians defending in a favorable environment, try "Old City", my urban fighting scenario at www.cmmods.com.

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[Scipio]

I jump in late here, so please excuse if I've missed something in an earlier post.

About the 'entering through windows thing', the time you need to let 5 or 10 men climb through 2 or 3 windows should be considered, too, especially if it's not a large windows. Even if the equipment is only light, how much time do you need - 5 seconds, maybe even 10? This sums up very quickly to a half turn or more...

Birdstrike, that's a great idea!

[RSColonel_131st]

Scipio, that is right and correct. Scaling large walls would also require significant time. But if your other option is to move out the two sides of the building where you are under enemy observation or fire, slowly exiting into the back alley trough the window will be 100% more favorable even if it takes longer.

[Inkompetent]

I jump in late here, so please excuse if I've missed something in an earlier post.

About the 'entering through windows thing', the time you need to let 5 or 10 men climb through 2 or 3 windows should be considered, too, especially if it's not a large windows. Even if the equipment is only light, how much time do you need - 5 seconds, maybe even 10? This sums up very quickly to a half turn or more...

Birdstrike, that's a great idea!

I think you should count with AT LEAST 10 seconds per soldier unless it is a decently large window and a very low one. Anything a bit higher up and they'll need guys helping them up if they want to keep any good pace at all. So if they all have to enter the same window you are up for some very slow entering.

[Scipio]

Scipio, that is right and correct. Scaling large walls would also require significant time. But if your other option is to move out the two sides of the building where you are under enemy observation or fire, slowly exiting into the back alley trough the window will be 100% more favorable even if it takes longer.

Yeah, that's correct, but I had something else in mind. My usual tactic when playing blue in MOUT is to pump as much fire into each building I know to be occupied by red forces. This usually results into casualties or pinned/paniced reds within 5 or ten seconds. That's why I doubt that adding a 'move through windows' feature makes to much sense.

But on the other hand, I have often wished for 'passable windows', when my men were on the top of a building and were not able to enter throught the windows of an adjanced building. Question is just - is this a problem of game design or scenario design?

[Scipio]

Hi Guys

...

3) Problem is: The enemy player can see this. Immediatly. Now, this is plain 100% wrong. If none of his units has LOS to that part of the wall (it was hidden behind a house in a corner) he should hear a loud bang, maybe wants to investigate that, but no way I hell can he known which wall I just knocked over. ...

That's, by the way, something I fully agree to.

[Sergei]

Scipio, that is right and correct. Scaling large walls would also require significant time. But if your other option is to move out the two sides of the building where you are under enemy observation or fire, slowly exiting into the back alley trough the window will be 100% more favorable even if it takes longer.

Since that would require, essentially, a change to the interface, TacAI and gub knows what, I don't see it happening, at least not very soon. After all, you'd need a way to tell the game whether you wanted to use the normal entry/exits or the slower ones, and then the little computer people would need some extra coding.

Even then it can be argued that most houses in 3rd world cities have steel bars or other antiburglary devices in their first floor windows. Shops would have something like this:

So letting men leap through all windows would be unrealistic, too.

But given limitations, why not. Until that happens, though, it's better to use that all seeing eye to make sure that your men can get out of where you're putting them in! (That's definately one of the gamey aspects, your squad leader has no way to know if the building he's about to enter has a back entrance, or even windows on the other side.)

[Lanzfeld]

Seeing wall breaches sucks, just like how trenches are visible. Dust from vehicles is similar. Those are fair critical points for sure.

Just to chime in.... these are very valid and I hope they are "fixed" before the WWII game is released.

[RSColonel_131st]

Since that would require, essentially, a change to the interface, TacAI and gub knows what, I don't see it happening, at least not very soon. After all, you'd need a way to tell the game whether you wanted to use the normal entry/exits or the slower ones, and then the little computer people would need some extra coding.

Not that complicated - if you order them to exit into a certain direction (depending on the first waypoint outside the house) they will exit trough the wall nearest to that waypoint. If it has a door, it's quicker than if it is a window. The animations could be the same or at least very similar to entering trough a door, just slower.

Point taken about barricaded windows. I do think that boarded up stuff wouldn't last long vs. a Squad, but metal grills certainly would be a problem.

[Other Means]

Sergei! Where the hell you been fella?

[c3k]

Metal grills: Who has the bolt cutters? Or the pry bar? Or the shotgun? Or fires right into the masonry to rip out the anchor bolts? Etc. Perhaps a delay, but certainly not a block to movement.

Ken

[salwon]

Metal grills: Who has the bolt cutters? Or the pry bar? Or the shotgun? Or fires right into the masonry to rip out the anchor bolts? Etc. Perhaps a delay, but certainly not a block to movement.

Ken

That wouldn't be good for the whole "sneaking out" thing.

"Crap, they have the door covered! Okay, we need to very quietly go out the windows..."

"Sarge, there's bars over all the windows!"

"Johnson, grab the shotgun!"

[Sergei]

Sergei! Where the hell you been fella?

I told you once!

[LRC]

IMYO, forcing building entry via doors makes MOUT very unrealistic because a squad can always enter a building. It is just a question of time...

Consider the following:

Case1: Door unlocked => 0 delay

Case2: Door locked=> delay30 sec max

Case3: Window => 15sec per body

Case4: window with bars => 2min + 15sec per body

In term of user interface,a basic visual coding could convey the door/window status:

- door locked or window with bars => door/window visible or colored Red

- door unlocked or no bars window => no door/window visible (plain hole in the wall) or colored Green

[Battlefront.com]

We've been over this many times before and we're not planning on making any changes.

In CMx1 we had unrestricted movement through any wall, remember? It was extremely unrealistic, you told us it sucked, and we agreed it sucked. So we changed things significantly Now with windows and doors explicitly simulated buildings have a lot more realism than they did in CMx1. Not perfect, since nothing is nor ever will be, but it's a Hell of a lot more realistic than what we used to have.

What about making it even more realistic? Doesn't work for us because it won't work for you. None of the suggested made here would benefit gameplay, UI, and/or realism. Some of the suggestions run into all of these problems, others just one or two. I'll use the one that is most problematic and expand upon that...

The average window can not be entered either easily or at all, depending on the circumstances. Either they are badly positioned, badly shaped, or too physically restricted (too small, barred, etc.). How do we depict this in the game? By having another couple dozen permutations for scenario designers to labor with when making scenarios? Me thinks they won't like that

Let's say we did simulate another couple of dozen window types and scenario designers actually used them. How do you, the player, use them within a game? Currently AI pathing gets your guys into buildings. This has proved to be a tricky thing to for the AI to do in the past, though now it works fine. And that's with very clear entrance/exit points. How the Hell do you expect the AI to read your mind that you don't want it to go through one wall vs. another one? There's no acceptable way I can think of.

If we leave it to the TacAI it will get it wrong way too often, I can guarantee you of that. If we add specific Commands to the UI then we're going down the wrong road of overspecialization of Commands, which in turn will produce complaints about the difficulties of playing in MOUT scenarios. And that is not even taking into consideration the game penalties for going through windows that are extremely realistic and yet nearly impossible to simulate in a way that people would like.

It seems most people here are smart enough to understand that a fully ladened soldier, not to mention a Western type one with 30 extra pounds of bulky body armor, can not just prance through any window of his choice. Even in the best circumstances it will be clumsy and time consuming vs. going through a door. It is also EXTREMELY dangerous because the soldier is just about the most perfect target a bad guy within the house could pray for. Largely immobile, nicely framed (literally), no weapon at the ready, and nobody able to cover him in any sort of effective way.

So when your Squad goes to the wrong wall, spends more than a minute and a half trying to get into a window only to have the first couple of guys killed by enemy within the house... there will be all kinds of calls for us to either yank the feature out (which cost us a long time to put in) or spend an amazingly long stretch of development time taking a wildly unpopular feature and making it just unpopular. This would be a horrible waste of our time for these reasons alone, but it's worse still when one considers...

From previous discussions soldiers backed up our assertion that in a fast moving MOUT situation where there is little known about the whereabouts of enemy forces within buildings that nobody has a clue about in terms of layout... windows would be very rarely used as entry points. Even in COIN Ops the preferred method of entry is through the front door for run of the mill entries. Sure, special cases can crop up, but many of those are outside of CM's scope (i.e. COIN Ops specific, which CM is not about) or fall into the category of "too infrequent to matter". We can't go around programming everything to the 10th degree, so combat related stuff which is not central to the average combat situation must, and I do mean MUST, be abandoned if only so we can actually have product to release sometime this decade.

In short... no

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

As for deformable terrain being included in Fog Of War, unfortunately this isn't practical for us to add. It's a better thing to shoot for getting in compared to window entry points, but it's still too much work for too little gain simulation wide in our opinion. Not showing something means having to know when to change the state to being seen. There's no code to support that now and adding it isn't trivial.

Still, it is definitely something we would like to have in the game in theory, so I hope someday we will. But it's not going to be soon.

Steve

[RSColonel_131st]

Steve, your answers disappoint me. You seem to mostly disregard what has been said.

Namely for example that window exit would be very helpfull to get OUT of a house, or trough an unoccupied house, especially for Uncons. There goes your argument that the first soldier is an easy target for anyone inside.

As for interface, right now how do you tell an unit which door to exit? Simple, they take the door closest to the next waypoint. Why shouldn't that work with windows (You'd place the first waypoint outside at the wall, just like you select which wall to BLAST when you use that movement). There goes your argument that it would be a clumsy and complicated interface.

As for multiple window types - if first floor windows are generally barred (boarded up) how come my guys can shoot out of them? If they are metal-grill blocked, that can be pried down and not even too loudly, compared to the background noise of a urban fight. I know from friends that the US Army does - at least some units - very well train to enter and exit trough windows. I guess they do it just for fun.

I didn't see anything about scaling walls without breaking them either, which would be a way around deformable terrain being seen by both sides, and would allow a more stealthy approach.

But to get down to the point why your answer most disappoints me: Everthing you argue and say always is about US tactics, training doctrine. You are always arguing from the US POV, what the US Army/Marines would do and wouldn't do. Belive me, Uncon Fighters (Irregulars with three banana clips and an AK-47) or Syrian Conscripts who have less equipment, vehicles and manouver training will come up with a LOT of things they can do in MOUT that are different from the US - because they want to survive just as much.

You think Syrian uncons will say "No, we can't break open that window and squeeze trough, lets go out front where the stryker will see us and gun us down?" Another example is that Syrians are unable to split squads because it is "not their doctrine". Yeah, so the Syrian Squad Leader can not tell two guys of his nine to take the RPG and go one floor up from the rest of the squad on the roof to watch out for the Bradley coming down the street - he would rather expose the other seven squaddies also? Or that he can't send two guys ahead across the street to see if they draw any fire? Even the german and russian conscripts - civilians with a minimum of basic training - in WW2 managed to things like that without always sticking togehter in blocks of nine men - because it was the logical thing to survive.

The weaker side in the current asymmetric conflicts has proven to be all but stupid. They are very creative in ways to make up for their inherent disadvantages. But whenever something like that is brought up here (like improvised tin metal sheet top cover for foxholes or trenches, to bring an example for "open warfare) your arguments are always "no, the US wouldn't do that, and thus no other army would do that".

Steve, your choice of setting for this game gives one of two human players in PBEM a very real disadvantage. Instead of allowing the Syrian Commander to make up for the tactical shortcomings of his men trough creativity and "out-of-the-box" tactics, you force him to play by the same rules as the superior-in-firepower US Side. Yes, if the scenario is set up very loopsided or with very tight restrictions on Blue (Casuality Percentage for example) the Red Player can still win - but even then, playing is NOT fun. It's no fun having to play by the Blue rulebook with Red units. It's no fun having your fortifications seen from miles away (Blue is usually the attacker, so they don't have that problem). It's no fun being unable to fortify a building as strongpoint so your guys would last just 10 minutes longer in a firefight.

You told me yourself in my recent Al Huqf thread that I should not try to play Red side like Blue side. Just a shame that all the unconventional things a weak Red force would try (like silently scaling a wall to sneak into the flank of an approaching blue squad, for example) are not allowed by the BFC rulebook.

I for one won't be buying any future modules for CMSF, and hope that CMx2 WW2 will again bring the even-sided fun that CMBB was. Blue vs. Blue and Red vs. Red is right now the only way to have a fair shot at an even-chanced PBEM game, but seeing US soldiers shoot at US Soldiers is more comical than immersive.

Rant over, continue with your regular shedule now.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Belive me, Uncon Fighters (Irregulars with three banana clips and an AK-47) or Syrian Conscripts who have less equipment, vehicles and manouver training will come up with a LOT of things they can do in MOUT that are different from the US - because they want to survive just as much.

BTW not talking about CMSF, but tactics in general, most of the stuff you are talking about do not require brilliant creative adaptions from the Syrian commander, as that type of stuff is by Syrian doctrine.

the Syrian side will take a stand on a well prepared battlefield of his choosing. buildings are fortified and specifically have stuff like planned & prepared escape routes (including, gosh, use of ladders). tunnel and trench networks (with overhead cover) are well camoed, just as are ATGM & mortar positions (in considerable depth in battlespace) and bunkers (which are strong enough to take air strikes). the whole idea is to not be seen, achieving a surprise by appearing at unexpected location and then melting away to alternate position (or cover) within the battlespace before receiving effective fire.

the Syrian defender does NOT expect to have odds, he is NOT massing forces in a futile attempt to match enemy firepower superiority, he is NOT trying to ambush the enemy in an open battle.

most of this stuff was talked about already back in 2005 (?) when this board opened. back then it was argued by BFC that the reports about above descriped kind of change in Syrian doctrine would not be succesful, because past attempts of changing Syrian doctrine would have failed.

IMO that rebuttal became more questionable after summer 2006, when Hezbollah forces, trained & equipped by Syrians, displayed effective use of such doctrine in Lebanon against IDF. it is also worth noting how some Israeli commanders commented after the short war how they had been confused about what Syrians had been doing in Syria already for some years, but now after seeing the tactics used by Hezbollah understood what Syrians had been up to.

[RSColonel_131st]

Interesting, hadn't seen all what you say URC. But makes sense.

I guess my vocal frustration here is borne out of the fact that I really looked forward to being the sneaky, evil, dastardly but creative Syrian bastard who'd give the US guys a hard time by unconventional means. Arguments like "Soldiers with 30 pounds Body Armor can not go trough windows" is PRECISELY why the Syrians would enjoy an unconventional advantage in doing so over the US (and even out their own disadvantages some).

BFC had - still has - the chance to make this a game that truly mirrors two sides in an asymmetrical conflict and their very specific advantages and disadvantages - one would be the attacker with superior mobility, networking and firepower, the other the cleverly hidden, stealthy/sneaky hit&run defender.

But what came out of it was a game that - arguable pretty brilliantly - models US Army doctrinal movement and combat behaviour, and then just takes away certain options from the Syrian troops (like splitting Squads). It doesn't really seem to consider individual specific tactical options for both sides separatly, more like "fit them all into a mold".

The only thing Syrians have and the US does not are IEDs and Spys, if I'm not mistaken. Stuff like better fortification modeling, TRPs for the slow artillery, unconventional ways to move around in MOUT, prepared positions - all not here. Am I to be surprised that there isn't a Syrian campaign either?

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[Lurker765]

As a related note to the bars on the windows. In my experience almost every place that has bars on the window has a security door as well that is much harder to pry off than the windows. When I have removed bars from windows with a crowbar it takes a couple minutes per window, but the door itself requires special tools and is not an easy task. The door cannot be kicked in either.

I think the bars on the window argument is a red herring. If the building has bars on the window then the doors are even tougher to get into and there are pretty good odds they are locked to prevent looting during a war.

[RSColonel_131st]

No we're not gonna ask you why you know all this from first hand experience or what your job description is...

Seriously, thanks for the feedback. Makes sense.