LongLeftFlank
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Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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winkelried - thanks for testing. Time permitting, I may try to replicate your tests using 81mm instead of 60mm. Those are the bad boys that inflict most of the devastating results I've been seeing on dug-in troops.
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Do you have any links to shots that show the positions as the enemy would have "seen" them, as opposed to standing right behind the thing looking down into it? As you know, photographic "evidence" can be deceptive. Most photos are taken well after the action and are posed for dramatic effect, not authentic illustrations of tactical drill. Consider some of the shots included in CMBN itself -- the GI with the grease gun sitting with his ear right next to the barrel of a water-cooled Browning.
EDIT: I'm sure the inexperienced GIs arriving in Normandy committed some entrenchment faux pas. I'm equally sure the Germans taught them the hard way how to do it properly....
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While it's indeed a trivial matter for a trained WWII mortarman (and observer) to "drop a pickle in a bucket at 500m", thus allowing a light mortar to kill infantry in open holes given enough time and ammo, that assumes they know where the bucket is (i.e. the observer has the target under direct observation, relatively free of obstruction).
In those cases, the target has only 3 alternatives:
(a) kill the shooters / FOs,
(
withdraw to less readily observed terrain© dig in deeper and roof over the dugouts so that only heavy shell direct hits will kill them and the mortars cause only pinning and shock.
In hilly areas, that kind of direct observation could happen more often, and explains the particular horror of the Hurtgenwald (sitting in the bottom of a valley filled with scraggly pines, surrounded on 3 sides by enemy FOs), or numerous valleys in Italy (which is also more sparsely vegetated). In not-quite-so-radically-hilly Normandy, this also explains much of the importance ascribed to seizing / holding the various heights around Saint Lo and Caen. It also explains much of the popularity of "reverse slope" defenses which deprive the enemy FOs of the ability to look into your holes.
So the dramatic "overkill" observed in the game seems to me to derive not from some problem with the modeled accuracy or speed of the mortar teams / FOs, but from:
(1) non-moving infantry in good concealment terrain, even dug-in, are far too easy to spot with precision, at a distance. Spotting seems to be all-or-nothing; once a unit is spotted, the spotting unit invariably knows its position down to the meter. Pickle, meet bucket. Reality is of course far more tenuous; you "spotted" muzzle flashes, or a helmet bobbed up, or just sensed something moving in the direction the shooting is coming from.
(2) excessive lethality of non-direct mortar hits against dug-in or comparably covered infantry, particularly those in buildings or wooden bunkers (honestly, units in the latter should be essentially impervious to light mortar fire -- the weakness seems to be the vision slits). Suppression and shock, yes. Wounds, not so much, at least not so quickly. I have watched medium mortars breach a hedgerow in 2 minutes; that kind of demolition simply wasn't possible with ordinary frag rounds (unlike gun shells which plow into the earth before detonating).
One tweak that might help a lot is to have entrenched infantry prefer to fight (shoot and spot) prone, as opposed to sitting up so much and exposing 50% of their bodies to incoming of all kinds. They seem to "take a knee" even when their position already has a good field of fire.
Another fix would be to radically decrease the spottability of entrenchments from "vehicle" class to "infantry" class. Right now, entrenched infantry are spotted about 3x as fast as unentrenched infantry in the same terrain.
Light and medium mortar fire, or any direct fire weapon for that matter, simply shouldn't be able to clean out a concealed and dug in position so fast at combat ranges. It's a real game unbalancer.
FWIW.
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Agreed. I don't even like the enemy casualty crosses showing up (and those can be removed via mod).
There's a FOW mod out there (by Mord, I think) that transforms all infantry icons (MG, etc.) to a generic infantry symbol, so at least you won't be able to differentiate unless you actually click on the spotted enemy unit. Of course, you won't be able to differentiate among your own either.
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Well now you have the Cubist Anti-Fascist Volunteers for your Spanish Civil War module!
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Seems to me that given enough gumption, PTO fanbois should be able to mod up a creditable representation once the Commonwealth module comes out.
Strip the Brits of their vehicles, mod faces (M1A1TC did some North Koreans for CMSF -- there's a start), uniforms and Airborne helmets, set morale to Fanatic and you've got a reasonable surrogate "Japanese" force to face the US (or British) Army (remember, more US Army soldiers fought in the PTO than Marines). No clue whether squad size compares, I'm sure someone knows.
Bren for Nambu, 2 inch mortars stand in for "knee mortars" and Tojo's yer uncle! Yes, your infantry are lugging SMLE .303 instead of the underpowered Arisaka .25 but ya can't have everything. I gather Japanese artillery was quite good, on the German model. Oh, and buy lots and lots of snipers.
For tanks, you'll likely need to wait until the final "funnies" module when French H39s or PzIIs / 38(t) come along to stand in for the Type 97.
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Enclose the buildings and their gardens with authentic walls and hedges and they won't look so odd. For good measure add a crate, sacks or bench. Simple enough.
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Er...your the ones who spell it wrong....fact.
I used to delight in saying such things to my American friends until one pointed out that the Latin from which these words were taken does NOT include "u" and that moreover all the Brits (and their offshoots) are doing is advertising the sad fact that a thousand years ago we lost a war to the French.
Never felt quite so self-righteous after that zinger....
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LongLeftFlank, what is this picture from? Music album? Book?:confused:
Punk rocker, poet, painter (and Late Empire uniforms grog) Billy Childish. The Youtube links posted above explain all. Thee Headcoats is his most famous band, but Buff Medways is another. Basically, if the Peng Challenge had a soundtrack, Billy would provide it.....
If that ain't enuff, Google or wiki "Steady the Buffs" for the regimental history.
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More than you think, mate....
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Nice work!
Putting a "gapped" high bocage abutting the side of a 2-3 story house is a little dense for ivy up close but doesn't look too bad at a distance.
It also provides very good additional cover for the ground floor -- bocage is a lot sturdier than stone and brick walls. I'm using this expedient to toughen up some of the walls of my fortified chateau.
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Wow, nice looking map!
One reco, FWIW: make sure units have little to no LOS deep into, much less right through, those two patches of woodland flanking the Abbey. Those are going to be critical tactical terrain in the game. Right now, I am sad to say the plain CMBN forest tiles + trees aren't accurately representing the dense thickets (young trees and bushes) at the woods edges that in summer heavily obstruct LOS into and out of the interior. They are more representative of "interior" forests where sunlight is sporadic.
The method I recommend is to use the hedge tiles that have gaps in them at various angles to represent the thickets, together with the small "orchard trees" and long grass. More info available in this thread. Good luck!
EDIT: Some others have suggested tinkering with the elevations or using bocage instead of hedge but I don't personally endorse those solutions as thickets generally offer very little cover (but great concealment). You make the call.
EDIT: Oh wait -- are those orchards? Never mind the thicket in that case, but they should definitely have bocage around them.
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Yes, buttoned AFVs spotting infantry is on my own Top Three Things To Be Improved list.
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As opposed to this (minute 13:25)?
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On the one hand, it seems like something like 95% of all infantry attacks in Normandy by either side -- at least in the detailed logs I've read so far -- ground to a halt once the enemy mortars found the range. Snipers and MG nests held up, but rarely stopped, an attack.
On the other hand, those mortars did not then proceed to annihilate the pinned down enemy force, entrenched or no, except in a few unusual instances. The mortars are unquestionably overmodeled in the game when it comes to their lethality against infantry in cover.
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Thanks for the observations, Steve. I got rid of the ditches (for now) and sure enough, the map now displays. I am just going to avoid the temptation to code any kind of terrain details on the master; all it will contain is the contours, watercourses, road net, placeholder buildings and the outlines of the hedgerows and forests.
Ideally, the carve-out battlemaps will have some additional space on them to support the omnipresent German artillery observers (and occasional SP gun)
Interestingly, I tried using the water tiles (which are locked to a single elevation) to create gullies and they don't seem to hit the memory nearly as badly -- they're just way too deep for my purposes (I want 2 meters deep, not 5-8).
As a general thought for future engine development; the tactical impacts of small depressions, defiles, gullies, drainage ditches, etc. are significant, even decisive -- Mother Earth after all provides far better cover than any above ground terrain feature. So it would be very useful indeed to find a way to let players "lay on" these features without distorting the basic terrain (contour) mesh and creating a concomitant LOS computation nightmare. I can definitely imagine and sympathize with the coding challenges however (same problem with adding any "subterranean" feature like cellars or "true" entrenchments)
I am happy to send the current map to anyone who PMs me with an email address.
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One of the few detailed sections of my master map; the southernmost section of La Meauffe looking southeast across the rail line. In the background, the Le Carillon height is visible (although it won't be on any game submap.... grrr!)
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Thanks for the info. BFC should definitely consider a "toggle grass" feature then.
It does seem though like it would be a hassle to go through and "repaint" various grasses, weeds etc. on all the submaps, especially since you're at risk for accidentally deleting other terrain types.
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I have a catapult. If you don't give me all the money, I will throw a huge stone at your head???
Man, that Rufus was a regular Henny Youngman!
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Interesting! Have you tested removing grass? If it makes such a difference BFC should consider a toggle...
Of course that may only provide a temporary reprieve, sijce I'll invariably go a "gully too far" again
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Well, further development of this project has now ground to a halt, at least in its current incarnation. I can no longer view my 2.6 x 2.8km map in 3d without crashing CMBN (it doesn't even give me OOM, just terminates).
Looks like gullies and steep-sided streambeds are the culprit; I am trying to render 2-3 meter deep irrigation ditches with ~30 degree sides, and the number of elevations I have to lock is ridiculous... nearly every square. I really wish BFC had kept the non-FOW "trench" terrain type in CMBN, as that was a useful way of rendering ditches and small depressions without so much clicking. The streambeds, railbeds and sunken lanes were critical features of the battlefield, allowing troops to advance and infiltrate unobserved.
I'm a little frustrated by all this, as I've put a LOT of time into research. Not sure what I'm going to do yet... I guess I'm going to have to leave my master map relatively devoid of details of any kind and start figuring out the submaps. Or shelve this frustrating project altogether and return to pooltable-flat Ramadi.
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I've read a lot of those accounts too, and they need to be taken with a LARGE grain of salt. The guys who wrote them were typically middle-aged officers who were not eyewitnesses to the events (or possibly, to any other frontline infantry combat). But they had been brought up in the traditional pikeman "spirit of the bayonet" culture that still formed a very fundamental component of infantry training and doctrine. So for these guys, it somehow wasn't a real fight if it didn't involve spitting the Hun.
I mean, it's not like it never happened, especially at night as ammo ran short. But in an era of mass-produced handguns, machine pistols, semiautomatic rifles/carbines and grenades, more reliable and longer-ranged alternatives were available for killing enemies once you saw the whites of their eyes. Stabbing and clubbing a man to death face-to-face was strictly a last resort.
The Civil War was a very different era tactically, with infantry combat having more in common with the Napoleonic era than with the 20th century. Introduction of the bolt-action rifle (more likely the single-shot breechloading cartridge a la Martini-Henry -- think Zulu War "volley fire") was the swansong of the medieval pikeman.
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Framerate impacts likely wouldn't be much worse than "fog" weather conditions. And there is a toggle option for smoke already.
I'd personally love to see more ambient battlefield smoke in general -- belching fumes, weapons smoke, longer dispersal of explosions, etc. A huge immersion adder, and seems readily doable by tweaking existing effects.
I wanted this in CMSF too, to the point where I considered putting some random RED indirect fire in my Ramadi map just for the atmosphere.
withdraw to less readily observed terrain
WW2 mortars and artillery. Most important thing to "get right" in the CM2 series?
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
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But aye, there's the rub! Hiding isn't enough....
First of all, the AI does not cause its units to Hide (hunker down) in response to incoming fire, which in 1 player mode basically lets you blast them out of their holes using 81mm without needing direct hits. In WeGo mode, you must wait until the next Orders phase to Hide your units -- in the meantime they have to suck it up.
In addition, even if you do Hide your units from incoming, the TacAI will frequently self- cancel that order when enemy units are in the vicinity. In that case, your guys resume sitting upright in their holes in "fighting position", soaking up the shrapnel (unless they're Cowering).
That's why I suggested that a tweak that causes entrenched infantry to fight prone by default as opposed to "taking the knee" might largely address the problem without mucking about with the existing mortar ROF, accuracy or ballistics models, which seem well-thought out. I'd settle for them to Cower a lot more while being shelled, even if it meant they were shooting far less.
Again, the bottom line is that 81mm -- however much of a "buzz kill" it proved to be in forcing infantry attacks to go to ground -- should not exterminate dug-in infantry in concealment terrain with the rapidity and thoroughness it does in the game. If mortars truly had this kind of "Argus eye" (
), frontline combat in both World Wars would have been very, very different.