LongLeftFlank
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Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
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I for one appreciate it. I've spent enough time among trees, woods, and forests that I should have been more mindful of differences. Thanks for reminding me.
One thing though, certainly in Germany and perhaps in some other parts of Western Europe at the time of the war there were managed forests of trees in various stages of maturity. These had lanes or fire breaks at regular intervals that could be exploited for movement and/or to provide clear lines of fire.
Michael
What you're thinking of would be mostly pines I think; fast-growing, hardy and tolerant of thin rocky (post-Ice Age) soils. As I mentioned a while back, the dense pine forests (taiga) that dominate the northern half of the Eurasian (and North American) landmass begin in earnest east of the Meuse (the Ardennes and Vosges). Large pine belts certainly do exist in the central massifs of France and down around Bordeaux, but in Normandy the dominant native forest is deciduous white oak.
This image was taken from a road. Once you get into the woods, visibility improves some (second image). But all the same I wouldn't fancy maneuvering a Sherman through there.
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Tree "objects" alone aren't considered "forest" for the purposes of vehicle movement (I assume calculating pathing based on every individual trees is too taxing). The way it is intended to work is to use either a "light forest" or "heavy forest" base tile where forest trees are placed. Light forest is passable to vehicles with penalties, heavy forest is impassable to vehicles. It is up to the map designer to pair the right base tile with the proper density of vegetation.
In the above example, dense forest tree "objects" are placed on a grass field base tile. As far as the AI is concerned, for movement purposes this is open grass field.
The only time you'd see mature trees standing alone is if human beings have cleared the undergrowth (e.g. parks, chateaus, orchards). Even stands of trees grown alongside fields or roads to provide windbreaks will have some brush and bushes at their feet.
For map building purposes, you would actually see "light forest" inside "heavy forest", not the reverse, and would rarely encounter "light woods" on its own. Woods are densest at their edges because light can get in and allow small trees, thickets and brush to grow. Tactically, that means that if you're deep inside the woods in summertime you probably can't see much outside, and vice versa.
Even in the "light forest" where big mature trees form a dense enough canopy to limit the height and density of ground cover, you will still get a mat of undergrowth, ferns and other low-light vegetation in summertime. This will provide some concealment and LOS restrictions for men at ground level, but not as much for vehicles. Kind of like patches of grain. The ground between the trees may be passable but hazards still exist, such as stumps, logs or boulders and patches of marshy ground disguised by a carpet of leaves.
"Heavy forest" on the other hand implies a mix of mature and not-so-mature trees with plentiful gaps that have allowed stands of saplings and thickets to grow. In summer especially, this undergrowth heavily restricts visibility at all levels. This makes this terrain functionally impassable to vehicles under battlefield conditions (they might be able to be safely guided into a concealed ambush position before battle); even if they can avoid the big trees and crush the small ones, they risk getting hung up on unseen snags.
Sorry to be pedantic about forests but heck, if people can ramble for pages about hull facing doctrine then I can ramble about terrain.
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Many of you probably know this, but for the benefit of those who don't, in CMSF you can split off a 2 man "AT team" from a Marine squad for example to go to a vehicle and grab 5.56mm. Once they return and reintegrate with their squad, the ammo will be shared out automatically and you can send them back for more. If you're in a hurry, send fire teams instead.
It's a bit of a hassle micro-wise, but it works.
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Are tanks more likely to bog/immobilize in the passable woods as opposed to clear ground?
Good question, and the answer ought to be not just yes but hell yes. One would also think that the maximum possible vehicle speed in such terrain would be SLOW. If you're in dense enough mature forest that there's limited undergrowth that also means no sunlight and poor visibility.
Fallen trees and tree stumps, as well as mossy boulders, are the main hazard. In low-lying level areas and dips, patches of soft ground hidden by a mat of leaves are also a problem, although this is least problematic in July-Sept.
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Note: this image was composited in Photoshop, this does not show a game feature:
Rats, I thought this was the "Haunted Panzer" feature we hallucinated we had been promised. Young Oberleutnant Götz von Berlichingen goes into battle under the eye of his iron-fisted namesake!
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Yes, it's a pity they can't find a way to model that dramatic plume of oily smoke and flame billowing out the side of the wreck and then drifting away. I'm not an expert on thermodynamics, but I believe the oxygen being sucked into the blaze basically creates its own "breeze" at ground level, causing the plume to move sideways before starting to pillar.
As the fire subsides (after the battle), it will start to look more like the graphic shown.
This is mainly eye candy of course, and I can live without it (although one might argue that it would enhance the concealment effect of the smoke). I greatly appreciate the addition of cook-offs!
What I would love is to have a building fire as placeable terrain, although I understand why it isn't in; pyromaniac players would then demand fire spreading rules, etc. etc.
I guess one might improvise same by creating an invisible vehicle, placing said vehicle as a burning wreck and then placing a modded building (scorched, windowless) on top of it.
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Agreed on the bridges and water.
They've clearly done a bit of work on the bocage mounds. I like this texture -- it's unobtrusive:
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Your question doesn't really make much sense to me on numerous levels, but Google up Mortain or Arracourt for starters.
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What's the range? I get the sense that at this point you've come close enough together that most hits by either side will be fatal, so (a) numbers (
HD position and © first shot will decide the battle. -
Yes, the poor gentleman's name was Amidou Diallou, a hardworking (legal) Ethiopian immigrant. RIP. Malcolm Gladwell (New Yorker) wrote a very interesting piece on that incident and how the human brain literally becomes more primitive under stress. It also found its way into one of his books ("Blink"?)
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My advice would be to make the VC such that the US units are worth a LOT more if killed or wounded than are the Kurds. You can do that by setting specific unit objectives for RED and identifying the American units. Be sure to mention it in the briefing. That will force the Americans to be a lot more circumspect.
Not sure about the "show them how it's done" part. MITT teams deliberately DON'T do that in general, since it just encourages the locals to let the foreigners risk life and limb instead of doing their own fighting.
That's actually part of the problem in Libya at this moment; the rebels are sitting back hoping NATO airpower will do the heavy fighting for them. That is of course impossible.
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Depends on the context. Special Forces normally wouldn't be assigned the role of infantry in a CM type environment (i.e. on a battlefield opposing a company or battalion level force with heavy weapons or armour); it's a waste of their training. They're great soldiers, sure, but not supermen. They die of lead poisoning as readily as anyone else. The few times when brass mistakenly tried to use them as an assault force on a hazardous mission they died like flies; e.g. Panama. That's what Rangers are for.
In a battle, you'd normally see Special Forces either directing ("advising") a local allied force, acting as FACs to call in air support (and hopefully prevent it hitting the good guys), or at most being snipers from outside effective enemy range. My own thought would be to use entirely Elite headquarters and spotter teams.
As a SEAL friend of mine noted: Special Operators try to only get involved in unfair fights, at times and places of their own choosing. That means ambushes. By the time the enemy knows what's hit them, the counterfire only hits empty scrapes.
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I notice that light Uncon taxis tend to bog a lot in the default "sand" terrain; although they generally recover after a while.
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A car flavour object would be sufficient IMHO, but even that is not essential. Cars and lorries were not as ubiquitous a part of the 1930s-40s European landscape as they are today, and those that did exist were largely garaged (especially since fuel for private use was scarce in Occupied Europe by 1944). You just don't see many in period photos.
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Or take a walking tour of same. My experience with rural France is limited to the Loire Valley, but I've toured the Ardennes and it really gave me a feel for what a hellish place that was to fight in in spite of the picture postcard charm of the towns in peacetime.
I remember walking into a dense stand of young pines near Buccholz (along the KG Peiper advance route) to answer nature and stumbling across a little plaque in memory of a US captain who had died on that spot 45 years earlier.
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Elmar, agree about the backing up route being a priority, which reminds me of another interesting point.
Reversing a tracked vehicle, especially offroad, for any distance is not a straightforward operation. Tanks (WWII tanks anyway) don't have rearview mirrors and backing up blind into unknown ground could quickly hang you up on a stump or boulder, or into mud. Now imagine doing that under fire (i.e. where the TC is otherwise occupied and can't guide the driver)!
Basically, you'd want to retrace the path you used coming in. Which means you actually don't want to change the orientation of your tracks after you reach your firing position. Or at least I wouldn't. I'd take not becoming an immobile sitting duck over a possibly marginally better armour facing any day. And if I'm not scared of bogging it's probably pretty open ground and I'm exposed to shooters from multiple angles anyway.
Not that I want to turn this game into Bogmat Mission or anything, but it seems to me there should be a heightened bog percentage for tracks reversing more than about 20 feet at a time on a battlefield, even more if they try it buttoned up. Any thoughts?
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Just imagine my response to this question.
A "blackwash" or "brownwash" aftercoat much like kit modelers use to "weather" their models will do wonders. I have no doubt the modding community will soon be busy at work and the kit will shortly look very lived in. No worries.
Being a terrain grog (in case you haven't noticed), I will be taking a "butchers" at the buildings myself -- a little water damage and moss on the slate roofs plus some stains on the facades and Bob's yer uncle....
The stuff on the rendering and shadows is interesting, but yeah, there's only so much a small shop can reasonably expect to do. Look for progressive improvements over time though (e.g. Bulge).
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For infantry fire at least, it looks like each shot or burst has some kind of CEP or "dither" assigned to it around the targeted Action Spot rather than always hitting dead center.... this CEP increases with range (as it should). In my CMSF Ramadi map where residential streets are narrow (8m across 2 "squares") and flanked by high walls, infantry are somewhat protected against defilade shots from angles >~10deg off the street direction -- a lot of bursts ricochet off walls (making a lot of odd noises BTW, but that may be my sound card) before they get to the target.
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Which grass mod is that?
Whose bad Baby Boomer haircut mod is that? (he said semi-enviously, since his own is long gone).
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Another data point FWIW (I have no personal experience to offer although the topic is interesting): Donovan Campbell notes in his (excellent) Iraq USMC memoir, JOKER ONE, that his (unnamed) platoon sergeant was pretty useless; he was very senior and a skilled target shooter but had little leadership, motivation or initiative. He did deploy with the platoon on a number of missions (this is a COIN deployment, keep in mind), but Campbell left him in charge of one of the other squads, keeping his first sergeant effectively as his 2IC.
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Ryujin has GOT to do his HD magic on that Maybach engine!!!!
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One important factor relating to crew training, experience and leadership is that (depending on the situation) a higher quality force may be able to get to the field of battle (the scenario) in better shape / earlier, and most important, take up better positions once there. As Sun Tzu says, the wise leader chooses the time and place (not always possible in practice of course for countless reasons, mainly FOW).
The scenario designer can reflect some of that with judicious/clumsy force placement; the experienced player can do it too (even with Green forces) by wisely using his setup zones. Come to think of it, that ought to be in the "Scenario design manual" -- the less experienced the player's force, the less latitude the designer should give him in terms of initial setup options/space.
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Thanks for the series. I like the one where the art gallery/dealer is now a real estate broker.
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'Course, when you hear the click you may already be in the kill sack. In which case you might want to just stomp on the gas and get out -- forward, back, whatever. Immediate action drill, bad plan better than no plan, "I Killed Tube Guy", etc. etc.
HD position and © first shot will decide the battle.
A Quick Battle AAR: Shermans vs Pz IVs, Not Your Fathers Combat Mission
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Able Fox Five to Able Fox. I got a target but ya gotta be patient.