SteveP

Charlie Company continues to slog through the bocage terrain. But things are starting to look a lot more promising. The American infantry have figured out new tactics that rely more on tanks and artillery than on close infantry assault. That is the way it should be – the way they thought it would be when they first trained in England. The latest in the Bocage aux Folles series is now at the Repository. It is somewhat larger than the previous two, but still less than battalion size. Along with Allies vs. the AI, it may also be played H2H. However, I am uncertain how well play balance works for H2H play, so keep that in mind. In this scenario, Charlie Company gets more tanks, more and better artillery, and a regular pioneer platoon. The map provides a somewhat greater variety of possible lines of attack, and some terrain that helps the Americans. There are fewer restrictions than in the other scenarios on what the Americans can do with their assets. The Germans pretty much have the same force complement as before, though more of them. The AI is hampered a little by the size of the forces involved. So, I expect it’s too easy for a realistic bocage scenario played against the AI. But the map has some interesting terrain features, if I say so myself. At least you can enjoy the view while you are carving up the German defense.

We may be debating something not worth debating, but consider this: In July, for units supported by non-rhino (or non-bulldozer equipped, for that matter) tanks, the sequence was: 1) tank plows into hedgerow and starts suppressing fire on the defended hedgerow; 2) infantry moves up into the bocage field and starts suppressing fire at close range; 3) tank pulls back and engineers lay charges in that location; 4) tank moves up and joins infantry. If the problem for the tanks previously was only that they were vulnerable to AT fire while plowing thru the hedgerow and into the field, step #3 above would not have been necessary. The engineers could do their work only if the enemy was fully suppressed anyway. If the enemy is fully suppressed why not just drive the tank into the field? With explosives in short supply (and perhaps properly training engineers as well), that would have been the obvious thing to do.

Well, consider that the rhino attachment did not do anything other than cut thru the foliage. It did not blast an opening thru the foundation of the hedgerow. If the issue was entirely about exposing the underbelly, the rhino attachment would hardly have solved that problem. I think the advantage of the rhino was that the tanks did not have to pull back and wait for the engineers to blast a more complete opening (or, for that matter, wait for non-existent engineers to show up). Instead, they could continue to work thru the hedgerow on their own and get into the open field without having to let up the suppressing fire.

In game terms, there is no practical difference if the opening in a hedgerow was created by farmers in bygone times, or by soldiers that day. The opening is there -- you can't tell how it got there. If the scenario designer did not create an opening, that is because it serves the purpose of the scenario design. The design may be a good one or not. Presumably a good scenario design allows for a reasonable number of openings where there is no tactical reason to do otherwise. If the Germans were defending a particular bocage field, they targeted the existing openings. They would never have allowed the American infantry to hack out a new opening without hitting them with mortars and MG fire. In fact, the Americans had to be very cautious about anything they did in the vicinity of their own hedgerow (including setting demolition charges, deploying MGs, etc.) that might give away their positions. So, unless the Americans could hack their way thru a hedgerow very quickly, it was pointless to try. That all changed when the Americans could deploy tanks in the attack, since the tanks could suppress the German defenses. Even then, the American did not bother hacking out new openings on their side of a defended field.

What the Sherman tanks did was drive into the hedgerow, knocking down enough of it to fire across the bocage field, but they were unable to knock enough down to allow them to get thru the hedgerow safely. Using a tank this way was a key element of an early tactical adaptation by the American infantry (it's the basis for Bocage aux Folles 2 - Pas de trois Scenario). The Sherman tank would drive into the bocage and help suppress the German defenses across the field. Then it would pull back and the engineers would take advantage of the damage to the hedgerow to plant demolition charges, so the tank could then get thru the hedgerow and help close assault the German defensive positions. In the game, of course, the ability of engineers to blast a tank-sized opening in the hedgerow anywhere, any time, safely and quickly, is completely unrealistic. But even worse when it is possible to have this capability in mid June.

The Germans knew they were in ideal defensive terrain before the Americans seriously started to attack in the bocage. They were surprised that the Americans didn't risk high casualties to attack the positions more aggressively, but they knew the Americans would end up taking very high casualties if they did -- regardless of how astute the company/platoon leaders were. They also knew they slow down the American advance to a crawl. In any event, I wasn't posting to this thread to complain about how BFC modeled the hedgerows. I think if hedgerow concealment/cover were realistic, these boards would be inundated with complaints. The guys who fought in the bocage had no choice. Game players do. That's all anyone needs to know.

The AI Plan for the scenario didn't give the defenders that option. The Plan set up for ambushes. Otherwise, they would have. Presumably this is because the mortars would have been landing in the setup zone, which would be considered tacky. The American army commanders regarded the bocage country as being among the worst terrain to attack in that they had ever encountered, and they found their normal tactics didn't work. For the most part in CMBN scenarios/QBs, the bocage terrain doesn't do too much more than slow things down. All it requires to defeat a defense in this terrain is a little patience. My point about spotting was to suggest one of the reasons why this is the case.

What raised my interest in this question was one of the scenarios that came with the game. I discovered from repeated experiments that if you put a couple of guys with binocs on your side of a hedgerow, facing an enemy held hedgerow about 125-130m away, they would start to spot the defensive positions within about 30 seconds (nobody is firing at anybody). Over the course of 2-3 minutes they would spot at least half of the defensive positions, including several that were full IDs. Since I knew that would happen, I simply waited and dropped mortars on them as they appeared. The only way for the defense to prevent that is to use Hiding -- but that means they don't spot anything advancing against them. I tried that test, as well, and discovered that the attackers could easily get right on top of the defenders before being spotted. The fact that guys who are already in the bocage field, and getting shot at by unsuppressed fire, have a harder time getting accurate spots/IDs on units behind a hedgerow doesn't surprise me. IRL, they would be hugging the ground, hoping not to hear the sound of mortars dropping on them.

Not necessarily arbitrary. One of the other unrealistic things about a game like CMBN is that you can impose a time limit on the attacker. So to some extent you can key timings to the likely pace of events and what you need to protect when. That's not so much a disagreement (I also think the AI scripting function needs more tools to work with). Just an observation.

I wasn't comparing them to other defensive options in the game (and I suspect that other defensive options are pretty weak). I was comparing them to what the hedgerows were like IRL. The Germans were able to dig into the hedgerow foundations and create something akin to thick walls in which they were virtually invisible. The attacker had to fire blindly into the defenses because they couldn't see where anyone was (the Germans helped by always putting their MGs in the corners, but that was about it). Later, when the Americans figured out how to successfully attack a defended bocage field, they had to follow up with hunting parties to search for Germans still hidden in the bypassed hedgerows. In CMBN, you can spot anyone behind a hedgerow within about 30 seconds if you are within 150m of them (haven't checked this in 1.01, btw, but it's probably the same). You can also kill anything there with 60mm mortar fire, and most small arms at a decent range. Thru most of June, sniper fire was reported to kill up to 50% of an attacking force, but snipers are easily spotted once they open up in CMBN. Etc. Etc. I think what we get in CMBN (especially in many scenarios and QB maps) is something closer to the hedgerows that the Americans trained to fight in, in England, and which they expected to find in Normandy. It was a real shock to discover what the Normandy hedgerows were really like.

I suppose people who design scenarios will differ on the objective. It seems to me that sections of bocage hedgerows that were more accommodating to the attacker would not have been defended by the Germans. Or they would have been defended with deep mine fields or something else that compensated (usually too expensive in CMBN). I can understand how players prefer to have more options for attacking thru the hedgerows, but I question the supposition that this makes the map more realistic as a tactical problem.

Sherman tanks could apparently traverse most low hedgerows, though probably at some risk. However, there is no reason why the Germans would have chosen such vulnerable locations for defense. The Germans defended the high hedgerow areas. Infantry could cut openings in the hedgerows, but presumably they could do this only where they weren't under fire while doing it. The infantry had to proceed cautiously next to hedgerows because the Germans would drop mortar fire on them if they did anything to draw attention to themselves. Infantry advanced into defended bocage fields thru existing openings -- the same ones that the farmers used. There is no evidence that the Americans ever used explosives to create openings for infantry -- only for tanks, after they figured out how to do that. Demolition work was generally slow and dangerous, and was only done when the engineers could be given a lot of protection with suppressive fire. IMHO, the biggest problem with the hedgerows in the game is that they do not give enough concealment/cover to the defenders. However, it is possible to come acceptably close.

I discovered this quirk while trying to figure out how to get realistic concealment/cover with the hedgerows. Foxholes didn't work, I think for the reasons you guess. For a time, I thought putting trenches under the hedgerow would work even though the graphics were compromised, but it didn't. In that case, it just seemed that the concealment/cover attributes weren't additive, but I can't be sure of course how the game engine was reacting to this combination.

I won't try to answer all your questions, but I believe the following to be true: Hedgerows run thru the center of an action spot. Foxholes and trenches run thru or sit on the center of an action spot. It is therefore not possible to put foxholes or trenches in the same action spot as a hedgerow (though I did discover it was possible in the scenario editor to put a hedgerow on top of a trench or a foxhole). So, they are going to be at least 8m apart.

So far, it appears I am the only one who thinks that prep fire by the defense in a QB is an odd thing to do. Since you know it will always(?) happen, it is certainly easy for the attacker to avoid.

I haven't spent much time yet with QBs but I am struck by the fact that they all seem to have prep fire by the defenders (i.e. the support targets). As an attacker you only have to wait a few minutes before moving, to avoid this problem and the defender uses up some artillery ammo. My question is this: is there a technical reason why you always get prep fire by defenders in QB maps? My cursory look suggests that it is not required, but I could be missing something. I am thinking about developing some QB maps, and this is one of the elements that is puzzling me right now.

In the Finder, the application is self-identifying itself as 1.0 still, but when you launch the game, it shows up as 1.0.1. Since the Finder/System thinks it is 1.0, that is what any system reports will show. It is basically a cosmetic problem, I think, but there is probably something that should be in the installer to change how the application IDs itself.

Charlie Company is still in the bocage, but now they will be trying out a new, combined arms tactical doctrine devised specifically for this terrible terrain. Each infantry platoon is teamed with a tank and a demolition team to assault the hedgerows. New techniques and technologies are part of the formula, and battalions have been pulled out of the line to receive the necessary training. If it works as planned, the Americans should be breaking out of the bocage much, much sooner than appeared possible only a few weeks before. The 1st Battalion is back from training. As fate would have it, their first assignment is an important one, and Charlie Company has a leading role to play. The scenario depicting that mission is now at the Repository. Some specifics: 1. This is a fictional scenario and is company sized. 2. It is playable only as the Allies vs the AI. 3. The Americans have tanks and demolition teams. They also have unrestricted access to company and battalion mortars. The Germans have no AT guns or AT mines. It’s an American infantry company trying to do something completely new, versus a couple of German platoons who have seen it all before. Some of the folks who played the original Bocage aux Folles scenario thought having a tank or an engineer squad would have made for a very different outcome. In this scenario, you get 3 tanks and 3 demolition teams. You should be able to cut through the German defense like a hot knife through butter.

I thought the game required 10.6 (cause it's a 64-bit app).

I did my own test some time ago and found this to be true as well. However, you might want to check out one more thing. What I found is that with lower experience, the FO (or HQ spotter) needs to have a much larger area of LOS around the target, while a higher experienced FO can succeed with a very small are of LOS around the target. So, green is OK if the guy has really a large LOS zone. At least that's what I found. Still, I try not to use anyone below regular.

Thanks. I already designed my orchards along those lines a couple of days ago. But I haven't fully tested them to see if they are defensible. I want my bocage scenario to be a tough problem for the Americans, as it was in reality. Orchards turned out to be a bigger problem than I anticipated -- unless, of course, you assume that the Americans saw orchards as a great tactical opportunity. Frankly, at this point, I don't know what to think.

I appreciate you sticking with me on this. I don't think your analogy is a good one, because I don't think I did anything that could be considered contrived. I simply set up a flat field (actually a bocage field in my scenario) and changed what was in that field. What I found was that the American squad could advance just as safely in orchard on dirt (or single trees, if that makes it any more acceptable) as in dense forest on heavy forest terrain (and doesn't this start to sound like a broken record? ). My whole motivation in creating a scenario is to avoid doing anything that is contrived, and I tried to conduct my test in that same spirit. btw, I don't think the game is broken.

That's what I am doing. I am not waiting around for someone to solve the puzzle presented by my test results. They're just test results.

No, not what I meant. I did literally mean that I hope I see this at some point. If I have gotten it wrong somehow, I will stumble on the answer at eventually. I tried it many times and always got the same result, so it has to be something obscure. In the meantime, it's a dead issue unless someone else sees the same thing.

I am not trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. I simply posted the results of a test I did. I could not find any way to get different results. I later posted a description of the test I ran -- something I should have done at the start. If anyone believes I was doing something wrong in setting up that test, I'd be delighted to hear what exactly they think that might be, especially from anyone who ran exactly that test and got different results. What I had not expected was that some people would think it might make sense for an orchard on dirt to provide the same concealment/cover as dense forest on heavy forest terrain. That threw me, I admit it. Sorry if anyone took my comments amiss. OTOH, I was not surprised by BFC telling me it was user error. Until someone else confirms my results, that is a reasonable thing for them to say under the circumstances.