Let's be honest...

[Zels77]

The CM series is, far and away, the best WWII tactical wargame simulator ever produced.

Nothing else comes close to replicating the obvious amount of effort that was invested into acquiring unprecedented levels of realism.

But it's for this reason that I think BF needs to be a little less defensive and a little more receptive to the fact that buildings serve as little more than a visual reference - they provide zero cover.

There's a reason buildings offered a wopping +2 or +3 modifier in ASL.

If buildings had provided as little cover as they do in CMBN, the Sixth Army wouldn't have lasted a day in Stalingrad.

It's round about now that a boneheaded grognard will point out that Stalingrad was full of industrial warehouses and not farmhouses... that's not the point, slappy.

The point is this: in CMBN, deploying troops in a building is a surefire way of getting them killed or routed.

Also, there's a disturbing (read: undeniable) propensity for leaders to be the casualty of any and all incoming fire.

I'll bite my tonge on the "yes, but leaders were - by definition - leading their troops into battle and therefore often copped it" argument related to small arms fire, but how does the shrapnel of a mortar that explodes in the midst of a squad always seem to find its way to the guy with the most stripes on his arm?

To the developers: admit you got it wrong and fix these issues so that we can get on with playing your masterpiece.

[Ranger33]

On the first point I agree. It seems the buildings in CMSF offer far more protection, even against heavy weapons. This is something we will probably see tweaked at some point.

On the second point, I think this is just confirmation bias. Anytime you lose a leader, you notice it, but when you lose a regular soldier it doesn't register in the same way. Unless someone has done extensive testing to prove otherwise.

[Seedorf81]

Though I'm too lazy to do "extensive testing", I can state that I'm under the impression that there is a bit of truth in Zels77's remark about leaders unevenly often getting hit.

In fact, there's another thing about leaders - and spotters - that has been quite remarkable in my perception. It seems that while playing the AI (I never played a human opponent), units with a spotting ability deploy more a often in a position where they CANNOT spot, than units that have no ability to call in arty.

For instance, when I deploy three squads and a HQunit randomly along a hedgerow, it still seems to me (after months and months of playing) that it is usually the HQunit that can't see the enemy on the other side of the field, while at least two of the squads can.

Maybe it's only my perception, or maybe I'm just brilliantly stupid at placing units, but it happens annoyingly often. In order to get mortarfire on the enemy, I need to replace the HQunit and hey, there goes another useless minute in which the enemy has just time enough to scoot.

So: Spottersunit spot less then others???

[Seedorf81]

Eh, sorry. Fourth line: "replace the HQunit" has te be "reposition HQunit".

[phil stanbridge]

I'd definitely agree that buildings appear to offer much less protection than they should. Plus, units in buildings tend to be spotted far more frequently than perhaps they should, but these are just my observations. I guess there is an amount of abstraction at work behind the scenes that we need to consider.

I can't say I have specifically noticed the leaders becoming casualties more often than other squad members, but then I tend to keep the HQ's to the rear, where possible and out of the direct firing line.

Hopefully the buildings offering cover will be addressed in the commonwealth patch.

A little thing I find annoying, if I have an HQ support squad with three men, or an XO team with three men, providing FO duties and calling in artillery, if one of those men becomes a casualty, they instantly lose that particular ability.

[Sgt Schultz]

Phil, I believe it depends on which man you lose.

Those teams you described have a leader, a radio operator and a soldier.

If the soldier(red shirt) buys it, then no worries.

If either the leader of the radio operator go down, then there is no longer a way to transmit info unless they are in shouting distance for radio loss.

[phil stanbridge]

Phil, I believe it depends on which man you lose.

Those teams you described have a leader, a radio operator and a soldier.

If the soldier(red shirt) buys it, then no worries.

If either the leader of the radio operator go down, then there is no longer a way to transmit info unless they are in shouting distance for radio loss.

Oh right, that's cool then

Actually, I presume, if the radio on the KIA is undamaged then there is a chance that it can be recovered. I've not seen this happen yet however.

[Sergei]

The point is this: in CMBN, deploying troops in a building is a surefire way of getting them killed or routed.

That's a mighty statement that you make, too bad that you don't substantiate it in any way. My experience differs, and it's based on actual testing (HMG bunkers firing at buildings with men inside) as well as playing the game. The truth is, being inside a building is generally safer than being in the open.

But there are more than one type of buildings in CMBN. A small barn can even be brought to collapse with a few minutes of .30 cal fire while a stone church is a much safer place to hide in.

[Praetori]

Buildings are no better than foxholes or trenches and most of the houses are marked on maps (which makes things even worse).

A concrete or stone wall stops bullets, bricks and wood does not. In fact they splinter and cause even more problem (sure 9mm SMG won't go through much but a 7,92mm defiantly will). Houses are also prone to burning. What they do often offer is a good view of the landscape and therefore good firing distances.

That goes both ways however.

I do agree that the building materials should affect more and that the material type should be quite easy to identify. There are other aspects of houses as combat positions that was discussed in the AT building thread.

[Sixxkiller]

Well in the real world in my experience, buildings provide much more protection in the form of concealment than actually being able to give you magical invincibility. The tricky part is in order to hit the enemy you do have to expose yourself in windows, doorways and in rare cases, murder holes. This tends to not make holing up in a building for long periods of time to be a great idea. Modern warfare history has shown static defenses to be a not so good idea. Better than fighting w/o cover and even in game is safer.

Houses also tend to be places where heavier arms tend to focus fire. I cant even imagine taking up a position in a house and being hit by tank rounds. Seen it it real life and gotta say I am glad I wasnt on the other side.

As for the reference to Stalingrad, 2 Million people lost their lives there so I am thinking being in structures didnt turn out as good as you make it sound. And while ASL may have been a good game, I didnt realize they used physics based modeling. ijs.

As far as admitting the game needs work, well BFC is aware of that. It's the reason there's patches. If they ever do make it perfect I am guessing thats the last game they ever make.

[phil stanbridge]

I suppose that's one way of looking at it Sixxkiller. Concealment is more effective than than actual cover. But in my experience, I quite often take casualties inside buildings even if my units are hidden. Moreso than if I place my men outside. But I wouldn't have a clue how to measure this, and it is my perception after all. It just *seems* that way to me. I don't like using buildings for cover/concealment as a result.

[noob]

I just ran a quick test with four modular buildings from one to four storeys high, i placed a squad of standard US infantry with typical settings across on the ground floor of each building with a small circular cover arc and a hide order, i then placed four standard Axis Grenadier squads with typical settings 150m away in the open with an area fire order on each house, all US units were in C&C with their superior officers up to Batt Co which were hidden in trenches at the back of the map.

The results were that not one single casualty was suffered, the squad in the one storey house got rattled and exited via the rear and hid behind the house, the squad in the two story house got rattled and pinned, the squads in the three and four storey houses were barely supressed.

In further repeat tests the only casualties that were sustained were from grenades being fired through the windows which is impossible to avoid irrespective of the building type.

My conclusions were that all the houses offered perfect protection from bullet casualties as long as the troops remained hidden, and also the more storeys the more psychological protection for some reason, which could be down to the firing squads spreading their fire at more than one storey or the more storeys the more robust the building.

I will try some more tests with return firing from modular buildings and other building types when i get the time.

[akd]

To the developers: admit you got it wrong and fix these issues so that we can get on with playing your masterpiece.

Prove something is wrong in a reproducible manner and it will be addressed. One bug related to building cover has already been squashed for the next patch, but there may still be problems with many independent buildings, either in overall cover or in apparently solid parts being porous to observation and fire. However, there is no wand to wave and these things have to be tested and problems specified down to the particular building.

[Tank Hunter]

My general impression is also that houses seem to provide little or no protection but let's think about it for a minute.

Let say a squad enters a two store building. With hide command issued the squad will hide and will not reveal themselves to the enemy until detected or other command given.

Let’s say now that you are approaching this building, so far it looks quiet, no movement in the windows and no activity around. Suddenly one of your squad guys is hit and hell breaks loose from several windows of the house. What do you and your supporting teams do?

You of course open fire on the house. Where do you aim? You aim at muzzle flashes from the windows. What is now happening inside the house?

If they still want to engage you they need to shoot at you. Where can they shoot from? Windows only. If they want to hit anything they need to appear in the windows for at least a second. All the fire that is coming from outside is mainly focused on the windows so any attempt to stick your head up will be punished.

If you were in the house what would you do? Would you look out from a window that is being blasted with bullets and grenades? The most natural reaction would be to crawl away to a safer place, another window or floor. How is that handled in CM? Are all windows affectively under same amount of fire? Normally only few windows would be engaged which would allow house occupants to shoot from other windows that are currently not under fire.

If the house walls are thin you get additional wall penetration that sends splinters and bullets across the room which creates casualties and suppression.

The current simulation of the houses may necessary not be wrong but the implementation of them is. We are missing houses with prepared fire positions. Sand bags, shooting slots, basements and so on. Such building would offer much more protection and would be more suitable for defensive actions. Right now the best way to utilize houses is as observation posts and brief fire exchanges where you evacuate the house after your first few bullets.

Defensive positions could possibly even be part of the unit purchase where you buy prepared position and then deploy it on any building in the game. The building gets a defensive boost which creates better protection for your troops.

[c3k]

^^^ This touches on one of the factors that seem to be in the game.

Remember, tests have repeatedly shown that units HIDING in a stone building are generally immune to area fire. (Area fire is distributed across the face of the building. The smaller building footprint and the lower the building, the more firepower will be concentrated. Many have tested this. Please try it and see if their conclusions are wrong.)

So, building walls (excepting barns, sheds, or other flimsy structures) provide COVER.

As stated above, windows do not provide cover.

If an entire squad is located together in a building location, each window available to the squad will be crowded with men trying to get a shot off. That is a recipe for high casualties.

Imagine the same squad split into fire teams (or 2 man pairs) and distributed throughout the various levels and locations. Now their vulnerability to incoming fire through the windows is reduced due to their dispersion across many more windows.

An experiment would be to put various 2 man scout teams (using US squads) in a building. Fire at it with, say, an MG bunker. Put enough scout teams in there to equal the size of a full squad. Make the building 2 or 3 floors tall with a good footprint. Then do the same test with a full squad in a single location. Set up 10 of these at a time and run the test 10 times. 100 iterations of each type, with incoming fire and the building being identical would give some good trend information.

Now run it with the infantry HIDING. Try both sets - squads and scout teams - 10 times.

Now change the building size. Make it smaller. Run the same 100 iterations. Apples to apples, oranges to oranges. Data versus "feel".

(I'd set the range to around 100-150m. Fanatic for all. Tight cover arcs for the units in the buildings. Everyone in command, +2.)

What I've suggested is 10 iterations of up to 6 different tests. 60 total runs, each with 10 samples. Use WeGo to have savegames and replays available for review. I would think about 5 minutes of incoming fire would be sufficient. The first run would be the one which would determine the length of each test. So, 5 turns, 60 runs. Assume each run takes 3 minutes (saves, reviews, annotating data, etc.) gives 3x5x60= 15 hours of testing.

Bueller? Bueller?

[akd]

^^^ This touches on one of the factors that seem to be in the game.

Remember, tests have repeatedly shown that units HIDING in a stone building are generally immune to area fire. (Area fire is distributed across the face of the building. The smaller building footprint and the lower the building, the more firepower will be concentrated. Many have tested this. Please try it and see if their conclusions are wrong.)

Tests of modular buildings have shown this.

So, building walls (excepting barns, sheds, or other flimsy structures) provide COVER.

Again, too broad of a generalization. And barns in Normandy should not be flimsy structures.

[Childress]

I just ran a quick test with four modular buildings from one to four storeys high, i placed a squad of standard US infantry with typical settings across on the ground floor of each building with a small circular cover arc and a hide order,....

The results were that not one single casualty was suffered, the squad in the one storey house got rattled and exited via the rear and hid behind the house, the squad in the two story house got rattled and pinned, the squads in the three and four storey houses were barely supressed.

Your findings reflect mine. The difference is that I had German squads in mod bldgs facing (not at an oblique angle) US squads in the open at 200m, and the Germans weren't hiding. The Germs consistently shredded the Americans. So the assertion that buildings offer little or no cover in CMBN is a libel. But the kind of building, as well as the facing, matters and the level of cover may be inferior to that of the CM1 series.

And I do think BFC should rethink the 'barn' parameters. The don't work conceptually for me.

[Destraex1]

CMBN is prolly the best. But is missing a strat layer and maps that have the scope of operation star which is also ratio 1/1

close combat - still very good

kharkov\operation star - a good contender for CMBNs crown.

Improve the graphics/animations and the smoothness of the way the game runs would be nice for me to appreciate CMBN more too. I know, I know.... its not about the graphics

[Zels77]

Three units positioned within 30m of each other in a triangle. Two are behind bocage, facing the enemy (Plat HQ and 60mm mortar) while one is 30m back from bocage in wheatfield (BAR team).

Stray mortar round comes in and lands in the middle of the triangle. Only three guys buy it out of a total of nine men - two of them are leaders.

In isolation, not completely far-fetched, but it happens MOST of the time.

Leaders are magnets for enemy fire in CMBN.

[sburke]

Three units positioned within 30m of each other in a triangle. Two are behind bocage, facing the enemy (Plat HQ and 60mm mortar) while one is 30m back from bocage in wheatfield (BAR team).

Stray mortar round comes in and lands in the middle of the triangle. Only three guys buy it out of a total of nine men - two of them are leaders.

In isolation, not completely far-fetched, but it happens MOST of the time.

Leaders are magnets for enemy fire in CMBN.

Probably standing around talking about their promotions.

[Michael Emrys]

Probably standing around talking about their promotions.

Probably standing together in the middle of the triangle having a smoke and discussing what to do next.

Michael

[sburke]

Probably standing together in the middle of the triangle having a smoke and discussing what to do next.

Michael

Better yet, trying to figure out what the orange circle with the + in it is for that is marked right near their hedgerow.

[Statisoris]

Three units positioned within 30m of each other in a triangle. Two are behind bocage, facing the enemy (Plat HQ and 60mm mortar) while one is 30m back from bocage in wheatfield (BAR team).

Stray mortar round comes in and lands in the middle of the triangle. Only three guys buy it out of a total of nine men - two of them are leaders.

In isolation, not completely far-fetched, but it happens MOST of the time.

Leaders are magnets for enemy fire in CMBN.

I think one reason why leaders get hit really often is that they are always kneeling or standing when everyone else is mostly prone or waiting in cover. Leaders are always trying to get better spotting LOS with their binoculars.

[JasonC]

"If they want to hit anything they need to appear in the windows"

This is civilian thinking and not a military reality. It is simply not the right way to fight from a house and every army in the world knows it, even if movie directors do not.

Soldiers fire through windows and doors from the other side of the room, not from the edge of that window or door. They change their point of aim or covered "lane" by physically moving around within the room, still on its far border, not by rotating the weapon only at or beyond the plane of the window or door.

This is standard "keyholing", and it works. By keeping the field of view *at each single moment in time*, small, it reduces incoming observation and incoming fire. And it restricts the lane from which that observation and fire can come, to the precise axis the shooter is firing down - where he can hit the enemy first, and suppress everyone if he hasn't hit them first.

Standing literally at the window, with the gun protruding out of it, may seem a natural course of action because it maximizes the field of view of the shooter and thus the area he can cover. But shooters are not scarce relative to areas in real combat between entire militaries. Cover is. At most, momentary exposure in "up" positions at the front windows can be used when in an offensive stance and "overwatching" for other elements crossing to the next building, or the like. But it is not the normal fighting position in a proper defensive scheme. A proper scheme will instead cross the narrow pencil "lanes" from the back wall, from multiple shooters, and thus deny passage of open areas ahead of the building.

Don't think of one man at each window exposing himself to anyone who can see the building. Think instead of 2-3 men on the back wall of the room tracking through that window with their weapons, at different angles. Recreate that at each window or door, and imagine their lines of sight all projected from the front of the building like so many spines from a porcupine. Now do the same from another building three houses down, and track where all those lines cross out in the fields in front. That is a defensive fire scheme from a buildings.

FWIW...

[Vark]

They also will try to put as many obstacles between their position, at the end of the room and incoming fire, if they have time. If engineering assets are available the rooms will become individual strongholds, often with their own integral defensive measures. It is this feature I find surprisingly absent from CMBN, the fact that each building has a standard defensive rating, irrespective of any improvements made. Given the excruciating detail, devoted, to AFV's it is a mystery why other factors are treated in a seemingly perfunctory manner. Why not armour ratings for all buildings that can be modified, so that both untouched, ad-hoc and fortified buildings can be represented?

As for Stalingrad, I thought most of the major buildings were burned out shells and the cottages just a collection of stone stacks. The factory districts were hellish because the heaps of rubble shattered equipment and moonscapes provided superb defensive features, the structures themselves provided minimal cover, with a few exceptions.