Buildings are awesome cover

[GreenAsJade]

I'm playing my first town battle since the patch.

My dudes are loving being in buildings.

What a difference! I suspect I'm winning because I ran for the houses, hoping like heck they'd be improved, and my oppo used the pre-patch tactics of "avoid houses like the plague"...

GaJ

[Georgie]

Did the patch change the protection offered by buildings? Some buildings have always offered good protection. May be the scenario designer selected the bullet proof buildings. Be good to know.

[Vanir Ausf B]

From the patch notes there was a bug that made building protection levels change based on the game's frame rate. As strange as that sounds it does seem to have made a difference.

[GreenAsJade]

I guess it must have been that us low frame rate trogs were the ones that were suffering,

because the difference is profound for me ... I play on a laptop that is posing, barely,

as a gaming machine...

GaJ

[phil stanbridge]

I think it has been changed slightly post patch. Smaller squads are now much better protected. But only smaller or split squads - if you stick a full squad on a single floor you're still in trouble

[poesel]

What has greatly improved is how the guys are positioning themselves inside the buildings. No more grouping at the window and somesuch.

But there is one caveat: the protection provided seems to differ between buildings and it is unfortunately not obvious which is good or not. I had a town battle with jby and some houses were like castles while in others they died like flies.

[phil stanbridge]

That's a good point - and I'm guessing that houses with wooden/timber appearances may offer less protection than heavier brick or concrete structures.

[~Viajero]

Remember that infantry quality is also a big factor in casualty effectiveness. If your opponent outside the building is green or inexperienced etc it also matters a lot and it may give a false impression the building is giving you more protection than it it really is.

[GreenAsJade]

All I know is that I just played a tactic that would have been instant death previously, wheras uniformly it worked wonderfully this time.

I don't get this "frame rate" thing, either. The turn is calculated _before_ the movie is shown. How can frame rate have anything to do with casualties. Is this trying to say that if I suffer badly in buildings pre-CW I should exit the game, reload on a better machine, and I'll fare better? It doesn't stack up does it?

GaJ

[akd]

That's a good point - and I'm guessing that houses with wooden/timber appearances may offer less protection than heavier brick or concrete structures.

Textures are purely aesthetic. They do not correspond to protection. Some buildings have options for both stone and for half-timber textures. Changing that does not change the protection.

[womble]

Textures are purely aesthetic. They do not correspond to protection. Some buildings have options for both stone and for half-timber textures. Changing that does not change the protection.

Once again, you're required to futz around in the editor to see what kind of protection various skins give you. Or learn by painful experience in the field which textures can denote good or bad protection.

[IanL]

I think it has been changed slightly post patch. Smaller squads are now much better protected. But only smaller or split squads - if you stick a full squad on a single floor you're still in trouble

What has greatly improved is how the guys are positioning themselves inside the buildings. No more grouping at the window and somesuch.

My experience is that buildings are a better place to be post patch too. I think that comes from two things (as @phil stanbridge and @poesel71 point out):

1. Teams stand back from the windows and do not bunch up
   
2. I never have more than 2 fire teams on one floor and I actually strive for one per floor.
   

I am not really sure that the actual protection offered changed or not but the two things above mean I am much happier to have my troops in buildings.

I actually have a pre patch game going on right now and even changing my style of play so that teams get their own floor has made buildings much more useful.

[akd]

Once again, you're required to futz around in the editor to see what kind of protection various skins give you. Or learn by painful experience in the field which textures can denote good or bad protection.

What good would that do you? Protection corresponds to the building 3D model, which does not vary when the textures are swapped. Larger generally equals tougher, but obviously windows and doors are also a factor.

[womble]

What good would that do you? Protection corresponds to the building 3D model, which does not vary when the textures are swapped. Larger generally equals tougher, but obviously windows and doors are also a factor.

No, but knowing the texture options for a given 3D model will help you identify which 3D model you're seeing. It will help answer the question "Is that grey building the same as the brown one next to it, protection-wise?" The more cues you can use, the more straightforward it becomes to identify where you want to be putting your pTruppen.

[akd]

That may be true in some cases, but could also mislead you terribly. The smallest modular building shares the same set of textures with the largest.

The best guide is simply larger is tougher than smaller, modulars seem to be tougher than independent buildings (given same size), and independents have a broad hierarchy of strength, with the caveat that size still matters to some degree:

Churches > houses >/= commercial > barns (I believe houses are generally stronger than commercials, but that might be worth testing further).

Also note there are likely some bugs lurking in the independents. If you note a solid, undamaged wall porous to small arms fires, or allowing units to observe / be observed, you might have found one. (Any help identifying these with repeatable tests would be most appreciated).