AAARRRGGHHHH! - issues with Map 027 (map spoilers)

[newlife]

This isn't a bug. Just a frustration with how the map was made and my own not putting enough time into reading the map.

Map 027 is an allied attack over a big hill into an Axis held town. The allied side of the hill is rough terrain FILLED with that @$%$ annoying bush that prevents vehicular movement through it. There is a lot of it, particularly down around the set-up zone. I was on attack so during set-up I went a little faster with deployment. My guys would be moving immediately so I spent less time lining things up and more time looking at my avenues of approach and so on.

Well I made one CRITICAL mistake. I placed 7 halftracks, including my T30 platoon in a part of the deployment zone which has 0 ways out. It wasn't immediately apparent upon setup as some the bushes were thick but patchy and I assumed there would be a way through.

I'm six minutes into the hour and the HTs have barely moved as it has slowly dawned on me to do the painstaking process of mapping out every possible avenue out, and found none. This is not an easy process for me as I'm colorblind and I can't even tell which terrain feature is actually preventing movement. So its a matter of moving the mouse in slow patterns waiting to see if it changes from accessible to inaccessible. Total Frustration!

Last turn I gave up on the vehicles and started dismounting everyone, turning my HT drivers into anti-tank teams in the process (its nice the drivers come with SMGs).

However, just as I was writing this note it occurred to me that the T30s can area fire into the bushes and hopefully crater up enough of the map for my vehicles to get out. Boy will my opponent be confused if he has any eyes on those HTs. "Pete's gone mad. He's firing HE into the ground just meters away from his vehicles..."

Now I just hope this works...

[newlife]

Oh well. I loaded up a one player quick battle on the same map to test things out. The 75mm craters either were not large enough, or whatever is causing the impassible-to-vehicles is part of the grid itself. Oddly, even inside multiple overlapping craters the terrain was listed as impassible.

Now I am out of ideas. I don't have larger calibre arty in the PBEM so trying out larger stuff won't be helpful.

[akd]

There are no bushes in CMFI that block vehicle movement. The underlying tile is either hvy forest, marsh or hvy rock which always blocks vehicle movement.

However, you are right that a setup zone should not include terrain traps for vehicles, even if the map was made primarily with infantry play in mind.

[Baneman]

I just had a look at the map in the editor - 60-70% of the Allied deployment zone is checkerboarded with heavy and light Forest tiles.

It should in theory be possible to thread your way out, but it's easy to confuse vehicle pathing and at the very slow speed possible on the light forest ( I assume that's the one with the annoying bush that slows you down to a crawl ), it may not be obvious.

There does seem to be something a bit odd about some terrain/vehicle interactions - in a recent QB there was a lot of rocky impassable terrain. I had a tank thread its way up a road between two impassable sections, but when I told it to move offroad - despite there being more room between the rocky areas than the road it just moved up, it decided to reverse away towards the enemy.

Have also noticed that a road is not wide enough for a vehicle if buildings butt up against both sides. It looks like there's room ( should be, AC isn't 8m wide, lol ), but the vehicle will balk.

[newlife]

Thanks for the clarification. I assume I'm trapped by heavy rock then. I guess the T30 teams will be used for holding the early objectives. They were going to be my main punch. I guess I should have moved them up the road. I got too tricky for myself and will chalk it up to the chaos of war.

[newlife]

Ninja'd. Must be the heavy forest tiles. Its the very left edge of the allied setup zone looking towards the town. I'd be okay if it was just slow, but the whole area is surrounded by a big semi circle of impassible, some of which is outside the setup zone. Perhaps I missed a hole but I searched for quite a while.

[sdp]

You're right about the heavy fores tiles; there are a lot of them. However there are very few small spots where they enclose an area totally - theoretically you should be able to move your vehicles out of the set up area.

The left edge of the set up zone in the editor;

The tiles with impassable terrain types placed on the mountainous QB maps are designed to work just like you experience; making vehicular movement off-road or armoured assaults on the hill/mountain tops very difficult - as it surely was in reality.

You're quite simply left with the "poor bloody infantry" doing the job. A conclusion you've already reached ;-)

cheers/

sdp

[MikeyD]

That map is just plain MEAN. Just yesterday I found myself in a QB terrain trap, myself. Kubelwagens hemmed in by low rural walls. All I had at my disposal to get out was my recon vehicle's 20mm, otherwise I was trapped.

[sdp]

A bunch of engineers on these maps with those mean walls are always a valuable asset.

When in Sicily, you should expect lots of walls and rocky terrain... Kind of the challenge of the Sicilian terrain...

/sdp