Fox holes and Trenches

[Georgie]

Wouldn't it be great if Battlefront includes real foxholes and trenches in version three and that they would actually look like foxholes and trenches. I would buy the new version for this reason even if it didn't have fire.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I'm more interesting in their functionality than their appearance. I'm using a mod that improves how foxholes look. If you mean that you hope they will be real 3D terrain features that seems unlikely to happen because of the fog of war issue.

[Georgie]

I'm more interesting in their functionality than their appearance. I'm using a mod that improves how foxholes look. If you mean that you hope they will be real 3D terrain features that seems unlikely to happen because of the fog of war issue.

Yes, I agree, the functionality is very important. It's hard for me to realize that the enemy approaching my fox holes doesn't really see that big mound of dirt and spots it as if they were real foxholes and my troopers had carefully scattered the dirt so that there would be no mounds to be spotted.

Where did you get that mod for the foxholes?

[poesel]

IIRC foxholes are what they are now because there is no FOW for terrain yet. Without FOW you could see immediately all fortifications on the map. Thus foxholes are ON the mesh and not below.

If (when?) FOW for terrain comes many other things get solved, too. Like being able to see the fence being run down by a tank from across the map behind a hill.

[A Canadian Cat]

IIRC foxholes are what they are now because there is no FOW for terrain yet.

Yes, and while I think it would be great to have things like broken fences and walls and breached bocage get FOW (i.e. remain hidden until your forces see the hedge row) I don't expect that to be very high on the priority list of features and frankly I think that is fine. But I can dream :-) and who knows perhaps some day it will be easier to do or they will run out of other things to do

[Vanir Ausf B]

Where did you get that mod for the foxholes?

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=1734

[poesel]

...I don't expect that to be very high on the priority list of features and frankly I think that is fine.

Now I'm curious because terrain FOW would be quite high on my list. Why do you think so?

With TFOW you could do a lot of interesting things. Real sunken foxholes, real trenches to run through, road blocks that only show up when you round the corner (cities!) - you could do nasty things like unknown structures or even pop up something like a forest. "Ooops, sorry captain. That map is obviously wrong!".

I'll bet some of the more evil scenario makers would make full use of that!

[YankeeDog]

If you want to give "real" trenches a whirl in the CMx2 engine, play CMSF. In CMSF, BFC took the opposite approach they did in CMBN/FI -- trenches ARE a part of the terrain mesh, BUT they are not subject to FoW. This mostly isn't a big deal as long as you are playing a NATO vs. Syrian battle, and the Syrians are the ones with trenches -- aerial reconnaissance would almost certainly give a NATO commander a very good idea of where any entrenchments were long before he actually gained LOS to them.

But anyway... what with the re-release for Mac OSX, I've been playing CMSF a fair bit recently. It is interesting how different trenches "feel" in CMSF compared CMBN/CMFI. It's hard to tell for sure what with all the other differences in weaponry and terrain, but overall, it seems like trenches in CMSF provide more protection, at least against small arms fire. It also seems like it's harder to spot a unit in a trench in CMSF -- you can see the trench itself right from the start of the battle, but seeing what (if anything) is in it is another matter.

On the other hand, the ubiquity of fast-response airburst mortar and artillery fire in CMSF makes trenches a very dangerous place to hang out for long -- playing as Red, I tend to use them more trenches more for ambush-and-fade and/or as OP positions than as proper stand-and-fight positions.

It will be very interesting to see what happens when BFC is able to get around to combining CMSF's "true terrain" trenches with CMBN's FoW fortification.

[Steiner14]

IIRC foxholes are what they are now because there is no FOW for terrain yet. Without FOW you could see immediately all fortifications on the map.

Sadly fortifications and trenches are not on the terrain. If a slope is steep enough, you can see exactly this happening now...

[A Canadian Cat]

Now I'm curious because terrain FOW would be quite high on my list. Why do you think so?

No reason - just lots of cool features they can work on. I would love to see terrain FOW but nothing really bugs me about it now and I don't find trenches and foxholes to be bad.

[Steiner14]

IMO TFOW would not solve the fortification problem, because of the camouflage effect: getting a LOS on terrain does not necessarily mean that the fortifications have been spotted.

[Redwolf]

The current looks came together because the engine cannot make cuts into the 3D ground mesh and at the same time display them under fog-of-war rules to the attacker.

I'm fine with the looks, but both cover and concealment still seem to be in question. It is unclear how much of it is driven by 3D and how much by abstraction.

[Georgie]

http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=1734

Thanks JuJu for the mod and Vanir for pointing it out, these should help.

[poesel]

Sadly fortifications and trenches are not on the terrain. If a slope is steep enough, you can see exactly this happening now...

Yes, know what you mean. Fortifications on a slope sometimes deform the terrain. But it's on the terrain in the sense that placing a trench will not cut into the existing terrain.