Bunker Placement

[LiveNoMore]

When I place a bunker on uneven terrain during set up, it sits on top of the ground as you would expect. But the same bunker during game play sits in an area that looks like it was dug out of the ground by a bulldozer. I have seen this on games I create and ones I have played that others have created. Is this a bug? or do I need to adjust my settings?

[womble]

That's the way it's supposed to behave, AIUI. The bunker's foundations must be level, so it will, like building in the editor, "carve out" some hillside. It's particularly noticeable on steep terrain, but happens even on slight grades.

[H1nd]

I wonder if it's absolutedly necessary for trenches and bunkers to do this? I mean you could make some very beautifull and semi realistic trenches with 1m-2m ditch and trench blocks with only a little clipping here and there. It certainly looks better than this lazer cut void that we see here. In both cases the the position of fortifications will be given away by the terrain but still I would prefer the pretty option.

[womble]

I'd rather see bunkers bury themselves in the ground properly on that sort of terrain, rather than having the "1m clear space". There are terrain mesh limitations, unfortunately.

[agusto]

Be careful with bunker placement. If they are sunk to deep into the hillside troops (including bunker busting weapons like large calibre tank guns) wont be able to target them. Always make sure that the center of mass (they point where AFAIK our troops in CM aim at) is above ground level. That is espceially important when you place a bunkers on a forward slope that are supposed to be fought up hill.

[H1nd]

I'd rather see bunkers bury themselves in the ground properly on that sort of terrain, rather than having the "1m clear space". There are terrain mesh limitations, unfortunately.

Aye I managed to do that with ditch tool in the editor and it looked so good... only the firing port was visible with 80% of the bunker hidden from direct los as it should be... This is particulary nasty thing now that we are moving to the eastern front were fortified positions had much bigger role than in normandy. Gameplay wise it is not that much of a issue but it hurts my eyes so bad.

[Bulletpoint]

Bunkers and fortifications in general could definitely use some more attention from the developers. I'm sure they could do much more with it.

[womble]

Bunkers and fortifications in general could definitely use some more attention from the developers. I'm sure they could do much more with it.

What we have, in terms of how they sit on the terrain, is probably all we're going to get. Figuring out how to do non-FOW-breaking fortifications, even to the degree we have now, was one of the things that delayed the advent of BN the most, IIRC Steve's comments at the time and since. Couldn't release a WW2 title without trenches and foxholes. Couldn't break the terrain mesh.

While I agree it's not the way we'd love it to be, I think BFC consider that the tech has been stretched as far as it can be for this format of game, so it'll be a while before there are any improvements on that (or the Eastern ) front. If brains in jars could run, I get the feeling you'd see Charles heading for the hills at the mere mention of changing how fortifications interact with the terrain mesh.

Edit: Then again, bridges were a total PITA, too, and they've come a long way since v1.0, so you never know.

[H1nd]

TBH I think there is always some way around problems. At least to a certain point. Bunkers for example, why do they have to be high like they are now? Could they be made flat so that they would give better impression that they are dug in ground. I dont need to see the fancy pixeltruppen inside the box as long as it squirts mg fire every now and then. And the foxholes? What good are they when 50-60% of the time tac AI can't get the truppen inside them? Could there be some sort of override command to the tac AI so that no matter what the terrain the troops will get in them foxholes? Trench seems to override the tac ai pretty well so why not foxholes? Ofc what is possible and what is worth the time spent on particular issue matters a lot but seriously fortifications and ww2? This should be quite important and especialy since the CM artillery is such a beast (as it should be).

[RockinHarry]

Bunkers, just like buildings level and adapt to the lowest height AS they´re sitting on, particularly when intersecting more than one AS. If one knows, one can work and plan pretty well with this, just as H1nd explains.

One obvious difference to buildings is, that bunkers rather rotate around the center of an AS at some distance, instead of beeing fixed right at the center and rotate in place. Must have to do with the mesh setup and interaction with the neighbouring AS meshes. Would be interesting to know, why exactly BFC did choose for this particular setup though.

Some PITA with foxholes in particular is when craters are nearby and you can bet, that any one ptrooper will select a crater, instead of foxholes, no matter how tiny it is. Obviously a hardcoded behavior and with regard to "cover" highest priority, even before any foxholes in the same or adjacent AS. However, the "crater magnet" can be used to influence AI (infantry) movements between Zones, as it preferably plots its waypoints on crater AS.

[womble]

I'm sure there are ways round things. One thing when assessing the state of fortifications at the moment is that most of them are, apparently (I think it was Steve who asserted this, so I have it filed under "authoritative"), meant to represent "hasty" fortifications. The sort of thing a squaddie with an entrenching tool can create in half an hour's frantic shovelling. Hence the lack of overhead cover options for foxholes and trenches, and the absence of explicit dugouts (though for fortifications where FOW isn't so important, buried bunkers and buildings have been made to stand in for such omissions). Where concrete bunkers fit into this scheme, I'm not sure, nor things like Panther turrets which appeared in GL. My point is that it's no longer quite what it was set out to be at the beginning of BN, and I'd hope that at some point, BFC will return to the issue with a barrowload of bright ideas on how to make the "state of fortification art" compatible with all the existing interesting items across all the scales of fortificational activity. Means to fortify houses, covers for foxholes, that kind of thing.

[LiveNoMore]

I now understand what is happening with the bunkers, and this is probably why my opponent is having so much trouble destroying a wooden bunker. So the question is;

How do you place a bunker so that this is minimized? The deep hole doesn't appear until the game begins. During set up it look fine.