Fortifications and visibility - a suggestion

[womble]

I think it is a widely-held opinion that currently, fortifications such as bunkers, trenches and foxholes can be a liability as much as an asset, since they are often spotted well before the troops that are supposed to be hiding in them are, leading to "speculative" area fire that renders the defensive position uninhabitable. My hypothesis is that fortifications get no benefit from their "experience" level for concealment (since experience soft factors don't affect the price of the fortification). It's like how you can often see a dead member of an enemy team but not the live ones, even if the casualty is prone and therefore harder to see. At least that's my hypothesis.

 

So, my suggestion is to make the Experience level (and maybe the leadership level) of a fortification affect how hard they are to spot in the same way as those soft factors do for infantry. This would represent a better-built fortification, with better blending into the local flora and topology, and at the very least would give the "benefit" of "Conscript" level training, which is better than "none" (as no-soft-factors-applying entities like casualties currently receive). It must be technically possible to allow only a limited number of soft factors to be considered, since artillery doesn't consider Morale or Fitness when calculating call times and accuracy (and QB points).

[General Jack Ripper]

Sounds like a good idea to me, so long as higher quality fortifications are also more expensive to reflect the additional time and effort spent camouflaging them.

[Fenris]

I'd love to see foxholes changed from the all round defence type things we have now to the same two man holes arranged in double row straight lines that can be placed to face either horizontal, vertical or diagonally on the terrain with a slight weighting to one side so they can be placed up against something or sitting more behind it.

 

Spotting suggestions in the OP aren't a bad idea.  Could also perhaps have none/partial/full camouflaged versions of the fortifications with the associated costs varied and perhaps even graphics if we want to get real fancy.

 

 

-F

[womble]

 

Spotting suggestions in the OP aren't a bad idea.  Could also perhaps have none/partial/full camouflaged versions of the fortifications with the associated costs varied and perhaps even graphics if we want to get real fancy.

 

I think having a "camo level" and the "experience level" modifiers would be redundant. And yes, I completely agree that QB costs for "better hidden" (whatever the mechanic) fortifications should be higher. Indeed, in my suggested scheme, since there would automatically be an improvement in concealment, even if the minimum "Experience" level was Conscript, the minimum cost of the things would go up immediately, since they'd default to being harder to see and therefore be worth more  than the current unhidden ones.