Combined thread for all bunker/fortification feature requests

[Bulletpoint]

This thread will serve as a friendly discussion about the current state of bunkers, pillboxes, trenches, and foxholes in the game, and what could be done to greatly improve the enjoyment and usefulness of using them.

I'm sure at least some of the changes would be possible to implement without too much trouble (while other ideas might take more work or be unfeasible, that's of course up to BattleFront to decide).

Feel free to chip in with ideas and comments, but keep it polite and to the point, please.

Bunkers/pillboxes

• Please make bunkers low and close to the ground, instead of looking like a log cabin.
• Would be nice if bunker crew had to be spotted individually, and spotting them only possible at very close ranges.
• Rifle troops should not fire at bunkers from more than 100m, unless given specific order to do so.
• Bunkers could wait "sinking into terrain" until spotted, avoiding giving away position by their "footprint".

Barbed wire

• Would be great if I could change facing manually of individual sections of wire.
• Wire would be much more useful if it snapped to walls, hedges, houses, etc, blocking passage.

Trenches (most ideas also apply to foxholes)

• Would be great to be able to change facing of individual pieces of trench (for an AT gun for example)
• Trenches sinking deeper into terrain (I know it's been discussed, but for sake of completeness)
• Trenches to offer greater protection as firing position for infantry. Should be on the level of bocage.
• Trenches to be made more difficult to spot at range.
• Improve soldier AI to not have 3 out of 4 guys inside the trench and 1 guy outside.

 

[Bulletpoint]

Houses

• Letting the player create a fortified house by moving 1 sandbag unit on to the house during deployment. Could be done separately for each floor of the house. Represented graphically by sandbags lining the walls and windows (only visible to units inside the house). Effect: Makes walls stronger against bullet penetrations, especially at close range.

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎4‎/‎12‎/‎2016 at 2:02 PM, Bulletpoint said:

Trenches (most ideas also apply to foxholes)

• Trenches to offer greater protection as firing position for infantry. Should be on the level of bocage.
• Improve soldier AI to not have 3 out of 4 guys inside the trench and 1 guy outside.

Now those two right there, I heartily approve of. I never was very clear what sort of abstractions are in use for trenches, whether or not they represent waist high crawl trenches, or chest high firing trenches. The same goes for foxholes. I know they offer an abstracted level of cover, but how much?

Is it a crawl trench?

Or a fighting trench?

This type of distinction is important.

[RockinHarry]

Think much has to do with the underlying ground mesh and navigation grid of 1m. With everything depending on that, a lot of terrain and object types can not be made smaller, both on the plane and vertically.  While you can sink trenches into -1m ditch locked terrain, which at least gives a slightly better graphical presentation and bits more cover, a depth of 1,50m would be needed to make real combat trenches. The next z-level depth of -2 can only be used for sort of communication trenches, as they are too deep for anything else but covered movements. Leaves the trenches width of 1m or more, which obviously is needed to navigate the pixelsoldiers and still let them pass each other, while moving and deploying. Looks like we´re not getting anything close to that, until BFC introduces a finer ground and navigation mesh of maybe 50cm. One can maybe hope for game engine 4 or 5.

Leaves all the inherent FOW issues still unresolved, the more if the relative spotting system is kept in mind. So far you can not change the terrain mesh for one unit and leave it unchanged for another. Bunkers and trenches that sink into the ground, leave the terrain suspiciously deformed for anybody on the map, although personally I do not care about that, particulary in play vs the AI.

[Bulletpoint]

41 minutes ago, RockinHarry said:

Looks like we´re not getting anything close to that, until BFC introduces a finer ground and navigation mesh of maybe 50cm. One can maybe hope for game engine 4 or 5.

Leaves all the inherent FOW issues still unresolved...

Well you never know. They are smart people. The purpose of this thread is not to prove something is possible or impossible, or to demand that they do this or that... but merely to find out if there's a high interest in giving fortifications an overhaul, and some concrete (no pun intended) ideas for changes.

[Bulletpoint]

• There's a problem when bunker crew is forced to flee their bunker because of close assault. As they start to exit, they are for a few seconds still inside the bunker, so they cannot be hit by small arms. But troops in overwatch outside the bunker will start to shoot at them too early, before they really exit, which is useless. The result is that when the bunker crew comes out, they face mostly enemies that are busy reloading, and they can easily shoot them. In real life, troops in overwatch would not shoot before the bunker crew actually came out of the bunker.

[RockinHarry]

3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

• There's a problem when bunker crew is forced to flee their bunker because of close assault. As they start to exit, they are for a few seconds still inside the bunker, so they cannot be hit by small arms. But troops in overwatch outside the bunker will start to shoot at them too early, before they really exit, which is useless. The result is that when the bunker crew comes out, they face mostly enemies that are busy reloading, and they can easily shoot them. In real life, troops in overwatch would not shoot before the bunker crew actually came out of the bunker.

Yes, one the many issues with pillboxes. I think pillbox crews even should be given more of an option to first surrender, in the face of enemy around or nearby.

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, RockinHarry said:

Yes, one the many issues with pillboxes. I think pillbox crews even should be given more of an option to first surrender, in the face of enemy around or nearby.

Yes, it's pretty odd. Also, I think bunker crew should be in panicked state when they run out. After all, they have hand grenades coming into their dugout..

[Anthony P.]

This I definitely agree on, too many times have I had occupants of bunkers fleeing in panic only to stop and unleash hell on the attackers who should've been quite well prepared to receive them.

[Bulletpoint]

In my humble opinion, they should be panicked when they run out, and unless they are very tough and highly motivated troops, they should surrender if they are faced with a "welcome reception" outside the bunker.

If they are fanatic, they should of course go down fighting, but not have much chance to win in that situation.

But in any case, the real problem, again, is that my guys start shooting at the bunker before the enemy exits, wasting the whole magazine and getting caught in the middle of reloading.

[iluvmy88]

I just want to put my AT guns in houses, but a fortified house Ala Russian SoP would be good too =D. fear the basment ATG right in the middle of a Xroads lol

[Bulletpoint]

9 hours ago, iluvmy88 said:

I just want to put my AT guns in houses, but a fortified house Ala Russian SoP would be good too =D. fear the basment ATG right in the middle of a Xroads lol

Well that might be easy to implement in the game, but could be restricted to smaller guns, and only in houses that already have one wall blown out. Because getting a Pak43 through the front door would be difficult

[womble]

Activating the "experience" level of fortifications and using it to provide gradations of protection and/or concealment might be helpful. So a "Conscript" trench would be easy to spot and provide a rubbish terrain save (but obviously cost fewer QB purchase points) whereas an "Elite" trench would be difficult to see until you fell into it, and give a good "terrain save".

Obviously, such a mechanic couldn't visually represent the differences, and, once spotted, a trench would just be a trench. But it could apply in different ways to different fortification elements. Trenches, bunkers and foxholes could be treated in a similar fashion to one another, perhaps with bunker "experience" affecting how much resupply there is in it as well. Wire could be made a bit more concealed at high experience, and maybe give extra "tangle factor" degradation of vehicle running gear. Mines at high experience might be more densely seeded, giving a higher chance of explosion and longer persistence when being detonated by crossing elements. They might take longer for Engineers to spot and mark.

You could possibly divorce concealment and protection/effect from each other by making other Soft Factors affect different things. Maybe Morale affects the protection provided, and Leadership affects how much ordnance is involved, while Experience only affects detection.

While writing this, it occurs to me that infantry could breach wire on their own, using wirecutters and, while not an optimal approach under fire, it's certainly a movie trope: anyone have any hard evidence as to the frequency of such undertakings in combat? A consequence of allowing slow/delayed infantry movement through wire is that higher soft factor wire might take longer to snip-snip-snip your way through.

[Bulletpoint]

I'm not sure what to think about the idea of making fortifications behave differently depending on the experience setting of the fortification. On one hand, I think the suggestion makes some sense, but there's something I don't like about it too.

I'm not too keen on having the same graphics for various types of trenches for example. I like to be able to see what I'm up against. I like the idea of "what you see is what you get"...

The player needs input to understand the tactical situation. If you don't get that info, you're flying blind.

Edited April 23, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[womble]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

I'm not sure what to think about the idea of making fortifications behave differently depending on the experience setting of the fortification. On one hand, I think the suggestion makes some sense, but there's something I don't like about it too.

I'm not too keen on having the same graphics for various types of trenches for example. I like to be able to see what I'm up against. I like the idea of "what you see is what you get"...

The player needs input to understand the tactical situation. If you don't get that info, you're flying blind.

Concealment differences don't need to be visually depicted, at least as far as the enemy goes, since if it's concealed you can't see it, and if it isn't, the concealment bonuses don't rightly matter any more... Protection, maybe. But if the two were dependent on the same factor, proximity before spotting would be a good clue as to how much protection (relatively) the fortification offers. It is, at best, though, a workaround or compromise if nothing better is practicable.

 

[John Kettler]

As for the idea of assigning experience levels to fortifications, I think it important to draw a distinction between prepared defenses and things like foxholes and hastily dug trenches. If, say, a unit withdraws to a prepared line built by combat engineers, then the goodness (protective qualities) of its defensive works will be the same no matter who occupies them. Their detectability (presumably reflected in their concealment value) would lie more in the soft factors regarding troops and leaders. Unfortunately, we have no means to treat noise discipline, light discipline, trash discipline and so on, which means things like getting patrols close, recon by fire, or offering bait to the defenders. Sad, but true.

Regards, 

John Kettler

[RockinHarry]

On 23.4.2016 at 11:17 AM, womble said:

Activating the "experience" level of fortifications and using it to provide gradations of protection and/or concealment might be helpful. So a "Conscript" trench would be easy to spot and provide a rubbish terrain save (but obviously cost fewer QB purchase points) whereas an "Elite" trench would be difficult to see until you fell into it, and give a good "terrain save".

Obviously, such a mechanic couldn't visually represent the differences, and, once spotted, a trench would just be a trench. But it could apply in different ways to different fortification elements. Trenches, bunkers and foxholes could be treated in a similar fashion to one another, perhaps with bunker "experience" affecting how much resupply there is in it as well. Wire could be made a bit more concealed at high experience, and maybe give extra "tangle factor" degradation of vehicle running gear. Mines at high experience might be more densely seeded, giving a higher chance of explosion and longer persistence when being detonated by crossing elements. They might take longer for Engineers to spot and mark.

You could possibly divorce concealment and protection/effect from each other by making other Soft Factors affect different things. Maybe Morale affects the protection provided, and Leadership affects how much ordnance is involved, while Experience only affects detection.

While writing this, it occurs to me that infantry could breach wire on their own, using wirecutters and, while not an optimal approach under fire, it's certainly a movie trope: anyone have any hard evidence as to the frequency of such undertakings in combat? A consequence of allowing slow/delayed infantry movement through wire is that higher soft factor wire might take longer to snip-snip-snip your way through.

+1

That ideas (or some of them) are circling for some time already. My only guesses that this sort of distinctive factors weren´t implemented yet, could possibly have something to do with the relative spotting system and maybe additional AI burdens and such. The currently implemented "one for all" solution likely has some advantages ATM and doesn´t yield complicated net effects on the overall system.

If BFC finds a working solution, I´d also hope for basements (+ almost level with ground fighting positions from within buildings) to be added to anything that needs molding deeper into the ground (mesh), like FH´s and trenches.

[LongLeftFlank]

Schrodinger's Bunker....