Should foxholes be visible before infantry?

[Schmoly War]

It seems a bit odd to me that foxholes should be visible and therefore targetable before infantry is spotted there. Any logic behind this? Thoughts?

[mbarbaric]

yes, you can sometimes see foxholes without seeing the infantry. although, in cm it happens always...

[Glubokii Boy]

Hopefully we will one day soon have an option between:

- Hastely constructed defensive possitions that have been established in a few hours inbetween firefights (simple foxholes and such)

and

- Defensive possitions that have seen days or weeks of continues improvements...Making them much harder to spot (both the fortrifications as well as the men and equipment in them)

 

Perhaps the level of camoflage could be toggled in the editor in a simular way as leadership, fitness, motivation etc can be set now. There is room in the editor UI for atleast one or two more toggle options i think....

 

Edited April 16, 2016 by RepsolCBR

[Bulletpoint]

If foxholes were spotted afer infantry it might look odd, firing away at a guy and have a foxhole pop up around him and then sometimes disappearing.

The kind of foxhole in the game seems to be with a pile of fresh soil around it, and topped with sandbags, which would be pretty visible in the landscape.

[Glubokii Boy]

"The kind of foxhole in the game seems to be with a pile of fresh soil around it, and topped with sandbags, which would be pretty visible in the landscape."

I don't think that is neccesarley what they are ment to represent. 
It is more of a work around IIRC due to some FOW issiues with foxholes and trenches not being able to be lowered into the ground without being spotted immidiatelly due to changing the elevation of the map.

but i agree with this.

"If foxholes were spotted afer infantry it might look odd, firing away at a guy and have a foxhole pop up around him and then sometimes disappearing."

I just wish they where not spotted quite so easily...Not the 'well prepared ones' atleast.

[MikeyD]

I'm reminded of a story told to me by an old Pacific jungle fighter. How one night the forward line of foxholes had a visitor. A Japanese soldier walked from foxhole-to-foxhole and peered inside to see if anyone was inhabiting them. The amazing thing is how none of the soldiers manning the foxholes had the presence of mind to shoot him! The way it was described to me, they were more afraid of drawing wild firing from their comrades if they fired off a round in the dead of night than they were afraid of the enemy soldier peering down at them.   

[sttp]

31 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

A Japanese soldier walked from foxhole-to-foxhole and peered inside to see if anyone was inhabiting them.

Man, what a crappy assignment for that Japanese soldier. Talk about drawing the short straw. Or maybe he was just unpopular? Or, most likely, Private Shugiyama was able to simply float or roll past those American foxholes by using his absolutely humongous gonads....

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

15 hours ago, MikeyD said:

I'm reminded of a story told to me by an old Pacific jungle fighter. How one night the forward line of foxholes had a visitor. A Japanese soldier walked from foxhole-to-foxhole and peered inside to see if anyone was inhabiting them. The amazing thing is how none of the soldiers manning the foxholes had the presence of mind to shoot him! The way it was described to me, they were more afraid of drawing wild firing from their comrades if they fired off a round in the dead of night than they were afraid of the enemy soldier peering down at them.   

If I had to guess, he was lost, and trying to figure out his way back to his position.  The fog of war is pretty impartial to rank (case in point my granddad picked up his second purple heart attempting to complete a mail drop on a Japanese cruiser).  

Re: Topic

Spotting the disturbance of even a well done position is more likely than spotting the troops contained within.  You might find it because of muzzle flash, but it'll again be the not quite right leaves vs the machine gun team that gives it away.

[Anthony P.]

That sounds by far too intriguing to leave us hanging like that!

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

My granddad was a radioman-gunner on a variety of US Navy aircraft, mostly TBFs and SBDs.  He was assigned to a land based Navy unit that did a lot of courier and transport type missions, which meant he got sort of a tour of the Pacific.  One of the unit's more common missions was delievering mail from New Caladonia where it entered theater in bulk, to ships out at sea.

One run granddad's SBD arrives over the selected mail drop area for a US destroyer that was passing through on it's way forward.  There's a ship right at the correct spot and time, looks a little big, but whatever, they swoop in low and slow to drop the mail.  Right about the same time, the pilot spots the rising sun on the ship, and the Japanese figure out it's a US plane.  Plane goes evasive, the Japanese let fly, and while unsuccessful in shooting granddad's plane down, inflict a whole mess of damage.  Granddad is pretty cut up from fragments, the plane has a laundry list of inoperable systems, landing gear inclusive, so the pilot limps towards the nearest US locations, which eventually happens to be the USS Barnes, a CVE.  Plane "lands" hard, and all the assorted leaking fluids start to smoke.  Pilot gets out okay, but granddad's canopy is jammed shut, and he's lost a lot of blood at this point.  A corpsman with the rescue party gets up on the plane (granddad described him as "massive") and starts going at the canopy with the blunt end of an ax.  First swing simply bounces right off.  Second swing smashes through hitting granddad in the noggin.  He's in a coma for two weeks, and someone decides to shuffle him back to the states.

Once he recovered, he was sent back stateside where he flew as a radioman on a Navy operated B-25 doing warbond tours.  There's a few glamour shots of various Navy aces you can kinda see him the background of as a result.  

[sburke]

wow.  Now that is a war story.  Thanks for sharing.

[user1000]

Fox hole inside the ground = no.

Raised fox holes with sand bags = yes.

[John Kettler]

FM 5-15 FIELD FORTIFICATIONS is the bible when it comes to how the US did this stuff. Starting at page 23, you will learn all that you can handle on the ins and outs of field scrapes, foxholes, weapon emplacements, trenches and so much more. All the drawings are clear, and full dimensions are supplied, together with bills of materials, crater dimensions, protection levels. One point clearly stated is that all excavations needed to be sodded as they are done. This is to hide the telltale spoil revealing the position.

http://www.easy39th.com/files/FM_5-15_Field_Fortifications_1940.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

[iluvmy88]

2 hours ago, user1000 said:

Fox hole inside the ground = no.

Raised fox holes with sand bags = yes.

this is just a graphic representation meant to be a general fortified position, terrain will not allow for them to make dug in positions so they just represent them with what they can. even the trenches are above ground in game white is obviously dumb but for all intensive purposes it works well enough.

[Anthony P.]

@panzersaurkrautwerfer That's a heck of a thing to survive, even though it sounds like he just barely did! Did they notice it before dropping the mail bag, or did the Japanese seamen get to shuffle through them looking for snacks or anything?

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

The mail bag did indeed go over the side, but I get the impression neither party to the exchange paid the bag much mind.  In either event, that was the fourth plane destroyed while assigned to him, and the second of three airplane crashes he was involved in.  

Needless to say when he drove out to visit us from the Midwest, he drove.  

On the other hand, from the cool junk perspective he pried the dataplate off every plane he rode in, likely committing some UCMJ punishable act, but leaving a trail of destruction only a 17 year old tail gunner can make.

On Topic:

It'd be neat if we could have in future games "Hasty" and "Deliberate" positions, reflecting the difference between a hole dug by an etool over the course of a few hours, vs a deliberate position  made by engineers and a lot of time.  Deliberate would obviously confer a better cover and concealment advantage.

Edited April 18, 2016 by panzersaurkrautwerfer
On topic Content!

[user1000]

terrain won't allow it? code a button to some deep bombshell indentation

[Wicky]

They tried that in CMSF but the deformations were too easily discernible before legitimate spotting, hence the pragmatic but odd looking mole hill solution.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Wicky

[womble]

7 hours ago, user1000 said:

terrain won't allow it? code a button to some deep bombshell indentation

It's about fog of war. If the crater is visible to the side that's using it, it's visible to the side that is shooting at it. Sure, you could use the crater mechanic to have troops dig new foxholes, with some graphic jiggery, but those foxholes would magically appear visible to the other side, even if they were in completely unobserved defilade. Same as if your spotting rounds fall or urban renewal happens out of LOS of any of your troops (by TRP or pre-planned), you see its effects. It's a limitation of the FoW-of-the-terrain-grid, not the terrain grid itself.

[Bulletpoint]

Is there any reason why wooden bunkers can't be low to the ground, instead of being "wooden cabins"?

It wouldn't need any ground deformation, just that the model of the bunker be made much lower, so that it would look like it was mostly under the ground.

But really it would just be like a very flat vehicle sitting on top of the ground.

Edited April 18, 2016 by Bulletpoint

[womble]

Sort of a cross between a trench and a bunker? I guess (emphasis on guess  ) it wouldn't be much different in programmatic terms, but all bunkers would be like that, and perhaps there would be some aesthetic concerns.

It is my hope that there will be more variety in defensive works in a future iteration of the engine. Steve has said that the combat engineering side of the game is an aspect he'd like to see expanded. It seems like fodder for a new version, though, rather than patches. When the OstFront gets to Stalingrad, it better be sorted out, or even when the fighting in Germany gets all urban, whichever front gets there first (Road to Berlin expansion for CM:RT in v4, sometime in '17 maybe*, if we're really good )

* Wishful thinking, not even a guess.

[Redmarkus]

I find the foxhole spotting in woods a bit too easy. As soon as my troops spot one, and before they've been fired on, I immediately plaster it with HE rounds. If the hole is occupied, I often spot infantry after firing a few rounds at it; either they pop up or they run. In training, I've walked right through a platoon position in woods without seeing a thing. It doesn't take more than half a day to dig in and conceal to that degree in the right terrain...

On the other hand, I think that troops hastily dug in in open terrain should be spotted more easily than they are in CM. Having said that, it would be good if the AI used the reverse slope more often, rather then always digging in on the crest.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Redmarkus

[c3k]

The fortification FOW issue is one that BFC is very aware of and has devoted a lot of intellectual energy towards solving. That it has not been solved, should mean something.

 

In the meantime, I tend to buy extra "soak off" fortifications, or use the ones I have as bait. Keep the enemy honest: never let them know when a spotted fortification is manned or not.

[iluvmy88]

On 4/18/2016 at 7:04 AM, Bulletpoint said:

Is there any reason why wooden bunkers can't be low to the ground, instead of being "wooden cabins"?

It wouldn't need any ground deformation, just that the model of the bunker be made much lower, so that it would look like it was mostly under the ground.

But really it would just be like a very flat vehicle sitting on top of the ground.

you can lock them into the terrain a bit but its kinda cheating as it makes it really hard to hit them to the point its almost a bug. figured this out in CMFI. pillbox type fortifications would be nice. similar to the gun pits in BoB.

ohh and dear god i wish they would rework sandbags they look horrible and you cant really build a respectable fortification with them =D.