AT gun firing back despite full suppression. Intended?

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, IanL said:

The bottom line though is soldiers in foxholes are better protected than those that are not.

Has that ever been tested ?

[General Jack Ripper]

3 hours ago, IanL said:

A debate has been ongoing about how effective foxholes are / should be.

The only way that debate will end is if instead of a generic "foxhole" we can pick and choose what type of foxhole is being used.

[A Canadian Cat]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Has that ever been tested ?

I seem to recall a test at some point. My own experience has never show the opposite to be true. Note, I am not saying anything about the level of protection other than troops are safer in a fox hole than not. I personally would never undertake such a test because I have never seen any indication that they don't offer protection.

58 minutes ago, General Jack Ripper said:

The only way that debate will end is if instead of a generic "foxhole" we can pick and choose what type of foxhole is being used.

You and I both know that wouldn't help

[slysniper]

I think the foxhole and trench thing will never go away.

I know for me the first few times I ran troops to these features hoping to save their lives from some type of arty attack and feeling very disappointed after the event.

But I am much older and wiser now.

also instead of asking others to do test  (learn to test things yourself) really you can do it.

 

OK, I have learned that these features work great, only if you place hide on your units, I also put pause on them. With those two settings. Your men are very well protected.

Test it for yourselves and you will see a major difference.

 

But in general, the men will have a tendency to stick their heads up if not on hide. (The pause is a good way of preventing any coward from wanting to crawl out of there and make some fleeing move.)

 

the test is easy, place two identical groups on a map, hit them with whatever  arty you think is a good example and set the one group with my discussed settings and the others without.

The results are drastically different

 

 

[BornGinger]

19 hours ago, General Jack Ripper said:

The only way that debate will end is if instead of a generic "foxhole" we can pick and choose what type of foxhole is being used

I think it would have been great if foxholes were made in the same way as craters are being done in the editor. Instead of having sandbags, or whatever, protruding from the ground where the troops are hiding they would be hiding in holes in the ground. Trenches could bee made the same way.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

10 minutes ago, BornGinger said:

Trenches could bee made the same way.

That's how they were done in CM:A and in CM:SF1 (and can still be done in CM:SF2).

But because they deform the terrain they are visible to everyone.....Thus they tend to attract artillery like flies to a t**d.  

Edited January 16, 2020 by Sgt.Squarehead

[BornGinger]

It should be possible to make them so that they don't deform the surrounding terrain and don't become that visible. It all depends on the game engine, I think,  and should be possible to code in a way so trenches and fox holes weren't that visible when placed on the map. If it isn't so easy to do in the game engine that is being used now maybe in the next one which hopefully will come in a not too distant future.

[domfluff]

19 hours ago, IanL said:

I seem to recall a test at some point. My own experience has never show the opposite to be true. Note, I am not saying anything about the level of protection other than troops are safer in a fox hole than not. I personally would never undertake such a test because I have never seen any indication that they don't offer protection.

So, I have.

Some observations and assumptions:

Tanks seem to aim at other AFV's centre of mass. This can and will miss through various factors, but I'd bet some money that you could model the results as a bell curve away from the CoM. That's then the game mechanical advantage to being Hull Down - some percentage of shots will hit the earth, which will be more than the percentage that would have missed anyway. This might seem obvious, but I think it's worth stating.

Assuming that is true, I think it's sensible to assume that soldiers also aim at the centre of mass, meaning that the mechanical of cover is to block this in a similar percentage sense. We know that shots have penetration values, so not all cover protects against everything, but it's reasonable to guess that the foxhole model blocks small arms and fragmentation.

In testing, small arms fire that hits these obstacles doesn't seem to penetrate.

Picture grabbed quickly from CMMODS: 

One thing that's worth noting is that the top two photos are taken from a raised angle. If you're shooting into a bell curve around the centre of mass, then the chaps in the foxholes above are very dead, with the foxhole providing little to no cover to direct fire. The chaps behind the sandbag are from a lower perspective, and would be better protected - more than half (but still nearly half) of the shots should hit the sandbags instead of meat.

The end result is that with a well placed fortification (and placing fortifications properly is *hard*), you're only going to be gaining percentage points of survival - at best you're perhaps doubling the number of shots it takes to kill a chap, and you can't rely on that.

You could and can make a case that the player models are over-exposing themselves, but that's what we can do with the tools that we have.

It's also worth talking about mortar fire. From previous discussion, mortars and other indirect fire are modelled as an explosion radius, followed by a random number of ray-traced "fragments" that'll fly out randomly from the impact point. That will mean that obstacles will protect better against indirect fire than they will against direct fire, since the fragments are going to be starting from ground level. They'll quite possibly still be awful against direct hits (since I doubt they help with the explosion) or airbursts, but they'll help with ground-impacting mortars fragments. Again, it'll be a percentage, but it'll be better odds than against small arms.

[Erwin]

20 hours ago, IanL said:

I seem to recall a test at some point.

FWIW: Yes, me as well.  But, that was several updates ago, and sometimes things get worse after an update and if the effect is subtle it can take a while for anyone to notice.  So, new tests would be wise...

[slysniper]

foxholes and trenches will also work well against direct fire with the hide and pause set on the unit.

The issue of course being that they are worthless as to returning fire.

 

But the tactic I use often in h2h fights is, Hide my men and let the enemy blast away, especially if I have a trench system.

I can crawl my men away from pinning type of effects.

The important part is, having other friendlies, normally farther away. concealed but keeping a eye on the enemy and set to open up on any enemy unit wanting to rush the defenses.

I have many a win because the enemy thinks they have my men pinned, they rush my trenches. I see the attack and unhide my units in the  trenches and engage the enemy at close range.

guess who wins the fire fight in those situations.

 

 

[holoween]

On 1/15/2020 at 5:41 PM, Bulletpoint said:

Has that ever been tested ?

yes

http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/thefgmforum/threads/cmfb-trench-vs-foxholes.29756/

 

and while it isnt explicitly stated in there foxholed do provide the best cover to infantry short of bunkers and tied with stonewalls.

sandbags and trenches provide less cover with trenches being practically uesless. I never tested buildings so they might provide more cover but ingame experience would suggest they generally dont.

[Erwin]

That's interesting, but the test does not compare being in foxholes vs being in the open which was the original question. 

However the data was interesting that rifle fire at 70m seemed to be more effective that 81mm mortars, and onmap 81mm much more effective than offmap ("troops take 90% of casualties in first 30 secs of shells landing and immediately abandon trenches").  

[Freyberg]

In a game I'm playing now, the Jerries had an ATG in a trench right in the middle of their line. It was exposed to mortar fire, an artillery barrage, numerous MGs, close indirect fire from tanks, and infantry in small arms range - the little b#st#rd kept on popping back up.

It wasn't until I had a tank get a direct, aimed shot from close range that I killed the little blighter.

It varies, obviously, and I'm assuming the crew were high experience, high morale - but trenches offer excellent cover in the right circumstances.

[John Kettler]

Back in my earliest outings with CMBN, there was a scenario in which a crater was practically worth its weight in gold when it came to keeping a US 57 mm ATG and crew in the fight, this with fire raining down from a hilltop, no less. Believe the gun killed two German ACs and a 251 haftrack before eventually being knocked out by crew casualties inflicted by a HMG.

Regards,

John Kettler

Edited January 17, 2020 by John Kettler

[holoween]

17 hours ago, Erwin said:

That's interesting, but the test does not compare being in foxholes vs being in the open which was the original question. 

However the data was interesting that rifle fire at 70m seemed to be more effective that 81mm mortars, and onmap 81mm much more effective than offmap ("troops take 90% of casualties in first 30 secs of shells landing and immediately abandon trenches").  

I though that much was obvious and didnt exactly need to be specified but i i just ran the test a few times and the platoon in the open always gets wiped out with a max of 4 casualties for the foxholed troops.

 

Keep in ine the 81mm mortars effectiveness is range dependant. this was done at basically point blank range. so Firing it at long range may reult in it matching the offmap version.

[Erwin]

1 hour ago, holoween said:

the platoon in the open always gets wiped out with a max of 4 casualties for the foxholed troops.

Ok thanks... that seems definitive.  :)

 

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, holoween said:

i just ran the test a few times and the platoon in the open always gets wiped out with a max of 4 casualties for the foxholed troops.

Thanks for testing it out. What was the range?

[Bulletpoint]

On 1/16/2020 at 1:16 PM, slysniper said:

also instead of asking others to do test  (learn to test things yourself) really you can do it.

Was that a swipe at me? I've done plenty of testing in this game. But my time is limited, so I asked if it had been tested before - no point in re-running a test somebody else already did.

[holoween]

12 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Thanks for testing it out. What was the range?

setup was exactly the same as the previous tests.

[General Jack Ripper]

On 1/16/2020 at 9:54 AM, BornGinger said:

It should be possible to make them so that they don't deform the surrounding terrain and don't become that visible. It all depends on the game engine, I think,  and should be possible to code in a way so trenches and fox holes weren't that visible when placed on the map.

They did, which is how we got the trenches and foxholes we have right now.