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Overpowered Buildings?

Playing cm Normandy, game engine 4.  Campaign entitled, “A Moment in Time”,   scenario entitled “In the Zone”.  I’m leading inexperienced German troops through a forest and then attacking American paratroopers inside buildings on the other side of the forest.  I have no armored vehicles and am playing on the easiest skill setting.  

The problem is that the enemy paratroopers have proven to be unbelievably hard to kill, demoralize, or dislodge from their buildings (which appear to be made of wood and brick, though hard to tell).   I’ve tried targeting a building with 2 and even 3 squads, firing from different angles and, while they manage to suppress the fire of the occupants a bit, it’s nearly impossible to kill any.  All the while, the enemy (usually one or two soldiers) manages to counter-fire well enough (through the windows I guess) to pick off one or two of my soldiers per barrage, and slowly whittles my forces down to almost nothing.   What’s even more amazing is that I’m also firing on these buildings with 55 mm mortars (sure, not the most devastating, but still).  The mortars are unbelievably accurate and tend to land right on the other side of the wall, window, or door as the enemy soldier yet, with rare exception, even after 15-20 near-consecutive strikes, the enemy soldier is neither killed, wounded, or in any way demoralized.   Again, this is happening in combination with relentless rifle and heavy machine-gun fire!

Is this a bug, or an accurate representation of warfare?   Admittedly, my troops are inexperienced, but the fact is that they still managed to fire thousands of rounds into a buiding, against a sighted enemy, along with 15-20 pin-point mortar blasts, to almost no effect.  

If what I’ve described is not a bug, then why is it that, in the rare case where I’ve managed to successfully storm the building and kill the occupants (usually, the few shell-shocked troops I can muster for the assault get killed on the approach), my troops will quickly be sighted and killed by other enemy troops firing on the building?   I should add that the enemy is able to quickly wipe me out using significantly less firepower than I was, firing at longer distances, and using no explosives.

If the imperviousness of buildings and the unflappability of troops inside them is not a bug, then what can I do to counter this, other than set multiple lines of fire, rain down mortar shells, and use smoke to approach the structures in order to root out the occupants?   Also, how can I obtain the same invincibility as the enemy for my own troops and do it without hiding?  I’d like to whittle down the enemy with counter-fire, while outnumbered and inside a hailstorm of bullets and mortar shells, just like the AI does.   

 

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If you Google Earth Street View around rural Normandy you'll find few 'stick construction' buildings (that are little more than siding and wallboard). What you see a lot of is masonry buildings with thick walls incorporating rocks. I have a distant recollection that BFC had purposefully dialed-up the toughness of buildings for Normandy because of the region's building construction method.

normandy  house B.jpg

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It’s definitely un-winnable, and i’m fine with that.  However, i’m concerned about the invincibility of soldiers in structures, whether it’s a bug, how to counter it if it isn’t a bug, and whether this will continue to be a problem in other scenarios where I’m not given heavy artillery or armored vehicles.   

Thanks Mikey, but I still can’t conceive anything less than a bunker absorbing that kind of destructive force.   Plus, if i landed 15-20 mortar shells on and immediately in front of a stone wall with soldiers just feet away on the other side, relentlessly, over the course of 15 minutes, along with perhaps a thousand-plus rounds of ammunition, and that building had glass windows and doors, i just don’t see how those soldiers wouldn’t either be killed or, at the very least, rattled.  Plus there’s the mystery of these bunker-like residential homes turning to cardboard the minute my troops step inside them.  

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Your mortars are 50mm not 55mm, although whether that would make much difference is a moot point. You are attacking stoutly built Dutch houses with one or two barns. The US troops are well trained and experienced Airborne. Your own men are naval cadets and their instructors. In my view it is unwinnable, and some people have suggested hitting "Cease Fire" at the end of Turn 1 just in order to get a better result from reduced casualties. Personally, I try to follow the designer's instructions and take my defeat on the chin.

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The advice that the scenario is unwinnable, while appreciated, is beside the point.   Though I quite enjoyed the challenge of at least taking a couple of the houses, I’m concerned that the structures in this scenario provided an unbelievable amount of protection to the enemy while providing very little protection to my own units.  Moreover, I’m trying to figure out whether this is a bug and, if it isn’t, whether there might be tactics that i can use to to take a stout dutch home with two soldiers in it without losing 45 men and two tons of munitions.  

Since the responses seem to indicate that this is not a bug, does anyone have any advice on how to defeat units inside buildings, without armored vehicles or heavy artillery, other than setting multiple lines of fire, raining down mortar shells, and usIng smoke to approach the structure and root out it’s occupants?  

Also, any idea how I can afford my units the same protection inside these structures that the enemy has?   Are there special commands, should the units be placed in any particular part of the building, etc?  

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I haven't played the scenario for a while, but smoke mauy be handy to use to block sightlines from other defended buildings, but be careful it doesn't block sight to your support fire on the building itself - used the wrong way it would give the defenders time to recover just as your assault is going in. 

Are there unoccupied buildings you could take before storming the occupied ones? That would give you the benefit of the added protection, and you could flank fire? 

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6 hours ago, AlexUK said:

I haven't played the scenario for a while, but smoke mauy be handy to use to block sightlines from other defended buildings, but be careful it doesn't block sight to your support fire on the building itself - used the wrong way it would give the defenders time to recover just as your assault is going in. 

Are there unoccupied buildings you could take before storming the occupied ones? That would give you the benefit of the added protection, and you could flank fire? 

Thanks.  Except for a barn far off to one side, and a far-off house on the other side,  the houses in question are all in one row.  While one was unoccupied, it would’ve been almost as difficult to take that one, so i opted for taking the occupied structure next door instead.  

Once inside a building, is there anything in particular you can do to keep your men alive?   The ai was surviving in these same buildings ten times longer than i was and while a lot of it must have to do with the differences in experience between my men and theirs, the contrast is so massive that it leads me to think that I’m missing something.  Perhaps theres a command or location in the building that would significantly improve my survival chances? 

Also, I’ve recently read that the target light command is better for harming troops inside buildings. Is that true?   

Finally, despite some research, i’m confused about grenades.  Let’s say one of my squads have grenade launchers and they’re 30-60 yards from one of these buildings.  Is there a command that would maximize the use of grenades by the squad and could one of those grenades, by chance, go through a window and detonate inside the building?  

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19 minutes ago, jxrey said:

Thanks.  Except for a barn far off to one side, and a far-off house on the other side,  the houses in question are all in one row.  While one was unoccupied, it would’ve been almost as difficult to take that one, so i opted for taking the occupied structure next door instead.  

Once inside a building, is there anything in particular you can do to keep your men alive?   The ai was surviving in these same buildings ten times longer than i was and while a lot of it must have to do with the differences in experience between my men and theirs, the contrast is so massive that it leads me to think that I’m missing something.  Perhaps theres a command or location in the building that would significantly improve my survival chances? 

Also, I’ve recently read that the target light command is better for harming troops inside buildings. Is that true?   

Finally, despite some research, i’m confused about grenades.  Let’s say one of my squads have grenade launchers and they’re 30-60 yards from one of these buildings.  Is there a command that would maximize the use of grenades by the squad and could one of those grenades, by chance, go through a window and detonate inside the building?  

It's been a long while since I've played. I seem to remember the barn is a deathtrap, hardly any protection. 

One thing maybe worth doing is to try to suppress multiple buildings at once with your MGs, so the new occupiers are not immediately under accurate fire. Suppression may not stop the enemy from firing altogether but it will mean their fire is less effective (eg less accurate), that is what I believe is the case anyway. 

Grenades have a max range. Currently no 'throw grenade' command, wish there was. 

Rifle Grenade launchers are different, and they can explode inside a building and be effective. 

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One pure game mechanics trick that is very useful in urban combat with the current engine is, to give any units that make into a bulding alive and intact a permanent Pause command.....This helps to mitigate the current engine's occasionally somewhat unpredictable fire avoidance routines.

41 minutes ago, AlexUK said:

Grenades have a max range. Currently no 'throw grenade' command, wish there was. 

@Aquila-SmartWargames  Has found a way to trigger grenade use.....Hopefully he will pop into this thread with a link to his video.  B)
 

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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7 hours ago, jxrey said:

Thanks.  Except for a barn far off to one side, and a far-off house on the other side,  the houses in question are all in one row.  While one was unoccupied, it would’ve been almost as difficult to take that one, so i opted for taking the occupied structure next door instead.  

Once inside a building, is there anything in particular you can do to keep your men alive?   The ai was surviving in these same buildings ten times longer than i was and while a lot of it must have to do with the differences in experience between my men and theirs, the contrast is so massive that it leads me to think that I’m missing something.  Perhaps theres a command or location in the building that would significantly improve my survival chances? 

Also, I’ve recently read that the target light command is better for harming troops inside buildings. Is that true?   

Finally, despite some research, i’m confused about grenades.  Let’s say one of my squads have grenade launchers and they’re 30-60 yards from one of these buildings.  Is there a command that would maximize the use of grenades by the squad and could one of those grenades, by chance, go through a window and detonate inside the building?  

Perhaps the secret is the 'hide' command. Soldiers hiding and or cowering are much less likely to take casualties, especially inside houses and fortifications. I can't recall the scenario from the top of my head, but if it's a very good position than it might be difficult to take without taking casualties. Better troops in general also do better in firefights and so probably can make use of the cover more effectively, for many reasons. Luck might be a factor too. Against strong buildings a 50mm mortar isn't really great. 
A PzFaust round might have better results. Suppress the house for several minutes with MG fire, move some infantry covered on the flanks. Move infantry next to the house first and target inside for nade attack. If the enemy is properly suppressed your troops can usually pick most off from here. But casualties are a given if you have to storm elite infantry in a 'fortified' building with only light support weapons and poor infantry.

AFAIK there is nothing magical for the AI going on.

Edited by Lethaface
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13 hours ago, Lethaface said:

But casualties are a given if you have to storm elite infantry in a 'fortified' building with only light support weapons and poor infantry.

I think that you are spot on. It may be frustrating for players (myself included), but this mission does illustrate the historical limitations of the Kriegsmarine perfectly. Even without going into the lack of heavy support weapons, just take the make up of the standard "Gruppe", 9 men = 1 Smg and 8 Rifles. If we were fighting with Fallschirmjager we'd have 9 men but this time with 2 MG42s 2 Rifle Grenade launchers and in some cases a second Smg.

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13 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:

I think that you are spot on. It may be frustrating for players (myself included), but this mission does illustrate the historical limitations of the Kriegsmarine perfectly. Even without going into the lack of heavy support weapons, just take the make up of the standard "Gruppe", 9 men = 1 Smg and 8 Rifles. If we were fighting with Fallschirmjager we'd have 9 men but this time with 2 MG42s 2 Rifle Grenade launchers and in some cases a second Smg.

Indeed a big difference. Considering the smg is firing 9mm (MP-40?), which has much less penetrating power compared to 8mm mauser, the volume of fire is much less and on top of that the only automatic fire (9mm) is probably not very effective at all against strong buildings. 

 

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Players more expert that I have indicated that this is not a bug.   No one has dissented from this view.  Therefore, I will assume it's not a bug and that none of the thousand rounds fired at the targets were able to catch someone at a window due to the bad aim of my green troops.  As for the pin-point mortar strikes, I guess 50mm mortars are simply not effective against stone structures (and troops standing on the other side of stone walls, just a yard or two from the blasts) even if they're hit with 15-20 blasts to the same location (though I imagine that it will begin to crumble after some number of blasts, say 30 or 40).  Still not clear why my troops were quickly wasted inside those same buildings (they're green and kept hanging out at the window, perhaps), but will try the pause or hide command in the future to see if it helps.  Assuming that I've been able to suppress fire from all other locations (it's difficult), I will pause before entering structures and target the occupants in the hope of triggering the use of grenades.  Will also try the 'target light' command to see if it's more effective at killing someone firing through a window (I read this somewhere else).   And yes, the scenario is unwinnable, I know.  

Thanks everyone.  If you have other thoughts, please chime in.   I'm particularly curious about the triggering of grenade use mentioned by Sgt Squarehead.  

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Basically protection value of buildings is based on type and size. Independent buildings (with barns in particular) are mostly not good for defense. Modulars are better, the more the bigger they are (2x action spot and more). But range is another important factor. Below 250-200m small arms can penetrate a buildings wall fairly frequently, the more if the shots hit perpendicular (slope armor effect?). Unfortunately the game visuals and audio are very much non indicative of actual small arms effects on buildings. There´s a dedicated penetration sound played for this purpose (bullet penetrate building X.wav). I replaced that with a simple "beep" sound, quite well indicating when a building turns swiss cheese. Not quite immersive admittedly, but more of a tool to evaluate a buildings current protection value.

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/134719-any-more-interest-in-cmbn-or-any-ww2-sound-mods/?do=findComment&comment=1784243

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How far away were you when you first started shooting? Firing at heavy buildings at very long range doesn't do much sometimes. It might not even suppress them that much. Like RockinHarry posted, the closer you get, the more likely shots are to penetrate. And how far away was the enemy when they shot up your own guys inside the same building? My guess is that might have been why you had so much trouble approaching the buildings, and then your own guys got wasted instantly the moment you got inside. 

You might have been trying to shoot at them from long range ineffectively, and then once your squad finally made it inside the building, they got hit by counter-fire at very close range. I haven't played that scenario though so I don't know. Maybe I'll have to try it.

In my own experience, the best way to deal with buildings if you don't have heavy weapons or tanks is to just get in close as quickly as you can and shoot them up as much possible with as many men as possible. Use smoke, suppress them as much as you can during the approach or whatever, but you don't really have to storm the building itself. You can even halt in open ground in front of the building as long as you outnumber them heavily and have fire superiority. The idea is that the moment an enemy soldier pops up at the window to take a shot, you have 30 guys or whatever right outside the building that will all instantly return fire. If your guys are all just 50 meters outside the building, the enemy will probably be dead within seconds. The enemy might open up on one of your squads and cause a casualty or two, but you should have two more squads right there next to them that should take them down. Sometimes that alone will be enough to clear a building.

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My MG34, was firing repeatedly from about 71 meters away at about a 25 degree angle.  Plus a number of other soldiers firing different weapons from different angles.  This particular situation lasted for about 10-15 minutes, with perhaps 15-18 soldiers firing on this particular building at the beginning (from about the same distance) and with less than half of them still standing at the end (which is when I stormed the building).  I'm chalking it up to inexperienced troops with poor aim (they're all green and conscripts) and the stoutness of the building.  Interestingly, the mortar fire was precise.  Maybe there was a long-hidden enemy soldier in the building but, far as I could tell, my units, once inside the building, and after at least a minute or two on the second floor, were killed by small amounts of gunfire coming from a nearby building, about 52 meters away, and equally small amounts of fire from one or two distant buildings 100-300 yards away.  I believe that one of those distant units was a sniper.   

If anyone wants to play it, can gain at least a marginal victory, and post a full video, it would serve as a great tutorial for the community.  

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That's interesting if you were unloading on them at very close range and still had that much trouble. I usually have pretty decent luck firing MG34s/42s at buildings. It's like the high rate of fire and sheer number of bullets hitting the building makes it more likely that at least some of them will penetrate. Maybe I had forgotten just how tough they made some of the buildings in CMBN though lol

It's been a while since I've played CMBN. Would be fun to try that scenario myself and see if I can pull it off. That's the one campaign in that game that I haven't tried yet.

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4 hours ago, Bozowans said:

That's interesting if you were unloading on them at very close range and still had that much trouble. I usually have pretty decent luck firing MG34s/42s at buildings. It's like the high rate of fire and sheer number of bullets hitting the building makes it more likely that at least some of them will penetrate. Maybe I had forgotten just how tough they made some of the buildings in CMBN though lol

It's been a while since I've played CMBN. Would be fun to try that scenario myself and see if I can pull it off. That's the one campaign in that game that I haven't tried yet.

Same here. The thread got me interested to try this one for the first time. The first mission already gave a taste of the modular buildings toughness, but I reached my personal goal in this. Now after the forest skirmish mission I´m at setup phase of "In the Zone". Looking at german troops I´m not very confident to achieve very much. :lol: Same for attack terrain. At least there´s almost all independent buildings.

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On 5/20/2020 at 12:36 AM, jxrey said:

If anyone wants to play it, can gain at least a marginal victory

Have you a save turn you could share  so folk could see what is happening and continue playing the problem out?

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On 5/17/2020 at 5:16 PM, jxrey said:

am playing on the easiest skill setting.

Ths can sometimes be a bit misleading and IMHO it doesn't really help.....AFAIK it doesn't make things any easier, it just throws more information at you.  Consequently you don't get to learn how that information is passed through your formation in quite the same way that you would when playing Iron Mode. 

Information is everything in CM, the more your units know, the better they will perform.....The easier modes can give the impression that units know much more than they do.  Iron Mode is actually the easiest way forward in terms of learning how to get the best out of the game engine IMHO.

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I must say that I’m impressed by all the advice I’ve gotten and interest everyone has shown.  Never posted much on game forums, but glad I did.  When i get home I’ll try and figure out how to send a game save.  
 

Iron mode seems intimidating but, if it’ll accelerate my learning, I’ll try it. 

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