Collapsing Buildings and End Turn Tactics

[Alexander]

Situation: I have a 2 PZ Gren squads and and HQ in a 2 story Light Building on both floors. A Jumbo Sherman pulls up at the beginning of the turn and shells the bldg with HE until it blows sky high around 55 secs later. There is 'one' survivor.

First, I question that a lousy light- timbered bldg when crushed would take out 19 out of 20 men. A brick bldg- perhaps. Certainly they would be shaken up.

Second, you'd think the TacAI would have the sense to evacuate the men instead of letting them cower inside while a tank pounds them for 45 seconds- this with a thick copse of trees waiting in the back yard. I've noticed AI-controlled units hightailing it out of burning structures.

If the tank appeared at the end of the turn the owning player could empty out his own squads. I'm sure the Fuehrer would have approved but I'm out 19 guys.

In a similiar vein, you get the feeling that AFVs could use a "Withdraw" option like inf.

You turn a corner at the end of a turn in your HT and your're looking at the turret of a Tiger slowly traversing in your direction. During a turn, no problem, the AI throws the HT into screaming reverse and you have a prayer of surviving. At the beginning, of your turn your're screwed because you have only the option of 'Reverse' plus the command delay.

[Chupacabra]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Alexander:

First, I question that a lousy light- timbered bldg when crushed would take out 19 out of 20 men. A brick bldg- perhaps. Certainly they would be shaken up.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Um, ever actually see a building collapse? Light or not, if that sucker has more than one story, that's a LOT of potential energy getting converted really fast into kinetic. Stuff's gonna be flying all around, and if you're on the second floor when it happens, boy howdy, that's gonna hurt. An ex-girlfriend of mine lived in LA, and according to her, the big danger during an earthquake, if you're in a building, isn't getting swallowed by the earth or anything like that, but getting clocked on the head by chunks of falling crud. Now imagine the same thing happening, but add in some people actually trying to kill you.

As for your second point, I think the issue is the way the AI looks at cover. If a unit feels threatened, it's going to head for the nearest cover, or, if it's in cover, stay there. So it makes perfect sense for the AI to stay in its nice, safe building while it's being shelled, rather than light off into the nasty, dangerous open ground that surrounds that building. I agree that it'd be nice if the AI was smart enough to figure out that "hey, this building might be great cover against infantry, but when there's an AVRE shelling it, it's time to leave." Oh well.

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Soy super bien, soy super super bien, soy bien bien super bien bien bien super super.

[This message has been edited by Chupacabra (edited 08-17-2000).]

[Jeff Heidman]

As far as the building goes, I think you are lucky to have one guy functional.

Having a building collapse on top of you is defintely a pretty serious issue. A "light" building is one made of wood. It's not like you are in a house made out of paper! I guess my point is that "light" is a relative term.

There is a lesson in this. Don't put all your eggs into one (fragile) basket.

As far as the other issue goes, you are correct. Sometimes the command delay does not really make any sense at all. I would hope that in the situation you described the tac AI would be bright enough to take over and pull the vehicle out of its exposed position regardless of the command delay, since it would be the crew deciding to do that, not a commander.

Jeff Heidman

[Kingfish]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>First, I question that a lousy light- timbered bldg when crushed would take out 19 out of 20 men. A brick bldg- perhaps.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Are you sure the collapsing building caused all those casualties? You have 20 men inside a wooden building and a tank lobbing HE shells thru the walls for 45 seconds, sounds like the tank got it's share before the roof came down.

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Wow, I've had the **** hit the fan before, but never like this...

[Guest aaronb]

They're not dead, they're pining for the fiords.

Seriously:

- if someone dropped even one 2x4 on your head, you'd fall down and stay down until the medics showed up. A house has a lot of 2x4's, or whatever the European equivalent is.

- Having had my opponents drop everything from a light house to a church (sound familiar, anyone?) on my troops, I usually lose 1 or none - the trick seems to be to order them to 'hide'. If they're moving around (walking or shooting), the casualty rate goes way up, to about 80%.

[Ron]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>First, I question that a lousy light- timbered bldg when crushed would take out 19 out of 20 men. A brick bldg-perhaps. Certainly they would be shaken up.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes but they could well be shaken up enough to be combat ineffective. Not all the casualties shown in CM are 'kills'.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Second, you'd think the TacAI would have the sense to evacuate the men instead of letting them cower inside while a tank pounds them for 45 seconds- this with a thick copse of trees waiting in the back yard. I've noticed AI-controlled units hightailing it out of burning structures.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's the challenge of the game no? Sometimes frustrating, sometimes helpless, but rewarding for the players who are planning ahead of the next turn.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>In a similiar vein, you get the feeling that AFVs could use a "Withdraw" option like inf. You turn a corner at the end of a turn in your HT and your're looking at the turret of a Tiger slowly traversing in your direction.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

From my experience if you don't give any orders for that turn the TacAI will take over and reverse to safety. Any player input with the accompanying delay seems to override that.

Ron

[Alexander]

I concede your point. Maybe the problem is that the game engine has only two ways of damaging structures:

1- The bldg catches fire and the AI evecuates the troops like in a High School drill.

2- The bldg blows up in a Hiroshima-like detonation and you try to find enough pieces to enable the CO to notify the next of kin.

I find the latter eventuality more likely with 155 shells than with tank HE. I think tank fire, coming up rather than plunging down, would tend to go through or blow out chunks of a bldg rather than levelling it. WW2 photos of villages in the combat zone attest to this. Casualties, certainly, obliteration, no.

As for the command delay as implemented for AFVs, I agree that sometimes it's inappropriate, especially in the end of turn situation described. Another example, would be for the Follow command, an enhancement(Please!) you assume will be incorporated into the next CM: A following unit assumes the same command delay as the leading unit.

[Kingfish]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>- Having had my opponents drop everything from a light house to a church (sound familiar, anyone?)on my troops<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ahhh, those were the days

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Wow, I've had the **** hit the fan before, but never like this...

[Jeff Heidman]

Alexander,

Your point about the Hiroshima like explosion is well taken, and has been noted on this forum many times.

Why exactly a house falling down makes a larger explosion than whatever caused it to fall down in the first place is a question that many have asked, but, AFAIK, there has not been an answer.

Neat idea for an an enhancement - make a falling building spill rubble into adjoining squares...

I think someone on the design team must have just thought it looked cool. Maybe they spent a lot of time making that expanding explosion graphic, and damnit, we are going to use it somewhere!

Jeff

[Grognerd_Fogman]

Lol Jeff, it's kinda fun to see the guys riding the wave, Surfs Up!...

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Thanks for Athskin!

[Joe Shaw]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Why exactly a house falling down makes a larger explosion than whatever caused it to fall down in the first place is a question that many have asked, but, AFAIK, there has not been an answer.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Jeff IIRC, Matt answered that question at one point by saying that BTS chose that "nuke" effect for lack of something better to represent the destruction of the house. It certainly got my attention when my 81mm mortar caused a house to do that though

Joe

[Supertanker]

Alexander, you are also underestimating the building height. Since the graphics are only representational, a one-floor building represents a building that is 1-2 stories in height. A two-floor building represents one that is 3-4 stories in height. See the manual at the last paragraph of page 45. So, when that building went down, your men were falling through and being covered by debris from a building about twice the size you thought it was.

I agree that the TacAI should have a sense of when the building was getting shaky, and maybe bug out. However, if they started leaving buildings as soon as the shelling started, it would make it too easy to break a line of resistance.

[dNorwood]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joe Shaw:

Why exactly a house falling down makes a larger explosion than whatever caused it to fall down in the first place is a question that many have asked, but, AFAIK, there has not been an answer.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Jeff IIRC, Matt answered that question at one point by saying that BTS chose that "nuke" effect for lack of something better to represent the destruction of the house. It certainly got my attention when my 81mm mortar caused a house to do that though

Joe

The answer -I- got (don't recall from whom) is that the "nuke" thing is supposed to represent a large dust cloud spreading from the collapse. With a bottom of the line 8M 3d card, I generally don't see much difference between -anything- . Maybe when I get that new card...

[Jeff Heidman]

[quibble mode]

Hmmmmm.

If the tactical nuclear strike bit is supposed to "represent" the dust cloud, why didn't they, I don't know, just have a graphic of a dust cloud?

Call me crazy, but that seems like the most intuitive way to go...

Why does the building appear to blow into a zillion little pieces flying all over the place? Are we showing a building being blown apart, or a building that is collapsing due to sustained damage to its structure?

Jeff Heidman

[/quibble mode]

[Alexander]

Supertanker, point well taken. Maybe, the problem is that the bldgs collapse too quickly rather than the high casualty rate. I've noticed it takes 1 turn, given heavy enough ordannance, to to annihilate a light bldg and only 2-3 turns to level a heavier one. And the poor truppen on the 2nd floor get the worst of it.

Also, I also think a levelled structure, especially the heavy ones, should leave behind some kind of covering debris.

[Jeff Heidman]

Alexander, the rubble left behind does provide cover.

Jeff

[Guest Germanboy]

Alexander, the real question is: what are your troops doing in a building in the first place when there is nice juicy cover right behind it?

As Jeff said, rubble provides cover and impedes movement. Try running a squad over it, you see them slow down. I think it looks flat for CPU hit reasons.

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Andreas

[David Aitken]

Jeff Heidman wrote:

> If the tactical nuclear strike bit is supposed to "represent" the dust cloud, why didn't they, I don't know, just have a graphic of a dust cloud?

It is a dust cloud. Compare it to an explosion graphic - these are instantaneous, whereas a dust cloud is big and slow-moving. Unfortunately it would be slightly beyond the capabilities of your average PC to accurately simulate all the characteristics of a real dust cloud.

> Why does the building appear to blow into a zillion little pieces flying all over the place? Are we showing a building being blown apart, or a building that is collapsing due to sustained damage to its structure?

When a building collapses, you tend to gets bits 'flying all over the place'. This is not the same as being blown all over the place - if a collapsing building was actually an explosion, it would throw debris halfway across the map. Unless you're a world authority on collapsing buildings, I'm not quite sure what the problem is. =)

David

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There's a splinter in your eye, and it reads REACT

[Jeff Heidman]

I'm not asking to simulate all the characteristics of a dust cloud, I am asking it to look like something vaguely similar to a dust cloud. Right now, it does not look anything like a dust cloud.

As far as bits and piees falling everywhere, I have been about 30 ft away from a collapsing building, and I can assure, all those little bits and pieces? They fall down and out, not up.

Jeff Heidman

[DanE]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Alexander:

In a similiar vein, you get the feeling that AFVs could use a "Withdraw" option like inf. You turn a corner at the end of a turn in your HT and your're looking at the turret of a Tiger slowly traversing in your direction. During a turn, no problem, the AI throws the HT into screaming reverse and you have a prayer of surviving. At the beginning, of your turn your're screwed because you have only the option of 'Reverse' plus the command delay.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

We have to remember that in the game world, there is no break in time. That HT that rounds a corner and sees something very bad has to have time to react. The delay from the Reverse command may reflect the time it takes the driver to grasp the situation and get the HT stopped so that he can slam it into reverse and back the heel up.

Just a thought.

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Dan

[David Aitken]

> Right now, it does not look anything like a dust cloud.

Well, dust clouds tend to be opaque, but they also tend to be irregular. The irregularity cannot be modelled in CM, so the opacity is toned down to compensate.

> I have been about 30 ft away from a collapsing building, and I can assure, all those little bits and pieces? They fall down and out, not up.

Consider that CM doesn't model the actual building falling down - it just models debris. A shower of debris falling to the ground would look a bit strange, so instead it 'explodes' slightly. Considering the collapse was caused by a high-explosive shell, it's not unreasonable that a few bits and pieces should be flying around.

Anyway, this isn't a building collapse simulator - it's a wargame! I think the effect, if not entirely accurate, is still very appropriate and effective. =)

David

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There's a splinter in your eye, and it reads REACT

[Supertanker]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

I'm not asking to simulate all the characteristics of a dust cloud, I am asking it to look like something vaguely similar to a dust cloud. Right now, it does not look anything like a dust cloud.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Jeff, I agree that the current image seems more "explosion" and less "collapsing building dust cloud" (at least based on the building demolition films I have seen). However, something better might not be worth the CPU hit. Did you ever try and play Nocturne? The hype for the game went on and on about how they had a true physics "cloth simulation" for the hero's overcoat (and whatever blowing curtains and such they could even slightly justify). That was nice and all, but it put such a massive hit on the CPU that it was unplayable on all but the most powerful systems. It was only programmed for 32-bit color as well, which didn't help the system requirements at all. Given that example, there are a lot of other things I would rather see the CPU cycles go to before they fix the dust cloud graphic. It I can put up with the vehicle fire graphics, I can put up with that. Until CM2, anyway.