Sandbags ruining concealment

[chuckdyke]

2 hours ago, JM Stuff said:

with this kind of layers we can perhaps play or minimum have a view of 2 scales Hqs hight scale and subordonates units...

You get a campaign automatically. A strategic game with the option which engagements you like to resolve on a tactical level. Armored cars and jeeps will play the role they were designed for. Example there were a few towns in the nearby province of Friesland. Some towns just had 2 Germans with a field telephone to contact and make their escape. Mobile scouts will counter it instead of committing a platoon when it is not necessary. I identified an obvious chokepoint near the village of Nansum and sure enough a few bunkers still exist till today. 

[JM Stuff]

3 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

You get a campaign automatically. A strategic game with the option which engagements you like to resolve on a tactical level. Armored cars and jeeps will play the role they were designed for. Example there were a few towns in the nearby province of Friesland. Some towns just had 2 Germans with a field telephone to contact and make their escape. Mobile scouts will counter it instead of committing a platoon when it is not necessary. I identified an obvious chokepoint near the village of Nansum and sure enough a few bunkers still exist till today. 

I dare to hope that this discovery of maps edition and battles, will enter the mind of BFC, to perfect an evolution of future modules, because... I think, that it is one of the keys of success to present at the same time the Strategic and Tactical level situation.

For the time I am all ears to your first realisation, and will be happy to see your first result !

[Lucky_Strike]

23 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

A good URL think it is a tremendous aid for scenario map makers. Select any area zoom with your mouse wheel and the maps becomes topographic, however numbers are small.

OpenTopoMap - Topographische Karten aus OpenStreetMap

Fantastic maps, do love to wonder round a nice map. Now if only this had a facility to role back the clock to see the lay of the land in ‘44 or ‘45 ... just had a look at the Lake Balaton area in Hungary, fantastic detail, even showing the garden boundaries between all the houses. Great find.

[chuckdyke]

20 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Now if only this had a facility to role back the clock to see the lay of the land in ‘44 or ‘45 .

Yes, I agree you need to guess population 60% of what it is today. Street view on Google maps and look at the architecture of the houses we get an idea of the original boundaries. In my project I will take some artistic license the purpose is to make a playable game. I see some old bunkers 128 mm AA guns will be replaced by 88mm ATG. Basically, set up a defense of how I would do it. Allies were pinned down in the nearby town. The attack will be through a choke point. Respect to the Canadians who achieved this. It had consequences Montgomery punched through to Hamburg and denied the Russians to be the liberators of Jutland. The BOAR and Dutch forces sat out the Cold War near Lunenburg. Here is where my association stops in the 60's we moved to Australia. 

[Ultradave]

A number of the scenario designers have found resources of period topo maps that have been used to created some scenarios. I don't have those links but they are out there. I believe there is a German resource that covers not only Germany but areas where the WW2 German Army was. The detail is good, and they can be used as overlays to create terrain. They were similar to the UK Ordnance Survey maps (my favorites, lived in the UK and they are amazing map sets), just not as good resolution of the images due to age/repro technique.

If you post a request for help, one of the beta testers who does a lot of scenario work might see it and post the links. Offhand I can't remember who it was. If I run across it I'll ask.

Dave

[Freyberg]

OK - this was bugging me so I ran a test. It took a long time to set up, I expect to be thanked

Scenario file attached, play with it yourself.

Test settings:

• CMFI, clear day
• Base terrain 'hard'
• Spotter, with binoculars, Regular, 0; spotter has 2m elevation advantage
• Spotter has 10 min to observe (no enemy troops on map, just fortifications)

Results:

1) Control, no cover (terrain file 'hard')

• Foxholes no longer visible at ~200m
• Trenches no longer visible at ~600m
• Sandbags no longer visible at ~800m

2) Extra long grass tile, fortifications placed one tile back from front of cover tiles

• Foxholes no longer visible at ~200m
• Trenches no longer visible at ~600m
• Sandbags no longer visible at ~900m

3) Light tree cover - light forest tile, tree type A, one tree per tile, fortifications placed one tile back

• Foxholes no longer visible around ~200m
• Trenches no longer visible at ~500m
• Sandbags no longer visible at around ~900m

 

OK - so this is a single vanilla spotter, with binoculars and 10 min of uninterrupted observation on a clear day.

For those who say 'these things are too easy to spot', do you drive, do you ever visit the country or go to the beach? 100m is literally 'just over there' - I can spot a sparrow in flight from 100m, without my glasses on - and it doesn't take 10 min.

I may (or more likely may not) do other tests with different elevation, but this is my preliminary conclusion.

Summary:

• Foxholes are quite hard to spot - camouflage seems to be assumed
• More robust entrenchments are not easy to spot until you are well within heavy weapons range.

A high elevation advantage may make a big difference, but it should; more eyes and more experienced eyes may make a difference, but they should  - feel free to play with the file and change terrain types.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9yvjmwddqiyv0eu/000 spotting A2_L.btt?dl=0

 

 

Edited April 23, 2021 by Freyberg

[MOS:96B2P]

1 hour ago, Freyberg said:

Test settings:

• CMFI, clear day
• Base terrain 'hard'
• Spotter, with binoculars, Regular, 0; spotter has 2m elevation advantage
• Spotter has 10 min to observe (no enemy troops on map, just fortifications)

Results:

1) Control, no cover (terrain file 'hard')

• Foxholes no longer visible at ~200m
• Trenches no longer visible at ~600m
• Sandbags no longer visible at ~800m

Summary:

• Foxholes are quite hard to spot - camouflage seems to be assumed
• More robust entrenchments are not easy to spot until you are well within heavy weapons range.

Interesting stuff.  When you say "Foxholes no longer visible at 200m? do you mean the foxholes were first spotted at 200m?  

[Freyberg]

13 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

Interesting stuff.  When you say "Foxholes no longer visible at 200m? do you mean the foxholes were first spotted at 200m?  

No - I set them up at about 80m intervals (10 action squares + a few extra for the spotting platform), gave the team 10min to see what they could see.

Foxholes were visible up to around 140m, and at around 200m, they didn't spot the foxholes. Check the image.

If you have CMFI, have a look at the file - in unit view for each side - then try it out...

[chuckdyke]

Try with Veteran and above. That's the only people I let spot. Insertion and Interdiction SF2 taught me that lesson. The snipers and the FO are green. The Platoon HQ (Crack) the marine's squad and the AT guys I qualify. Trenches become visible after a few turns. 

[MOS:96B2P]

16 minutes ago, Freyberg said:

Foxholes were visible up to around 140m, and at around 200m, they didn't spot the foxholes. Check the image.  

+1.  Okay, understood.  Thanks for testing and sharing. 

[Badger73]

9 hours ago, Ultradave said:

A number of the scenario designers have found resources of period topo maps that have been used to created some scenarios. I don't have those links but they are out there.

The Few Good Men's SCENARIO DESIGNER’S WORKSHOP – Making Maps

[Ultradave]

Jackpot. Thanks!

[Lucky_Strike]

12 hours ago, Ultradave said:

They were similar to the UK Ordnance Survey maps (my favorites, lived in the UK and they are amazing map sets), just not as good resolution of the images due to age/repro technique.

Yes there are some fantastic OS maps available now, they range in resolution/scale as well as year and are absolute goldmines of info. I believe that France has something similar for land registry, would need to check.

[Ultradave]

3 minutes ago, Lucky_Strike said:

Yes there are some fantastic OS maps available now, they range in resolution/scale as well as year and are absolute goldmines of info. I believe that France has something similar for land registry, would need to check.

We lived in the northwest, just on the south edge of the Lakes District. Every stone wall, every footpath, many of which we made good use of. We used one scale for walking, one for biking. I have quite a collection. Besides being useful I think they are pretty much works of art (I love maps - can you tell?)

 

[Lucky_Strike]

21 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

We lived in the northwest, just on the south edge of the Lakes District. Every stone wall, every footpath, many of which we made good use of. We used one scale for walking, one for biking. I have quite a collection. Besides being useful I think they are pretty much works of art (I love maps - can you tell?)

 

Have you seen https://www.archiuk.com/

Bit of a clunky interface but has a nice selection of old maps that overlay on modern maps - specially made for map heads!

Lake Windermere

[Ultradave]

Nice. really cool looking at where I lived.  (Pennington, just west of Ulverston to the SW of Windermere). In fact, the house is shown (Church Stile House), just below - south of St. Michael's Church in Pennington). We did a lot of local walking there just to the NW around the 2 reservoirs and Bank House Moor.  Great memories. Stunning scenery around the Lakes District.

[Lucky_Strike]

On 4/24/2021 at 12:53 AM, Ultradave said:

Nice. really cool looking at where I lived.  (Pennington, just west of Ulverston to the SW of Windermere). In fact, the house is shown (Church Stile House), just below - south of St. Michael's Church in Pennington). We did a lot of local walking there just to the NW around the 2 reservoirs and Bank House Moor.  Great memories. Stunning scenery around the Lakes District.

Nice! That place doesn’t look like it’s changed much in the 120 or so years since they made those maps, bet a person could find their way around now using them.

[LongLeftFlank]

Ha ha, all this reminds me of one of the lines from Elford's "Devil's Guard" that persuades me it wasn't entirely fabrication (though much of it is):

We crossed and took to the hills immediately, following a narrow depression that we had discovered on an old, wartime Japanese map. Strangely enough, this very important ravine had been missing from every contemporary French map of the area. More than once we discovered the superiority of vintage Japanese Army maps; they were more detailed and more correct.... Thanks to the meticulously precise Japanese cartographers we covered ten miles in about six miles, over very difficult terrain.

There was good order in Japan—as there used to be in Germany. The French housekeeping was nothing but a giant whorehouse, from maps to machine guns. Nothing ever functioned properly. Not even the water closets.

Ouch.

 

Edited April 30, 2021 by LongLeftFlank

[RockinHarry]

While not beeing a solution for the main issue (spotability) it at least looks nicer. Same for foxholes. Main idea is to remove the annoying sandbag graphics and same time add more cover from the ground mesh. So FH positions preferably s/b placed in some depression or just behind a crest/back slope.

https://community.battlefront.com/topic/136638-standing-in-foxholes/?do=findComment&comment=1816520

Edited April 30, 2021 by RockinHarry