WimO Posted June 27, 2023 Share Posted June 27, 2023 What I like about modular buildings is their flexibility. The ability to add floors, remove walls, rearrange windows and doors and trim,rotate in place and create and cycle through new skins are all wonderful. .... BUT! ... as a modder and scenario creator there are some things to hate. Before I let off steam about my number one hate I want to point out a "silly bit". In the Scenario Editor, modular buildings #2 & #3 are identical as are the pairs #4-#5 and #7-#8. Don't be fooled by the icon which shows them rotated 90 degrees relative to each other. After all the buildings can be rotated by the user. So instead of 9 orthogonally arranged buildings (not counting the diagonal ones) there are in fact only 6. This is further cemented by the fact that the "pairs" share the identical roof, With 2-3 using roof 2, 4-5 using roof 3 and 7-8 using roof 6. And that leads into my 'hate' rant. I hate the fact that the roof graphics cannot be cycled in the manner that we can cycle the building graphics. This has the undesired result of roof skins not able to match all building skins. For example if building #1 can cycle through stucco, brick, stone and timbre skins, the roof skin is locked into just one option which frequently does not match. The result can be awful - at least it is to me as a building modder. At the very least Battlefront could have made the roofs for the "pairs" of buildings different. And at best, the roofs could and should be cycleable with SHIFT + Left Mouse through a series of user modded options. Blah .... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlXII Posted June 27, 2023 Share Posted June 27, 2023 My number one gripe with the modular buildings by far is the fact that the toggeling of walls on and off is for looks only ! It has NO or atleast very, very minor impact on gameplay (LOS/LOF) if the wall is removed or not. I 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RockinHarry Posted June 27, 2023 Share Posted June 27, 2023 Exactly. That´s what makes me hate seeing timber frame type roof sides on more modern city buidlings quite in particular. Can only get rid of them by replacing with own modded roof types (brick wall or plastered). Still remains the annoying random swapping of roofs once a map/mission gets saved and reloaded. Not to mention the Potemkin type attributes related to CM buildings generally. (fake windows/doors, damage and cover modelling) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artkin Posted June 27, 2023 Share Posted June 27, 2023 4 hours ago, CarlXII said: My number one gripe with the modular buildings by far is the fact that the toggeling of walls on and off is for looks only ! It has NO or atleast very, very minor impact on gameplay (LOS/LOF) if the wall is removed or not. I I'm not so sure about that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ithikial_AU Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 11 hours ago, CarlXII said: My number one gripe with the modular buildings by far is the fact that the toggeling of walls on and off is for looks only ! It has NO or atleast very, very minor impact on gameplay (LOS/LOF) if the wall is removed or not. I No. The number of door's and windows provide access points for pixeltruppen to view and fire from for that side of a building. Doors have the added benefit of building access. When there is only one window you'll probably see your troops limited by the amount of fire they can put out or will clump together to use the opening to lay down fire - increasing risk of a HE shell or RPG doing more casualties the other way. Blown out walls improve LOS/LOF and reduce cover and concealment. Cases where troops ignore certain windows could be a reflection of angles and LOS calculations of where the target is situated relative to the shooter. Just because there is a window, doesn't mean it has LOS/LOF solution to a target. My three gripes with modular buildings are: - Targeting a building for area fire relies on being able to see the centre of the relevant floor even when you can see a corner or partial part of the wall. - Can't remove floors to create open internal spaces within larger module buildings such as simulating giant factory floors or auditoriums. - Can't create archways/bridges between buildings to allow vehicles to drive under into a courtyard or similar. (Yeah this one is a bit more bespoke). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlXII Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 8 hours ago, Artkin said: I'm not so sure about that. I pretty much am I have put 6 one tile modular buildings together and REMOVED the internal walls. Playing in scenario test mode... Nobody sees nobody... The germans moves through the 'room'...Nothing until... The germans reaches the one tile building right next to the enemy... When enetering the house they have LOS/LOF to pretty much nowhere exept the adjacent 1 tile building... I add wall with no windows around the 1 tile buildings with the enemy troops and move in simular fashion. And the result is just the same... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artkin Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 39 minutes ago, CarlXII said: I pretty much am I have put 6 one tile modular buildings together and REMOVED the internal walls. Playing in scenario test mode... Nobody sees nobody... The germans moves through the 'room'...Nothing until... The germans reaches the one tile building right next to the enemy... When enetering the house they have LOS/LOF to pretty much nowhere exept the adjacent 1 tile building... I add wall with no windows around the 1 tile buildings with the enemy troops and move in simular fashion. And the result is just the same... You didnt mentioned internal walls in your original post. Either way a destroyed wall will offer cover that an empty wall wont. The reason why the above happens is because only one of the houses was walled up. Add walls to another house and they wont be able to shoot at each other. To explain this simply: You can walk through a door in cm. You can also walk through a broken wall in cm. You can further walk through a completely removed wall. It's essentially a doorway. Make a complex building like you did above, except dont delete walls and make them all solid instead. Add doorways to one side of the wall and not the other. Your troops will walk through the doorways and into the next house. They can also see and shoot into the next house. With this method you can create interior balconies that sort of function and you dont have to go crazy making doorways on both sides of the wall if you dont want to.. though it looks much better if you do. Further, this allows you to pair houses with broken walls to other houses to create more complex structures. I.e. using the tiny barn with 1 destroyed wall and connecting it to a modular house. The barn will look like a foyar entraceway where people typically store clothes, shoes, outdoor equipment or whatever. It essentially adds more options for the mapmaker. I can think of another reason too. If you're making a complex structure and you dont want to see wallpaper on the inside. You can delete the interior wall and you'll have a sometimes more visually appealing/realistic wall. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlXII Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 10 hours ago, Artkin said: The reason why the above happens is because only one of the houses was walled up. Add walls to another house and they wont be able to shoot at each other. The walled buildings are NOT the problem...It's the 'unwalled' ones that are... When the buildings has visible walls (damaged or not) the game treats them okish....The problems comes when you as a designer want to add a large building to the map by combining several smaller ones into one...Lets say a factory or warehouse. Take my example above...What if i wanted this to represent a large warehouse...consisting of ONE large room...by removing the internal walls visiually it looks like i have achived this but when it comes to game play functions...I HAVE NOT...The game still treats this space as if it has all 6 individual 1 tile buildings intakt with their walls up... Visually it looks like ONE big room with clear LOS/LOF...But its NOT.... That is not good imo ! 10 hours ago, Artkin said: Either way a destroyed wall will offer cover that an empty wall wont. At long distance maybe....but close in not all that much...In my example above it made no difference at all if the allied troops where in a tile with all around windowl/door-less walls or an entirely wall-less tile...The result was the same. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Artkin Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 (edited) 18 minutes ago, CarlXII said: The walled buildings are NOT the problem...It's the 'unwalled' ones that are... When the buildings has visible walls (damaged or not) the game treats them okish....The problems comes when you as a designer want to add a large building to the map by combining several smaller ones into one...Lets say a factory or warehouse. Take my example above...What if i wanted this to represent a large warehouse...consisting of ONE large room...by removing the internal walls visiually it looks like i have achived this but when it comes to game play functions...I HAVE NOT...The game still treats this space as if it has all 6 individual 1 tile buildings intakt with their walls up... Visually it looks like ONE big room with clear LOS/LOF...But its NOT.... That is not good imo ! At long distance maybe....but close in not all that much...In my example above it made no difference at all if the allied troops where in a tile with all around windowl/door-less walls or an entirely wall-less tile...The result was the same. I already explained why this is happening to you. Keep in mind that the game can't simulate a large open enclosed space when combining houses. Ithikial nailed it. Edited June 28, 2023 by Artkin 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CarlXII Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 5 minutes ago, Artkin said: Keep in mind that the game can't simulate a large open enclosed space when combining houses. Ithikial nailed it. Yes i know ... And that is exactelly my problem. I wish that the game could represent a largish internal space...and the fact that it can't...THAT is my biggest gripe with the modular buildings. The fact that a scenario designer can toggle individual walls off without that having any....or at best....very, very minor impact on actual gameplay is somewhat strange to me... If you toggle a wall off...It should be GONE...not simply invisible... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JM Stuff Posted June 28, 2023 Share Posted June 28, 2023 (edited) Up and down from CM situations, very interresting thank you for the test and analyse... Edited June 28, 2023 by JM Stuff 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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