Wood Bunkers

[:USERNAME:]

The MG wood bunkers just arent worth it. I would rather just have a HMG crew to be able to maneuver. Its a ripoff when they leave the bunker because they dont take the weapon with them.

Lewis

[Compassion]

3 important points:

Location, Location, Location.

I have used the wood bunkers to good effect by placing them out of sight of where I think the spotters will be spotting from, but too close to where I think my prey will be wandering that I want the protection for the gunners.

Of course you're right. in an area that the flanks aren't protected or is visible to a spotter they are deathtraps.

[:USERNAME:]

I think they should be modeled as buildings and units should be able to enter and leave.

Lewis

[Guest Big Time Software]

A wooden bunker was realistically not meant to withstand direct HE fire. Since this is what the Americans have at their disposal in VoT, expect to loose them. But wait until you have infantry trying to take these things out in the middle of dense woods. They are murderous.

Don't forget you are playing only ONE scenario and therefore to draw sweeping conclusions about the usefullness of these buggers is pretty pointless since you haven't used them in any other situation.

Crews bail out of their bunkers because they have either the weapon was damaged or because they panicked. If you thought the next HE round was going to finish you off, would you bother to limber up the gun, gather ammo and spare barrels, *then* leave the bunker? I think not.

Steve

[Sublime]

Waaaay off topic, but thanks for the speedy and effective reply to my dads email about changing the shipping adress Steve..

Jeff C

[Goanna]

To add a nice spoiler (since Steve has said that the game is nearly shipping and i won't be starting any new VoTs) to the above, you can even make them work well in VoT.

I put them below the LOS for the obvious places that the Allies will roll in their initial armour and keep them on an ambush target until they are most effective. I also stole from Berli the tactic of using another building to screen them from direct fire from one side (thankfully, when the building goes down, the rubble still blocks LOS)

If the allies wat to spend a bunch of off board arty taking out these bunkers, I call that a good trade. Less to use on my 150 IG.

Using the above I have zippered up a number of advancing squads before losing the bunkers after an initial experience that was similar to Lewis'.

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desert rat wannabe

[:USERNAME:]

Steve

I am saying that I would like to realistically leave the bunker with my weapon. Who said anything about HE or any fire whatsoever?

It should be an option to leave the bunker with the weapon and deploy elsewhere. You are locked in because of the way the game models the bunker like an immobile vehicle or something.

Lewis

[Dittohead]

Don't forget that once the computer spots your bunker it is able to identify all locations on the map where it can get a shot at it. Sometime you think you have it out of LOS and then wammo the AI finds that one angle you were'nt expecting and gets an early shot at it

Tony

[Spook]

OK, that's a interesting point, Lewis. You are asking for the option to "abandon" a bunker/pillbox (B/P) so that the inherent weapons team could be deployed elsewhere.

This, of course, would necessitate that the CM model now include the option for "abandoned" B/P's that are undamaged. Next, this would require that the abandoned B/P be considered as possible to be "remanned" by some weapons team or some other infantry team. Some "size limit" would then be needed to identify what kind of foot units could get into the B/P.

Actually, this is all kind of interesting. Heck, in certain "static" battles, I wouldn't mind being able to stick foot HQ teams into B/P's for better protection. But all of this would take the BTS team a bit of added programming effort, we must all fairly admit.

I also think that "static" teams locked in their B/P's and not being able to deploy elsewhere, as is the present case, is not that unreasonable. When one focuses on the 1-2 hour timeframe that would be covered in most CM battles (if even that long!), the B/P teams are likely expected to guard and cover a certain region and not "flitter around." For example, if a MG team leaves a B/P to assist somewhere else, but later on, a new enemy movement is able to seize the B/P and the surrounding area without losses, then what consequence is applied to the MG team (or the controlling CM gamer) for "abandoning a post"? Rather, it's AFTER the battle's resolution where the assigned B/P team could then normally be expected to re-deploy.

[Compassion]

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

I am saying that I would like to realistically leave the bunker with my weapon. Who said anything about HE or any fire whatsoever?

It should be an option to leave the bunker with the weapon and deploy elsewhere. You are locked in because of the way the game models the bunker like an immobile vehicle or something.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I do not have the details on how a bunker was proivisioned... Was it in fact set up to allow fast setup and collapse of an MG? Or was it built with a tripod mound say... staked in? If so I can see bailing if the thing is hit.

But you have a point maybe in the case of deciding to abandon the bunker if you are not being fired on (like during a moment of calm when an opponent tries to regroup orr brings up a spotter and you know you are goign to be toast in a couple minutes).

[OberGrupenStompinFeuhrer!]

Good point Spook.

I think it *is* reasonable that we could expect a heavy weapons team, assigned to a location for field of fire and under orders to stay there, to remain for the duration of the battle. In VoT this is all of 35 minutes. If they panick and bug out, that is one thing, but to be deliberately redeployed some 10 minutes or whatever after the battle starts is not realistic. If you are going to do that, put the bunker in the other place to begin with. And if they are suitably placed to confront infantry, with as much protection from artillery spotters or tanks as possible (schreck nearby?), they will last longer than an unbunkered MG team.

Having the option to abandon and reman a bunker would be akin to a tank crew abandoning a tank and remanning it a few minutes later at the players orders. Again not too realistic, but akin to doing the same with a wooden bunker.

Ober

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"Them Yankees couldn't hit the broa..."

[:USERNAME:]

I think the bunker should be modeled more like a house. Ive built bunkers and no way are you going to be like a robot staring through the front while a battle rages around you. Perhaps in a concrete pillbox with its limited vision slits and locked steel door but not in a bunker.

Bunkers are more in line with field fortifications (trenches, foxholes, etc). Perhaps BTS is trying to model a blockhouse.

Ive read of Israelis handcuffing released criminals to MG tripods in bunkers to force them to stay inside and fight. Ober you lose me real quick with your reasoning though. Sorry guy.

Lewis

[Guest Big Time Software]

I understand what both Lewis and Ober are saying here. One is saying they should be an optional part of the battle, the other that higher orders have determined that you will occupy them and therefore that is where you crew starts out. Because the battles are so short it would be unrealistic in such a case to allow you to opt to bail out of them (say on the first turn).

The fact is that if you were given bunkers for a scenario, bunkers you shall have You might as well say, "I really don't want this vehicle but another instead" or "I'd rather this artillery piece were off map and I had an on map FO instead" or "I'd really like to dig in this vehicle even though I am not allowed to for this scenario". Sometimes a commander on the ground is not given total freedom of action, and therefore it is not unrealistic to just have to "deal" with the what you get.

If you are making your own scenarios or doing a Quick Battle, you don't have to have bunkers so you are all set.

In any case, we are not going to model these differently. Realistic or not, to have them be modeled like houses is not something we are looking at doing in the near future. It is a buttload of coding for something that is of questionable value.

Steve

[Kevin Peltz]

Moon has some interesting articles on his website re German tactical deployments, etc. One segment on fortifications notes that the Germans tried to stay within the bunkers/pillboxes on defense, even though they may have been surrounded or bypassed. The idea with this was to slow up the attackers with "islands" of resistance, and to provide assistance in the event of a German counterattack (also SOP in a situation where a fixed line has been pierced, also in the same articles). With this in mind, I would think that if the crews were to leave the bunkers at all, it would be because they were panicked- not to serve in a different tactical development...

[Spook]

Well, Steve, I am going to re-open the bunker "can of worms" just a little bit with this note.

I would like it to be considered SOMEDAY that knocked-out bunkers and pillboxes MIGHT be re-manned by a friendly footbound weapons team. Yeah, I know this would be a programming morass: Which teams could get in? Could mortars be used from a knocked-out bunker? What would be the new effective defense bonus, given that an earlier damaged bunker or pillbox wouldn't probably give as good "cover"? Nope, this doesn’t sound like fun to consider now. But with CM2 and the East Front premise, I would find it a bit difficult to accept, on historical bounds, that a damaged or knocked-out B/P would always stay abandoned in some of the “hard core defense” battles a la Stalingrad or Sevastapol.

So to me, there’s no real need to mess with this now. But please consider the suggestion on a “sticky note” basis for CM2.

[Kraut]

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

Well, Steve, I am going to re-open the bunker "can of worms" just a little bit with this note.

I would like it to be considered SOMEDAY that knocked-out bunkers and pillboxes MIGHT be re-manned by a friendly footbound weapons team. Yeah, I know this would be a programming morass: Which teams could get in? Could mortars be used from a knocked-out bunker? What would be the new effective defense bonus, given that an earlier damaged bunker or pillbox wouldn't probably give as good "cover"? Nope, this doesn’t sound like fun to consider now. But with CM2 and the East Front premise, I would find it a bit difficult to accept, on historical bounds, that a damaged or knocked-out B/P would always stay abandoned in some of the “hard core defense” battles a la Stalingrad or Sevastapol.

So to me, there’s no real need to mess with this now. But please consider the suggestion on a “sticky note” basis for CM2.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree on this one. It would be really nice to have such options in CM2.

MK

[:USERNAME:]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

I understand what both Lewis and Ober are saying here. One is saying they should be an optional part of the battle, the other that higher orders have determined that you will occupy them and therefore that is where you crew starts out. Because the battles are so short it would be unrealistic in such a case to allow you to opt to bail out of them (say on the first turn).

You lose me now Steve. I am saying that MGs should at LEAST be able to move out of the bunker and morph into a HMG crew. What do you mean "optional"? I would accept losing the bunker even though other people would like the "structure" concept on that. If I put a infantry unit in open ground/woods in Valley I get a foxhole. If I put the same unit in a house they lose the foxhole. Is this what you are talking about?

The fact is that if you were given bunkers for a scenario, bunkers you shall have You might as well say, "I really don't want this vehicle but another instead" or "I'd rather this artillery piece were off map and I had an on map FO instead" or "I'd really like to dig in this vehicle even though I am not allowed to for this scenario". Sometimes a commander on the ground is not given total freedom of action, and therefore it is not unrealistic to just have to "deal" with the what you get.

The problem with your reasoning is that the MG is a weapon seperate from the bunker. You are saying that a MG bunker is a weapon system. I am not asking to substitute weapon systems or augmenting weapon systems like your "examples" but rather looking at the very realistic repositioning that occurs on a battlefield where units leave foxholes/trenches/bunkers as events unfold. I can accept a 75mm ATG being "locked down" during the length of a scenario due to the extra manhandling involved in setting it inside, the same is not true for MGs.

In any case, we are not going to model these differently. Realistic or not, to have them be modeled like houses is not something we are looking at doing in the near future. It is a buttload of coding for something that is of questionable value.

Steve

The value is realism. Maybe you can explain how foxholes/trenches work? If you stay in a trench but move along its length, does it give the same protection? Does it disappear if you leave it?

Lewis

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[robertpat1]

I agree with this idea to.

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A 2x4 and a kind word work better than just a 2x4

[Guest Big Time Software]

There is no argument from us that in theory a HMG could uproot itself from a bunker or pillbox given enough time and the right circumstances (i.e. not being fired at by a Sherman). What I am saying is that you are given a bunker and it is treated as a weapons system for coding reasons. So you must deploy it and utilize it in the way it was intended by the scenario designer. You have no choice over the matter, nor should you any more than the examples I listed above. If the scenario designer wanted you to have bunkers, then you have bunkers instead of HMG teams just like if he decided to give you Kübelwagens instead of Jagdtigers. So while the units themselves might not be the same, the concept of playing with what you are given is exactly the same.

Obviously there could be a case where you may wish to proactively abandon a bunker with its HMG as the battle moves unfavorably against you. I can see the value in such a decision as well as the realism behind it. But it is not allowed because it is a major deal to program. Foxholes and bunkers don't share the same qualities, from a code standpoint, are therefore are as different as night and day.

Bunkers and pillboxes are "vehicles" as far as the code is concerned, not terrain. With a decent amount of work we could have made them terrain, but then you wouldn't be able to choose where they started out at the beginning of the scenario. And the complaints about that would be huge and well founded.

So that really is the choice. Either a pillbox works like a vehicle or it works like terrain within the code. Without a major programming effort there can be nothing inbetween because there is no structure like this in existance. So while it might be more realistic if we allowed a crew to relocate, we don't think this is an important enough issue to come before all sorts of other things we and others want to see added into the game (like more varried building shapes for example).

Remember, CM can not simulate 100% of reality 100% correct 100% of the time. Totally impossible, so therefore by definition there will be some things that are not 100% spot on. This is just one of them.

Steve

[:USERNAME:]

Steve

I would prefer to have a scenario designer place the bunkers and then I would decide WHAT I would put in them if I could (or leave them vacant till later).

Perhaps you can rewrite the code whereby there is a mobile pillbox/bunker phase where they are driven to some point whereupon they are immobilized. This would be before the setup phase of course.

Lewis

PS How about making them aircraft carriers that turn into zeppelins that morph into smelly foot lockers that grow into bunkers? Or maybe they can be magic logs that went into that timewarp machine and became half bunker/half man...?

[Guest Big Time Software]

I like the zeppelin idea myself

There are problems with making bunkers terrain pieces. We would have to have a seperate tile for each and every bunker facing for each of the major pieces of terrain. This is something we do not want to do (when you see the number of tiles already in the Editor you will understand ). Such a thing would dramatically reduce their tactical value and your tactical freedom from the get go. Bad choice in our opinion, so it won't happen.

The thing here is that you have made up your mind that things like wooden bunkers are useless. They are if you place them in the wrong spot or happen to come up against the wrong force. But deployed in the right way they are the deadliest little buggers you can imagine.

Again, this is just one of those things that would be cool if it were quick and easy to fix, but it isn't. In theory we would like to have placable bunkers/pillboxes that behaved like buildings, but this is quite difficult to do as is so it isn't high on our priority list.

Steve

[tss]

Steve wrote:

A wooden bunker was realistically not meant to withstand direct HE fire. Since this is what the Americans have at their disposal in VoT, expect to loose them.

One difficulty in assessing what a wooden bunker can withstand and what not is that there wasn't any "standard" wooden bunkers at all.

A 76mm top hit could destroy a bunker with roof only one or two layers thick and that had about one foot of earth on top of it. On the other end of the scale, a bunker with 3-4 layers of logs and 1.5 meters frozen earth on top of it could withstand a direct hit from 152 mm guns (later hits would probably destroy it if the crew didn't have time to repair it).

The figures above are for indirect fire. Direct fire is slightly different matter. A wooden bunker could be reinforced with rocks and earth from front side also, but not as efficiently as from top. A 152 mm gun would certainly be enough to crack open such bunker and 45 mm gun would be too light, barring vision slit hits. I don't know where the cutoff point would be but I'd guess that somewhere around 100mm. (As the Shermans in VoT have 105mm guns, that would make them heavy enough to destroy wooden bunkers without having to hit in particularly weak spots).

Off my memory I can remember details on three occasions where bunkers and concrete pillboxes were destroyed with direct fire:

1) On January '40 at Summa Soviets brought 152 mm and 203 mm guns to fire direct fire against two Finnish concrete pillboxes. The smaller 'Poppius' was seriously damaged by a direct frontal hit. Its walls cracked and parts of it cave in. Most of the crew members inside was killed by shock wave. The larger 'Miljoona' was better built (it was constructed for flanking fire and had no openings towards Soviet lines) and it withstood multiple direct hits without severe damage. However, Soviets managed to destroy the two steel vision cupolas of the bunker.

2) In September (or maybe little later) 1941 Finns destroyed multiple Soviet bunkers with old 150 mm guns firing direct fire in Uhtua section.

3) During Summer '43 Finns field-tested the BT-42 assault gun by conducting direct fire against Soviet bunkers. The 114 mm howitzers of the assault gun destroyed 5-6 bunkers.

The main worry that I have on CM bunkers is that they seem to be too easy to spot. Given enough time, a bunker could be camouflaged pretty well. Also, the vision slits may be a little too easy to hit. However, I haven't played the full version and I've played VoT only three times thus far so I don't know whether this is a problem or not.

Kevin Peltz wrote:

One segment on fortifications notes that the Germans tried to stay within the bunkers/pillboxes on defense, even though they may have been surrounded or bypassed.

Same thing for Soviets and Finns. In fact, the last 19 defenders of 'Miljoona' are still in there. (The Soviets sealed the entrances with demolition charges when the defenders refused to surrender).

That's why I don't think that the restriction on removing heavy weapons from bunkers is important. A commander who would evacuate a bunker if it was not absolutely necessary would likely be court-martialled.

Having wrote all that I think I'll conclude this post by saying that I would like to see a wide variety of bunker types in CM, like concrete bunkers with "wings" to protect openings, and so on.

- Tommi