Instantaneous Combustion - Heavy Buildings

[Jeff Heidman]

One isue with the PF thing is that you can't tell your squaddies that they should not use their inhernet faust while in the building. Since most AT weapons are the primary weapon, you would not place a schreck or zook in a house you were unwilling to take a chance of lighting up.

Unfortuantely, you might need that squad in the building to defend it from other infantry, then that enemy HT strolls by and before you know your defensive strong point is on fire...

Jeff Heidman

[David Aitken]

Medieval wrote:

> A Panther of mine in Parker's Crossroads BLEW to pieces a 2 story Heavy building filled with like a company of Amis. Most died. That's a bit over the top.

Well that's another debate. Try this thread:

Why DO houses blow up?

Anyway, if it really was "like a company of Amis", whoever put them there ought to be court-martialled and shot.

David

[David Aitken]

Jeff Heidman wrote:

> Unfortuantely, you might need that squad in the building to defend it from other infantry, then that enemy HT strolls by and before you know your defensive strong point is on fire...

Such is war. Frankly, there are an infinite number of screwy things that might often happen in real war, which can't happen in CM because they're simply not modelled. So I think it's quite fair that there is reasonable potential for confusion and disaster with what is there.

David

[Guest Germanboy]

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

That certainly is fate.... the chances are slim to none. A backblast could start a flame but not a blaze instantly... nor an explosion.

In addition, I've noticed many buildings blowing up from HE rounds... and its happening more and more it seems. A Panther of mine in Parker's Crossroads BLEW to pieces a 2 story Heavy building filled with like a company of Amis. Most died. That's a bit over the top.

Andy<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I totally agree - putting a company of soldiers into a building that is in LOS of a tank is over the top. It is also very very very stupid. You should thank your opponent. No medal for him.

As for the backblast - it only starts a flame, and not a blaze. Go back to the thread linked to by David on page one of this one.

Also, what is your expertise for making that statement? Or could we be confronted with one of the great pieces of knowledge pulled from you-know-where?

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but if you only have your opinion to offer (as I suspect is the case), please make that clear by a simple 'IMO'. If you should have any other expertise than your intuition, do not hesitate to share please, and my apologies for suspecting you are not an expert.

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Andreas

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/greg_mudry/sturm.html">Der Kessel</a >

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[This message has been edited by Germanboy (edited 11-02-2000).]

[Bruno Weiss]

All things considered, and all points well taken, one thing that now is concerning after someone posted it. There is a difference between placing a PF unit in a building, with the knowledge that using the lethal duality of the lil bugger might bring instant death sweeping down upon it's bearer, and placing an infantry unit "equipped" with a PF into a building you wish to defend. Because, you control the PF unit, and it essentially has a singular purpose that your in control of, at least from the standpoint that you put it in the building in the first place (although I can see situations where PF's might go into buildings on their own).

But, with the infantry they have more than just PF equipment, in fact my guys who were guilty of starting this thread, only had one PF shot. Now, I don't have the option of telling them (hey dummies, read the warning label on the PF). So then now what? I have to worry about placing PF equipped infantry into a building on account of one of em breaks bad and goes Audie Murphy on me and fires off the PF and POOF! There goes the neighborhood?

IMO (see Germanboy, I used IMO, I used IMO), IMO that isn't such a good thing. It places an awful lot of defensive planning onto the roulette wheel so to speak. (Hmm, shall I defend this building with infantry and risk burning down Dresden, or)...

Yes, there are a substantial amount of uncertainties in battle, but if you tell your tank to defend a certain point you do so with the relatively secure knowledge that it isn't going to commit suicide on account of every few rounds or so an industrial glitch in the production lines caused ammunition to suffer from premature fuze ignition and so periodically the shell explodes in the breech. If you see what I mean... I mean, abstract theory can only be taken so far.

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"Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses

open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)

[This message has been edited by Bruno Weiss (edited 11-02-2000).]

[Jeff Heidman]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by David Aitken:

Jeff Heidman wrote:

> Unfortunately, you might need that squad in the building to defend it from other infantry, then that enemy HT strolls by and before you know your defensive strong point is on fire...

Such is war. Frankly, there are an infinite number of screwy things that might often happen in real war, which can't happen in CM because they're simply not modelled. So I think it's quite fair that there is reasonable potential for confusion and disaster with what is there.

David<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I see what you are saying, but with the Germans, you could look at it as a rather significant disadvantage. Well, that's an exaggeration, but the fact that you never know when a unit of yours is going to do something that is both stupid and completely out of your control is a little alarming.

It's one thing to say "Hey, if you don't like your infantry getting killed when the building falls on them, don't put them into buildings where tanks can fire at them!" It's another to have to deal with the fact that every German infantry squad is a potential time bomb waiting to screw your plan up, and there is nothing that you can do about it.

Personally, those little guys toting PFs have been much better off with them than without (I think I have seen 1 or 2 buildings catch fire in all the games I have played, and I have destroyed many an Allied AFV in return), but I can see the problem.

In ASL, you knew you were always taking that chance when you fired a LATW in a building, but it was *your* choice.

Jeff Heidman

[David Aitken]

Bruno Weiss wrote:

> I have to worry about placing PF equipped infantry into a building on account of one of em breaks bad and goes Audie Murphy on me and fires off the PF and POOF! There goes the neighborhood?

If your infantry are able to shoot at enemy vehicles (by design or accident), said enemy vehicles are quite likely to shoot back, under which circumstances a building is not the best place to be. This argument is starting to feel like Colonel_Deadmarsh's (see above linked thread on this page), where he wanted the game to be reprogrammed to avoid the case where he put men in a building, and suddenly an enemy tank appeared and started shelling the building, and knocked it down before he had a chance to relocate his troops. If you're expecting enemy armour, you don't want your men to be in buildings, because buildings are poor protection under shellfire.

Where light enemy vehicles are concerned, no-one in their right mind is going to send a halftrack up next to a building where your men might be hiding. If the halftrack is unloading infantry to assault your building, your men will be too busy firing at the infantry to worry about the halftrack.

If an enemy tank takes you completely by surprise, rolls into LOS and starts shelling your building, and (in Deadmarsh's case) the building collapses, or (in your case) your men let off a Panzerfaust, and by a small chance they set their building alight – well, that's just hard luck. But good tactics and sound operating procedures will go a long way towards protecting you from such eventualities.

David

[This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 11-02-2000).]

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

If you see what I mean... I mean, abstract theory can only be taken so far. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I see what you mean, but IMO it is not very abstract, but quite concrete; Buildings are death traps. I do believe they were death-traps in reality too, and nothing that was offered as counter argument in the other thread linked to by David has convinced me otherwise (not that that matters a lot). IIRC the strongest counter-argument was: 'Do you really want to tell me that infantry did never hide in buildings during WW II' (or somefink). Does not cut much ice as far as arguments on this board go. To me it just boils down to 'don't be inside buildings'. Defend rubble, not buildings. I also think that this is a problem in QBs. The accounts I have read talked about a lot of arty prep barrages. In QBs, if you attack a village, there should be some rubbled buildings in there, to reflect the effects of that barrage (which is outside CM's scope). This would give the whole scene a more realistic feel, and open much better options for defense.

This is obviously not good advice in a city fight, but I don't think that is where CM shines anyway, and I expect that to be one of the areas where we will see the biggest improvements in CM2.

In all fairness David, I think Jeff has a point. It should be your choice whether you want to take the risk or have them close-assault the target. Tricky one to code I am sure.

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Andreas

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/greg_mudry/sturm.html">Der Kessel</a >

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[This message has been edited by Germanboy (edited 11-02-2000).]

[David Aitken]

Jeff Heidman wrote:

> Personally, those little guys toting PFs have been much better off with them than without

Exactly.

> In ASL, you knew you were always taking that chance when you fired a LATW in a building, but it was *your* choice.

Consider that in CM (as we've discussed before), AT weapons – which in reality were carried by regular infantry – are modelled as separate teams, thus allowing you much greater flexibility. The Panzerfausts are the exception, and there is a small chance of things going wrong – but as you say, Panzerfausts are a blessing more often than not.

David

P.S. Sorry Andreas – my risk in not quoting Bruno first time backfired, and it looked like I was replying to Jeff.

[This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 11-02-2000).]

[Bruno Weiss]

Guys, all these absolutes are telling, but I suspect not the way you think. Take this veteran's account on our very own forum of how positions in the town were preferred to woods:

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/012248.html

Secondly, the statement:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Where light enemy vehicles are concerned, no-one in their right mind is going to send a halftrack up next to a building where your men might be hiding. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

-is another absolute of someone's prediction about what the masses might or might not do, (as if no vehicles in WWII ever approached a building). And, how would you presume (unless your playing w/o FOG), that all buildings "will" have enemy infantry in them, particularly in a city fight where most all of what you have is buildings. In the game I have going where all this started, that is precisely what happened. And, the offending halftrack is no more as the PF struck home.

Secondly, and I don't know where this came from in the discussion about fearing the shelling of buildings by tanks. Tanks shelling the buildings was never a part of the issue. Third, the buildings we were discussing are large heavy interconnected buildings. You can shell em all you want, by the time you knock em down my infantry will be out the back door. Which is what I said earlier, questioning why it seems that buildings are much more sensitive to internal blasts than external penetration blasts.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If your infantry are able to shoot at enemy vehicles (by design or accident), said enemy vehicles are quite likely to shoot back, under which circumstances a building is not the best place to be. This argument is starting to feel like Colonel_Deadmarsh's (see above linked thread on this page), where he wanted the game to be reprogrammed to avoid the case where he put men in a building, and suddenly an enemy tank appeared and started shelling the building, and knocked it down before he had a chance to relocate his troops. If you're expecting enemy armour, you don't want your men to be in buildings, because buildings are poor protection under shellfire.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is good, where then would you recommend you place your infantry if all there is, is buildings, including the victory location? Kinda hard to get them Shermans to climb in through the window.

And yes, this is, as I stated in the beginning a "city fight". For those of you afraid to place infantry in buildings, or who think it was never done, I'd submit your in for a real interesting time when CM2 is released with scenarios in Stalingrad. Come see me then.

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"Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses

open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)

[This message has been edited by Bruno Weiss (edited 11-02-2000).]

[Snarker]

Well, the backblast from any rocket style weapon in an enclosed space is nasty to be caught in. Training manuals warn against it, "keep #### amount of square footage of open space to allow gases and pressure to exit" etc, etc. I think what toasted your guys was the second floor aspect - they have to go down first, then out. If it was a large building, you were in effect on the 3rd or 4th floor - long way down.

[Bruno Weiss]

Nope, they were on the ground floor. But we already established that there are abstract walls in the buildings "we" don't see, just the CM AI. For purposes of what "I" can see versus what the AI apparently knows that we don't, yes there was more than 10 meters available, about 20 to 30. But, the abstraction walls explain that.

Love it when the "pack" comes at me. Hehe, Grrrr

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"Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses

open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)

[This message has been edited by Bruno Weiss (edited 11-02-2000).]

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

Guys, all these absolutes are telling, but I suspect not the way you think. Take this veteran's account on our very own forum of how positions in the town were preferred to woods.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sorry to quibble Bruno, but he does not say they were positioned in the houses. I can show you lots of very good defensive positions in the towns were I lived in Germany and very few of them would be inside buildings. Obviously inside a town you have a better defensive position, because you have much more possibilities for ambushes.

Your point about Stalingrad and city fights, I totally agree, I think it is not very well modelled, and I would expect CM2 to do much better on it. So I don't usually do city fights at the moment. I find the maps inordinately boring.

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Andreas

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/greg_mudry/sturm.html">Der Kessel</a >

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[This message has been edited by Germanboy (edited 11-03-2000).]

[Bruno Weiss]

Nah, no quibble consternation here. I think we're all quibbling.

But I suppose without a picture, (maybe I'll do one of this scenario), I can't get you guys to see what I'm talking about. The scenario where this discussion began is very much "like" Stalingrad. A large city area of large interconnected three story heavy buildings, blocks long and blocks deep. There "is" no other place to put infantry short of right out in the open in the streets, or on the leeward side of a building (which places them in both a blind spot and in a position of not being able to provide lanes of fire support to each other).

While I disagree with the notion that buildings should be avoided by infantry at all costs (I think each situation presents a different case problem to be resolved, it depends upon that situation, the building itself, the surrounding terrain, and a number of other factors), this particular situation provides little or no alternative and I doubt it is, or will be the only one like it to arise in CM.

Hey, I don't mind quibbling. That's how one learns. Only thing that bothers me is when someone jumps up and declares some absolute like; ("NO ONE would ever do this or that, it was stupid, it is suicide, YOUR stupid for doing it...). "The old Japanese master just looked at the lad and said; waxa on, waxa off..."

Case in point: At this very moment in the scenario in question, one of my PF teams is in the bottom floor of one of these type buildings right up against the wall and directly next to an M10 on the opposite side of the wall and about 10-15 meters out in the street. The M10 is totally blind to the PF, because of it's position and proximity. The M10 is firing all over the building's upper floors where it last saw the PF, trying to hit it but to no avail (and certainly without doing any appreciable damage to the building yet, or the PF). Now, the PF is so close that it's two shots thus far have whizzed right past the M10 out into the street. I suspect the M10 will be dispatched to Valhalla shortly, potentially along with the PF, but hey. I'll trade a PF for an M10 any day. Interestingly enough, none of "these" PF shots have incinerated the building though. Backing up what others have said that, this isn't an all the time situation.

As the discussion has ebbed and flowed, I've changed my opinion on a couple of things. But I must stick to my thought that with regards to German Infantry carrying PF's as an inherent compliment to their weapons inventory, and because they have many more purposes than AT defense, then there should be an option with regard to the "player" telling them to use, or not to use, the PF's similar to other weapon system options in the game.

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bruno Weiss:

there should be an option with regard to the "player" telling them to use, or not to use, the PF's similar to other weapon system options in the game.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Time for the close-shave... I would agree on this, and on the statement about infantry in buildings. There are situations where it is the best possible course, I am sure. Probably even outside city-fights. My attitude towards this discussion stems from the previous one, where some posters seemed to think that buildings are the first choice of place to place your infantry in, and not one of the last.

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Andreas

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/greg_mudry/sturm.html">Der Kessel</a >

Home of „Die Sturmgruppe“; Scenario Design Group for Combat Mission.

[This message has been edited by Germanboy (edited 11-03-2000).]

[Bruno Weiss]

Hehe, I always loved that part of the movie "Patton".

Nope, not I. By necessity only, or by design if I can stage an ambush, particulary with PF's, which on upper floors can be deadly. The more thin armor plating on the target being on the top, or down into a HT.

And grabbing a building temporarily on the way to or from something is useful. I think the governing rule here is, to realize the building is a nice fat target that one has just put infantry inside, like a tank if you leave it sit long enough, someone is going to come knocking.

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"Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses

open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth."

-Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke, (1848-1916)