Why DO houses blow up?

[Simon Fox]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Hmm, I don't get the main premise here I guess.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Slumming it in the cesspool clearly turns your brain to jelly (or the cesspool equivalent ). <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If not, what makes it fundamentally different?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Just about everything actually. If the building is in imminent danger of collapse generally one would expect troops to abandon it since having a roof falling on your head has a high probability of casualty which might readily be escaped. In contrast the example you give suggests they might be better staying put or certainly could wait until the end of the turn since casualties will acrue gradually. That is unless you think getting up and running around when you are in the middle of a mortar barrage and taking fire from the rear is a good idea?

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"Fatso-the battlers' prince"

[Guest Germanboy]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Simon Fox:

Just about everything actually.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You see, I am not so sure about that. Basically you have screwed up by putting your guys in there, and now you want the AI to correct it. I am not comfortable with that level of control. And maybe my brain has turned to jelly, but I would like to think that there is a basic problem of control here.

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Andreas

[David Aitken]

I agree with Andreas (probably because my brain is jelly too). You can say that the issue of a collapsing building is black-and-white, but that's not the important bit – what matters is what happens next. Andreas gives a good example of a situation where it is very unclear both what your men would be best to do, and what you might want them to do. The computer can't decide the best course of action for itself.

A building is essentially the same in this respect. Okay, it's about to collapse, so your men need to get out. But which way? The computer has no idea of the dynamics of the battle, so it can't possibly decide the safest exit route. Your men are as likely to be cut down when they exit, as they are to be crushed by falling rubble.

If you command your men properly, you can keep this situation to a minimum. When it does occur, and if the building collapses, that's war. If the AI were programmed to react to this, I think it's only likely to make things worse.

David

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...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

[PvK]

I'll admit I've never seen any mention of buildings being a bad place for infantry to take cover against HE. I'd be fascinated to read any such references - can anyone provide some?

While I don't doubt that it's possible in CM for units to not take losses when a building collapses, my experience so far has been that inf in buildings take very low losses in buildings from direct fire, but then frequently take multiple losses when a building comes down, which it inevitably does after a few HE hits.

The problem I have with this is that in reality, I think houses would tend to fall down in stages - it's unlikely for the whole thing to tumble at once and trap multiple people, I would think. While a building falling down might hurt or trap some men sometimes, I think that would be less dangerous than HE explosions themselves, and this seems to clearly not be the case in the game - the falling-apart building is way more deadly than the bombs and bullets.

Yes, I can see that if a house is being destroyed by HE fire, that the men should and would probably get out. However I think that infantry are much faster and mobile and intelligent about how to do this than is shown in the game - they're not a mass of guys in one spot who only move as shown in the game. In other words, I think men would scramble to safe corners and so on quite quickly, and usually be able to make the presence of a house at their location a strong defensive advantage rather than a trap, most of the time. The player shouldn't necessarily have to micro-manage where the men move, and the AI shouldn't have to even move the guys out of the house - I'd just reduce the chance that so many guys will be lost, because this sort of defensive scrambling seems to me to be beneath the scale of the game's infantry units. Guys will scamper behind what's left of a crumbling edifice, and it's more likely to be a benefit that there's a house, or the remains of one, at their general location than if they were in the open or in light cover. At least, that's the way it seems to me.

PvK

[David Aitken]

PvK wrote:

> I'll admit I've never seen any mention of buildings being a bad place for infantry to take cover against HE. I'd be fascinated to read any such references - can anyone provide some?

A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan. After completely failing to prize the men of Colonel Frost's battalion from its positions at the end of Arnhem bridge, the SS Panzer division Frundsberg simply drove its tanks down the streets, levelling the British-held houses with HE. That was the turning point of the bridge defence – even low on ammo, the paras were holding tight – but in the face of direct fire from tanks, they were screwed.

David

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'...With mortar shells raining down everywhere, he said, "Come along, Padre".' When Egen showed reluctance, Tatham-Warter reassured him. 'Don't worry,' he said, 'I've got an umbrella.'

[Guest KwazyDog]

Below is an except from a posting here some time ago I save to my system (apologies to the origional poster, I save it as a text file as name wasnt saved). It was origionally from the book 'Handbook on German Military Forces' if I recall. Anyways, thought it might be of interest here

"The Germans regard towns and villages as excellent strongpoints, particularly if the buildings are of masonry. Towns also are regarded as excellent antitank positions because of the considerable infantry-artillery effort necessary to neutralize them.

In defending a town or village, the Germans locate their main line of resistance well within the built-up portion; the edges of the town, which provide easy targets for artillery fire, are believed to be too vulnerable. The main line of resistance is laid out irregularly in order to envelop flanking fire, and every effort is made to conceal its location until the last possible moment. Minor strongpoints are maintained forward of the line in order to break up attacks and provide additional flanking fire. Cul-de-sacs are organized and attempts are made to trap attacking forces in them for destruction by counterattacking mobile reserves. These reserves are kept in readiness within the town itself , but other reserve forces are held outside the town to prevent hostile flanking maneuvers."

Dan

[This message has been edited by KwazyDog (edited 10-05-2000).]

[Col Deadmarsh]

I would be happy just to see a patch that implements PVK's suggestions. Most of these buildings wouldn't crumble to the ground in a heap of rubble. Yes, most of the buildings would take massive damage. But these are trained soldiers we're talking about. They are not idiots and when a building looks weak or has taken hits, they are not going to stand there and let the roof fall on their heads.

I recommended that the AI move out the men. Some people said that this would only make things worse because they would probably end up getting shot by other teams as they ran in panic.

After hearing this, I think you're right. That would be a hard thing to code to make it do the right thing at the right time and it would probably just make things worse.

I think though that the solution to this problem is to lessen the damage to the squads while they are in the building at the time of destruction. I only have control over my men every minute. If the AI cannot move my men to safety at the right time and without doing something dumb, then I believe the damage they suffer while on their own should be minimized to reflect real life common sense.

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Yeah, but in Close Combat...

[Aardicus]

I have a simple solution, dont allow the house to be blasted by direct HE fire. Kill the tank or suppress the inf. gun.

just my 2 cents

p.s. It seems to me that putting more than one or two squads of inf. in the same building is counter to proper tactical spacing SOP. Kind of like clumping infantry in the open or trees, artillery will massacre them, but casualties can be minimized if they were are spread out a bit.