Foxholes and Area Fire

[FFE]

A simple test result:

Single Regular US Rifle Squads advancing on foxholes at move speed in November 44 with clear weather and dry conditions. Range at which foxhole is detected;:

Open terrain: 100 meters

Scattered trees: 50 meters

Woods: 15 meters

The foxholes located in the woods were placed along the fore-edge.

The double line foxhole tactic may be viewed as gamey by some and not so by others. This is a given concerning any debate on this board. The use of teams was never clearly laid down by BTS. Players wanted it. They implemented it. Nevertheless, if double foxhole usage truly bothers some it can be circumvented by a simple house rule prior to engaging in a game. Asking for special rules is good communication. I am often asking for special rules to re-balance the game in my own eyes. There are a plethora of special rules being used by many players. Some players are adamant against flakwagons, others feel that SMGs are too inexpensive, and yet others believe the overuse of onboard 3" mortars may sway the game unfavorably.

To quote foxhole sources in historical context is beyond the abstraction found within this simulation. Prepared defensive positions were sometimes taken, re-taken, and taken yet again. What the game lacks is bogus contact positions such as fake guns, armor, and movement echoes. Playing a pro-longed operation with a counter attacking defensive force is a good example of how foxholes are reused, re-created, and sometimes use to deceive the opponent. A waxing and waning MLD over the course of several battles will fashion the environment into a pot marked landscape riddled with foxholes and craters.

[Galatine]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>That's the sort of detail that distinguishes an expert defender in CM from the masses of mediocre ones. <hr></blockquote>

I can't agree.

It's a nice ploy to hang out there, but I suspect that if my opponent is at least vaguely aware of the possibity of the deception it's not going to have a significant effect.

In my mind its success relies has nothing to do with the skill of the defender but entirely on suprising the attacker.

Again, for me- effort exceeds effect.

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Galatine ]</p>

[Jeff Duquette]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Galatine Are you implying foxholes are spotted easier than just infantry /or/that foxholes are spotted first before the infantry in them?<hr></blockquote>

To clarify, I noticed this purely by accident during a recent Operation I was playing. I was in the attack…US Rifle battalion strength with some support Shermans. Germans in defense…a couple grenadier companies I think..

I was scanning areas I felt might make good defensive positions and I noted "shellholes" where no shelling had occurred. Putting the targeting cursor of a Sherman over the "shellhole" I noticed the terrain indicator actually indicated "foxhole". On a whim I targeted one of these "shellholes" with a Sherman. A couple of rounds of HE latter I see a squad of PanzerGrenadiers rise up from the "shellhole" and start scampering away to safer environments. Well that opened the floodgates. I proceeded to scan the terrain around this first foxhole…sure enough I found another hole. I hammered away at this hole and low and behold a HvyMG42 Teams routs and runs for safer environments. In all cases I noted the foxhole bmp's long before I ever noticed any infantry. Infact I typically never saw the foxhole occupants until after they received some HE area fire and subsequently began running.

I proceeded to pick this unsuspecting fellows position apart. He sent me an email asking how the hell I was spotting all of his positions. Since I have been playing this fellow in various email games for a couple years now I felt compelled to tell him that I was cheating and searching for foxholes than shooting them up with area fire. He said he thought that this was a fine tactic and sent me an email latter saying he was using it in some other PBEM game he was involved with. Personally I think its gamey, but I will continue to use it.

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Jeff Duquette ]</p>

[Galatine]

Jeff,

Couple of questions:

Do you feel that you wouldn't have spotted those units if they were not in foxholes?

In what terrain were the foxholes located?

What kind of view did the your nearest infantry team have to the foxholes? What was their quality level?

From what you've said nothing 'gamey' or out of the ordinary occurred. Sounds to me like your forces clearly spotted the dirt mounds indicating infantry dug in.

They saw a suspicious series of man-width dirt piles and guessed correctly that peoples were hiding behind and under them.

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Galatine ]</p>

[CMplayer]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Galatine:

It's a nice ploy to hang out there, but I suspect that if my opponent is at least vaguely aware of the possibity of the deception it's not going to have a significant effect.

<hr></blockquote>

I'm wasn't referring to deception, but the tactic of having a fallback position of foxholes. The distinction has to do with thinking about the way you position them, so that the front line of foxholes which the attacker takes doesn't provide him with good, protected positions from which to lay down fire on your next defensive position. Some defenders think about this kind of stuff when laying out a defense, others don't. That's all.

[CMplayer]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Jeff Duquette:

Putting the targeting cursor of a Sherman over the "shellhole" I noticed the terrain indicator actually indicated "foxhole".<hr></blockquote>

It can get even worse than that. In a pbem I am still in now, some routed enemy infantry ran behind some bocage and disappeared, leaving the 'last spotted' icon just on the other side of the bocage. I clicked on this icon, to see if I could find anything out about the unit, and to my great surprise and pleasure, it said that it was located on a FOXHOLE.

So here the foxholes themselves weren't even spotted, but I knew it was there (along with a whole platoon position, by supposition). This took all the surprise value out of any potential ambush from those guys. I then had 25lbrs start to hit it at the same time as tanks and infantry flanked it. They melted like butter.

[CMplayer]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by FFE:

Open terrain: 100 meters

Scattered trees: 50 meters

Woods: 15 meters

<hr></blockquote>

Interesting. I recently spotted foxholes in open terrain from about that distance, though I'm pretty sure none of my units had LOS to the holes. They were located directly behind bocage, and couldn't be targetted spot-on by anything I had. That seemed a bit silly.

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: CMplayer ]</p>

[Ben Galanti]

I believe there is a bug in operations which allows foxholes to be spotted long before they should be (it maybe even always spotted no matter what). This is for battles after the first one in an operation (I think that foxholes are only dug before the first fight of a new day of operations too, so that is when you will see them).

Is this what your talking about, Jeff? I'll try to dig up a post confirming all of this...

Ben

[Jeff Duquette]

Galatine:

Good questions which get to the heart of the matter.

Question 1: Do you feel that you wouldn't have spotted those units if they were not in foxholes?

In game terms I personally don't feel I would have known where my opponents MLR was until I bumbled into it with patrols. As the game played out no prelim patrolling\scouting was necessary.

In non-game terms: The scenario was somewhat of a movement to contact type event. I therefore don't believe my Rifle Company's should have had any prior knowledge of "exact" squad level fighting positions of the enemy. Perhaps a general knowledge of where the enemy was but certainly nothing as precise as "there is a foxhole at grid reference 563241" (IMHO).

Question 2: In what terrain were the foxholes located?

My longtime opponent is a fairly competent player, and in all cases the fighting-holes were in light or heavy woods…perhaps 20 to 30 meters from the tree line. Undergrowth, foliage and duff are the friends of infantry digging into wooded areas. Concealment is a little easier prospect in such cases.

Question 3: What kind of view did the your nearest infantry team have to the foxholes? What was their quality level?

Mostly regulars with a few veteran rated leaders. Proximity info…dunno. Perhaps I will try some experimentation with this over the long Thanksgiving weekend.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>From what you've said nothing 'gamey' or out of the ordinary occurred. Sounds to me like your forces clearly spotted the dirt mounds indicating infantry dug in.<hr></blockquote>

I disagree. The bad guys in the scenario I have been speaking of were crack SS kinder-jagers. Hard to believe that at least some of these folks wouldn't have taken the time to think about concealment of their fighting positions. Obviously CMBO does a good job at modeling careless soldiers that don't employ a bit of camouflage around their fighting positions. What about veteran level and higher experiance levels...soldiers that understand the benefits of concealment and don't leave trench spoils carelessly mounded up around foxholes in plain view of the enemy?

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Jeff Duquette ]</p>

[Ben Galanti]

Here we are: Operations and foxholes problem?

Ben

[Dan Robertson]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by CMplayer:

Originally posted by Dan Robertson:

In combat leaders are often create extra tasks to get me ocupied, digging a second line of defence would be one of them.

No way! Get out! Were YOU in combat? Where, when?

<hr></blockquote>

me = typo men

I was in the army for a short time never went into combat. However it is SOP to keep men busy (without exuasting them) to stop them thinking about what is going to happen soon.(or playing Russian Roulette, raping the locals shooting the prisoners ect )

Also when on the defencive you really can't have entrenchments built strongly enough, the longer you are at a position you will generally reinforce it until you reach a point when you start then concentrating on making it more comfortable. You some times even hear of bunkers in Vietnam containing fully equipt bars

[Jeff Duquette]

Thanks Ben. I can never seem to get the CM Forum search tool to work.

Regarding that other thread I am less inclined to think there is an issue with extended operations. If foxholes have been discovered during a previous battle of an operation I think you should have that knowledge for subsequent battles of that operation. My bitch is with the first battle of an operation in which a player can get the lay of the land by a knap-of-the-earth scan of the bad guys potential positions.

I don't disagree that human nature being what it is some folks will always go about concealment in a half-assed manner. But I also think that veteran soldiers probably know better and might be more inclined toward putting a bit of elbow grease into concealing their fighting positions.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Dan Said: I was in the army for a short time never went into combat. However it is SOP to keep men busy<hr></blockquote>

Agreed. Foxholes eventually become trenches. Trenches lead to dug-outs and bunkers. Throw in some communication trenches, trench shoring, over head cover, barbed-wire entanglements, mines, etc, etc, etc. Given enough time in the same position an infantry unit will create a veritable fortress. But keeping idle soldiers busy extends to both continuously improving cover as well as concealment.

Regarding some ones commentary on trenches, I too hope CMBB will include a somewhat more elaborate modeling of field fortifications.

[ 11-21-2001: Message edited by: Jeff Duquette ]</p>

[Battlefront.com]

Some very quick answers...

Yes, it is intentional that foxholes are spotted before their occupants. At least it is intentional that there is a CHANCE of this happening. Unforuntely, Absolute Spotting can lead this to be a bit too easy in the game compared to real life. Hard to work around this problem.

It was common for very dug in forces, especially in static positions, to have multiple lines of defense. In situations where there was not time to do this, primary positions would be dug (if possible) and unprepared secondary positions would be specified.

CMBO was not flexible enough with defensive options or implementation. CMBB has gone a long way towards fixing that. Individual units have the option to be dug in or not. Trenches can be purchased, along with a wider/improved range of defensive stuff.

I don't know if spotting enemy fortifications is done according to the experience of the guy's in the hole, but in theory this should be the case. Just not sure if this is possible to do this in CM or not.

Steve

[Jeff Duquette]

Thanks Steve. Do foxhole and shell hole terrain features share common BMPs?

Regarding primary and secondary fighting positions, unfortunately the game engine implementation does not really portray what is implied...at least not as described by FFE in his clever tactic. A squad would normally fight as a cohesive unit from its primary fighting position. Once things got a bit to hot -- in theory -- the squad would displace to its secondary position. It is also common for crewed weapons and tanks within prepared positions to ID primary and secondary positions as well as alternate positions. However what has been described is half the squad digs into one location…and the other digs into a second location. So half the squad occupies the primary fighting position and half occupies the secondary position. You than sneak the two elements to the primary fighting position during the course of the battle. Perhaps some might feel this is splitting hairs, however I think there is an important distinction in game implementation and the Real World implementation of primary and secondary fighting positions.

But again this all implies a fair bit of preparation and forethought on the part of the average grunt. I think it just as likely that infantrymen thinking about primary and secondary fighting positions are just as likely to be thinking about concealment of their fighting positions. Just my two cents.

[Battlefront.com]

Hi Jeff,

About the BMPs... I am pretty sure they are shared. Not totally sure about that. However, I remember there being more than one shell crater BMP. Size, of course, is also different depending on shell size.

Yes, your point about the current system not explicitely supporting multiple lines of defense is correct. This has been fixed in CMBB.

Steve

[Splash]

What I don't understand is the size of the foxhole. If you split how can a full squad fit into a half squad hole? Hmmm a bit philsophical this.

Or better yet how can a piece of artillery fit in a 1/2 squad ditch?

Or is it that when I'm looking over my troops digging away they are actually building beer coolers and it just looks like they are for people.

[Battlefront.com]

Coding up special rules for foxhole sizes, and the Tac/StratAI necessary to make things work right, was simply not an option for the CM engine. However, when we rewrite the game we can do something about this. Until then, they are to a certain degree abstracted.

Steve

[CMplayer]

BTS could you look into the issue I mentioned above where a 'last seen' marker reveals as yet unspotted foxholes? (unless you want it to work that way, which I doubt)

[Jeff Duquette]

Thanks for the further clarifications Steve. Have a good Thanksgiving.