Moving between connected buildings

[Enoch]

I was playing against a friend. I had some pioneers in one large heavy building that was placed directly next to and connected to another large heavy building. This essentially made it look like one very large building. Anyway, my friend had troops in the other building. I ordered my troops to move directly from one "half" of the building and into the other to clear it out.

Now instead of staying inside and simply moving into the other building, ny troops walked out of the "half" I was in, into the street and were then moving to head back into the other "half" of the building. Of course they never made it as they were raked by enemy fire from other buildings.and destroyed before the made it back inside.

At first I couldn't believe this and thought that perhaps they had done this for some unknown reason. I set up a test last night and they same thing happened. When trying to move troops between two "halves" of two buildings that are connected the troops have to go outside to re-enter.

Maybe there is a good reason for this, but I personally think this should be changed. First, troops can normally enter and exit from any point of a building. Why should this change when two buildings are side by side? I suppose if these are two independent buildings then the might not actually have doors connecting them.

But, I have read numerous accounts of troops moving through the walls of connected buildings by blowing holes in the walls with either tnt or using a bazooka. Why not include this in the game?

Any thoughts?

[jgdpzr]

Yes, BTS has acknowledged that their handling of movement between buildings was greatly simplified for CMBO. What you are seeing is no fluke, it is simply impossible to move from one adjacent building to the next without moving outside of the one and into the other. You are spot on regarding the use of charges to blow holes in building so infantry can move between the two. BTS has further stated that this will change in the future, and such use of explosives will be modelled. Not sure when, but it certainly would be a logical new feature for Barbarossa to Berlin (B2B) since urban fighting will take on a whole new critical nature to the game.

[Enoch]

Thanks for the info. Always tough to learn a lesson like this by having to lose a squad or two.

[Pvt. Ryan]

This has been discussed at length before, and you are basically right about everything you said. I don't know what BTS's response was, but CM does not model moving between buildings by blowing holes in the walls. Ajdacent buildings may appear as one large building, but they are seperated by solid walls and are not connected by doors. Yes, it would be great if it worked that way. I understand that BTS is working on the building models for CM2 to account for the large scale fighting that took place inside large buildings in cities such as Stalingrad.

On a related note, I was playing one of Franko's operations recently that had several heavy two story buildings placed in two rows and back to back:

XXXX

XXXX

After levelling the first row of buildings:

XXXX

----

my tanks were unable to fire at the back row of buildings even though they had clear LOS. When my infantry made it to the buildings they were unable to enter from the rear side of the buildings that had previously backed up to the now demolished structures. Apparently, the restrictions on entering adjacent buildings exists even after one of them has been destroyed. This does not seem incorrect as that solid wall would still exist (although in real life the building would probably not break off cleanly from its neighbor). Just thought I would point that out.

[Mattias]

Ryan,

There definitely is a cluster of LOS problems connected with buildings, just yesterday I had the same problem as you. Another thing that keeps coming up in every game of mine where there are buildings and guns, is the problems with simply targeting the buildings once these have been made “transparent” by entering enemy units.

BTS is no doubt aware of these things though..

M.

[Peterk]

Here's a related question?

What happens when a building gets rubbled and it's adjacent to another building or another rubbled building?

I would have thought that the exact same movement rules would be in effect as when the buildings were standing, but I can swear that I have seen squads move through a pile of rubble into an adjacent building the way I wanted them to when the building was standing.

I've been too lazy to set up a test case though.

p.

[Pvt. Ryan]

Peterk, that's pretty much the situation I was describing. In the situation I observed the troops would enter the rubble, but would not enter the standing building except through the front. It may depend on how the buildings were placed during the scenario design. As you are probably aware you can choose a building's facing when making a map. If you have two buildings facing inwards towards each other and one building is destroyed, CM may then see the front door (previously abutted [is that a word?] against the other building) of the standing building as an accessable entry. That's just a guess though, as I have not tested it.