Grain Fields - Grows Which Crop ?

[winkelried]

June '44 setting: 2 Tiger IE can't see each other even 100 m's apart (Eyes approx. 4 m above ground - 2.98 height of the tank).

June '02 setting: My wife and I drive into a grain field in central Europe with a SUV each. I see her car with eyes 3 m above ground in more than 200 m distance easily.

Can anybody explain the paradox ? Do we grow smaller crops today ?

[Conscript Bagger]

I don't think the program accounts for the physical height of the viewer - another aspect of this is that you can't do turret-down spotting (where a tank is just behind the crest of a hill but the commander can stand in his hatch and look over the hill). So the only way to see over that grain is to get to a higher terrain or building elevation.

I haven't tested, but I think CM's brush terrain is a little more "transparent" than grain (can anyone confirm or deny?).

[Tarquelne]

June '02 setting: My wife and I drive into a grain field in central Europe with a SUV each. I see her car with eyes 3 m above ground in more than 200 m distance easily.

Since SUVs became common many farmers have switched to shorter varieties of grain, for better visability. In your case, the field owner's rifle probably jammed, or maybe he was away.

[winkelried]

Since SUVs became common many farmers have switched to shorter varieties of grain, for better visability. In your case, the field owner's rifle probably jammed, or maybe he was away.

Or maybe I am the farmer

[winkelried]

I haven't tested, but I think CM's brush terrain is a little more "transparent" than grain (can anyone confirm or deny?).

thank's for the explanation ... answers also some other questions ...

I checked it in the game, you get to 155 m visibility in brush ...

[Michael Emrys]

Someone with better knowledge of the subject correct me please, but I assume that grain in Western Europe is mostly wheat, though may include other types. Again I may be wrong, but many of the photos I've seen taken in the Soviet Union were in fields of maize. (Which is not meant to suggest that the Soviet farmers grew only or mostly maize, only that it was not rare.) The significance of that is that the maize grown for commercial exploitation is somewhat taller and has much more dense foliage, thus provides better concealment.

However, none of this is likely to block spotting from one tank (or other large military vehicle) to another, since both are apt to protrude a considerable distance above the foliage. Maize could provide excellent concealment to men on foot if they could proceed through it without disturbing it, or had their disturbance masked by the wind.

So your question about which kind of grain is interesting and meaningful. Hopefully when the Great Engine Rewrite™ is done, it will code for different crops to reflect these differences.

I see her car with eyes 3 m above ground in more than 200 m distance easily.

I assume you were standing on the roof of your vehicle? Or did you mean 3ft?

Michael

[Guest SnarkerII]

The answer to this apparent paradox may lie in an abstraction. Terrain is rarely totally flat, and these undulations (my word for the day, LOL) might be simulated by shortening LOS.

[winkelried]

on the wheat you're right. todays wheat is a bit smaller than during wwII but not significantly.

for the measurements: my car is 180cm (roof), me standing on the front seat and peeking through the sunroof (+1.20) roughly ...

[YankeeDog]

I grew up in an agricultural area (Vermont, USA) where maize (or corn, as us American call it) was the most common crop. Mostly it is grown in Vermont as feed for dairy cattle.

In the northeast U.S., maize grows steadily throughout the summer, reaching a height of around 2m by mid-late august. Some varieties I have seen are slightly taller than this at full height, but certainly not as high as 3m. Maize fields are quite dense. Since fully grown maize is above the head height of all but the tallest humans, LOS for someone standing on thier own two feet in the middle of a maize field is VERY short - perhaps in the order of 10-15m. I played many a game of hide-and-seek in maize fields growing up. A neat little trick: Since most of a maize plant's leaves are on the upper part of the plant, you can actually see better if you crouch down and get your eyes close to ground level.

Maize is not tall enough to obscure the view from one tank turret to another, though, except maybe for small or low-profile vehicles like turretless tanks. While I have seen fully grown grain fields that approached my own height (I'm 6'1", or about 1.8m tall), I have never seen wheat, barley, or rye that surpasses the height of Maize.

Assuming no intervening terrain feature, I see no way that fully grown grain fields of any sort could conceal the LOS from one Medium or Heavy tank turret to another. Of, course, ALL you would see would be the turret, so fully IDing the tanks would be more difficult, and at long distances, spotting would presumably be less likely because there's less of the tank to see.

I guess this is a minor inaccuracy in the CM model.

As a little side note, Tanks (or any vehicle, for that matter) leave big swaths of knocked down grain when they drive through cultivated fields. From a higher elevation, even the paths of bent/broken stalks smade by the passage of people on foot is quite apparent from considerable distance. In maize fields, the plants are bigger and spaced farther apart, so you can avoid breaking the stalks if you are on foot and move slowly and carefully. This does slow down your forward progress considerable, though.

Cheers,

YD

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by YankeeDog:

As a little side note, Tanks (or any vehicle, for that matter) leave big swaths of knocked down grain when they drive through cultivated fields. From a higher elevation, even the paths of bent/broken stalks smade by the passage of people on foot is quite apparent from considerable distance.

This fact was a source of considerable hilarity for Alllied Jabo pilots when the Germans would drive vehicles into a field and then try to conceal them under haystacks, etc. Might work when viewed from the ground, but from the air all you had to do was follow the tracks to the end and, hey presto!, there was your target.

Good post, btw.

Michael

[Yggdrasill]

Another possibility is hemp.

I was on a cross-country horseback trip through France in 1990, in late August, and passed hemp fields whose plants stood easily 3-4 meters.

Corn also grows high, but none of the grasses are tall enough to conceal tanks.

[winkelried]

As a little side note, Tanks (or any vehicle, for that matter) leave big swaths of knocked down grain when they drive through cultivated fields. From a higher elevation, even the paths of bent/broken stalks smade by the passage of people on foot is quite apparent from considerable distance. In maize fields, the plants are bigger and spaced farther apart, so you can avoid breaking the stalks if you are on foot and move slowly and carefully. This does slow down your forward progress considerable, though.

Very good statement.

To my knowledge corn was only introduced after the war on a large scale in Central Europe. Mainly as green fodder for the cows (there is not enough sun to ripe entierly). The main crop was wheat, oats and rye (and naturally potatoes) ...

With your thoughts you brought up some other aspect which is not modeled in CM: The degradation of dirt roads by tracked vehicles. In the army we had some rules about how many tracked vehicles could run over such a track until we had to add gravel on it (depending also on the speed).

The same would apply on fields or other terrain features (I once saw an apple orchard after two platoons of Panzergrenadiers on their M113 had rolled through)

[Doodlebug]

I'm no botany expert but I'm pretty certain from some dark (and best not investigated) recess of my mind that modern cereal crops are bred way shorter compared to older varieties where the stalks were not considered waste product but were used for thatching roofs. I'm pretty sure that would not account for the discrepancy though.

[mike_the_wino]

originally posted byYggdrasill

Another possibility is hemp.

As the release of CMBB is soooo delayed it is possible that BFC modeled crops after their favorite agriculutural product.

originally posted by Doodlebug

I'm no botany expert but I'm pretty certain from some dark (and best not investigated) recess of my mind that modern cereal crops are bred way shorter compared to older varieties where the stalks were not considered waste product but were used for thatching roofs. I'm pretty sure that would not account for the discrepancy though.

My indoctrination..er, education taught this same idea. Modern crops are shorter. Taller crops tend to fall over, or get blown over more easily, which is bad. Shorter crops don't fall/ get blown over as easily and yield more crop which means more $$$. Also decreases biodiversity of crops but hey, our food is cheap, right?

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Halfdane:

Modern crops are shorter. Taller crops tend to fall over, or get blown over more easily, which is bad. Shorter crops don't fall/ get blown over as easily and yield more crop which means more $$$.

My guess is that the less energy the plant invests in making stem, the more is available for making seed. But what do I know?

However, the trend on maize breeding seems to have been toward taller plants. The primitive corn from which it derives is a much smaller plant which also produces more than one stalk.

Michael