Building endurance

[JasonC]

I can put my suggestion in a form closer to pseudocode if that will help. First to clarify - the only aspect I find laughable is what the smallest rounds do to the biggest buildings. The large rounds are more or less fine, and the medium rounds only have me scratching my head - "huh?", as I put it before, as in "would that really happen?" puzzlement - when it comes to the big stone buildings.

What I'd recommend as tweaks would be two minor changes, one to deal with the high end of buildings, and the other to deal with the low end of shells. For the large stone buildings - 2 story, full tile jobs, not the little houses - double the amount of blast impact needed to rubble them. For large wood, you might raise it 50%, but not more than that.

Those changes would have effects even on the largest shells, but not big ones for single targets. Because once you get a bead on a building, it doesn't get away. If it take another 2 minutes to drop it, that is easy enough to do if it matters tactically. What this would do, however, is deter wholesale block clearing by HE alone, because the ammo loads wouldn't go as far through a whole town. Saving ammo is one key reason real tankers didn't blast at empty places as much as CM players. CM players don't care how low the ready-racks are after 30 minutes; real world tankers do. If it is a key defended location, though, this level of added toughness would not save the place, and would only keep it standing for a matter of minutes longer.

Or in pseudocode

Ifn large stone, structure points are previous times 2

Ifn large wood, structure points are previous times 1.5

The second tweak I'd recommend would be for low end shells. To me this is the most important tweak. The idea is simply to make the adding up of blast less than linear for small enough shells. For stuff above 75mm, there is no problem, or anyway none that the previous reform won't address seperately. For the small stuff, the effect should decline more than linearly with blast rating; a squared function would be sufficient. In pseudocode -

Ifn blast is less than 30

then buildingblast is blast square divided by 30

else buildingblast is blast

Thus, 81mm mortar rounds with 19 blast would have effect on buildings of 19x19 divided by 30 is 12 blast, or about 2/3rds the effect they have now. Very small rounds would do very little.

One other complication is blast ratings for high ROF AA guns. Right now they are implicitly given 4 times the blast rating of a single shell. So for the above system, you'd want to use the "underlying" blast rating, and then multiply by 4. Since the above just squares the blast rating, that means such weapons just have 1/4 the effect they do now. That is -

Ifn high ROF AA flag is yes

then buildingblast is buildingblast / 4

So a quad 20mm, instead of doing 26 blast and doing it with more shots per turn, would do 5.6 blast, but still more times per turn. It would level buildings about 1/3rd as fast as 75mm HE, instead of faster.

The combination of the two would have large stone buildings much more resistent to small shells. The effect of 75mm HE (and up) on small houses would be exactly the same as now.

I hope this helps. Use any part of it you think proper, naturally.

[Holien]

I think the comment made about the Sherman crews actively seeking the weak point in a building wins the argument on bringing buildings down.

Even with lighter weapons if you go for the weak point on a building you can cause serious damage and collaspe.

All it takes is a key bit of masonary at a corner to cause a serious collaspe. E.g. Hit the lintel on a doorway a couple of times with a 20mm HE round and it would cause a collaspe in that area. Do that for the windows as well and you have collasped the front of the house and done serious damage.

When you have smart crews working on that small area as per the Sherman example it will not take long to cause a serious collaspe to the structure.

Until I read that I was slightly in the camp of it being too easy to knock buildings down. That post switched the light on and made me think differently.

Of course the medimum of CM can not create all the varieties of houses and building structures there was in WWII, so if a degree of randomness can be introduced then that would only enhance the game for me.

H

[Redwolf]

Still, it would be nice if the breakdown wouldn't be so predictable.

Within the same kind of building you should at least have a variation of 100% in number of rounds to knock it down, maybe even more. Then, players would seriously think before starting to invest the ammo, as the building may turn out to be a sink. And I guess it would be easy to code.

[JasonC]

Here is an different, easily implimented idea to increase endurance and put in some randomness. Instead of adding the blast effect of the round to the damage to the building, add a random number between 0 and the blast of the round. On average that will be half, but sometimes it will be as fast as now, sometimes much slower. If one wants to reduce the small round effects too, perhaps subtract off an absolute number from the "roll", related to building type. (E.g. small wood 0, small stone 1, large wood 2, large stone 3). The the combo would reduce the damage from the smallest rounds more than most, while making a trivial difference with the biggest rounds. Particularly well placed shots would be high rolls, but not every shot at a building would count as a well placed one. For what it is worth.

[aka_tom_w]

Hell Has No Heroes by Wayne Robinson © 1962

Describes the action of a DD tank that landed on Omaha beach. It is a Great book written by someone that was there.

pg 202

firing HE 75 mm from a DD Sherm range about 500 yards.....

"Blast that house on the left! Blast It! Blast the whole house!"

The gunner listening on the intercom already had his first round on the way and followed it immediately with a second round as Morris fed the gun. Barska watch as the house erupted and began to break apart. It was not a large house, timbered upper floor above stone. The first round smashed the second story the second round dropped the front wall away, and the third brought the roof crashing down into the lower floor. The house collapsed into itself, a crushed ruin, begining to burn.

"Thats enough, Cease Fire"

That was ONE light house and a 75 mm Sherm collapsing it with 3 well placed rounds of HE from about 500 yards.

Another section of the book describes a church Steeple being used as an observation post for a german arty spotter and to take it down, required 8 shots, the first shot missed and then they changed the range and it took 7 more shots of HE to bring the steeple down.

the book has plenty of blow by blow expamples of how this one DD Sherm Crew leveled buildings, and from reading that and seeing how buildings come down in CM I think the way CM handles 75 mm HE with regard to knocking down buildings is pretty much RIGHT ON (at least according to the way this crew and TC of the Sherm describe leveling buildings )

I agree however with JasonC on his perspective about German AA fire with small rounds and how they work too quickly and efficiently to level buildings.

I will post more GREAT quotes from this book as I come across relevant info about knocking down buildings.

I read the book for the first time in high school 25 years ago and am just now in the process of re-reading it having recently purchased a used copy on the internet.

-tom w