BARBWIRE: A gamey way to lay clear LOS?

[Radar]

I'm currently in a PBEM with an opponent in extremely close terrain (tall pine). Now suddenly I'm spotting units several times further than I should (he does the same BTW). I thought that this was unusual so I set up a test (this is by no means conclusive) on tall pine (normal visiblity 20-30m). By laying stings of barbwire I'm now getting clear LOS checks with greater than 75% exposures at any range (300m+)!

[Stixx]

I'd love to see some clear test results on this.

[Mattias]

Now this was another of those moments, I've played the game for day one and still I haven't noticed..

Barbed wire is considered open terrain for LOS purposes, if you place a wire counter in, for example, tall pines you create "hole" that "adds" as much as 20 meters of LOS if you look along the length of the wire. If you look over the breath of the wire a 5 meter "hole" is created. The wire counter does not mix with the terrain but instead takes over the LOS properties of the area it occupies. In real life that would mean cutting down every single tree and clearing the undergrowth, then add the neatly curled barbed wire. No, I think not. But perhaps it hard to simulate.

However..

What complicates matters is the fact that during setup this bug/feature is not "visible". LOS lines are not affected by the wire when setting up and thus the unweary player is likely to place the wire "too close" to his position if he plans to be able to cover the wire but not be seen from beyond it.

Odd and strange. Your aptly named though, Radar, thanks for spotting it

M.

[von Murrin]

That explains a lot. I once played a QB in which I had a shallow hill on my left flank topped by a pine knot, and surrounded by a thin line of "L" shaped woods. It was also home to an objective.

I topped it with an 88 bunker and laced the fringe with wire. It was perfect, and should've been invisible with two tight fire lanes leading in. Imagine my surprise when I hit GO and six Shermans immediately blasted it to smithereens!

Now I know why...

Nathanael

[Conscript Bagger]

This "clearing" of terrain when wire is placed is really interesting, and I haven't seen it discussed before. It's been a long time since I read the manual but I don't remember it there either. But while this effect may indeed have been unintentional, it could be seen to represent fire lanes cleared in front of a prepared defense.

[Mr. Johnson--]

Cool, I never noticed this either. So sticking the barbed wire in the middle of some woods with MGs behind it would work really good if the MGs have infantry protection and the enemy walks into it.

[newlife]

Wow,

You could use it to generate perfect keyholes on defense. Cut a few barb-wire lanes through woods for your Nashorn to jump back and forth to. Eww, just thinking about that gives me the shudders.

[Conscript Bagger]

Don't forget the mines... lay a few in the gaps between wire entanglements and cover them with MGs and/or mortar TRPs. Maybe even put one or two under the wire if you know the other guy's got to send somebody through right there...

[Abn_Ranger87]

This actually was a nice surprise. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, stringing rolled concertina wire across any sort of brush (let alone thick forest) is a delight best left to inmates serving hard time... Not fun at all and a real drain on band-aids and BDUs if you get my drift. In a way, wether they meant to or not, the designers have sort of incorporated the clearing or terrain required to actually emplace a wire obstacle. You don't want the OPFOR to be able to simply waltz up and breach without being spotted so this "feature" actually makes sense. One thing that does bother me though, if real life wire can easily stop a tracked vehicle if it rolls through it. It winds up on the return rollers and drive sprockets causing the track to slip (another good job for inmates, replacing thrown or broke track is inhumane labour.) Oh, as far as spotting goes, one can easily rig wire with mechanical detection devices from trip flares to cans with pebbles in 'em.

[Radar]

I also find that you can use BARBWIRE to make a path for tracked vehicles through otherwise impassable terrain. I was wondering that if Barbwire made the area it occupied clear for fire purposes that it would do the same for tracked movement. I setup a test field and what do ya know? It took a bit of probing but it seems that you can enter impassable terran. I didn't fully investigate this mechanism. I did note however, that if I had plotted a path that crossed a point of impassability the tracked vehicle might just sit idle or the AI would replot orders and reverse out...

[ 01-03-2002: Message edited by: Radar ]</p>

[Triumvir]

I don't think it's that gamey at all.

Some things are indeed ahistorical (although apparently, if you read accounts of the Bulge, sending people up in jeeps as recon did happen) such as piling together tons and tons of wunderwaffe.

But improving fields of fire on the defence? Heck, _everyone_ does that in the army. When training as an MG gunner, we prepared range cards and cleared terrain from our field of fire; when a mortarman, we prepared range cards for semi-direct fire; I don't see why an AT gun shouldn't prepare range cards and set up particular fields of fire.

I agree with Abn_Ranger87 on almost all his points, especially about replacing thrown track. But laying concertina wasn't that bad; we did it in jungle without too much problems. We had heavy leather gloves with metal bands, something like brigantine armour, and if you're careful enough and respect the wire, it's not so painful.

Course, in our training, we weren't allowed to _physically_ clear terrain except for once or twice (otherwise the next batch of training troops wouldn't have any terrain to pretend to clear!) for practice but it's a legitimate practice.

[Hanns]

Hehe, concertina wire is nasty $hit! Ever wandered into it at night when going out to take a leak? Not fun. Blowing holes in it with field expedient bangalore torpedoes is fun though. Raining bits of red hot razor wire tends to put a damper on it though. If anyone is interested I'm working on a mod to make the wire obstacles in CM:BO look like double strand concertina wire. I've got a lot of work left on the mod but I can post some test pics if anyone wants to critique them.

Hanns

[Radar]

I've been running test fields on this and one glaring thing pops up...ya can't seem to hide barbwire. And you can spot it at unreasonable distances through concealing terrain. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to add one and one. :mad:

[acrashb]

I just ran a test against the AI in heavy woods. Works swimmingly - created fire lanes right through strips of woods for my MG pillbox.

Don't know how a human would react, this might be something to add to the TH CAL rules.

[Abn_Ranger87]

Radar,

The presence of concertina, like most obstacles, is very obvious in practically every enviroment. Only after a few months of "weathering" does it start to rust. As Hanns wrote and I can attest to, old wire left behind by some lazy REMFs can really ruin your night if your wander into it...

Wire, log-cribs, AT ditches and the such are what's called deliberate obstacles with the goal of either delaying, channelizing, or distracting the enemy. They will force an opponent to deploy early, change his axis of advance and utilize assetts prematurely. Unless covered by direct and indirect fire an obstacle might as well not even be present because on it's own it will be only a minor inconveniencs. For example, wire can be breached by something as simple as one guy with a folded blanket. When I first got to B 2/75, our SOP for hasty concertina crossing was to have a "volunteer" run up with his foam sleeping pad and jump on the it. During my first field problem this task was assigned to me (cherry's always get this distinction) and I still have scars from it. The wire was triple strand, pegged down with engineer stakes and had a supporting strand of barbed wire stretched taunt inside the top roll. I jumped on it and bounced sideways landing backfirst, pad up. They rest of the platoon just ran over me and the last guy peeled me off... Good thing we were able to DX uniforms then, my BDU's were shredded along with my back and legs. In a way it was a good thing, seemed to impress the older guys and I was let off the hook from some of the psychotic hazing other newbies were subjected to...

[Hanns]

Hehe, sleeping pad roll...... my squad leader wanted to prove how hard-a$$ed he was so he volunteered to smother the wire. My room mate and I had to cut him free, stitch up his wounds and carry him about 1/2 mile up hill to the safe line. Not a wise thing to do on a live fire course. We had a field expedient procedure that was heavily tested in Desert Storm. Drive a non-critical M113 straight through and pretty much abandon it until time was available to break the tracks and get all the wire off the drive sprockets and road wheels. Guess who got to do this more times than I cared to count? Sometimes it sucks being a grunt who is good at fixing things. I'll see about getting the preview of my wire mod up in a couple of days barring nubile female interference

Hanns