CM:BO and buildings (long)

[ropey]

In recent games two things happened to make me think about buildings more.

1) A StuH42 flattened a large light building in 1 minute.

2) A close assault set fire to an entire church 'instantaneously', forcing all occupants to run out into enemy fire (some closer to known enemy units, but that's another story altogether.)

So here is my thesis in a nutshell:

CM:BO undervalues the resilience of buildings, especially to DF and fire.

I don't know what the good folks at BTS have in store for CM:BB, but I would like them to think about this for CM:BO at least.

Buildings have two very different surfaces - the horizontal and the verticle. Verticle surfaces are load bearing, while horizontal virtually 'hang' from the walls, sometimes holding the walls in a little. DF fire generally effects vertical surfaces (walls), while plunging fire (ie indirect fire) generally effects horizontal surfaces (roofs and floors).

As load bearers, verticle surfaces are much stronger than horizontal, so (entrances aside) the fire of DF weapons or external near misses from IF is deflected and dispersed, lessening its effect.

Horizontal surfaces on the other hand are generally flimsy - tile roofs, wooden floors - and once penetrated offer little cover to troops inside. Internal explosions will in fact be concentrated by the restraining verticle surfaces and be more effective.

So what? I think this clearly shows that buildings need to be modelled differently in CM according to what type of fire is laid on them.

Now let's look at the time it takes for DF to bring down a building. I believe that a heavy building should not be able to be brought down by DF in the timescale available to CM, and that a light building should take at least 15 times longer than is currently the case to be demolished.

I have read a range of books on the Kiwis in Italy. I am assuming that the basic construction of buildings in that theatre is similar to that of Europe in 1944, but someone may correct me on this.

It is clear that heavy buildings offered significant defensive advantages. Several entries relate how single buildings were defended for a day or so against mortar and tank/SP fire. One describes how a Sherman commander used 31 AT shells to demolish a wall at point blank range, by nibbling away at it yard by yard. This would hardly be necessary if half a dozen HE shells could do the job in a few minutes.

Where buildings do suffer significant damage it is generally through IF fire - mortars and larger arty. Even so, troops have ample time to get out of buildings in these circumstances - between barrages being not unusual. Furthermore, the verticle surfaces stay largely intact, providing cover and blocking LOS.

Take a look at any damaged building in photos (or even in TV coverage of Palestine). Horizontal surfaces - roofs and floors - have caved in, while most of the verticle surfaces remain to give cover to defenders. This is true even under the most intense bombardments as can be seen in photos of Cassino.

Now to the question of fire. This may be much harder for CM to model as fire is always a tricky beast. My major gripe here is the speed at which fire destroys a building, even if started by FTs. In my situation above a church is close assaulted and a grenade (or whatever) sets the church on fire. All the defending troops were shocked and within one minute had been forced to evacuate this large structure.

In NZ we see adverts that tell us a room can be fully ablaze in 30 seconds. Note that this is a room and that nowadays we have buildings full of plastic and other flamable goods. Even a small building in CM is assumed to be more than one room (I think?) and is likely to have far less in the way of flamable materials. For a large building to be considered instantaneously (or even near instantaneously) alight is therefore ridiculous. For a church - stone built, few flamable materials except perhaps pews - to do so is even less acceptable.

I would suggest that only fires in small buildings have any shock value. I would further suggest that a fire set in a large building is not counted to have taken full hold (making the building untenable) for something like 4 minutes. Even that seems too quick.

There ends my gripe session

[dalem]

Good points. I don't know what, if anything, can be done about them before the engine rewrite in CM2, but these are each excellent points.

With respect to fires, I've always assumed that the fires we see in the game are only the fires big enough to cause trouble. Presumably by the time we've spent ten minutes hurling tracers, HE, and the like at each other in reasonably dry terrain lots of things are on fire or smoldering, just not to a degree to warrent representation in the game. Still even if I'm correct, I agree with Ropey's main point about speed.

-dale

[ropey]

Originally posted by dalem:

With respect to fires, I've always assumed that the fires we see in the game are only the fires big enough to cause trouble. Presumably by the time we've spent ten minutes hurling tracers, HE, and the like at each other in reasonably dry terrain lots of things are on fire or smoldering, just not to a degree to warrent representation in the game

-dale

Except there had been no fire on these buildings prior to the assault! I know there is a certain amount of abstraction, but this is one they seem to have got badly wrong.

[Wolfe]

Madmatt said in one of his famous Bones that fire can start small and grow:

Will CMBB Properly Model Thrown Bones?

Unfortunately the picture he is referring to in the text is gone or has moved; along with more than a couple dozen other CMBB preview pics that used to be on Battlefront's site.

The pic you can't see is a pic of a burning building at night in a snow storm.

And one other cool thing I came across but had missed the first time is that buildings will produce a more persistent dust cloud when they collapse. :cool:

- Chris

[dumrox]

The fire issue and it's enhancements in CMBB have already been mentioned.

As for buildings, I believe a light building in CMBO represents a wooden building and I wouldn't expect a wooden building to provide much protection or last long when up against any significant fire.

Also, I think the defintion of rubble needs to be clarified. The buildings you mention in Palestine would, in my opinion, qualify as rubble for two reasons:

1. The horizontal surfaces have collapsed and anybody in them when it happened would have been at great risk of being injured, just like CMBO soldiers inside a collapsing building.

2. Enough structure remains to allow survivors, or those who entered the structure since, cover and concealment benefits, as does rubble in CMBO.

I would think that the buildings you mentioned that protected troops for a day against tank and mortar fire would qualify as rubble in CM terms.

Kevin

[Tarquelne]

CM:BO undervalues the resilience of buildings, especially to DF and fire.

That's absurd.

Haven't you ever seen a building destroyed in CM:BO? It's obvious BTS has assumed that significant amounts of TNT, finely ground grain, or Communist literature are stored in all the game's structures. A little HE fire and... BOOM! (Or Fwooosh! crackle crackle crackle.)

OTOH, I've been doing some research lately, and I think BTS has _may_ have overestimated the amount of explosive materials commonly kept in west front homes, churches, etc..

For example (This is taken from an account of the fighting around Calais):

"... the Germans had gone. The captain told us to go in and see if the building would make a good HQ. In an upstairs bedroom I found three large barrels. One was full of gasoline, and the others contained what looked like coarse black powder. Cpl. Hoagland found twenty back issues of "Novy mir", but they'd suffered severe water damage and didn't seem dangerous. Captain Godwin had us move the gasoline into another bedroom, and one of the other barrels downstairs. He told us not to worry about the magazines. The other buildings in the town seemed clear. I grabbed Ansty, and we set up the radio on the downstairs powder barrel."

My italics. See, in this account only ONE building in a large village had explosives in it. Furthermore, no high-explosives (TNT, dynamite, Marx's "Manifesto") were involved at all.

[ June 22, 2002, 10:29 PM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

[ropey]

Originally posted by dumrox:

As for buildings, I believe a light building in CMBO represents a wooden building and I wouldn't expect a wooden building to provide much protection or last long when up against any significant fire.

It would seem though that wooden buildings are not that common in countries where wood is relatively scarce as a building material. How many photos of Europe show wooden buildings? I would suggest very few indeed. (Could be wrong though. )

[Photos & TV] qualify as rubble for two reasons:

1. The horizontal surfaces have collapsed and ...

2. Enough structure remains to allow survivors, or those who entered the structure since, cover and concealment benefits...

I would think that the buildings you mentioned that protected troops for a day against tank and mortar fire would qualify as rubble in CM terms.

Kevin

I would have to strongly disagree. The rubble in CM:BO seems to have very limited height so LOS is not blocked much. (Anyone have figures?) And the protective value of rubble is also less than that of a building. My point is that the buildings should offer full or close to full protection from DF for much longer in CM:BO (and CM:BB by extension.)

[ropey]

Does anyone have the actual figures for cover and blast damage from the game?