Artillery vs woods?

[Rista Blodörn]

Will artillery be able to damage trees? Will it have any changes on LOS for example

At least to me it looks a little weird in CMx1 to set up your troops hidden in a woods and then being suppresed by heavy artillery fire and if surviving still being able to use the woods as cover as if nothing happend (to the trees that is)

Just a fought

[securityguard]

I dunno, does artillery really evaporate trees? They would just fall over and cause more cover. I don't think LOS would really change. It's not really important to model vertical LOS changing either.

[Rista Blodörn]

Well I suppose it would be a lot of rubble if the grenades just exploded at ground level in the dirt...

But if exploding in air at tree top level wouldn't it be an very effective de-leafing method, leaving a lot of still standing "telephone poles"? ...At least this is my understanding of reading witness accounts from barrage-survivors

..or at least it could perhaps be a great way to beef up FPS a bit!

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Rista Blodörn:

But if exploding in air at tree top level wouldn't it be an very effective de-leafing method, leaving a lot of still standing "telephone poles"? ...At least this is my understanding of reading witness accounts from barrage-survivors

It would take a lot of shells, probably fired over several hours to achieve that effect. In any event, all that debris has to go somewhere, and where it goes is on the ground where it offers lots of nice concealment opportunities for men on the ground. Probably the most noticeable immediate effect would be to make mobility through the damaged area slower and more tiring. That's a point worth considering.

Michael

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Probably still very effective. Even the great Tiger would go down if an artillery round exploded next to him.

Regards

Jim R.

[Philippe]

I thought that much of the Argonne forest in WW I ended up as a few tree stumps here and there and no leaves. Of course, that was not the result of a five minute artillery barrage...

[Peter Cairns]

In the Hurtgen forest in WW2 the Germans used mortars which when they hit the tree tops sent splinters down into the US troops in foxholes with terrible results.

I am not sure if or how do do it, but there is plenty of evidence that artillery can not only change woods but that far from giving the kind of cover it gives from small arms fire, frees can actually make the effects of artillery worse.

Peter.

[GJK]

Does the CMx1 series already model tree bursts?

[Joachim]

Sure it does. Just check the result of a barrage on woods with no trees displayed. Some explosions happen well above ground level.

81mm treebursts really hurts even when in trenches while 81mm in the open usually suppresses with only a few casualties.

Gruß

Joachim

[Other Means]

Originally posted by GJK:

Does the CMx1 series already model tree bursts?

Yup.

[imported_no_one]

Good grief!Acccurate tree damage had better be modeled correctly,considering that it is as whack as firepower ratings and cover ratings.

Fire--OF ANY KIND--can and will damage trees.Heck a basic thunderstorm can strip leaves and small limbs.It doesn't have to be arty,it can be 15-30 minutes of a few HMGs firing into a group of woods to de-foliate the exterior facing of the woods,allowing the attackers to see further into the woods.Something as small as 50mm mortar rounds exploding in the tree tops would knock off leaves and small limbs,allowing in more and more light.I am not talking about the complete destruction of the woods,but in CMX1 terms,summer woods would go from summer woods to spring woods,then fall,then winter,etc. in terms of LOS.Even small arms will strip trees of leaves.Don't believe me?Take a shotgun,load it with game or buck shot and shoot a tree...what happens?

The argument that heavy arty would actually aid the defenders by adding more cover on the ground is a joke.Who are the Rambo mofos that are going to withstand the arty barrage,huge limbs and tree trunks falling on them,while walking around gathering up piles of leaves to play in later?

As it is/was in CMX1,NO amount of fire would have any effect on LOS or cover rating for tree cover.This simply is not logical,and needs to be fixed.I can't even believe that this is(?) a debate topic.

[mazex]

Hmm, when I was in the army a battery of 120mm mortars incidentally landed about 10 barrages in a spruce forest close to us. The forest (mature full height spruce) was completely messed up. It looked like a tornado had squashed it with giant trees cut off from 0.5 meters etc... There was splinter in a huge area around it. I wouldn´t say the cover for small arms fire was reduced but the visibility through the forest was vastly increased

Another first hand memory with spruce trees... Firing a short burst a close range (like 10 meters) with a 7.62 MG does cut a full grown spruce tree so bad that it falls. The bullets that are not yet stable at that range tears the trunk apart - especially on the "exit side" of it

/Mazex

[Rista Blodörn]

Perhaps I messed up something else than your woods by writing "using woods as cover"

I believe I wanted to say "visible cover", or the visibility through the now messed up woods!

I think like this: my infantrys chance of moving undetected in the now less dense, more open area woods would be smaller. It could of course also make roads unusable to vehicles. Or it might just reveal that Tiger I had hidden behind the woods in an ambush position..