Terrain--does it matter?

[Nemesis Lead]

Being an old infantry player in CMAK/CMBB.....I have been trying to use cover in CMSF.

My guys are getting mowed down at shocking distances. It is as if they are not in cover at all.

Does cover matter? Can we get the old "exposure" rules back?

[Sergei]

Infantry weapons have progressed since early WW2, at least that one is conveyed very clearly... so much lead in the air that you can't breathe.

[Nemesis Lead]

Regardless...cover (and distance) should make a difference.

[jomni]

If your hiding behind bushes and even trees, then you're still dead. I think what protects you now are the slopes and man-made obstacles. Keeping out of sight is the best protection these days.

[JasonC]

I don't think it has anything to do with weapons progress, actually. They are just modeling the flight of every shot now, but there is no smart Tac AI playing self preservation on the receiving end, rigorously minimizing each soldier's exposure.

The result will be vastly higher lethality per shot than anyone actually gets in the real deal. If the hit chance is more than a few percent, a hit will occur. And the hit chance will be more than a few percent in nearly all cases, for infantry targets and available forms of cover.

Basically, infantry in LOS either suppresses the shooter or their friends kill said shooter or the infantry gets whacked. Pure firepower dominance. Building interiors might be marginally better, but HE will get you in those.

[thewood]

Jason, can you clarify. I am not being a smartass. I can see you are heading somewhere interesting, but don't quite understand what you are trying to say.

Why would any shot with a chance hit, actually hit, regardless of the function of terrain.

[SgtMuhammed]

I am with Jason on this one. Moral effects should be much more important than actual casualties caused. They are averaging over 200,000 rounds per casualty in Iraq right now. Just look at the casualty numbers from the major operations casualties just don't happen as easily as they do in the game.

[jomni]

Jason is saying that the lack of TACAI always puts the troops out of cover. If they were smart enough they won't expose themselves as they do in the game.

The 1:1 representation would have worked if these guys would run for cover and hug the walls during movement and combat. Otherwise, it would be better if they have done some abstractions like before.

I once mistakenly ordered my troops to do a "Move" instead of "Quick". And they were just walking straight into the enemy oblivious to the bullets flying around. The eventually got massacred.

[thewood]

Is that a bug or a design philosophy?

[Battlefront.com]

Bug and "evolution". We worked on CMx1's TacAI for almost 4 years post release. We haven't had that sort of time yet But correct, something is fudged and we should have at least a decent fix in v1.02. How much? We'll have to see.

I will say that the TacAI isn't much to blame, though, for the conditions Nemesis Lead was asking about. If your guys are out in the open, and they get shot at, there isn't much the TacAI can do but drop them to the ground.

sgtgoody (esq), there are multiple reasons why US casualties in Iraq are much lower than they are in CM:SF. The two primary ones are:

1. "Poor" leadership shown by the player. If I order a Squad into the middle of a fire swept street, I can't claim that I shouldn't be receiving casualties simply because in Iraq it takes 200,000 bullets to cause a casualty. That's just the odds. In war it only takes 1 bullet to cause a casualty, and if you expose your guys to enemy fire... the odds go up that 1 is going to catch up with you. Especially if you're playing the game like you would CMx1 or an RTS.

2. Relative force ratio. There aren't many battles in Iraq right now where a US Rifle Platoon is going up against an organized platoon sized enemy force. The battles I read about put the US:Insurgent ratio usually at many times the ratios you find in CM:SF battles. When you have 5:1 headcount superiority AND you have support vehicles AND you aren't in a super hurry AND you know that the enemy doesn't have a tank tucked away somewhere AND... well, that's just the point. There isn't much similar between COIN ops and full on conventional combat so it is hard to compare the end results.

I can say that some of our military trained testers have won sceanrios with just one or two casualties while those who lack such training tend to do worse. It's all about tactics, especially if you're playing RealTime. Take it slooooooow. Rushing things, like CMx1, is a sure way to get guys killed.

I epxect as people get more used to things the casualty rates will drop off.

Steve

[jomni]

Nice insight.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Take it slooooooow. Rushing things, like CMx1, is a sure way to get guys killed.

This is the key, imho.

Don't move unless you feel confident you won't be under fire. Try to only move cover to cover withing the turn (WEGO).

Even if its just the other half of the squad, doing assault movement, don't go anywhere without as much overwatch as you can muster.

Don't reveal your position by firing unless you feel confident you're going to supress or kill the target, or are about to be overrun.

Put arty/air support on anything you can.

My .02 to minimize casualties.

[thewood]

Is this related to armor having little in the way of self preservation sense? That is a bigger concern for me.

[Guest]

The idea of being able to apply common tactical AI solutions (true cover seeking, etc.) to the CM:SF TacAI framework makes me a) salivate at the prospect of just seeing it in action and writing the code (which is always fun -- at first), and cringe at the thought of how much work would be involved to realize it.

Cheers, BFC and Charles. Thanks for working so hard on this. I'm looking forward to your patches.

[Capt. Toleran]

Finished the campaign on Elite, here's what worked for me:

Keep your guys in the vehicles until you're about 250m from any suspect buildings (because of RPGs -- if they had anything better, your vehicles would have already been hurting). Empty out a Stryker, see if anyone shoots. If they do, the enemy gets blasted by everyone in LOS, even if your squad absorbs some rounds. Use that same empty Stryker (you might want to let the squad take the Javelins off and go on a roof somewhere for overwatch) to flush out any more, and just move everyone up and keep blasting, making sure your infantry don't get gunned down.

I also have to point out that ranges for various weapons and info on their lethality is in the manual. Any kind of MMG can take you out at 700m or greater very easily in the open. Assault rifles are more limited, but still a nuisance at anything around 300m or closer, and rapidly more lethal thereof.

The armor pathfinding thing kills me too, esp. when it turns its back on enemy positions, or wanders down some strange uncleared alley because it can't see the big gap I blew in the wall.

EDIT - revised my m's upwards

[ August 01, 2007, 09:23 PM: Message edited by: Capt. Toleran ]

[Lt Bull]

Originally posted by Nemesis Lead:

Being an old infantry player in CMAK/CMBB.....I have been trying to use cover in CMSF.

My guys are getting mowed down at shocking distances. It is as if they are not in cover at all.

Does cover matter? Can we get the old "exposure" rules back?

LOL. Ah the good old days when terrain, cover and exposure in a CM game actually meant something. Sure it was abstracted and represented in a way some people would even say is "not realistic (looking?) enough" (eg. No actual solid tree trunks modelled, no doorways to buildings etc) but it did the job as you would expect. If you placed a unit in "Woods" terrain, it actually benefited as you would expect from being in cover/concelament etc.

These same people that wanted this "next level of realism" are the same people who would have rooted for and be thrilled just to see the kind of "realistic looking" 1:1 represenation of individual soldiers, doors, trees, bullets etc that we now see being attempted in CMSF above all else, even if it meant BFC having to literally change the very nature of the game that we knew as CM.

What many of those people fail to understand is that there is a world of difference between the fundamental design and coding of game which abstracts 3D terrain (and infantry squads for that matter) like CMx1 does and one that actually attempts to model and represent all objects in a world using 1:1 representation, like CMSF attempst to, so that LOS and cover works as it does in say a FPS.

eg. In a FPS, typically, just by entering terrain/area that you would consider "Woods" in CMx1, doesn't automatically entitle you to some automatic concelament/exposure bonus. You must actually place yourself BEHIND a solid object to actually benefit from it.

Sure this can be theoretically possible to achieve in a game, but when you consider everything else that needs to be coded to function within this 1:1 world you have created, like TacAI behaviour, pathfinding, LOS tracing, projectile tracing etc, the level of complexity of design and coding goes way beyond the capabalities of probably most game developers, and BFC is no exception.

The primary function of "terrain" in CMSF is not to provide an interactive tactical battle landscape which can be exploited by players, but to look graphically realistic" in the first instance, and perhaps then if possible, get it to function in a way you would "realistically" expect it to.

An herein lies the change in design philosophy I have seen happen with BFC. They used to focus on designing realistic games first THEN try and make it "look" realistic. Now they seem to be more interested in designing realistic "looking" games, and only then try to make the game actually play out realistically.

So I think it is almost a case if most people who are now just wrapped to see the 1:1 graphical representation of individual soldiers, individually armed, running through doorways and into the back of Strykers etc we now see in this new direction the CM franchise has gone, but disappointed (or even surprised) that some things in the game don't work like they did in CMx1 (like cover/concelament gained from terrain)), to just spare all of us the whining or bewilderment for it not being in, or not working in CMSF.

You got your stupid 1:1 representation "realistically looking" transformed RTS CM game that you think just because it now looks "real" (and in RT!!) then it must then also play "real" (at least more so than CMx1). Now just spank off over the graphics you got and just keep telling yourself "If it looks realistic then it is realistic". It has all come at a price.

As for the question being asked, as far as I know and have expereinced (not even the manual discusses terrain/terrain effects ), no. Apart from buildings and walls (though even that seems to be buggy), the terrain type is basically irrelvant to the combat cover/concelament. Don't be fooled by what you see in the game. It is probably there because it gives the impression of a "realistic" game. This discussion is relevant to ToW as well.

Note: This post was in no way directed to the the topic starter, though there is a sense of surprised "loss" of a fundamental ("Can we get the old "exposure" rules back?") that you would expect from a game called CM that I thought needed an explanation.

[ August 01, 2007, 09:55 PM: Message edited by: Lt Bull ]

[thelmia]

I think cover is bugged. Troops are too easily cleared out of buildings with small arms fire. I don't think that is intentional design.

The best cover in the game does not protect infantry very much. I don't have to level buildings with HE anymore. I can simply hose down buildings with .50 cal and that works fine. It's not like rough or heavy buildings in the old games, where only HE would get them out quickly.

[McIvan]

Yeah, but I think hosing down a building with .50cal fire ought to be fairly murderous, especially against infantry that will be standing up next to a window. There are very few houses I can think of that would stop a .50cal round.

Small arms fire, that's a different story.

[CRourke]

It would be interesting to run some tests with CMSF vs CMAK... To be consistent, try a .50 cal vs squads in buildings.. see how long it takes to achieve 50% casualties.. I might give that a shot when I get off shift. Not sure if there is any other CMAK terrain with a close enough analogue in CMSF.

[rudel.dietrich]

Originally posted by thelmia:

I think cover is bugged. Troops are too easily cleared out of buildings with small arms fire. I don't think that is intentional design.

The best cover in the game does not protect infantry very much. I don't have to level buildings with HE anymore. I can simply hose down buildings with .50 cal and that works fine. It's not like rough or heavy buildings in the old games, where only HE would get them out quickly.

Almost every modern battle rifle can penetrate most modern building materials up to and including single layer brick walls and cinder block

And a 12.7mm round can tear thorugh a single layer brick wall and several interior walls before it expends all its energy

Being in a building does offer cover but buildings are not fortresses

In fact in some ways its more dangerous to be in a building since when rounds start tearing into the walls they tend to create alot of flying building materials which do not react well to human skin

And there have been many many studies which show that since WW2 less rounds are killing and wounding more soldiers on the modern battlefield

Better weapons and much better training are leading to never before seen accuracy

Even todays American national guard units can probably shoot with much greater accuracy than did their WW2 grandfathers

In my years in the army and my current job I have fired probably over 100,000 rounds of ammunition from over 300 different weapons and I must say that CMSF does a very nice job of modeling small arms fire.

And I think it is the first game to represent that buildings are not bulletproof

When you begin peppering a building exterior with .50 cal rounds you can only imagine the number of high velocity fragments tearing apart anything in the interior rooms

[Darkmath]

But Middle East houses are not much alike american building.

Isn't the walls in these buildings thick enough to stop rifle bullets ?

Just like in CMX1, European house have either stone walls or thick brick firewalls.

[Raptor 2101]

@Darkmath: you Know that most houses builded in ME, are not using steal ore stones? Most used material are loam bricks ore even a loam / mud mix if you go to the slums... and a single loam brick doesn't stopp a .50 bullet...

[Secondbrooks]

Terrain has effect, atleast by my experience. Here's bit of example:

I played quick battle in that forest map with tiny infantry forces and when enemy was using woods (more like scattered trees?) they took serious amount of lead before dying... much more than in average CM:SF fight in open terrain.

Also enemy (also Syrian SF) which were lying down in woods was hard to see by my blokes. Usually they opened fire at my advancing teams and caused nasty casualities to me, although my men knew what there was and in what location it was (icon in correct place, and unit's type was displayed), but they actually didn't see the enemy... Until enemy opened fire.

[Panzer76]

Q for developer:

Does cover like trees give an % protection for the troops, automatically, when they move through it.

OR, does the individual soldier actually be *behind* a tree to benfit ftom the cover?

[Tuomio]

Quit thinking the terrain bonuses. Thats thing of the past. I myself look for reverse slopes and other, thick obstacles and they work just like they should, keeping casualties in almost 0. TacAI seems to take advantage of them, when i use "face" command. Buildings in far east are made from hay/mud bricks and 12,7mm (50cal) will rip right trough it wall to wall. Most strykers are equipped with AP-I rouds which pack substantial penetration abilities. Wood etc. is just the same. It takes thick, heavy materials to stop the bullets.

Try it out with different commands and think buildings as shrapnel/LOS covers cuz thats what they are in modern battlefield.