Why won't Tanks smash through small walls....!!!!

[Battlefront.com]

Exactly. The problem is if we allow something without the limiting factors being simulated, we've got ourselves a problem. Chance of bogging (track damage in CMx2 terms ) is only a factor to possibly punish, not a factor limiting the decision to try in the first place.

One major problem with doing this, right now, is that we don't have multiple types of walls. The loose ones that a drunk with 3 pound hammer could knock over is a far cry from a correctly cemented cinderblock wall. As Normal Dude said... sometimes they wouldn't even try the wall and would instead go for the gate. But if we have only one type of wall composition, now what do we do? Simulate all walls being the strong type or all being the weak type?

It's a slippery slope for adding/disallowing pretty much everything but the basics, so we have to go carefully when we deviate from that.

Steve

[PeterLorre86]

That explanation makes sense to me. It's not that I find lack of crushing walls a game breaker, the game is fine without it and you are right, it would be undoubtedly used more then in any real situation.

And i understand your point about having to limit what you can allow the player to do. You could add tens of thousands of abilities and still only scratch what is really possible in combat, and as you say, each of those things would be used without the limiting factors a real life situation would create, and thus exploited.

My gripe is only with claiming it was left out because it would knock the treads off the AFV. To me that sounded like an excuse. (rather then this honest explanation)

I appreciate the expanded explanation, and am enjoying 1.3, especially like the new, more detailed looking terrian.

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, that first thing about the tracks getting knocked off was just a quick answer, not a thorough one. Tip of the iceberg thing

Actually, it technically might not be THAT hard to add knocking down walls if it weren't for all the other issues I raised. That's because we simulate wall breaches already (unlike CMx1). Shelling a wall would be more common, I think, in combat than knocking a hole with a vehicle, so I think we can live without it. Now here is an interesting problem for us...

It is no doubt true that people are probably breaching walls with canon fire more frequently than would be done in real life. Just a guess, of course. But what is our alternative? To make walls impervious to large HE hits? That's not going to fly with just about anybody So for better or worse we have to allow it because trying to figure out some way to realistically restrict it is not a good use of our time (if we could figure out a clean way!). That means we just have to rely upon ammo expense being a mitigating factor. I think it is at least a serious consideration for people since it takes a couple of rounds to do much to a wall.

Steve

[ August 30, 2007, 10:29 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[Charlie901]

O.K. Fair enough.

What about those extremely small, graphical, 4 foot high stone/cinder block thin and low walls, depicted currently on a lot of maps, that your soldiers can hop with a single bound, without even breaking their stride...?

Wouldn't it be ridiculous if a tank had to turn it's flank to travel along this wall instead of running over it and got killed in the process???

Especially when the Driver could clearly see that it was a thin, easily, traversable object.

Yet I've seen both my and the A.I. tanks refuse to drive over/through such a trivial wall currently in the game.

It currently is very limiting to have a 4ft thin map wall that soldiers can hop, become an insurrmountable object, for every tank/AFV and becomes an easy cheat for chokepoints, when you can view the entire map (top down) and these vehicles wouldn't be so limited IRL.

Unless I'm wrong and these walls are made to be surmountable and the A.I. just isn't treating them as such?

[Battlefront.com]

I'll leave that question open to the treadheads. 1.25m is max for an Abrams and 1m is what a Bradley can handle. I forget what the wall height is simulated as, but it is right in that ballpark somewhere.

What would likely happens is the wall would be broken up under the weight of the vehicle, so really the vehicle would be going through it as much as over it. This then introduces the sorts of track threats that were mentioned on the pervious page.

So here's the problem we face. If you explicitly order an Abrams to go over a wall then you are deliberately saying that you want to risk immobilization. But how is the pathfinding supposed to know if you want to go over it or not? Imagine the howls we'll get for that happening

So here we go... it's dubious that a Bradley or Abrams would go over a wall when there was a viable way around it. But in some circumstances, yeah I can see them deciding to take a shortcut risks and all. I'll have to think about this one some more, especially since none of our testers flagged this as a concern.

Quick personal story:

I have a couple of tracked vehicles, one of which is a Bombardier Muskeg I use for hauling around trees. One winter I went over a fairly small diameter frozen tree on the ground and did so at an angle other than 90 degrees (yeah, I knew that wasn't smart!). My tracks slipped on the ice and I spun to the side half way over and wound up bottomed out with tracks spinning on either side of the tree. I had to hitch a tow cable to one track and the other to the end of the tree and pulled myself off it that way. Took about an hour.

Another instance was in my WW2 Weasel on an "skidder trail", which is a fancy name for a bunch of crushed tree limbs in the forest. All of a sudden I'm not moving. I look and a 3" diameter limb got kicked up and jammed itself between the track and the hull. I had to hook a come-along to a tree 15' away with a tow cable around the STICK to free up the track again. That took me about an hour.

And in neither case was anybody shooting me

My point of these civilian stories is that tracked vehicles, even ones designed for adverse terrain, can get stuck by the damnedest things and trying to get them out is often "interesting".

Steve

[Lindan]

Originally posted by Charlie901:

Steve,

At least give us the option to punch a hole in a small compound wall...

And for me a Cheeseburger please. Thanks.

[Huntarr]

Might I suggest that wall breeching be left to the engineering vehicles if/when they are implemented. That is really one of their fortes.

[weasel75]

About things, which *could* be done, but are not done in reality all too often:

Ask why, and find a way to simulate it - or opt the feature out

a) Fire:

* fire can cause major damage to civil structures or growings... result: penalty, because it is bad for the "image"/PR

* fire limits infantry (always exhausted/tired due to lag of oxygen?) and LOS by thick smoke, so the player pays a price for the neat gimmick

* .. etc. - more to come?

walls

With the chance of loosing the tracks, the player might think twice.

And maybe the assault or hunt-command might be used for tanks/vehicles to make them take the shortest possible way ... even over/thrue walls?

Salute!

PS: Damn, where is that Paradox-Patch ... *argh*

[Splinty]

Alot of brick walls in Iraq are very fragile and can be knocked down by a HMMVW. OTOH many concrete walls are full of rebar and that will throw a track or puncture a tire.

[Bradley Dick]

I think it's pretty cool that you own a couple of tracked vehicles, personally. Track is crazy. Having put on or repaired more suspension and track than I ever thought I would, I gotta say it's pretty fragile sometimes.

Something as simple as some chicken wire can wrap around your front drive sprocket and cause MAJOR problems for you later.

[shankfisher]

A dozer tank would be nice.

[OG_Gleep]

I have been really missing something. Since the target system will lock on to a preset point, not where you nessisarily tell it to, it is a pain to get your heavy guns to blow holes in walls. Especially when they either fire 1 shot, or fire 6 shots at the same exact section of walls, of which 1 blows a section out and the rest tear up the landscape directly behind it.

A fire from point A to B, not unlike the linear option for fire support, or if that won't work, a destroy or target object which would order the MGS or abrams to place its rounds intelligently instead of in one spot (ie; The first floor of a house, when it creates damage to one section, it moves to another secion. With walls the same thing, if it sees its fire has caused damage to the structure of the wall, it will adjust its fire).

What I have to do now is either:

1. Watch it waste a whole bunch of rounds for 60 seconds, adjust its target in the next phase, rince and repeat.

or

2. Watch it fire once, which could do nothing to the wall, and watch it spray it with MG fire for the next 55 seconds. Cancle, let it reload for 60 seconds, and then try it again. Its a crapshoot on which number the next round of fire does (option 1 or 2).

The best option is to have all of your heavy assets pick a spot on the wall and have at it for 60 seconds, but thats not always an option. 1 mgs or abrams must and should be able to create a breach point in the wall.

Currently, no matter what you do, you could end up with small sections of wall remaining in your breach, and since you can't pinpoint them theres nothing to be done but leave them.

So, if we can't ram it, atleast give us the tools nessisary. Be it demo charges in the strikers, or a new order system I mentioned in the start of this way too long post). Don't really care if its realistic, as I suspect if a wall needs to be taken down, troops in the field figure it out.

[GonzoAttacker]

How about instance in "Thunder Run" when tanks took wrong turn to Airport and had to go through highway cement barriers, First tank started crumbling barrier and "flew over wall even airborne" and each succeding tank continued break it open... Also did the same at airport entrance... I would think a small rock wall would be easy push over and short cinder block walls will be no problem too.. But thick tall walls out of the question,,, Tanks blew holes into buildings in Fullajah but as steve said they were guided by the grunts on the ground...

[Trooper]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

[QB] I'll leave that question open to the treadheads. 1.25m is max for an Abrams and 1m is what a Bradley can handle. I forget what the wall height is simulated as, but it is right in that ballpark somewhere.

What would likely happens is the wall would be broken up under the weight of the vehicle, so really the vehicle would be going through it as much as over it. This then introduces the sorts of track threats that were mentioned on the pervious page.

Treadhead here.

Short of reinforced concrete, I'd be hard-pressed to think of a wall which I couldn't knock down with my tank. I've even slammed right into a concrete Jersey Barrier at high warp factors once. Took the guard off my headlight, but no damage otherwise.

Even if you're not inclined to ram the wall at full speed, just nose up to it, put it in low gear, and away you go.

Yes, throwing track sucks, as does getting barbed wire caught in your sprocket wheels, but if you're perpetually in fear of it, you're probably not aggressive enough.

NTM