Windows..

[Euri]

There are building with multiple windows on each side and buildings with fewer. Does this affect the firepower delivered from soldiers firing inside the building and is it factor as better cover?

[Jonny(FGM)]

no and yes i believe

[gibsonm]

“search” is your friend.

[Euri]

“search” is your friend.

not sure what you mean

[gibsonm]

I mean that the effect of windows (do they limit where people actually fire from or is it an approximation and a hundred other questions have already been discussed).

So if you do a search for “windows” you may well find the answers to your questions before potentially starting the whole cycle all over again.

[Euri]

I mean that the effect of windows (do they limit where people actually fire from or is it an approximation and a hundred other questions have already been discussed).

So if you do a search for “windows” you may well find the answers to your questions before potentially starting the whole cycle all over again.

I would appreciate if you answered my question; I would equally appreciate if you don't want to answer my question. It is really a waste of time of other people at this forum to read irrelevant stuff.

If I wanted to invest time to search I would have done so. I choose to ask. You are not forced to answer; you are not forced to play clever as well.

[gibsonm]

Your question to me was “not sure what you mean?”

I answered it.

I don’t intend to answer the broader question as many pages have already been devoted to it and if you not wish to invest some effort looking it up, I’m certainly not going to invest the effort to type it all out again just for you.

[Euri]

Your question to me was “not sure what you mean?”

I answered it.

I don’t intend to answer the broader question as many pages have already been devoted to it and if you not wish to invest some effort looking it up, I’m certainly not going to invest the effort to type it all out again just for you.

Fair enough. Answers of the type /"search" your friend / do not contribute anything to my question. Your intention of answering or not is of interest to me and anyone sharing the same question as I do.

If you do not wish to answer you might better stay silent. Thank you.

[gibsonm]

I think not, but anyway.

At least with my response you know there’s an answer (for those willing to look).

But for certainly from now on I’ll give you the same monosyllabic responses as “Jonny(FNG)“ gave you earlier.

[JohnO]

Fair enough. Answers of the type /"search" your friend / do not contribute anything to my question. Your intention of answering or not is of interest to me and anyone sharing the same question as I do.

If you do not wish to answer you might better stay silent. Thank you.

Give me a break! This is ridiculous. Can't we just all get along.

[Jonny(FGM)]

Do I really have to break out the classic picture with a caption about arguing on the internet?

[Alchenar]

Your question to me was “not sure what you mean?”

I answered it.

I don’t intend to answer the broader question as many pages have already been devoted to it and if you not wish to invest some effort looking it up, I’m certainly not going to invest the effort to type it all out again just for you.

Way to be a massive dick.

Euri, the answer is that the windows you see are an abstraction and that typically everyone can shoot. No idea if a blank wall provides more protection than windows but it certainly provides concealment.

Edit: I mean really, wargames are hard enough to get into and it does nothing for the community when innocent questions provoke rude, sacastic and utterly worthless responses. If you wanted to be helpful, dig up the link and offer it. If you didn't want to go to that effort, type up that one sentence that I did there. If you don't want to be helpful, don't post.

Saying 'I won't help someone who won't help themselves' is a horribly selfish attitude to take because it just creates a catch 22 scenario where you are never obliged to be helpful because anyone who fulfills your criteria to 'deserve' an answer doesn't need help.

[Sakai007]

Personally I thought is was common internet sense to search for an answer to your question before starting another thread to rehash the same conversation again. If no one ever used the search function, there would be triples of the same thread in every forum. In other places I frequent, threads are locked if the person didn't bother to use the search function before posting a question, since that is what search is there for. Not knowing you can search to find the answer to your question, that is one thing and I can understand. But knowing the option is there and just no doing it since you don't feel like it, seriously, it's clicking a button. It takes a lot less effort then starting a new thread, that's for sure. Common sense I would think.

[Sivodsi]

The problem with 'search' is that it pulls up a lot of random issues that have everything to do with the word that you are interested in, but nothing to do with the specific question that you are trying to answer.

You get all these irrelevant results because maybe you haven't used quite the right key word or you are being too general. So you make the search more specific and then you get nothing, and then you try again and it tells you you have to wait before you do another search because it is too soon and yada yada yada.

It takes up so much time to search through all the results that actually its a lot quicker just asking the damn question. I've never had much luck with the search function on this forum.

Sure, if you stick around the boards as I do, and Gibsonm does, you get sick of seeing the same questions asked, but given the frustrations of the search function, I understand why simply asking is the method many continue to use.

So, Gibsonm, if the answer is easy to find using the search system, could you do us a favor and post a link to the discussion?

And if you take more than say 5 minutes to find the answer by searching, could you perhaps just post the answer?

This approach might raise less hackles than your earlier reply.

Just trying to be helpful, mind.

[Sivodsi]

Euri, the answer is that the windows you see are an abstraction and that typically everyone can shoot. No idea if a blank wall provides more protection than windows but it certainly provides concealment.

.

Really? Is that for real? I don't think so, because you can see the modeling for yourself. Your little men run to the window and shoot. No window, no shooting. I thought this was the whole point of one-to-one representation.

But correct me if there is an element of abstraction in this.

[astano]

ISTR in a discussion about this in the CMA threads that there is some abstraction. What's abstracted, I believe, is the graphical representation of someone standing at a window. So you can have one guy apparently shooting through the wall, but it is actually an abstraction of him shooting through the window, rather than literally displaying the squad members shifting to change who's firing out the window (which would require more TacAI and animations investment than it was deemed worth).

Put another way, troops can only fire out a window. But their visual presence at the window is graphically abstracted, and instead they look like they're shooting through a wall.

I hope I've explained that intelligibly. Of course, I can't seem to find the thread now, so I could be completely making this up.

[Erik Springelkamp]

What I often see is a row of soldiers line up behind a single window, and the one at the back shoot through the ones before them, but all fire more or less through the window.

[LongLeftFlank]

This is a very interesting topic, and I too am having difficulty locating that large number of threads where it is addressed definitively.

In general, it has always seemed to me that the more spread out troops are within a given Action Spot (in this case, a building), the more likely one of them will be hit by incoming fire, as the precise placement of aimed fire seems to vary semi-randomly around the "bullseye" (Target line), and that spread increases with distance (as it should).

Whereas, if the pixeltruppen are in a tight cluster in front of that single window, the chances of anybody getting hit by any given burst of incoming are less -- although I *think* I've seen a single burst of small arms take down two guys close together at close range. Not certain on that latter point.

This dynamic seems to change once the individual troops in the building are Spotted by the firing units, usually within ~100m; they are then targeted as individuals in the same way infantry assaulting the same building would target them. At that point, it seems to be worse, not better to be clustered around a single window.

The above dynamics seem to be of greater value from a survivability standpoint than any variation in the Cover value of buildings having more or fewer windows. As further evidence, windowless walls seem to be as readily pierced with (Area) fire as those with windows; it's just far harder to spot units inside them.

There is a Cover value to buildings, sure, but it seems to be generic (a different one seems to apply to the roof parapets). I've always found it curious that I don't see a lot more bullets ricocheting off buildings the way they do off, say, compound walls or vehicles. If the ballistics engine was indeed "seeing" the specific windows, you'd think you'd see a lot more ricochets off the solid parts (and off the floors too, which are poured cement and a hell of a lot thicker than the walls in most multistory Middle Eastern buildings).

Having a single Cover value makes sense from a game design economy/CPU standpoint, as it's one less set of calculations for the ballistics engine to worry about. It also explains why Steve was reluctant to have "light" and "heavy" building types as was the case in CMx1 (I think he said they would be added them in CMBN).

If I'm spreading gross disinformation, I sincerely apologize (we Canucks are good at that). These are just my own observations, and are not based on systematic testing. Please correct me.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

I think there has to be a degree of abstraction aklthough I do not recall seeing squads lining up behind a single window. I do accept that the program does not always identify the precise location of windows, doors and for that matter AFVs so sometimes you do see graphical representations that appear, visually, a little silly. But, certainly until software and hardware improve sufficiently to do away with these issues, we have to put up with them. Personally I prefer to do the job of the battlegroup commander rather than worry too much about minor graphical details like this.

Luke