Church not like a fortress?

[De Savage]

I miss heavy and light buildings from earlier Combat Mission. Now all are "paper-buildings".

[Sirocco]

the guys inside always standing at windows and exposing themselfes.

[dirty mind]

*chuckles*

[/dirty mind]

[Lanzfeld]

Yeah the rounds can go through brick but if your troopers are prone inside they should be a little better protected on top of everything else.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

many of the old churches were literally fortresses. it was a part of their function.

[Lanzfeld]

Another tweek. I really hope BFC is listening.

[Vark]

Sorry, with all the talk about churches, could not resist it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ozg3W6zhpw&feature=related

On a serious note, what was cover like in CMSF, the building in ME urban areas tend to be very robust, did they offer more or less cover, from similar rounds (Nato 7.62 ball) than the buildings in CMBN?

[Bimmer]

Judging by the pre-war buildings I've seen in Normandy, a pretty good percentage of them (especially the older rural houses and farm buildings, and the ground floor of many in town) have stone walls a good 8-12 inches thick. That should be enough to protect against rifle-caliber rounds.

I've got some photos - I'll try to dig up a couple of good examples.

[MengJiao]

I think other posters are correct that buildings seem to display more cover characteristics of wooden construction than concrete and stone.

the building thing makes intuitive sense to me. The building restricts fire and spotting. There aren't many buildings that a full US squad can shoot from.

Plus, the whole building is an easy targetting reference in terms of fire distribution: 1 mg takes one window, another the next and pretty soon the defenders are overwhelmed by fire.

I usually only defend from buildings in the reserve line (mgs, spotters, ammo carriers). Squads actively shooting -- I deploy them elsewhere if possible unless there's a lot of indirect fire. Buildings seem pretty good against indirect fire.

[dieseltaylor]

AFAIK - eight to twelve inches is not thick for stone buildings. They may taper to that for the roof plates or wooden second floor structure.

http://www.world-housing.net/uploads/stone_masonry.pdf

mentions 400-700mm for normal house

[Wiggum]

The problem was already in CMSF.

Something with the abstracted interior or the cover and concealment a building offers to a persons seems very odd sometimes.

Just try it out by yourselfe. Go to the streets and try to spot persons inside a (solid european) building...its hard even if the person stands at the window (light reflections ect.).

And if you are in the middle of a building...maybe prone...there is no way someone can spot you or use small arms fire effectiv against you, he could pepper the hole building with tons of ammunition butt...

Ok, you have to expose yourselfe to shot. But again you still hard to spot and should get a abstracted bonus from the walls inside and the interior.

I really believe that the spotting is the bigger problem.

It is hard to spot persons in a building from 200m away and must be even harder during combat situations...so think about it.

I can remember a situations during MOUT training with the AGDUS system were we were totally confused and did really have no idea where does shots coming from while your comerades were alredy hit (smoke, noise, stress and all that).

And believe me, the "enemy" was also moving inside those buildings.

In CMBN however, moving inside of a building means instant death if any enemy unit is near.

Units that are not moving will hardly be spot but as soon as they move every GI Joe on the map knows their position.

Strange wenn a few rifle shots from 100m away kill half of your squad while they move to the second floor of a building...

Something to look into or tweak for sure.

[Cull]

"...like the guys inside always standing at windows and exposing themselves"

Which can not only be dangerous, but is illegal in most locales

After a decent amount of time with the game I too would like to add my voice to the "buildings aren't providing enough cover" theory.

I wonder if it is indeed a fact of occupants being exposed in windows and the 1:1 thing (which, I would imagine, would require some significant coding to tweak) or if there's not just a "global" cover setting that could be dialed up a notch for buildings to improve it.

For me, so far, it doesn't seem that small-arms fire is too out of whack in it's lethality, but more HE and whatnot. I've seen 60mm mortar rounds land outside a building, say fifteen to twenty meters away, and take out half the building's occupants.

It seems (I'm no WWII-era French building expert by any means) that that's a pretty extreme effect on a heavy/thick stone building, and even if the occupants were all loitering in windows like idiots it still shouldn't get that many of them.

EDIT: I do agree with ^^^Wiggum^^^; moving within the building does seem to increase the lethality of enemy small-arms fire by a significant/unrealistic factor.

[poesel]

about churches:

I'd like to add that in any 'old' (pre-WWII) church or cathedral I've ever been there is no way I could take a look outside from the floor level. The windows are always more than head height. A defender on the inside would be completely hidden.

Also the walls are usually more than a meter thick - solid stone. I'm no expert but this seems to me more than enough to stop everything but big caliber guns.

The only way in or out are the main door or gate and one or two side entrances with sturdy doors. Churches are not easy to shoot out from (except from the bell tower) but even harder to shoot at the occupants. Very good defence - that why they were very often just burned down.

[sawomi]

Here is the picture:

[Schlosskirche]

I have absolutely nothing to add. But the thread title plus my screen name compels me to do so anyway. Continue on...

[YankeeDog]

about churches:

I'd like to add that in any 'old' (pre-WWII) church or cathedral I've ever been there is no way I could take a look outside from the floor level. The windows are always more than head height. A defender on the inside would be completely hidden...

This is a very good point. Your typical Norman church is probably very good as a defensive shelter, but the limited ability to see and fire out of the building means it's not so great as a defensive fighting position.

[sawomi]

I have absolutely nothing to add. But the thread title plus my screen name compels me to do so anyway. Continue on...

Ahem, just something compels me to add that technically a Schlosskirche would have more elegance than this Wehrkirche (='fortified' church ) in the picture.

Schlosskirche (='palace' church).

[sawomi]

[...]Your typical Norman church is probably very good as a defensive shelter,...

That is (was) exactly one function of very old churches still standing in the countryside...at least in Thuringia, for what I know. That's the reason for the name Wehr-kirche. If you only have archers as arty, they are a hard nut to crack.

[sawomi]

Église fortifiée de Saint Juvin (Ardennes)

[Wiggum]

There is a reason why another popular wargame has a special building type with the name "Fort or Church"...

[Humbug]

I concur that buildings (and trenches) generally should offer more protection than they currently do. I recently played the Devil's Descent campaign and I was amazed how quickly I killed the guys holding up in the church. I was getting ready for one hell of a fight and having to use everything I got including mortars but they just died after less than a minutes worth of firing from maybe 2 or 3 squads.

[Rayak47]

Shooting out of the same window more than once is an invatation to get shot - funnel of death. Urban warefare doctine realizes unprepared buildings can be easilly supressed and recommends "bunkerizing" a building, you build shelters within the building out of the furniture to provide extra cover from grenades, etc, and try to dig holes in the walls to observe and shoot out of rather than the window bullet magnets.

I haven't tested too much on buildings, but in hindsight, yeah maybe the bullets do penetrate more easilly than they should in certain buildings. I was assuming Normandy was like CMx1, there were hard and soft buildings. That's not the case? Hide commands and cowering should make it hard to get killed or spotted in a building. I haven't noticed spotting to be too out of wack. The guys are harder to spot until they start shooting. Maybe I need to pay more attention to that too!

[sawomi]

[crsutt]

I have only played two games, but it seems that a trench offers no protection at all. MGs and infantry are fairly easily shot out of trenches. Not like the old CMAK.

[permanent666]

i agree with you - buildings are not strong enough. i guess that the textures of a building (stone, wood, brick) don't affect cover values. so a wooden barn has the same cover value as a stone church.

but unfortunately i don't think we will see major changes in this respect because this would destroy the balance of the scenarios and campaigns.

[JasonC]

The way infantry actually uses a building is definitely not to stand right up at the windows looking out to have as wide a field of view as possible.

Instead it is (1) loophole the walls for narrow 6 to 12 inch firing ports, (2) take positions across the room from a window to keyhole through it in a designated firing lane (3) same as 2 for doors (4) cross the fire lanes for men in the same building to cover different angles of approach (5) cross the fire lanes coming out of the building with those coming out of other positions in the overall defensive scheme.

There was no need to maximize the number of weapons sticking out of the structure, nor to ensure wide fields of fire for each one. Every opening able to hit along a couple of trajectories was all that was wanted. Men well back from the openings also covered all of them with point blank fire, to prevent close enemy entry. You could not eliminate the remaining defenders from outside the structure; that is why a grenade had to enter first, and had to be followed up by men with small arms (and more grenades for nearly every room).