Infantry Don't Bennfit From Low Walls

[Vanir Ausf B]

Bocage might skew the results too. IMHO the safest way to separate lanes is with elevation. It takes a little longer but nor by much.

That's a good point. My results with lanes were generally consistent to those without lanes, although the degree of difference in performance between the Behind Wall and No Cover groups was significantly larger without lanes. With lanes the guys behind the wall took about 14% more casualties than the guys in the open, without lanes they took about 22% more.

[LemuelG]

Has anyone tried one with the wall-troopers just hiding? What about AFVs? Is a hull-down position behind a wall even worthwhile?

[Vanir Ausf B]

I don't know about walls. I have tested hull down positions behind earthen mounds. That works as expected.

[titanwarrior]

Walls seem to work ok in the last four pbem games ive played. I don't know if I agree with walls not doing what they should. I think they should alot more testing before we come to any conclusions.

[Battlefront.com]

Er, Steve, I'm on your side. Agree with your comments. (Ducks)

heh... I know. I was just using your post to make a general point.

I dabbled in simracing a few years ago and I can assure that those forums make this one look like a Victorian tea party. You hear the same about the flight sim community. (Maybe something about 'sims',?)

Certainly true. Every type of game genre has it's own "hardcore" that can't see the forest through the trees. Or at least complains they can't. There's guys who play first person shooters, for example, that say things like "this game sux!! Did you see how the thumb is positioned on the M4 bolt when cocking? Gahd!! Can you believe that crap! I stopped playing because it is just so obviously wrong".

My theory is that the developers are usually wiser than the fans. If everyone of us who complained or lobbied for a new feature, or a restored feature, got their wish we'd probably end up hating the game by turning it into an overloaded, unplayable kludge. CMBN and its progeny will be great.

Hence my frequent reference to the Simpsons episode where Homer becomes a car designer for his long lost brother (Danny DiVeto). Great example. Homer designs something that is completely impractical and too expensive, and in the end even he doesn't want to drive it for some trivial reason. It's sad that there's more to learn about business from a cartoon than what is taught in most schools

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Walls seem to work ok in the last four pbem games ive played. I don't know if I agree with walls not doing what they should. I think they should alot more testing before we come to any conclusions.

Besides the good discussion about things like limiting outside variables and gaining a statistically significant sample (which is boring, but essential), it should be remembered that it's possible that walls MIGHT work in some situations and not in others.

Phil's taking a deeper look and we're pretty sure of several things:

1. Walls do block bullets

2. Walls do offer protection to soldiers behind them

3. The protection is angle sensitive

4. HE impacting the walls, such as rifle grenades, has the potential to cause casualties.

5. Although "skylining" is not explicitly simulated, significant parts of it are "naturally" present.

6. A prone soldier in the open stays prone and that means it naturally has decent protection. Remember, open terrain isn't billiard table flat since we do simulate unseen "micro terrain" (small variations which graphically aren't possible to show).

We have two ideas of where there may be something in need of a tweak. But we have to do ore research before we know for sure.

Steve

[ChrisND]

There was an immediate drop in causalty rate with a wall now BEHIND them. With more units surviving the inital shooting those squads now got to add their firepower causing an increase in the casualty rate of the guys not behind the wall. There was only one conclusion I can logically make from this. These guys were silhouetted from the skyline. Will somebody at BFC tell me if you were that freakin crazy to include this? I find it almost spooky, cool but spooky. I intend to run some more tests to see if these results are consistent. If they are I learned one lesson about this game. There is a heckuva lot more under the hood than I even remotely suspected.

Some very interesting results sburke, and a very good eye. I've run tests of my own on this to a much higher level of certainty (a control and experimental run of 4760 troops each) and I think there is indeed something happening when a wall is behind troops; although my test results on the internal forums haven't been torn apart by the peer review just yet, so I may be mistaken and talking out of my posterior. Anyways, it's being looked into.

[Battlefront.com]

Ricochets? They are simulated. Since bullets can't go through the stone wall, it's quite possible they are causing casualties in front of it. I know I wouldn't want to stand in front of a wall with bullets whacking the wall behind me

Steve

[akd]

Ricochets? They are simulated. Since bullets can't go through the stone wall, it's quite possible they are causing casualties in front of it. I know I wouldn't want to stand in front of a wall with bullets whacking the wall behind me

Steve

That's what would be expected, but seems we are seeing the opposite (troops with a wall just behind them are suffering fewer casualties than troops without a wall behind them).

[Vanir Ausf B]

Except that the guys with the wall behind them are taking fewer rather than more casualties, so ricochets don't seem likely.

EDIT: Ninja-ed by AKD

6. A prone soldier in the open stays prone and that means it naturally has decent protection. Remember, open terrain isn't billiard table flat since we do simulate unseen "micro terrain" (small variations which graphically aren't possible to show).

I used pavement for the terrain in my tests to factor this out, although I suppose there could be some monster potholes.

[BigJ62]

They also seem to be giving more casualties to the troops at the other end.

When I moved the wall back one more grid the effect was gone, the unit started taking casualties just like the unit at the other end, it was as if the wall were not there anymore so I do not believe this is an example of skylining.

That's what would be expected, but seems we are seeing the opposite (troops with a wall just behind them are suffering fewer casualties than troops without a wall behind them).

[GI Adelscott]

I think the point in this subjet is if walls are working as BFC supposed. As they are the designers maybe they have modelled walls to work in the way they do, but it's also possible that BFC was as suprised as some of us with the results of test...

Any answer about it?...

[YankeeDog]

I think the point in this subjet is if walls are working as BFC supposed. As they are the designers maybe they have modelled walls to work in the way they do, but it's also possible that BFC was as suprised as some of us with the results of test...

Any answer about it?...

Given the responses from BFC in this thread already, I think it's pretty clear that the test results posted here are not what BFC expected, and at the very least, the development team strongly suspects that *something* is not working as it should.

I think the hard part now is that the source of the problem could be any of a number of things, and it may take a while to come up with the proper fix. Rushing to conclusions and applying some sort of ad hoc adjustment would probably create more problems than it would solve.

[Battlefront.com]

Correct. Something isn't working as it should be. We have a deeper, detailed discussion going on internally and I'll post more thoughts when we've come to specific conclusions. At this point I'll say we think there's a combination of two factors that need to be adjusted. The wall behind the Soldiers issue is an odd one we're going to look into next.

Steve

[GI Adelscott]

Correct. Something isn't working as it should be. We have a deeper, detailed discussion going on internally and I'll post more thoughts when we've come to specific conclusions. At this point I'll say we think there's a combination of two factors that need to be adjusted. The wall behind the Soldiers issue is an odd one we're going to look into next.

Steve

Thanks for the answer! Keep up the good work!

[76mm]

i would have thought that these kind of issues would have been ironed out in CMSF and its several patches and modules?

[Childress]

The space shuttle program enjoyed years of successful flights. But some defective o-rings found their way into one of the Challenger's rocket boosters.

S&%$ happens.

[PhantomApple]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to run tests. Some of the most enlightening threads are the ones like this, where the community ran tests and published findings.

Eagerly awaiting what the internal BFC investigation finds.

[Battlefront.com]

i would have thought that these kind of issues would have been ironed out in CMSF and its several patches and modules?

Yeah, we thought so too. Which is one reason why we were a bit skeptical at first. But there does seem to be a fairly specific cause of a problem which would come up VERY rarely in Modern combat and not regularly when playing CM:BN as a game instead of a test lab.

Since there are now a few more people playing the game post release than pre release the chances of finding an anomaly like this goes way, way up simply because more people are experiencing a wider variety of situations than could ever be experienced in testing. As always, once a test is devised that shows a clear problem (i.e. it is likely wrong and can't be explained) things seem rather obvious. But since this particular issue has existed since probably 2006 or 2007, it's clearly not that obvious

Steve

[Broadsword56]

Well testers, you've made a believer out of me. I hereby apologize for any early skepticism and all-round grumpiness on this topic that may have burbled forth hitherto. A real success story of collaboration between some very committed, dedicated players and a developer who really listens to them!

[MikeyD]

One thing about CMSF. Body-armored troops spend less time firing prone than CM:BN troops do. For CMBN prone is the default infantry fire position. So comparing behind wall to open exposure in CMSF was more of an 'apples-to-apples' comparison. Guy up on one knee behind a wall, guy up on one knee out in the open. The guy behind the wall obviously gets more protection. There could be a debate about the relative advantages of laying prone in the terrain compared to helmets bobbing above a low wall like a shooting-gallery arcade game.

[LemuelG]

Another size wall and bocage would be pretty good, in between the two we have. And it would be nice if 'hunting' infantry kept a very low profile, in the classic hunched posture we've seen in a million contemporary pics. Low walls aren't high enough to protect anyone unless they're lying down, high are too tall to peek over - seems like we're missing a happy medium between them.

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, body armor is one variable that mitigated the core problem. Obviously most Syrian forces in the game don't have body armor, but they are also usually subjected to major amounts of firepower. So much that one wouldn't think "hey, those guys behind the wall should have survived". That and the fact that gamers *tend* to be more concerned about perceived negatives when they happen to them, not the AI. Since most players appear to use Blue Forces (which have body armor), I think it's safe to conclude that if the situation cropped up in CM:SF the average player wouldn't have noticed it for one or more of these reasons.

But there are some other factors at work here as well.

Steve

[dumrox]

There are no perceived negatives when bad things happen to the AI. It's just our brilliant tactical planning coming to fruition!

[BigJ62]

Did a very quick test and did not see these problems, did somebody run some tests and see it?

Yeah, we thought so too. Which is one reason why we were a bit skeptical at first. But there does seem to be a fairly specific cause of a problem which would come up VERY rarely in Modern combat and not regularly when playing CM:BN as a game instead of a test lab.

Since there are now a few more people playing the game post release than pre release the chances of finding an anomaly like this goes way, way up simply because more people are experiencing a wider variety of situations than could ever be experienced in testing. As always, once a test is devised that shows a clear problem (i.e. it is likely wrong and can't be explained) things seem rather obvious. But since this particular issue has existed since probably 2006 or 2007, it's clearly not that obvious

Steve