Bug? Orchards and cover/concealment

[Sgt Joch]

SteveP,

If I look at the screenshot AKD posted, it looks as though Forest terrain (on the left, no spotted units) provides more cover than an Orchard (on the right, 4 spotted units) and Orchard provides more cover than Open terrain (in the middle, 9 spotted units) which is what I would expect to see.

Why don't you post screens of what you are seeing so we can figure out what is your problem.

[cool breeze]

You are right that I ended up doing the test because of what I wanted to achieve in the scenario. Apparently the test I did isn't interesting because:

1. Normandy doesn't have dirt under their orchard trees, so who cares?

2. It doesn't matter what the mg gunner can or can't see thru the lines of apple tree trunks sitting on dirt, because the trees branches up above his head have lots of foliage.

3. There are workarounds I can use, so who cares?

4. BFC says I can't possibly have seen what I saw in doing my tests, so I must be doing something wrong.

I would still like to see, on one of my scenario maps, dense forest on heavy forest terrain having a bigger impact on concealment/cover than orchard trees on dirt. Maybe I will some day (perhaps when I figure out what I am doing wrong).

Wait hang on I just read the whole thread and nobody said anything like that stuff?

You say you want to figure out what your doing wrong but your putting words in every ones mouth, discouraging them from helping.

I guess your using too big of trees too close together. I remember from Shock Force that orchards work like you'd expect, you can see well straight down the rows and columns and a bit down some diagonals too. I see you think the soldiers should be seeing quite clearly all around because of the dirt... I think this is a product of modern farming with mechanical terrain leveling. I think an orchard on natural ground would probably have ground uneven enough that you cant just lie down and see through the bottom 1 foot all over the place because the bottom one foot is at different heights.

[Michael Emrys]

All these years on the forum, now I see we have orchard grogs, what is next???

Well, we haven't gotten around to discussing the effects on spotting of brine shrimp yet. I regard that as a serious omission. Don't you?

Michael

[SteveP]

You say you want to figure out what your doing wrong but your putting words in every ones mouth, discouraging them from helping.

I am not trying to figure out what I am doing wrong. I simply posted the results of a test I did. I could not find any way to get different results. I later posted a description of the test I ran -- something I should have done at the start. If anyone believes I was doing something wrong in setting up that test, I'd be delighted to hear what exactly they think that might be, especially from anyone who ran exactly that test and got different results.

What I had not expected was that some people would think it might make sense for an orchard on dirt to provide the same concealment/cover as dense forest on heavy forest terrain. That threw me, I admit it. Sorry if anyone took my comments amiss.

OTOH, I was not surprised by BFC telling me it was user error. Until someone else confirms my results, that is a reasonable thing for them to say under the circumstances.

[GonzoAttacker]

my pattern for orchards works quite well. Still too stuffed. There is no apple tree scenario editor, the trees are more hard wood type. With this said, I use a mixture of Bushes, and trees in my orchards. my pattern for adding trees is , tree, skip, skip, tree. But as an evil designer that I am, I very the pattern and add stumps for missing trees in the design.

I also mix up the patterns depending on what kind of map I want. Do I want the area to be dense on purpose for defensive purposes? Do I want a killing zone?

I have an almond orchard across the road from me. It has about 40ft between trees(trunk to trunk), world war II era of planting, that would open the orchards up quite a bit.

Bottom line is the editor is what we have to work with, the designer needs to use imagination and create a playable scenario.

[cool breeze]

"I would still like to see, on one of my scenario maps, dense forest on heavy forest terrain having a bigger impact on concealment/cover than orchard trees on dirt. Maybe I will some day (perhaps when I figure out what I am doing wrong)."

"perhaps when I figure out what I am doing wrong"

Implied that you might be trying to figure out what. But I guess I was mistaken. Your just here to tell us how it 100% definitely is.

[SteveP]

"I would still like to see, on one of my scenario maps, dense forest on heavy forest terrain having a bigger impact on concealment/cover than orchard trees on dirt. Maybe I will some day (perhaps when I figure out what I am doing wrong)."

"perhaps when I figure out what I am doing wrong"

Implied that you might be trying to figure out what. But I guess I was mistaken. Your just here to tell us how it 100% definitely is.

No, not what I meant. I did literally mean that I hope I see this at some point. If I have gotten it wrong somehow, I will stumble on the answer at eventually. I tried it many times and always got the same result, so it has to be something obscure. In the meantime, it's a dead issue unless someone else sees the same thing.

[SteveP]

Bottom line is the editor is what we have to work with, the designer needs to use imagination and create a playable scenario.

That's what I am doing. I am not waiting around for someone to solve the puzzle presented by my test results. They're just test results.

[Battlefront.com]

Take the same area, and make the tiles heavy forest and use high density trees and run the same test. I found that the results were roughly the same. I also got the same results for any other combination of tiles and tree option.

That pretty much explains it. Your expectations are not exactly wrong, but only because there's a hundred different ways we could do this in theory but in practice we have to approximate. We do not have a "very sparse orchard" type terrain. It doesn't seem appropriate to the environment so we didn't cater to it. Therefore, what you're looking for isn't in the game labeled "Orchard". You need to follow some of the creative suggestions people have put out here to get the sort of orchard you're looking for.

But notice that nothing you've said thus far supports the conclusions you've made about how the game mechanics work. It's similar to someone putting a bunch of PzIVs in a row and having Stuarts shoot them in the rear. The results are likely a bunch of PzIVs. Concluding that the game is "broken" because the PzIVs don't defeat the 37mm rounds is wrong because the expected outcome doesn't conform to what is being tested within it's realistic parameters.

Steve

[Pak40]

SteveP,

check out http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=99073

Looks like what you're trying to achieve.

[SteveP]

But notice that nothing you've said thus far supports the conclusions you've made about how the game mechanics work. It's similar to someone putting a bunch of PzIVs in a row and having Stuarts shoot them in the rear. The results are likely a bunch of PzIVs. Concluding that the game is "broken" because the PzIVs don't defeat the 37mm rounds is wrong because the expected outcome doesn't conform to what is being tested within it's realistic parameters.

I appreciate you sticking with me on this. I don't think your analogy is a good one, because I don't think I did anything that could be considered contrived. I simply set up a flat field (actually a bocage field in my scenario) and changed what was in that field. What I found was that the American squad could advance just as safely in orchard on dirt (or single trees, if that makes it any more acceptable) as in dense forest on heavy forest terrain (and doesn't this start to sound like a broken record? ). My whole motivation in creating a scenario is to avoid doing anything that is contrived, and I tried to conduct my test in that same spirit.

btw, I don't think the game is broken.

[SteveP]

SteveP,

check out http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=99073

Looks like what you're trying to achieve.

Thanks. I already designed my orchards along those lines a couple of days ago. But I haven't fully tested them to see if they are defensible. I want my bocage scenario to be a tough problem for the Americans, as it was in reality. Orchards turned out to be a bigger problem than I anticipated -- unless, of course, you assume that the Americans saw orchards as a great tactical opportunity. Frankly, at this point, I don't know what to think.

[Kandahari]

I'd say that's fairly acurate about the cover afforded by orchards - many orchards having low boughs for the picking, and forests (in my peculiar geographic experience) having a significant gap between undergrowth and arboreal concealment. I'd rather sneak around in an orchard than in an (Australian) old growth forest... anyone above the flat will have immense difficulty in putting down fire onto troops in an orchard.

That having been said, anyone defending on the flat with say, an mg42, should have no problem at all if the cows and sheep have been keeping down the grass, as they would, from France to ...

A fig orchard provides awesome concealment to anyone below the flat - anyone above the orchard could see nothing until we were within 10 meters.

Anyone on the ground could see us coming from 100m away.

I finally got around to doing a little testing on this one because of problems I ran into creating a scenario (orchards are important in Normandy).

The test was an orchard (single trees in a grid pattern) on dirt vs dense forest on heavy forest terrain. Flat elevation in both cases. What I found was that the orchard provided more concealment than the dense forest. Essentially, units in an orchard could easily get to within 30-40 meters without being spotted. Units in the dense forest were often spotted within 50-60 meters. A spotter looking down into an orchard from an elevated position could see nothing.

Differences in cover are hard to detect at those ranges, but it seemed like the orchard on dirt provided cover that was just as good as the dense forest. In fact, an orchard on dirt would provide a more realistic Hurtgen forest than the dense forest would.

I have been seeing this for some time, so I don't think it's a fluke of my test.

[Broadsword56]

Also, if mappers build forests properly (see some of the how-to posts from last week on another thread), they should have intermediary bands of thickets and bushes and smaller trees along the perimeter, along with even some gapped hedge tiles. This makes a forest that offers more realistic concealment, blocking LOS better, and offering realistic ambush possibilities. Too many forests on existing maps lack this detail and are too easy to see into/see through.

[A Canadian Cat]

<snip>intermediary bands of thickets and bushes and smaller trees along the perimeter,

<snip>

Too many forests on existing maps lack this detail and are too easy to see into/see through.

+1 to that. I am playing a QB now where my men and tanks are setup in a staging area waiting for the pieces of the plan to come together. They are in some woods they are getting picked off by, and doing some picking off of, my opponents guys 300 - 700m out who are on the other side of two rows of trees with forest cover. That should be through the band of tickets they are behind trough four more of those bands (plus two sets of forest 50m across) and out the other side into the open.

There are no forested areas around here that you could do that with.

Don't get me wrong I knew what the visibility was when I sent my guys there - I'm not complaining about my tactical situation because I knew what it was like. I'm just saying it is hard to imagine this happening unless these forests were part of a park or manicured estate.

This discussion and the one about how to create a forest with a ticket band is informing my map building activities. If only I could stop playing the game long enough to get it done:)

[hoolaman]

What I had not expected was that some people would think it might make sense for an orchard on dirt to provide the same concealment/cover as dense forest on heavy forest terrain.

I don't think anybody said that either.

[LongLeftFlank]

Also, if mappers build forests properly (see some of the how-to posts from last week on another thread), they should have intermediary bands of thickets and bushes and smaller trees along the perimeter, along with even some gapped hedge tiles. This makes a forest that offers more realistic concealment, blocking LOS better, and offering realistic ambush possibilities. Too many forests on existing maps lack this detail and are too easy to see into/see through.

Amen. Relevant thread is here