Fortifying Bocage == possible; let me show you a trick

[YankeeDog]

My hope is that by the time the next CMx2 "family" rolls around (CM:Battle o' the Bulge, presumably), BFC will have found a way to solve the problem of applying fog of war to actual terrain features, which apparently isn't possible right now due to the amount of coding time required, and also something about the additional load this would put on the computer hardware.

But if this issue can be solved, trenches and foxholes can once again be represented as actual holes in the ground (as they are in CMSF), but with Fog of War applicable. For those not familiar, while trenches are nicely depicted as actual furrows in the ground in CMSF, but Fog of War doesn't apply to them at all, which isn't so bad for realism as long as you're playing CMSF as Blue, since NATO aerial/satellite recon would presumably easily spot any significant earthworks. But this way of doing things would be much more unrealistic in a WWII game like CMBN.

In the interim, perhaps some sort of stealth tweak can be added to make entrenchments them harder to spot at a distance; it does seem like they're awfully easy to spot.

Also, there is still a problem with subtle brown lines giving away an unspotted trench location when viewed from higher level at a distance. Hopefully, this can be fixed eventually as well...

[RockinHarry]

Maybe BFC can code in "on the fly" foxhole and trench creation, like it does for craters, altering the terrain mesh during live play.

The FH/trench owner sees the terrain at original stage, while the opponent has to spot these terrain alterations at unmodified stage. Maybe the action spots containing foxholes/trench sections would be just "marked" for the opponent to spot and then altered to real terrain, once spotted (ain´t that the CMX1 way?) on the fly.

Obviously this requires to maintain 2 terrain databases (?) and I do not dare to think, how this can be coded with reasonable efforts. "Spotting" could still be abstracted with spotting probability %, to avoid a true 3D tracking/spotting necessity.

Just a quick idea and BFC surely had considered something like that before and declared no go.

[LongLeftFlank]

For the record, I hated the CMSF "trenches" -- far too wide to furnish decent cover (prefab mass graves)

-- I much prefer the CMBN object solution. Just trying to think of ways to make them more (historically) inconspicuous.

[Sublime]

Lol! they always seemed too wide to me too - mass graves is EXACTLY what they look like.

[RockinHarry]

Ain´t the ground mesh resolution now tighter in CMBN? Think there´s a bunch new code for altering the ground mesh (bunkers, foxholes, trenches, buildings, craters do alter the GM after setup game phase), that can be reused to create on the fly FH´s and trenches. Guess there´s a harcoded minimum width for any sort of trench for probable reasons of individual soldier path finding, positioning and such. Creating true 3D slit trenches that are not mass graves, will most likely result in pathfinding and related issues, when this part is not improved as well.