Combat Mission: Normandy will not have FOW for entrenchments

[Michael Dorosh]

Per the Derek Smart comparison, more on Steve's discussions at his own forum, this time with regard to entrenchments, and the problem that trenches and bunkers are visible to both sides from the moment any scenario starts in the new game engine.


http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1104759

Battlefront.com

Sergei's comment about visually covering up things is a good place to recover something I've said several times in this thread:

Quote:
I don't think it's impossible to do either. It's more a question of how much work, ie. how long time it will take from Charles to implement something.
All of these things we're talking about are possible given enough programming time and computing resources. When we looked into this years ago we decided that we didn't have enough of either to build it into the initial version of CMx2. Here we are several years later and we still don't see us having enough of either to do it.

As I said a few pages before, does anybody know of any 3D game that has FOW terrain that modifies the mesh/physics? I can't think of a single game that does but can think of dozens that don't.

Oh, and to get back to something from a few pages ago...

I completely agree that from a game standpoint giving the player the ability to place defensive works, like trenches, during Setup is far more important than having terrain FOW. We've always understood these things to be separate issues and, thankfully, from a coding/design standpoint they are indeed separate things. Placing defensive works involves a lot of UI coding but doesn't impact the "world" once the game start, which means it's a lot easier to do than FOW terrain. That's why one is on the schedule and one isn't

Steve

Other Means:

Giving the player the ability to place trenches is nullified by them not being hidden to his opponent.

I think everyone would accept borg spotting for terrain - it's explainable in real life by them never moving.

But the ability to hide good cover where the enemy doesn't expect it and can't see it is extremely valuable.

Steve:

Other Means,

Giving the player the ability to place trenches is nullified by them not being hidden to his opponent.

Not at all. The primary GAME reason to set up ones own trenches is to set up a defensive strategy that is unique and customized to the overall defensive plan. With fixed trenches, like we have in CM:SF, you are either forced to conform (to some degree) to the scenario designer's defensive concept or to purposefully not use trenches that the game provides you with.

Also, it's faulty logic to presume that having trenches initially hidden will actually mean something for a specific scenario. I've played plenty of CMx1 games where I spot the trenches in plenty of time to react to them. True enough, it's an advantage to know about them before the game, but a good offensive plan will work no matter if this is the case or not. Therefore, practically speaking hidden trenches might not make any difference. Plus, I've played plenty of CMx1 games where I spotted trenches within the first seconds of the first turn. Might as well be Setup Phase since I, as the attacker, have plenty of time to use that information to my advantage.

I think everyone would accept borg spotting for terrain - it's explainable in real life by them never moving.

I agree. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen because it doesn't make FOW terrain any more viable as a feature. It's like being on a fixed income of £30,000 a year and being offered a castle in Cornwall for 75% off the £2,000,000 starting price. It's a Hell of a big discount, but it doesn't make it any more practical to own. Well, at least not since the mortgage meltdown

Steve

RSColonel_131st:

Originally Posted by Battlefront.com
Not at all. The primary GAME reason to set up ones own trenches is to set up a defensive strategy that is unique and customized to the overall defensive plan.

If the opponent can see my unique positioned trenches, then he can figure out my customized defense plan before it hits him hard. To try something "out of the box" it doesn't help when the other player knows about it immediatly.

Originally Posted by Battlefront.com
True enough, it's an advantage to know about them before the game, but a good offensive plan will work no matter if this is the case or not. Therefore, practically speaking hidden trenches might not make any difference.

I find this reasoning funny. Yes, a good offensive plan will work no matter what. But if you are playing an opponent with a bad offensive plan, it will much more likely work if he knows your setup beforehand - so you are basically granting a handicap to less capable opponents, just because a good opponent would win either way?

The whole point of Human vs. Human play is that one of the two will likely have the less quality tactics. Assuming your opponent will have an infallible attack plan anyway and thus it doesn't matter how well hidden your defense is, is akin to saying you'll lose anyway.

I'm not seeing Steve's logic in any of this - he's working extremely hard to defend not doing the work of hiding entrenchments (which will also, one hopes, include individual foxholes/slit trenches and also one hopes shell-scrapes, which are shallower foxholes.)

He's basically saying it's too much work, a good player will just find a way to defeat them anyway, and who cares because no other game has them either!

That's like saying why make your bed in the morning because you'll just unmake it at the end of the day, and in 1999 they could have also said why bother making a 3D squad-based game, because no one else has one on the market either...

In a sense, he's right that you can have a game in which all the defences are known to both players at game start - but you lose the ability to call it a realistic sim. Again - why brag about the realistic ballistics info and armour penetration data in that instance, and then have a simplistic "game" model as far as the strategy part goes?

In essence, you're removing the ability of the scenario designer to model any situation in which prior reconnaissance hasn't been done.

Redwolf raised the point in another thread that the trenches in the first generation game engine weren't correctly modeled either - you could hide them, but they didn't modify morale or permit units to move in them while under fire - i.e. grant real world benefits to the occupants. The trend continues. Only this time, the real world benefit being denied to the player is camouflage and concealment.

 

[Redwolf]

Well...

CMBO has placeable foxholes subject to FoW.

CMBB and CMAK had placeable trenches subject to FoW.

They didn't like the graphics hacks they had to do, I understand that. But they picked looks over realism and should admit that.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

But they picked looks over realism and should admit that.

Ok - Why?

 

[Redwolf]

The looks problem with CMBB style trenches (which also solves the FoW problem) is that they do not modify the ground. There is no 3D hole in the ground.

CMBB trenches are just black carpet on top of the old, unmodified terrain, and soldiers' 3D models in the carpet are modified, and for combat purposes assumed to have more cover and concealment.

I admit that the hit on graphical artistry from this hack would be worse in CMx2. They think they have to have a real hole in the ground, which is very hard to cover up FoW wise.

But I also know that no placeable foxholes and trenches in Normandy means that defending in creative ways will be - well - impossible. I wrote a longer post about it on the BFC forum, I should copy it over.

Let's not forget that CMBB's trenches were half-backen, too.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

The problem with CMBB style trenches is that they do not modify the ground. There is no 3D hole in the ground.

CMBB trenches are just black carpet on top of the old, unmodified terrain, and soldiers' 3D models in the carpet are modified, and for combat purposes assumed to have more cover and concealment.

I admit that the hit on graphical artistry from this hack would be worse in CMx2. They think they have to have a real hole in the ground, which is very hard to cover up FoW wise.

But I also know that no placeable foxholes and trenches in Normandy means that defending in creative ways will be - well - impossible. I wrote a longer post about it on the BFC forum, I should copy it over.

Let's not forget that CMBB's trenches were half-backen, too.

No - I mean why should they admit it?

Yeah, copy it over, I'd like to see it.

I edited my post while you were replying - I mentioned your comments about trenches, specifically:

Redwolf raised the point in another thread that the trenches in the first generation game engine weren't correctly modeled either - you could hide them, but they didn't modify morale or permit units to move in them while under fire - i.e. grant real world benefits to the occupants. The trend continues. Only this time, the real world benefit being denied to the player is camouflage and concealment.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

What I don't get, and this was raised on the other board so this isn't original to me - I mean, it didn't occur to me til it was raised there - is this.

They can model an M-1 Abrams with a zillion polygons and make it move around the battlefield, and make it appear and disappear at will.

They can model a building on top of the ground with a x number of polygons, then blow it up.

Why is it so hard to model a hole in the ground, which doesn't move?

I mean, Steve admits it is doable, they just don't have the time to do it correctly and don't feel it is worth the effort. Is this just Steve being Steve again?

Why even talk about it this early - the game has barely even entered production - all you can do at this stage is dash hopes that the game will be any good and disenchant people.

 

[Redwolf]

Why is it so hard to model a hole in the ground, which doesn't move?

It would be no big problem to make trenches like they have in CMx2 now placeable at setup time, if you are willing to "recompile" some LoS data structures in the first turn to adjust for the reshaped terrain.

But making the hole subject to LOS means that you have to

• show the old terrain to the attacker
• show the new terrain to the defender
• until the attacker is in LOS and spots the deformed terrain, then switch

It's doable, kinda.

But since the hole in the ground actually has units in it, in places where the old terrain is solid there's a huge dependency graph you gotta build there so that things stay consistent and you don't get mole people soldiers and the like.

This is why the hack with the CMBB trenches, which were just carpets, is so elegant. Ugly but gets the job done with low coding overhead.

I still think you could do the carpet trick in CMx2 if you would just assume they are very narrow slit trenches. They will have to do that trick for foxholes anyway, so just make 100 feet wide foxholes.

You can have the current non-FoW scenario-designer-placed things in addition.

 

[Redwolf]

Here is the quote I promised. I posted this on the BFC forum in the thread about FoW problems:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84640&page=15

I'm not doing the planning for CMx2:Normandy, so I can't speculate about whether placeable foxholes and placeable (lets call them slit) trenches are in.

I'm just making conversion in a discussion about what features people deem highly required for a Normandy game. Since this thread is mostly hardcore CMers and no "potential" customer who could be scared off will ever wander into it I don't think people should get too emotional. It's not that people posted a CAPS LOCK thread title with NORMANDY WITH NO FOW OMFG!!!111

Anyway, the point is, if they aren't planned for Normandy I urge to reconsider.

The backslash from semi-mainstream reviewers (those that now mostly fairly evaluate Marines) if you are missing placeable/FoW foxholes and some kind of "movement-enabled long foxhole" or whatever you want to call the small trenches would be bad. I don't think you want that kind of bad press. And as the transition from CM:SF 1.0 to Marine 1:10 has shown, you never shed the reputation built by the initial release.

In my wargame experience, playing and trolling forums, people will strictly expect that in a Normandy game the German defender can dig in so hard that the Allied player needs to be creative to get them out. It is absolutely required that the German player can place their units at will and not has to choose between always visible trenches he can't move and no protection from fortifications. You need placeable fortifications that are only revealed if the Allied player either gets out of his way to scout them out or of the occupants open fire.

The nastiness of a Pak40 hidden where you really didn't expect it is a major part of what made CMx1 a great game. You would ruin it if the defender cannot place it freely (pre-spotted trenches only) and/or if free placement has no fortification bonus.

It's about creativity. In a Normandy game the creativity initiative is on the German player in playing out some unexpected defensive setup freely, without unrealistic penalties for cover or FoW. Then the creativity of the attacker kicks in dealing with it.

And if I might say so, the lack of this kind of creativity when defending is what makes CM:SF so much less fun to play as Syrians. It's not that just the Syrians are weak. It's worse that the game doesn't allow you to get creative in setting up your defense.

 

[Redwolf]

Ok - Why?

The specific reason why they will at least not have FoW trenches, and maybe not even placeable trenches, while they had both in CMBB, is that the finer detailed terrain in the 3D model would make the "carpet trick" of CMBB trench stick out too much. It would look goofy.

If you don't do the carpet trick, if you break up the 3D ground, you have a lot of trouble at your hand. Even without FoW you would need to do recomutation of what appears to be precomputed LOS helpers for maps in CMx2.

I explained above why FoW is real nightmare for breakups in the 3D ground.

People like me think that the carpet trick would work well enough, even for looks, if you just make the trenches narrow enough. It's not that this game is going to compete with large-budget "for-looks" games anyway, what's the point of compromising realism.

Let's not forget that trenches in CMBB were half-baken and foxholes were compromised because Steve gave the latter a very low cover benefit (in open ground). It think it was 45% or so exposure. Place yourself behind some kind of cover. Imagine somebody shoots at you. Imagine you want to shoot back, so you can't completely dive into the cover. Would you expose 45% of your body. Make a photo of you and mark how much 45% is. You'd cover your balls, but that's about it. Not realistic. If I knew people would come over the ridge trying to kill me I'd dig deeper than that. I don't think you see any photos of real-world defenses where soldiers have foxholes that only cover 55% of their bodies.

 

[Feofilakt]

The specific reason why they will at least not have FoW trenches, and maybe not even placeable trenches, while they had both in CMBB, is that the finer detailed terrain in the 3D model would make the "carpet trick" of CMBB trench stick out too much. It would look goofy.

If you don't do the carpet trick, if you break up the 3D ground, you have a lot of trouble at your hand. Even without FoW you would need to do recomutation of what appears to be precomputed LOS helpers for maps in CMx2.

I explained above why FoW is real nightmare for breakups in the 3D ground.

People like me think that the carpet trick would work well enough, even for looks, if you just make the trenches narrow enough. It's not that this game is going to compete with large-budget "for-looks" games anyway, what's the point of compromising realism.

Let's not forget that trenches in CMBB were half-baken and foxholes were compromised because Steve gave the latter a very low cover benefit (in open ground). It think it was 45% or so exposure. Place yourself behind some kind of cover. Imagine somebody shoots at you. Imagine you want to shoot back, so you can't completely dive into the cover. Would you expose 45% of your body. Make a photo of you and mark how much 45% is. You'd cover your balls, but that's about it. Not realistic. If I knew people would come over the ridge trying to kill me I'd dig deeper than that. I don't think you see any photos of real-world defenses where soldiers have foxholes that only cover 55% of their bodies.

One thing I don't get is that if you look at the original explanations for WE-GO they were along the lines of "We need greater fidelity to reality to make a suitable wargame, therefore we will calculate the mechanics of the game in 60 second intervals to provide said fidelity to reality". This, at the time, was largely due the limitations of processing power during the late 90s. What I don't understand is given the CPU power we have available nowadays, wouldn't it be possible to create an even greater fidelity to reality -and- a similar scale if BFC used proper 60 second intervals as opposed to real time and real-time-with-pauses-every-60-seconds.

Also, the foxhole thing is a little irritating. I generally bypass that limitation by sticking to other sorts of terrain, however.

 

[Kineas]

What I don't understand is given the CPU power we have available nowadays, wouldn't it be possible to create an even greater fidelity to reality -and- a similar scale if BFC used proper 60 second intervals as opposed to real time and real-time-with-pauses-every-60-seconds.

Bingo. But in the meantime BFC's strategy changed. Now their designs are purchase driven, and the products will slowly converge to the Company of Heroes-style.

 

[KG_Jag]

It's becoming all too clear that Battlefront is drifting farther and farther away from the core of CM x 1. My interest in CM x 2 wanes with the growing distance. While not surprising--given the last year or two, it is disappointing.

 

[Redwolf]

Well, it seems there will at least be placeable foxholes subject to FoW, equivalent to CMBO. I hope they offer realistic protection.

Since CMBB trenches were only half implemented I suppose we don't lose that much.

But a disappointment none the less. A creative, nasty defensive setup with a forward ambush and then falling back will be impossible, basically, unless there happens to be east-west wood strips.

You can't say that it's the same as CMBO since you had no difficulties falling back in CMBO due to the infantry/MG bugs

 

[Sirocco]

I still don't understand why this wasn't coded into the new engine from the start. With so much riding on it it feels as if the bare minimum of time was spent on thinking it through. You can't argue resources when you're having to spend time going back over code to make it do what it should have done in the first place. And I don't think that's at all a case of perfect hindsight.

What size foxholes will be available for placement? Enough to conceal a PaK? If that is possible it might be a workaround for not having complete entrenchments. And what about bunkers? Will those still be in plain view?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

What size foxholes will be available for placement?

1:1 of course.

But it brings up a great point I've mentioned here a couple of times. Not all slit trenches/foxholes are created equal. A shellscrape is not the same as a foxhole is not the same as a two-man fighting position. If we're going to get serious about this most serious of sims - as the fans of the game are calling this and as BFC is marketing it - I'd expect there to be some distinctions drawn.

But it won't happen because there's no user-friendly way to pass the information down on what the cover percentages are for a squad squatting in the things, no matter what kind they are - certainly not in real time - and what happens if you set up a 6 man British infantry section in slit trenches, and an American 11 man rifle squad comes up to relieve them in place?

Who jumps in the holes? Do we then quibble about why the BAR man is sub-optimally placed?

And when a German infantry squad fires on them, do they really calculate every bullet and where it is going, and what benefits do those 5 Americans lying in the dirt get to their morale? As opposed to the ones in the holes? In CM:BB trenches didn't provide a morale benefit at all, according to RW. Did foxholes?

Will be interesting to see how it plays out. I expect a lot will simply stay under the hood - and for good reason.

 

[Redwolf]

I still don't understand why this wasn't coded into the new engine from the start. With so much riding on it it feels as if the bare minimum of time was spent on thinking it through. You can't argue resources when you're having to spend time going back over code to make it do what it should have done in the first place. And I don't think that's at all a case of perfect hindsight.

There are two ways to do trenches with FoW:

1) modifying the 3D terrain, aka creating an actual depression in the ground. That's a nightmare even without FoW because you need to modify existing terrain and recalculate pre-computed LOS helpers you might have done (I think CMx2 does).

With FoW you have to show the original terrain to the attacker and the new terrain to the defender until such a time when the attacker can see it. Even when you use Borg spotting that's a nightmare because objects that might be moving in that area have to behave accordingly, e.g. vehicles driving over it.

2) use "carpet" trenches that are just 2D markers graphically and provide cover and concealment just by abstraction.

That's ugly

I think that option 2) is a must-have but others disaggree.

What size foxholes will be available for placement? Enough to conceal a PaK? If that is possible it might be a workaround for not having complete entrenchments. And what about bunkers? Will those still be in plain view?

Do we have actual confirmation as to whether foxholes with FoW are in?

Somebody remind me, I honestly don't remember, does CM:SF have them?

 

[Sirocco]

SOmebody remind me, I honestly don't remember, does CM:SF have them?

I never saw a hidden foxhole in CM:SF. I'm actually puzzled how hidden foxholes could be handled with the CMx2 engine and not trenches.

I can't help but think Charles started work on it before the team had time to really go into great depth into what it needed to actually do, hence the lack of proper prepared positions. That's the only thing that makes sense. After CMx1 and how poor trenches looked when it came to making the engine look good that would have to be a pretty high priority, given their tactical importance and a core game feature.