Depiction of foxholes in CM: Normandy

Michael Dorosh

der Spieß des Forums
Joined
Feb 6, 2004
Messages
15,733
Reaction score
2,765
Location
Calgary, AB
First name
Michael
Country
llCanada
It also fails the "it's a game, let's have fun" sniff test. And the "I only play Germans" test. He's still looking at it from the lens of the CM:SF "why would I want to play the bad guys, they suck" perspective.

That is true of the Syrians - they do suck, no one buys Syrian action figures or grew up reading about the cool camouflage uniforms and weapons and uniforms of the praetorian guard of the Syrian dictator, and the Syrians are a 2nd rate military that are not competitive in game terms anyway. That changes when the bad guys are the Germans, and the number of closet Nazis who want to get their mitts on a Normandy game and play as the Germans will be much higher than the number of guys who want to beat their brains out as the commander of the U.S. 8th Infantry Division slugging it out through the bocage. They want to control panzers and flammenwerferschweppers and other things with unGodly long names that they read about in Sgt. Rock.
 

Redwolf

Member # 3665
Joined
Sep 2, 2002
Messages
5,113
Reaction score
43
Location
MA, USA
Country
llUnited States
I read a lot of books on Normandy, other ETO books and generally WW2 narratives.

The grunts always have to find the Germany positions by getting fired at with machines guns.

And so do the tanks, who get fired at with PaKs, if not a Panther camouflaged so well they didn't see it before it fired either.

And the German positions are always very well built out, pretty much impossible to crack with the firepower the infantry has on it's own. And so heavily camouflaged that the attacker sometimes lose track where they were and have to find them by being fired on again.

In addition there is the famous incident where some American infantry was complaining to the Air Corps about being bombed by Germans too easily when those showed up. The Air Corps sent back photos of German lines and American lines that are famous for showing nothing from the air for the Germans but look like Las Vegas for the American positions.

All the rest is just waffle.

Maybe the Army Air Corps actually spots some fortifications, but they sure don't tell the grunts. What's now? Combat Mission the game assuming that there's perfect communication from airplane to infantry company commander but none whatsoever when directing airstrikes?

We all know this will end with Charles putting FoW fortifications in. Hack or not.
 
Last edited:

jwb3

Just this guy, you know?
Joined
Feb 21, 2007
Messages
4,393
Reaction score
260
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Country
llUnited States
Much as I enjoy being around you "kvetching grannies", I definitely think you're overdoing it at this point.

First, Steve has presented a pretty good, thorough, thought-out explanation of what the situation is.

It rests on certain assumptions about computing power and programming abilities, some of which may be questionable -- but I for one am not in a position to prove them wrong.

It then points out that BFC has to live in the realm of the possible -- which is obviously true -- and that sometimes tradeoffs have to be made. One can disagree about which tradeoffs matter, but I think we can all agree that they do exist. It's quite possible that if they had planned from the beginning for FOW trenches, we'd be complaining about some other major tradeoff that had to be made instead.


Second, if they can figure out a way to get foxholes right, but not trenches, then I can live with that. While you can laugh all you want about Steve's comment about aerial recon, and come up with plenty of examples of well-hidden trenches in Normandy, Steve is right that you can do a reasonable approximation of the Normandy campaign with only FOW foxholes and non-FOW trenches. At least as reasonable an approximation as you could do in CMBO... which after all had no trenches at all!


Like you all, I want it all to be perfect; I want it all to be right. But no matter how hard they try, it's never going to be all good. To me the question is whether they put in "due diligence", and if Charles does go back and make a solid effort, of the kind he so often does, to solve this problem, then I'm willing to accept that diligence and move on.

Even if Steve turns around and presents the results to us with the usual helpings of "You're all jerks" and "We planned this all along".


John
 

Michael Dorosh

der Spieß des Forums
Joined
Feb 6, 2004
Messages
15,733
Reaction score
2,765
Location
Calgary, AB
First name
Michael
Country
llCanada
I tend to agree with you John; trenches and foxholes are two different things.
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
A tactical game without proper prepared positions? You can't get around it. All Steve is doing is attempting to paper over a very poor decision, something he has a habit of.
 

Michael Dorosh

der Spieß des Forums
Joined
Feb 6, 2004
Messages
15,733
Reaction score
2,765
Location
Calgary, AB
First name
Michael
Country
llCanada
A tactical game without proper prepared positions? You can't get around it. All Steve is doing is attempting to paper over a very poor decision, something he has a habit of.
It's true, but it's also coincidental in this case that if he can get the foxholes to work, as John points out, the trenches will be an annoyance but one that you can live with. In fact, if I were to do a scenario on Buron, and German trenches were somehow subject to FOW, I would probably come up with some way in the briefing to make them known to the Allied player from game start anyway. :D
 

Redwolf

Member # 3665
Joined
Sep 2, 2002
Messages
5,113
Reaction score
43
Location
MA, USA
Country
llUnited States
I don't care about foxholes versus trenches too much. CMBB/CMAK trenches were useless for movement under fire, so they were just glorified foxholes anyway.

I only ever talked about some kind of defender position that offers protection from enemy fire, allows you to fire out and offers some concealment incl. FoW. I don't care what shape or form it has.

Now, if proper trench systems are an option we can talk about those. I have not tested CM:SF trenches to see whether they fix the movement problem.
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
It's true, but it's also coincidental in this case that if he can get the foxholes to work, as John points out, the trenches will be an annoyance but one that you can live with. In fact, if I were to do a scenario on Buron, and German trenches were somehow subject to FOW, I would probably come up with some way in the briefing to make them known to the Allied player from game start anyway. :D
It would actually make for some interesting scenario choices if you could make prepared positions visible in certain circumstances.
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
With CMx1 I hardly ever used trenches. I could probably count the times I used them on one hand. Foxholes and bunkers with FOW would do fine for the defender.
 

Redwolf

Member # 3665
Joined
Sep 2, 2002
Messages
5,113
Reaction score
43
Location
MA, USA
Country
llUnited States
With CMx1 I hardly ever used trenches. I could probably count the times I used them on one hand. Foxholes and bunkers with FOW would do fine for the defender.
The problem with CMx1 foxholes was they they didn't offer enough protection in light terrain.

45% exposure was the rating in open ground.

Get a photo of yourself standing up. Use photoshop to mark the upper 45% of your body. Then ask yourself: if I was in a foxhole, and people were shooting at me, would I expose that much of my body?

Trenches fixed that.
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
The problem with CMx1 foxholes was they they didn't offer enough protection in light terrain.

45% exposure was the rating in open ground.

Get a photo of yourself standing up. Use photoshop to mark the upper 45% of your body. Then ask yourself: if I was in a foxhole, and people were shooting at me, would I expose that much of my body?

Trenches fixed that.
The downside was they were pretty expensive and were a bit more limiting in terms of placement. I always preferred the flexibility of foxholes, even with a bit more exposure. But I agree it would be nice to have them offer proper protection.
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
The fact is that the more elaborate and involved a defensive system is, the greater the chance that the enemy will know about it. Even if it isn't known before the first patrols hit it, it will be known soon after. And since you can't just pick up and move an in-depth defensive system, once it's location is known then it's going to be known to whomever is assaulting it.
What absolute nonsense. No one bothered digging in. They just lazed under a bush and hoped for the best. No such thing as camouflage. It was totally uncommon for people to be surprised by defensive works.

What is he smoking?

OBVIOUSLY not 100% of the time all the time, but more often than not. Add to that the fact that more often than not the Germans didn't defend from trenches, and the Allies effectively NEVER defended from trenches (not in the Normandy timeframe anyway), trenches are really not a big deal. Or not any more of a big deal than all kinds of other things which CM has either never simulated well or only simulated as a peripheral feature.
Hill 112?
 

Michael Dorosh

der Spieß des Forums
Joined
Feb 6, 2004
Messages
15,733
Reaction score
2,765
Location
Calgary, AB
First name
Michael
Country
llCanada
What absolute nonsense. No one bothered digging in. They just lazed under a bush and hoped for the best. No such thing as camouflage. It was totally uncommon for people to be surprised by defensive works.

What is he smoking?



Hill 112?
He's right, if he's making a distinction between trenches and foxholes/fighting positions, which is what he's doing. Trenches (by which I mean long, First World War style communications-style fortifications) were relatively uncommon, and he's right when he says the Allies didn't make use of them and that the Germans rarely had time to dig them. Far more common were two or three man fighting positions, even for units dug-in for days at a time.
 

Sgt_Kelly

Member
Joined
Sep 9, 2002
Messages
296
Reaction score
6
Location
Ghent
Country
llBelgium
Ok, that excuse works for Normandy (although those who have a burning wish to recreate the Brecourt Manor scenario are pretty stuffed...) and arguably the entire ETO, but wasn't this engine supposed to be able to handle all wars regardless of time and place ?

How can you claim to have produced the universal wargame engine if it struggles to do defensive positions properly ?
 

Michael Dorosh

der Spieß des Forums
Joined
Feb 6, 2004
Messages
15,733
Reaction score
2,765
Location
Calgary, AB
First name
Michael
Country
llCanada
Ok, that excuse works for Normandy (although those who have a burning wish to recreate the Brecourt Manor scenario are pretty stuffed...) and arguably the entire ETO, but wasn't this engine supposed to be able to handle all wars regardless of time and place ?

How can you claim to have produced the universal wargame engine if it struggles to do defensive positions properly ?
They knew where the trenches were at Brecourt - they had reconnoitered the position before hand. So the FOW issue doesn't apply there either. Nor does it matter to my Buron example.

What does matter are two things:

  • the 3D depiction of trenches, as mentioned by Rule_303 - an 8m ditch, essentially, which is one thing, and
  • the actual modelling of the trench, which is another "under the hood" thing in many ways. I've also not seen troops use trenches to run through while under fire, which you would think would be an advantage to a trench - duck under the parapet and leopard crawl down the length of it impervious to enemy fire in order to shift positions, kind of the point of having a trench to begin with.
 

thewood

Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2004
Messages
2,594
Reaction score
12
Location
Boston
Country
llUnited States
There are still a lot of issues with pathfinding and trenches. You can plot a line down the length of a trench and because of action spots, half your squad ends up running and stopping outside the trench. That's how it was in 1.10. I haven't tried it in 1.11.
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
He's right, if he's making a distinction between trenches and foxholes/fighting positions, which is what he's doing. Trenches (by which I mean long, First World War style communications-style fortifications) were relatively uncommon, and he's right when he says the Allies didn't make use of them and that the Germans rarely had time to dig them. Far more common were two or three man fighting positions, even for units dug-in for days at a time.
There's a real difference between one or two man foxhole positions and slit trenches.

I don't know if Redwolf touched on it, but the current representation of trenches is more like ditches. And if as Redwolf suggests cover is taken direct from the 3D terrain model there isn't the same amount of overhead cover as you'd expect from a proper slit trench because of that.
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
There are still a lot of issues with pathfinding and trenches. You can plot a line down the length of a trench and because of action spots, half your squad ends up running and stopping outside the trench. That's how it was in 1.10. I haven't tried it in 1.11.
I remember seeing that in an early build in a QB. I'm disappointed to hear it still works like that.
 

Michael Dorosh

der Spieß des Forums
Joined
Feb 6, 2004
Messages
15,733
Reaction score
2,765
Location
Calgary, AB
First name
Michael
Country
llCanada
There's a real difference between one or two man foxhole positions and slit trenches.
They're exactly the same thing, with different names. The problem may be one of terminology. It is possible to build a fortified foxhole or trench with overhead cover, but the name stays the same.

"Slit trench" was a term used by Americans, incidentally, to refer to a latrine trench. :)
 

Sirocco

Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2008
Messages
255
Reaction score
0
Location
England
Country
ll
It may be a difference in terminology.



That's what I'd call more like a foxhole.



A slit trench. Note better overhead cover.
 
Last edited:
Top