All-Around Defense

[RickAllen]

When infantry units are in a fort and you assign them to a defense posture,they do not fire as an all-around defense.  The men of entire unit fire in one direction.  Not sure what the solution to this would be, other than assigning different skirmisher units to different wall sections. 

[Hitorishizuka]

Fortifications in general are a trap and should almost never be used unless there's no other alternative. They're usually in bad spots where the enemy has cover to shoot back at them anyway, the units fire gets strung out instead of firing in volleys, and they widen the line so they take return fire from 3-4 brigades and lose the firefight and get pushed out anyway.

[Alavaria]

3 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Fortifications in general are a trap and should almost never be used unless there's no other alternative. They're usually in bad spots where the enemy has cover to shoot back at them anyway, the units fire gets strung out instead of firing in volleys, and they widen the line so they take return fire from 3-4 brigades and lose the firefight and get pushed out anyway.

I often wonder why the fortifications are placed in such "interesting" spots. Though the Ai doesn't always realize it can just stroll up and start meleeing.

[Hitorishizuka]

38 minutes ago, Alavaria said:

I often wonder why the fortifications are placed in such "interesting" spots. Though the Ai doesn't always realize it can just stroll up and start meleeing.

FWIW, fortifications do give a bit of melee defense which can discourage the AI. You'll see the same if you try to melee through the forts on, say, 2nd Bull Run that the CSA takes early. You can do it but the first unit you send in there at equal strength will probably also rout (and if you're unlucky, rout towards the Confeds 'cause things are dumb like that).

[sukha]

Devs need to realize this and fix it, start by decreasing forest cover so that it doesn't trump all cover in the game.

Cities have this problem as well, you easily get 100% in a city. If you garrison a city block however you don't get 100%, wth???

Then there is the problem of fortifications spreading your units so wide allowing for concentrated fire against them which needs to be a part of calculating the effectiveness of that cover.

plz fix, thx.

[Alavaria]

It looks like forts can also stretch out your unit's firing zone, so a single unit can shoot at targets in a larger area. Since they also can't run around while in a fortification, I wonder if it would be useful for those long-range skirmisher units (have line infantry in front of them in that tree cover etc to protect them).

 

Instead of their little dancing they can stay put and simply shoot shoot shoot.

Edited December 22, 2016 by Alavaria

[KaleRaven]

Buildings and forest should give a penalty to firepower as a tradeoff for cover. The advantage of actual prepared fortifications is that they provide cover while still allowing troops to fire effectively. Whereas dense forests or urban areas should make it difficult for units to concentrate fire without sacrificing their cover. 

[Hitorishizuka]

27 minutes ago, KaleRaven said:

Buildings and forest should give a penalty to firepower as a tradeoff for cover. The advantage of actual prepared fortifications is that they provide cover while still allowing troops to fire effectively. Whereas dense forests or urban areas should make it difficult for units to concentrate fire without sacrificing their cover. 

Supposedly they actually already do, from other posts I've seen.

[waldopbarnstormer]

Fortifications should provide the best cover and damage protection of all terrain types, woods should provide good cover but also reduce line of sight and reduce firepower to represent not every man being able to form in a firing line. Similarly buildings should provide very good cover and damage protection but reduce firepower.

[Andre Bolkonsky]

21 hours ago, KaleRaven said:

Buildings and forest should give a penalty to firepower as a tradeoff for cover. The advantage of actual prepared fortifications is that they provide cover while still allowing troops to fire effectively. Whereas dense forests or urban areas should make it difficult for units to concentrate fire without sacrificing their cover. 

Agreed/ 

 

21 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Supposedly they actually already do, from other posts I've seen.

Who actually speaks for the devs and provides this information to us? Or is there a guy who does that? 

[Hitorishizuka]

Mind, if fortifications get buffed, then something should probably be also done about directionality. If I take the effort to flank all the way around to the back of very strong fortifications, they should have 0 cover because what they're hiding behind is on the wrong side.

[RobWheat61]

15 hours ago, Hitorishizuka said:

Mind, if fortifications get buffed, then something should probably be also done about directionality. If I take the effort to flank all the way around to the back of very strong fortifications, they should have 0 cover because what they're hiding behind is on the wrong side.

But trenches or trench like fortifications would have to be treated differently in this case. If you flank around units in such fortifications, all they need to do is an about face in theory.

[Hitorishizuka]

18 minutes ago, RobWheat61 said:

But trenches or trench like fortifications would have to be treated differently in this case. If you flank around units in such fortifications, all they need to do is an about face in theory.

True, but I don't think many of those exist? Everything seems to be walls and barricades of some fashion.

[MikeK]

There is a lot of experience and writings from and about the 18th and 19th C character of maneuver and combat involving woods of various kinds and BUAs from small viilages up to large towns. E.g., that woods tend to have a much more predictable tactical character at the level of the brigade commander than do small towns where troops entering are in the streets and quite vulnerable to enemy counter-attacks to drive them back out, but given some little time to adapt suitable positions find suitable positions they might become very difficult and expensive to dislodge.