Artillery shooting through woods

[Saddletank]

Hi NSD.

I was playing an MP game last night and had a brigade posted on level ground near a large forest that was about 300 yards wide. They kept getting hit by artillery all game and I couldn't work out where the fire was coming from. As the game ended and we defeated the enemy, pushing past the wood, I discovered two enemy batteries were posted on the very far edge of it. They had been shooting through several hundred yards of forest over level ground for a the best part of an hour.

I am certain that woods in Gettysburg blocked line of fire, guns would only shoot a short distance inside woods. Why is Waterloo different? I'm concerned in case Waterloo is based on an old version of Gettysburg before this issue was addressed in that game.

Thanks for any comments.

[Little Powell]

Not really sure what to tell you on this one. The woods properties in WL are setup exactly as they are in GB, same visibility, same height, defensive values, etc. Woods are woods, although some areas are less dense than others which could be the issue.

[Saddletank]

The enemy guns were inside the NE corner of the wood and shooting through it out of the W side about 300 or 400 yards away. We were using a mod but that doesn't affect the visibility and the same values of a similar mod in GB prevented artillery shooting through more than about 150 yards of woods. Its hard to properly test these things because they sometimes happen and sometimes don't.

What I do know is that in an early version of GB artillery could shoot through woods as though they didn't exist. Later that was fixed in a patch that blocked LoS through woods. Now I see the kind of thing I haven't seen except in an old version of GB and I was bothered in case you guys had built WL on an old build of GB that had this issue in it.

Can you categorically assure me that isn't the case? If so, I'll check again and try to send you a save game so you can look and see if its something obvious like a gap in the trees or something else basic I'm missing.

Thanks for the response though.

[Little Powell]

Ok, I asked Norb about this. It does have to do with the visibility setting in the map CSV. Some of the light woods have a visibility of 200 yards, which could explain how artillery was shooting at targets if the woodlot was 200 or less yards wide. If you can get a save showing the problem, I'll look into it further and see if any adjustments are needed.

[Saddletank]

Cheers, LP, thanks for looking into this. It was actually the Antietam AM map, the big square-ish wood just west of town.

http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php ... u-Wood.jpg

The wood is circled. The enemy guns were where the black dot is with a direction of fire indicated by the red arrow. I am sure the range was well over 200 or 300 yards since they were shooting roundshot and not canister. We were using the KS mod that has much longer canister ranges than the stock game.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

I was the recipient of AI artillery fire from guns on the far side of more than 400yd. of forest. However the guns were far away from the trees so it may have been a case of the AI thinking the guns were above the forest and shooting over them. They really weren't. Do obstacles like trees have any vertical extent in the LOS calculations? In other words are they 3 dimensional or do they only block the LOS if the gun is at the same level as the base of the tree?

[Jim]

Object height, including trees is defined in mapname.csv in column F of the Terrain Table Brush section of the file. All of the Woods types on the Antietam AM map have a height of 100 ft, orchard has a height of 50 ft. On the original Ant.bmp map, those woods have a CSV value of 40, which has a visibility range of 100 yards. If the color on the mapname.bmp file or the entry in the mapname.csv file have been altered then you will have to see what your new values tell you. According to Google Earth, the target site is around 20 ft higher than the origin so shootover issues should not have been in play here. The artillery LOS calculations are supposed to include the height parameter for intervening terrain.

-Jim

[Marching Thru Georgia]

It would be worthwhile to check that part of the code and see if the height of intervening objects is coded correctly. A problem there would explain a number of odd observations.

[Little Powell]

We would need a save. So if one of you can grab one that clearly shows the issue (please no mods, use WL maps) then we'll look into it further. Thanks.

[Marching Thru Georgia]

We don't play the stock game. I'm sure you can find appropriate terrain and set up the conditions described and make an appropriate save.