Reply To: Woods and Streams

[invisible officer]

The problems with woods in games are old, as old as modern wood farming post WW II.  It starts with wrong ideas about woods being a light problem for movement and vision.

 

Modern men are used to the cleaned industrial woods of today.  Hardly any undergrowth.  Like city parks.  WW II was fought in old style woods.  Some thick undergroth was normal. The edge of such a forrest was like a wall. No way to look into it. And the trees closer to each other.

And in WW II there had been woods that had been even more xxx. Like the Reichswald in Western Germany. Allied soldiers, that knew the jungls of Far East, had been astonished about that European Jungle.  No way to move away from the paths and zero visibility.

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Another wrong idea is the idea of woods giving cover. In fact HE bursts on trees have a much increased effect on human flesh.   So to do an ambush at woods edge (like that on Irish Guards in A bridge to far movie) is a stupid idea.  Worse, the edge of  a forrest is easy to range in by artillery. So German AT and infantry  units would have taken a camouflaged dug in position   in front of that wood.

 

In Reichswald they hacked paths with vision cover on top, giving access to bunkers built to control the bigger paths.

 

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I like the BA ways to give the gamer wide options.   Not reducing the gamer to slaves of mechanics.