Opinions and ideas wanted - cupolas

[pdoktar]

I first thought about multiple because of the close assault fields of fire. But the as your close assult need to be done three times, the cupolas will be too expensive in satchel charges etc. to crack. Also a big issue is that AI has three times the shots for a single simulated cupola.

Making it a 360 turret and using blocking terrain to give it a real field of view is more realistic. Also you can imagine that in a close assault scenario the cupola defenders might be a bit more combat worthy than waiting for certain death because they can´t fire back at the flanking enemy.

[PatG]

A couple of things. First, if you go with a turret, you can reduce the overall effectiveness of the MGs compensating for the better field of fire with reduced effect. If you go with mutiple fixed units, consider splitting the total crew for the installation between each unit and possibly adjusting the armour rating, crew size and survivability rating to make each unit more or less fragile as needed.

The bigger consideration is how you plan to use the OOB. If it is only for scenarios, then the problem of extra demo charges etc. is eliminated as you can add them to the opponent forces with the scenario editor. Terrain masking is very useful here as you control the placement of the fortifications. If it is to be a general purpose OOB then things get a bit more complicated since you cannot control if a player will use terrain masking and you are dealing with stock opponent forces. If it is to be a special purpose fortification OOB then some of the unit problems are reduced but you are in for alot more work especially if you start changing graphics (though this would be my preferred approach).

Finally worry less about duplicating a particular fort exactly and focus on getting the effect right. Terrain masking is a good example already discussed. If a real life engineer platoon reduced a similar fort in about 10 minutes, then that result is what you should work toward rather than worrying about getting all the fire arcs exactly right.