Opinions and ideas wanted - cupolas

[Marek_Tucan]

I am currently toying with WW2 OOB's, namely tring to finetune my variant of Czechoslovakian OOB. Of course I have tried to model the border fortifications as gwell as is possible, but now I am standing against a problem.
The problem is called cupola. Something like this:


There were three basic types used:
Observation cupola (ZP)
LMG Cupola (ZN)
and MMG cupola (KD, KM)
The last one doesn't pose any problem, as its fields of fire were usually rather narrow, but the first ones are a bit problematic.
Typical observation cupola got a field of view 120-180 degrees, LMG cupolas ranged from 120 to 360 degrees.
So, how would it be better to model them?
Since field of view of a vixed unit in SP is 60 degrees, there are (basically) two options:
1) Rotating turret
2) multiple fixed units (to simulate say cupola with 180° field of fire, you'd have to have three separate units facing at different directions)

Pluses and minuses of each solution are cler. Turret allows one weapon to have desired field of fire, but OTOH allows it to have even greater field of fire than is possible, what comes in as a problem esp. in close-in combat where even terrain modelling blocking "undesirable" arcs doesn't work (not to mention other problems). Multiple units allow to create field of fire shaped as needed, but OTOH they mean more guns than IRL and offer possibility to fire in more directions than would one weapon realistically allow. This can be cured by player by switching off weapons in momentarily unused directions, however AI will happily blaze all guns. EDIT: Not to mention that knocking out one "section" doesn't automatically incapacitate the others.

So now I am asking y'all to state your opinions. Which solution is better IYO? I am inclining to the solution 2 but I'll be glad to see your takes on the matter.

[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.