It's not a flaw. It is a product of current technology. Does anyone here have any idea how many trees and bushes are on an MA terrain? It's in the tens of thousands (the largest object group in the game). If the game had to keep track of every single tree or bush that was knocked over, the server would probably assplode. It's simply not doable if we want to keep all the other things we have in game. It's not a flaw, it's just way too much for the game to keep track of. A rough estimate of a 512x512 mile MA terrain is 30,000 to 40,000 trees & shrubs.
To be precise trees and bushes are not objects. They are like clutter....... If they were objects they would be individually capable of being set hard or soft, destructible, non destructible.
Clutter can also be set hard or soft. But only as a generic type.
We have hard trees and soft grass and small bushes. Indeed parts of the trees are soft and other parts hard.
The next trick IMO would be to make clutter react to "masks".
One type of mask maybe defined as a shell crater where by all clutter within the crater is switched off.
Another mask may be defined by vehicle tracks whereby all clutter within a set of vehicle tracks is switched off.
Having established this principle then we have to make clutter react to a form of "damage". This does not have to be the same as object damage in game.
We could imagine various damage thresholds..... Let's assume 3 for this purpose.
No damage> light damage> medium damage> heavy damage.
Craters due to bombs or shells or the area between and just infront of a Tiger2 tracks would impart heavy damage..... Removing all clutter within this mask.
A jeep would only impart light damage capable of removing light bushes just infront of and between its tracks.
A T34 might only impart medium damage capable of removing small trees in front of and between the tracks.
To the player a jeep driver would hit and bounce off small and large trees as it does now. A Tiger 2 would seem to drive through all trees masking off and removing the tree as it fell between its tracks. The T34 would still bounce off the large tree but drive through the small tree.
The next question is how and when this clutter would re appear. Obviously if a jeep parks over a clutter mask path made by a Tiger the risk is that a tree suddenly grows under it flipping it over.
There are a number of solutions here. The clutter could transition thru soft to hard as it re appears from the mask. Indeed if it transitioned from fully soft > light> medium> heavy then even a jeep would mask it locally as it went thru the light stage.
