A Canadian Cat

To me the average looks pretty much the same (the slow test does show some early damage with one platoon of tanks though). I chalked this up to 15 runs not being enough to smooth out the bumps and what Vinnart said about the tanks showing down when they approached the wall (i.e. they are all really going slow over the wall). Anyway my take away is the same as what I was already doing - spread the wall beaching around amongst your tanks. Don't let one tank keep breaching walls. When a tank gets to yellow their breaching days should be over (except for emergencies). Trust me you do not want to watch a tank drive around with orange track status.

Agreed - can you comment on if this is suitable for H2H play and which side has AI plans?

Ninja'ed by Vinnart but I will post my quick testing anyway since it took me a while to create it. This was done with 15 PzIVs (three platoons). They ran on a course of about 1km with three types of walls (brick, stone, rural stone). First, the type of low wall made no noticeable difference. There is quite a bit of randomness involved but patterns emerge that I suspect will hold out over more test runs - but I am not doing any more. It looks like on average 5 wall breaches will cause a PzIV to get to yellow and 10 will take it to orange. But sometimes it only takes two walls to get to Yellow. In the thirty runs only three tanks took no damage running over their first wall. The other thing I noticed looking at the raw data was that just because your tank had early success or early failure does not mean it will be one of the tanks that beats or exceeds the average. In two cases (look at the slow tank 2 platoon data) the HQ and number 1 tank managed to get to yellow after two wall breaches but then went the next 8 and 6 walls with no additional damage and ended up right on the average for getting to orange. Raw data. Fast tanks saved game Slow tanks saved game

It would be shooting via a TRP so there would not *be* any spotting rounds. I wonder if the hatches are modeled to that level of detail. I say go for it and find out.

That is the big question - are they in the right place. I have really only used TRPs in a QB for ground denial purposes. You can either race to the objective or you can prevent the other guy from racing there a head of you. Or both.

I don't know about that. I am with @slysniper on this 5 tanks vs 2 this will be won by he has the last tank standing. Unless GAJ is really careful and clever - which *is* possible - I think Bill has the upper hand. Don't for get Bill is the one with trucks so he can change is disposition faster.

I usually use near by infantry for scouting ahead of tanks. I think I have dismounted a tank crew once for scouting purposes. I don't normally think about it because I have infantry along with the tanks.

Well in my defense I thought Fast was "go as fast as possible". Three tanks starting next to each other, one on the road, one in a field and one in a forest, given fast orders 200m forward will not travel that 200m in the same time. I see my tanks slow down when the enter rough area and then speed up again on open ground. I do not think there is any gaminess to be had here.

Slow is not a guarantee of not damage from driving over a wall, we just think it reduces the chance. Come to think of it I have never tested just assumed that it helped. I have to admit my AFVs move fast pretty much everywhere except if I want them to hunt or they are going over a wall or fence. Even rough terrain I just send 'em fast. The only other thing I do, is if a series of movement orders ends with any of my men in front of the AFV and I have given the tank an area target command at the end I make sure there is a short strech of slow before the target command. I have had several instances of blue on blue casualties because the tank commander orders the gunner to fire before the driver comes to a complete halt: tank's nose dips just as the gunner pulls the trigger, round goes into the ground right next to my squad.

Wow check out those movement orders in the air. I know they are para troopers but they can fly? I have never seen that. I guess I usually have reason to set way points at various points on route. Very cool effect.

I am with you on this for sure. That chaos is makes this game so much fun to watch. I would not want to change any of that. Those moments where the last few guys in a squad surrender, except one who ends up saving the day. Those are great moments.

Thank you very much for that link. I understood that it was an Action Square visibility issue - and due to the design. Steve's post was very informative about what is going on and the issues with making changes to resolve it. He even called out the reason players do not run into it often (and why I think players might hit it more once market garden comes out) I am glad to see that BFC understands the issue and have been working towards making things better.

Agreed that would be nice.

It is not Nebelwerfer but 120mm Mortar - it is pretty cool: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1428163&postcount=172

This happened a while back and I forgot to post it. I finally got an artillery kill on a tank. This was near the beginning of a Quick Battle that I ultimately lost . At least this part was fun. My Forward Observer was high on a hill well hidden and spotted a Sherman in the valley. He called in 120mm artillery on the first Sherman he spotted. The Sherman stayed nice and still... Here it is taking a direct hit And after it was all over I shot video too:

OK the video is uploaded. @slysniper made the ideal move. To the left of this position an HGM is covering the main road. The men in this building are covering the right of this building and there is no access to the alley on the left or this building itself from the other street. So he conducted some renovations:

And this is the heart of the problem. As a UI designer if you use something in the UI that looks like a real world object it needs to behave like that real world object. When it does not the UI breaks down and does not work. The fact that a large number of people do not know how to use a real compass and think the thing that looks like a compass is intuitive does not relieve designers from their mistake. In fact it means they should not be using a compass analogy because too many people do not know how a compass works. Ken is spot on. I have been ignoring that thing since the first time I tried to make heads or tails of it. I agree. I am using his mod now and right away it was useful - thank you. It clearly shows what direction the camera is looking towards.

I am not sure I would say it is well known - here at least. You have it right. The tank cannot area fire but can target any enemy that shows itself. I realize it is a design issue. I just think it should be given a high priority to be fixed. More fighting in urban environments means players will run into the issue more often.

Now that I can understand the viewing direction gizmo (aka. the compass) that conditions popup will be useful. Thank you all. Before the kind folks here explained how to figure out which direction is what, that conditions popup was very close to unless to me.

Actually that is a really good point. I am not sure specifically what issues he has seen but I have seen problems of vehicles not fitting down streets that the look like they should fit. And even if the game knows that it cannot fit it should tell me. Yeah I realize it does not know instantly but some part of the code figures it out because my vehicles don't go down those streets they go another way. IMHO this problem is not unique to urban fighting. This is a variation of the problem of no feedback when asking a vehicle to go through an opening in the bocage that is too narrow. Or across a wall it cannot knock down. BFC I would love to have a way of knowing when this is happening. Ideally feedback at the point of placing way points. A couple of ideas for the "how" are a broken way point line or ghost buster symbol (like what is used now for showing the vehicle cannot land on that AS). Or alternatively away to ask - for the selected vehicle - please show the route this vehicle will take given the way points I currently have set for it.

Because the above screen shots are shrunk for viewing, here are 100% crops from the first way point where the tank should be able to target the building and from the third way point where if finally can. Notice the difference is the amount of adjoining wall that can be seen. I think all would agree the tank should be able to target that building from either position. Further if the tank does spot the MG team that is in that building it will be able to target the enemy soldiers. And when they duck and can no longer be seen the tank will suddenly no longer be able to target the building. I my opinion this is something that should be fixed - at some point. If I were a tester I would have logged this as a bug. I realize that this is probably an issue that comes from under lying design decisions so it will not be an easy fix. This is my number one game play issue - I guess I should change my sig now that I have articulated the problem:) First way point - should be able to target but cannot: Third way point - finally can target:

Not 24 hours later I have the opportunity to show screen shots to illustrate my problem of targeting buildings in an urban environment. These are from an ongoing QB I am fighting. This is the second time I have fought on this map - it is a good one. This is not quite the urban fighting I have been talking about. This is more of a village but it shows the problem. What I will show is that a tank in the street is unable to target a building whose face is fully in view. There are no obstructions between the tank and the building. To successfully target the building it must move down the street to increase the amount of the building that it can see. Once it can enough of the adjoining side it can magically target the building. You will see that the tank should be able to target the building from all three of the positions I try, not just the last one. Further I should point out that moving down the street in this context is not a big problem. I own this half of the village! So even the new position is quite safe for the tank. So, while this shows the problem the workaround is easy and safe this time it is not effecting play. I want to further point out that if this were a more built up area this would be a bigger problem. Because there is space between the target building and its neighbors the tank only has to move a short distance down the street and it is still quite far away. However in a more built up environment there would likely be another building close by and moving that short distance would not allow the tank to see the magic portion of the adjoining wall. This is where the problem would start to effect play. In a fully urban environment tanks have to move too far up to get the shot and then they are no longer safe. A bit of speculation on my part: I believe the problem is Action Square related. To me it appears that the tank cannot target the building until it can see the centre of the action square. So it is not really an amout of adjoining wall that needs to be seen but the centre of the AS the building is sitting on. So without further blabbing the screen shots. First I try to move the tank up from behind the building where I have it hiding. From here I has a clear LOS to the building (trees are turned on). You can see that there is no reason the tank should not be able to target that building. Full Size Version The building next door is can be targeted no problem: Full Size Version I try moving the way point down the street a small amount (camera has not moved). Still no joy. Full Size Version I try again further down the street, ah sweet satisfaction I can target the building (bug again no camera change for the screen shot). Full Size Version Same third position but camera moved to the new way point. Full Size Version

Surrender no way. My guys might have lost that building but the put up a fight first. Even the last guy who runs for it stops at the door and lobs one last grenade inside. Great moment. Course he dies from rifle fire from above...

Yep, spot on for the case where the squad cannot see the tank yet. The worst example where my guys paid the ultimate price though was in the case where the squad assigned the task could see the tank. They were in the bocage line and the tank drove just past them and stopped - facing further away. I gave them the order to go through a small gap pretty much right behind the tank hoping they would take it out easily with a close assault. The turn started and the tank moved further down the road - out of grenade range and my guys ran out into the lane and stood there like target dummies. And that is just what they ended up being. With a follow command perhaps they would have followed it down the road and managed to get it before it spotted them (it did take many seconds before the tank spotted them). Or with a assault tank command perhaps the would have just aborted after the tank drove off. Clearly these kinds of commands would take significant effort to code in the tac AI. Clearly this is a wish list item. I just hope some improved way of handing assaulting tanks makes it onto BFC's todo list.

I spent some time this afternoon reloading old turns and recording it. Recording is done I will stitch it together tomorrow - I have some illustrations for my previous point about targeting buildings I want to post first.