shift8

I dont think there is edit there at all, the smoke is still handing in the air when it fires the second round....it is just old footage. Second, Im not asking the gun to first quite the fast. Just the the follow ups at close range should be very fast, generally faster than the average RoF. Yes, 12-15 rounds a minute is typical of 120mm cannon. Or Panther 75mm cannon. But the 6pdr and M3 75mm fire much smaller shells, and should be capable of a bit more for short durations. More to the point, the guns in game generally dont follow up in 4 seconds. Like I said, the tank in question had time to rotate around its turret and shoot the other tank before it could fire a second shot. Clearly not fast enough imo.

At 3:25 you can see a Sherman fire round after round crazy fast. You can also not how little smoke there is and how fast in disperses. Not that it matters since my example is about very close ranges anyhow. Im posting this only to demonstrate that the gun can be fired much faster than it happens in CM. Not that this rate of fire should be applicable to every tank fight (or even most). Just that it would apply to very close engagements. It doesnt even have to be this fast, just alot faster than they currently to it, which is unreasonably slow.

I get the issue in WEGO, I never play RT. So I think you might be right there. The smoke should not be an issue here, as we are talking about extremely close ranges. Also smoke disperses quite quickly IRL, and is not a perfectly opaque thing either. I also see tanks fire second shots all the time, its just the speed at which they do it that seems off. It seems almost like they shoot at the same pace at 15m as the would something 1000m off. (for follow up). I dont think it would be a factor of experience (or at least should not be). It does not require tons of training or combat time to know that a tank you just shot that is still trying to kill you will need to be shot again. You would have to have some serious mental disability to not immediately re-shoot. It seems like it takes them ages and ages (compared to what it should) at close range to fire a second or even third shot. Many times the third shot can take as long as the second to fire. When something is that close the rounds should be coming in very rapid succession: essentially as fast as the loader can ram in a new round and the gunner pull the trigger. In other words: like 3-4 seconds.

Excellent work!

I dont know if anyone else has noticed this, but I thought I should post on here about it to see if anyone else has this issue. Im trying to make a video of it to post on here but there are so many variables that I havent decided on the best way to present it yet. However, I describe the issue below. It seems like it would be an easy fix imho. I have noticed that in CM tanks that have just shot another tank take far too long by any reasonable measure to follow up with a second shot. This seems to occur even a point blank range. For example, in a battle I played in SP, a M4 Sherman hiding behind a hedgerow ambushed a Panther as it passed by at a range of about 20 feet. The round struck, and penetrated. The panther stopped from the hit and almost immediately started traversing its turret to engage the Sherman. The sherman took so long to reload and fire again, that the Panther actually shot and killed the Sherman. The crew was regular, +1 leadership, and high mot. This seems to happen all the time. In fact, I dont think ive seen a tank a close range rapidly pump several rounds into another tanks. There are many historical accounts of this being done. I find this rather odd since tanks in CM do tend repeatedly shoot tanks that arent sure are dead, even when the player can see that they are. Please note that I am talking about what is possible withing the constraints of the gun. I am not expecting some kind of full auto belt fed tank guns. Anyone else seen this? Thoughts? Etc.

I dont really think that it would matter if it would, and it is unlikely they would all have the same opinion anyhow. My experience however, has been favorable. There is a ww2 pilot Ive had the pleasuring of flying with in aces high who flew wildcats in ww2 and actually engaged japanese fighters. He flys alot of F4F

No I am not kidding. It seems like a bad system imo to lump the target acquisition period in with the AT guns general movement (outside the limits of its own traverse) because it creates a problem where the gun cannot be moved in a host of other circumstances because it has had this function linked to some other function that is not always relevant to the situation. I wouldn't describe this as two modes, since the mechanisms should have been separate in the first place. It seems to me that this is precisely what is being complained about.

That seems like it would still create a problem though. Perhaps not when engaging a specific target, but how does that affect when rotating the gun when not in combat, or when simply wanting to change its sector of fire in a battle (again, without something to aim at.)

Im not sure I see how the target acquisition has anything to do with the gun rotation speed. He isnt refering to traverse rate, but the time it takes to swivel the gun to a place needed outside of original traverse. Then the gun in CM, once in place, has to aim etc. So what does this have to do with target acquisition?

@ASL Veteran and @Baneman: I absolutely do understand that the time limit is the mission designers intent as a victory condition. And I also absolutely understand that the defender may not be able to win without it. BUT as I already stated earlier in this thread: I dont care. (reasons below) I have no problems playing a scenario where one side is almost certain to win. This happens all the time in real life. I play battles for the historical or tactical experience, not necessarily for some kind of competition. In particular, the AI is ultra easy to defeat in general, so I get no enjoyment by "outsmarting them". I get enjoyment from scenarios by exploring the tactical possibilities presented by something that is supposed to be a moderate simulation of real events. In multiplayer I prefer no time limits as well. I dont mind losing if the tactical situation was impossible. Nor do I find it fun to win when my defense was only possible because some game-ism made it so that the attack had to stupid things that enhanced my chances. Id rather lose than win like that. If you dont find this fun that is fine. Im merely expressing my opinion on what I think makes a fun CM game. I like as few game-sims as possible. And I absolutely despise time-limits in particular. I dont care much for what the scenario designers definition of victory is. I play the scenario by my own definitions of victory and defeat. IF someone else likes the AAR page, I dont mind. If you want to declare it a defeat because of some time limit, and I can even somewhat live with that. What I find MOST irritating is how the time limit STOPS the game. This is the biggest reason I dont like the limits. Which is why I dont see them as necessary regardless of how you want to play. I see no reason that time limit couldnt be indefinite and simply view the time limit as a modifier of your score. But his is not what happens. The game simply ends on some silly clock and you get a defeat.

There is a bur under the saddle because the tone of your response was overly pointed. It came off as dismissive. What Miller said about objectives and time is not ridiculous at all. The confusion here is that one side thinks are they implementing some kind of omage to the operational level with time limits when they are not. Time limits are an obtuse method of inferring this. If you want to talk about reality, the tactical situation dictates how long something takes. Some declaration of operational intent is a fantasy compared to the reality of how long an attack will really take. If the operational time requirement is too short, then it because the operation was not planned properly in the first place. IE: unrealistic expectations. The Caen example is a good one. As I recall Caen was a D-Day objective and didnt get taken till august like Miller pointed out. This is because the original plan was not realistic. Turn out the enemy does things you cannot plan for. When one units comes up against another unit in the field, it really does not matter at that level how fast command wants you to go. You can only go as fast as the tactical geometry allows for. Hurling yourself at the enemy to try to go faster will most likely result in failure that wastes even more time because you have to do it again and again. OR, you take so many casualties that while you may get somewhere as determined by some arbitrary schedule, you wont be worth anything. Fundamentally here there is a disconnect about how time works in real life. The actual physical geometry of combat dictates how long things take. Human schedules are meaningless in this regard. They serve only as a planning tool to construct a generalization of how things could go. Hence why virtually no major military operations follow their time tables even remotely. Human fantasy meets battlefield reality.

1) It is not "nonsense." It is a absolute fact that since the combat in CM is in real time, the tactical aspects of it are valid. The fact that gameness causes forces to commit more completely resulting in faster conclusions is irrelevant. 2)Tactics should evolve organically based on the enemy Im facing and what I have at my disposal. Not, OMG I only have 1 hour to do this, so I have to releive myself of good sense and take stupid and unrealistic risks. 3)The defender would have less to react with anyhow....so again moot. And the AI being less-than-intelligent is not and excuse to add an artifice to the game. This is just more crap heaped on top of crap. (Not that I think BF did a bad job on the ai, but this is just the nature of ai in general) 4)I am not "disparaging" anyone. The fact you chose to word it that way says alot about how sensitive you are to any accusation of a bad scenario design. I find ANY time limit arbitrary. It is not because I think they just picked a time. Further, play testing a time limit only validates a time limit for one persons concept of acceptable losses or tactics etc. Which to some extent shoehorns me into that. It also means that the time limit in that case is NOT based on some omage to operational concerns at all, but rather simply if someone deemed that time "playable". 5) I find your viewpoint incomprehensible......And who said anything about noodling about? There are plenty of other reasons an attack (properly conducted) may take longer than some silly time limit insists on. 6) Please do not presume how I think based on the century you think I was born in. For that matter, I wasnt born in the 21st century. I dont know when you were born, nor do I give a hoot in the context of judging your arguments. "time limits" in real life evolve organically are only exist as a function of space and enemy forces and terrain. This is why historically the wishful thinking of commanders with regards to operations time tables almost never matched up with tactical realities. Tactically, a fight takes as long as it takes, period. Full stop. Rushing things to try to move faster will usually result in things taking longer when you fail repeatedly. You cannot force a timetable. The battlefield makes the time table for you. It doesnt matter how fast I move through an objective if my force loses tons of men in the process. Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast. Do it right the first time or dont do it at all etc. It would be much better if there was simply a time "intent" that you tried to meet, and that no meeting it may or may not affect the forces or terrain in later missions in the campaign. Not this rubbish where a battle just careens to a halt when the meter runs out. At the very least, I should be allowed to fight it out with the ai after the mission ends.

+1

I never said bullets moved faster. I thought that you might be and was attempting to clarify that was not the case. The temo-increaser forces a player to behave in a inorganic and stupid manner. It is irrelevant because it 1) does not apply evenly to things 2) it completely mitigated by the fact that the defender can also do things more decisively and more quickly etc. I may be able to adjust fire faster, or move troops up faster etc, but the defender can perform the counters to these things just a quickly. It is therefore for all intensive purposes moot. However a time limit is a disproportionate and arbitrary addition that does not behave in a organic manner. So instead of performing a correct assault with proper support by fire, the attacker is forced to just barge in. This in turn allows the defender to aport tactics or deployments that are equally silly or not life like. Essentially, you are trying to solve a "problem" that is related to this being a game on a computer by adding additional artifice to the game; something that can only result in a cascading effect of continuously more unrealistic counters. Obviously the challenge is respective to me. This argument is about what different individuals think a scenario should be, so pointing out "its my opinion" is completely moot. And where are you getting the idea that the VP's should be dropped? Rather I argued that the VP's should not be controlled so narrowly by the time limit. I dont have to realize anything. I dont find them less interesting that way. If you do, go right ahead. But please dont tell me what I find less interesting. Except that the scenario states the units IRL used the same tactics. I never listed how many men I lost, just that they were few in # by my standards. You simply cannot magically interpret the casualties for a time limits as somehow corresponding to real life. For all you know, my approach was closer to the real thing. And more to the point, it is the time limit induced assertion that I completely failed over some failure to kill the last German in some asinine and unrealistic time frame that is annoying here. Not that the time it takes should have no effect what-so-ever.

You misunderstand how those things affect real life. Most of the time discrepancy has absolutely nothing to do with what the end result is. In real life I might take 40min instead of 5 to decide if I want to cross a road because real people will die. Does not change the result of cross the road. Yes, I am more efficient because of my view of the battlefield, but this is completely canceled out because the enemy can do the same. Ergo: it makes no proportional difference. Doing things faster does not mean it would have gone any differently. Arbitrarily forcing non-organically determined time limits does produce tactically unrealistic results. The game should not about about "boosting" the chances of winning on the defense. This entire view (not yours but by gamer in general) misses the point that in reality everything is fundamentally binary. Every scenario is technically an inevitable victory or defeat for one side or the other if both sides do every action right. IMHO, people need to realize this and play simulators for what they are. If you are on the losing side then simply enjoy the experience of losing. Or have fun on the overpowered side experience what its like to have and abundance of firepower etc. If you want true balance, play on some fantasy map with mirrored terrain and identical forces..... In addition: -IRL you do not attend to wounded in the middle of a fight. This is Army CLS 101. -Pushing through danger zone unrealistically is the result you get when you add time limits that force a player to do something stupid to avoid a arbitrary time crunch -Your god view is canceled by the other players. Ergo: proportional etc. -You keep speaking of pushing fast and hard.....I am specifically complaining that the time limits make me do this too much....so how does this benefit your argument exactly? -About pushing vs waiting for support. Has nothing to do with time "limits". In fact, once again this is just another argument that IRL people will take all the time they need to execute a mission properly. Clearly the time limit induced "bum rush" is not realistic.

It seems to me that you are openly admitting that you want a tactical crutch to take precedence over realism. Perhaps if would be better for scenario designers to simply pick more even historical match ups. Also: I just discovered I can mod the time limits myself, so this conversation is now even more academic that it was before

I understand that decision making and decisiveness in general in CM are faster, than that IRL people do a lot of sitting around between actions. However, this does not imo much effect the actual second by second results each engagment (say panther shoots sherman etc). Therefore, I dont really see it as a justification to also scale the time limit. While I may not have to wait around in CM for people to stop eating lunch or spend an hour deliberating on crossing a street: everything else is in real time, so a time limit still put strain on minute tactical things. I dont find this very realistic. I think it just better to acknowledge that in a game I will commit to decision faster than IRL etc. I completely and totally agree with you that most Attack defend scenarios are predestined regarding their results. However, I dont see a problem with this. This is just MHO, but I think that scenarios in CM should be played to experience the history of the scenario, not purely for competition. I will gladly play a scenario where I conduct as easy if drawn out attack with certain victory as much as I would be willing to play a certain defeat. For me it is just about the tactical realisim, and I dont really care for challenge per se. I am really enjoying courage conquers so far in CMFB, it being my favorite campaign. I wont lie though, there was one mission in that campaign that sort of set this off. Its not the first time limit to irritate me, but it is fresh in my memory. There is one mission where you have to seize a town defended by a regiment or something of paratroopers. The actual in game briefing states that IRL the Americans sat back in blated the town to hell with artillery, then sat back again and blasted it some more with a large block of tanks, then at long last sent in the infantry to mop up. It did these very tactics. Imagine my irritation when about 75% of the way through the town (with very few casualties at all....)it tells me I get a minor defeat because I didn't kill the last 3 german units within the 10min variable time limit (or whatever it was). Of course the battle is destined to go the Americans way given the forces involved, but I dont really mind that. If that is how it was in history, then thats how I want to play it. I dont want to be given a mere 1:30 to take a town just because it would be too easy otherwise. Just my two cents.

One thing I would like to see in CM is a option for the removal of time limits or for longer ones. I would rather see time limits as part of a series of missions or as a simple modifier of total score rather than the ridiculous manner people use them in CM scenario design. Giving someone an hour to take a town with a battalion of infantry in it and then declaring their mission a total defeat because they took 10min too long is something that really grinds my gears in CM. The time limit is used as a bludgeon by scenario designers to hurry the attacker into unrealistically hasty action in order to make the scenario harder. I see this in all kinds of scenario's, so if you make them dont take this personally, it isnt about anyone specific. Im sure someone can dredge up some off kilter example to contrary, but in real life war does not have a "time limit." Now before someone rips my head off, YES there are time sensitive things at the strategic or operational level. However, time tables for battles are rarely if ever kept, and units in the field generally take as long as they need to do complete and objective. After all, you cannot take town X if you are dead. Units do not generally come across a heavily defended positions and go "well crap! the colonel said we had to take this in 20min, so we had better just charge right in!" Slow is smooth and smooth is fast: Period. The worst bit though is that the time restrictions given in the game are completely silly most of the time. What macro level time concern's there are do not come down to 20min decisions. These are generally large time periods at those levels, and they are not on some kind of stopwatch. They are merely time "concerns" based on constantly fluctuating and often times estimated variables.

Personally I think what really matters is the agreement you come to with the player you are facing. As we mentioned before with people not reading briefings, if a person makes assumptions about how a QB should be fought, then they are just as at fault. All of this discussion about victory conditions and which type of battle are better is all well and good, but I find that in games where controversy comes up it generally is the result of both players making alot of assumptions about what "fair" is and never actually discussing this with the other side in detail. I think just about any combination of conditions, units, or scenario type can be fun if both players simply acknowledge what they are getting into before hand. Using myself as an example, I am pretty much ok with anything so long as I know what to expect. I am totally fine with playing a scenario on a side that is virtually doomed to lose so long as I know that is what I am getting into. From discussions on these forums, I have seen that some players readily dismiss even single players scenarios that are no balanced and I dont really see the logic in that. This game is supposed to be a sim, and war is almost never fair. I personally play alot of scenarios both single and multiplayer just to explore the battle and get and impression of something. Essentially, for the experience. I think that in something like combat mission, this is part of the fun. That being said, I am totally fine with games made fair for competition as well. The only caveat I put on this is that in order to actually make a game fair, you have to have alot of agreed on rules. We are playing a game with inherently unbalanced units, unbalanced nations, etc. In the long run, almost no combination of rules will ever be truly 100% even. And since part of the competition is the choosing of forces with as much judiciousness as possible..... So given all that, I think that when we as CM players find ourselves in tough situations in game the best thing to do is simply set your own goals. If for some reason a scenario gives you 1 greyhound and the other dude a platoon of Panthers, expectations should be lowered. Having fun is all about what you expect from something.

That is assertion about accuracy isn't really my opinion. Muti-shot weapons have a objective advantage against moving targets due to follow up. The LMG's have higher accuracy because firing bursts means a higher potential for casualties to be caused. This would compensate for the number of rounds used overall in most situations. Simply put if I fire 2 3 round burts and my point of impact for round 1 is off, rounds 2-3 might hit, meaning 3 shots per kill. But if I have a rifle and my point of impact is off, it is simply off. I have to try again with the same chance of missing as the first shot. Meaning in the long run it will take more trigger pulls. Migo's tests do not show per-shot accuracy as you state. They only shoe kills per rounds fired. This does not auto-translate into a measure of the MOA accuracy of the weapons system. My AK was semi-auto, and my point was to demonstrate that without a zero firing single shots caused high rates of missing.

IMHO there really isn't a discussion of realism to be had here. If correctly done, a scenario is a set piece of a actual engagement that took place historically. Or it is a set piece of some fantasy battle the author thought would be fun. A QB meeting engagement isn't any more unrealistic than any other battle we fight in this game. There is no law of physics that says two equivalent forces could not meet in battle. As has already been mentioned, this happened IRL. Whether or not these forces statistically shared the same combat values on average doesn't really matter. It could happen, and it isnt somehow less tactically important just because the majority of engagements would not be like that. Nor imo does it matter if both forces know the attack values are precisely identical. If you want to start nitpicking down that route, we are in for a real rabbit hole. @Childress I think that you mentioned these are the most competitive players is important. Players who have a good grasp of what works and what doesn't will not accept matches (when for competition) if the scales are unbalanced. Therefore, it makes sense to insist on a meeting engagement because in actual war (and cm) anything else is far too evidently zero-sum. This is one of the biggest differences between real life in games. In games, players can afford to fight so many battles that they know to a extreme degree what does and does not work. Real battles are a giant mess of humans making stupid tactical decisions with macro-factors generally deciding the outcome. So in other words, CM battles are not less realistic, they are just the product of closer analysis or real concepts and tactics.

There is nothing wrong with the speed at which the tire. Try doing a low crawl, even with no gear, and you will tire VERY fast. To make this clear: in Army basic training drill instructors use the low crawl as punishment on occasion. In addition, during the last phase of basic you have to do a relatively long low crawl under wire with live ammunition being fired overhead and it can be very tiring.

It would in the scenario I was quoting, since the other weapons were either more accurate or could take advantage of opportunities better. This would in general be the case in more realistic scenarios, not necessarily on ranges. Also keep in mind that Migo's tests, despite what controls he added, are not really accuracy tests. They only reflect casualties per shots fired in a specific scenario. I also noted that at the ranges he tested, the accuracy of those weapons is more or less the same. Particularly the LMG's. I dont understand where you guys are getting this idea that LMG's are some how less accurate per shot than a bolt rifle. In practical terms, it is simply not the case. The SMG's are a different matter, but again, automatic fire etc. And Migo's tests at no point demonstrated single shot accuracy for those weapons. I own a number of weapons, but in particular I have AKM that used to have a issue where the front sight post didn't adjust. This made it extremely difficult to hit any target over 75m if there wasn't some kind of backdrop to see the deviance from. So difficult in fact, that you could go 10 rounds or so without hitting a man sized target at 150-200m.

Nope. Although I am not BFC Being solid shot, M77 AP would perform the worst against the Panther. AP projectile suffer greatly from slope effects. M82 also cannot penetrate due to other reasons. Only HVAP at 400m, and T-33 APBC @1000m could pen the panther glacis reliably.

T-33 should only be available in numbers in extremely late 44 or early 45