Jump to content

Bad Luck in CMBN


Recommended Posts

I was just wondering if I am the only one with bad luck when it comes to armor in the CM games.  Here is my most recent example.

 

Fighting a MP battle: Sticking it out.  I am the Germans.  As the battle starts I gently roll my five or six Panthers to crest the small hill.  I am overlooking an Orchard and village.  My Panthers spot two AT guns in the Orchard.  All my Panthers shoot and miss.  AT guns respond taking out two Panthers by hitting them in there main guns.  My Panthers all fire again killing one AT gun.  Now I roll up two stugs to help.  AT gun takes out one stug and another Panther all with hits to the main gun.  I finally kill the AT gun and roll my whole force to attack the village position.  My opponent shows his Tank destroyers which knock out two more Panthers first shot on both taking out the main gun while my stug kills a TD.  My last Panther is taken out one shot to the main gun before I kill the last TD.  I know have my half track and one stug left to support the main attack.

 

I just believe its bad luck to lose six or sor tanks and tank destroyers all with there main guns taken out.

 

In another mp battle this time with me as the British I hit an enemy Panther 47 times I thing that's about how many hit markers I can count.  I hit it all with Shermans and two fireflys.  The Panther killed nine of my tanks and is still alive.  It cannot move but It is still in action.

 

Like I said I was just curious if I have just bad luck or if this is normal for tanks to lose there main guns this easily.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well loosing the main gun on so many tanks is not usual (it certainly happens, there have been other posts about losing many main guns) but neither is having a Panther survive 47 hits especially if Fireflys are involved.

I certainly have had tanks loose the main gun before but normally it is once in awhile. One factor that highlights the loss of the major gun is having a tank like the Panther facing off against an opposition that has trouble penetrating the front armor - eventually the main gun gets hit. Whereas a lessor tank would have died to one of the turret hits.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My experiences with Panthers have been similar. It seems like anytime you're fighting from a hull down position or the Allies have higher elevation than you your main gun gets knocked out. I'm perfectly ok with this- I've also taken a 290mm heat round from an AVRE and survived. Those Panthers are tough as hell.

 

I think part of the problem you had according to your post is that your using your Panthers to get initial contact. While this certainly works because of the high quality optics those tanks have, it's not optimal. There's always a chance you're not going to spot in time and get blasted. I think what might have happened is those ATG's got sound contacts on your tanks rolling up so they knew where to look. If there was enough time before your Stugs got there C2 could have informed his tank destroyers of where your tanks were.

 

So you always have to keep in mind how much noise you make. You always want recon units to spot for you, and you want the contacts they see to show up for your attacking units. If you had already spotted his units and your tanks had "?" signs on the contact when you clicked on them, the battle might have gone the other way.

 

And ATG's reload realllllly fast compared to tanks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is hard to kill dug-in ATG's. Next time try machine-gunning one (Target Light area target order), have another tank SMOKE it, then move your HE chuckers up to kill it. If you're taking effective fire where you are, that should be where you aren't. You're in a kill-zone. Get out.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is hard to kill dug-in ATG's. Next time try machine-gunning one (Target Light area target order), have another tank SMOKE it, then move your HE chuckers up to kill it. If you're taking effective fire where you are, that should be where you aren't. You're in a kill-zone. Get out.

I don't know about this.  I had six Panthers hull down at around 900m.  I had a spotter to their front left that seen the at guns before I rolled up.  My Panthers fired and missed the at guns did not.  I get this result things happen, so be it.  My main point was that I lost all my Panthers in this battle....everyone of them with its main gun destroyed.  I lost three of the four stugs all with main gun destroyed.  This happened through the entire battle not just in one fight. I won the fight basically using my tanks as heavy mg platforms.  I was just curious if losing the main gun is a common thing or if I just had bad luck this battle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main gun on a tank takes up a lot of the visible real estate when looking at a hull down turret from the front... it makes sense to me that a penetration from the front would have a high chance of damaging or taking the main gun out of action.  

 

I wouldn't read too much into it or think of it as a bug, fortunes of war I'm afraid.. best solution?  Don't set your tanks up where they can get hit.   ;)

 

That last bit sounds snarky, but I don't mean it that way.. you have to try to engage the enemy from angles where they cannot easily engage you, keyhole positions, enfilade positions, etc.

 

Good luck and keep playing!

Edited by Bil Hardenberger
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bloody Bill,

 

This problem is neither unique to you nor CMBN. Rather, it is the reality of playing Combat Mission and has been true since CMBO was in Beta Demo. You may think you're playing a computer wargame, but it's really a BNAT (Buddhistic NonAttachment Trainer). Buddhism teaches that all suffering has its origins in attachment, and CM exists, I find, to help free you of such pain. By inflicting so much pain on you that you cease to be attached to your pixeltruppen and their toys. Consequently, Murphy gets special positive DRMs (Die Roll Modifiers) making him even more potent than usual, as does the AI or your foe, while you get negative DRMs. Your shots will miss or be ineffective, whereas you will get hit by some impossible shot, in the worst possible place and at the most unhinging time. Your best AFV will first Bog, then Immobilize on dry ground! If this happens and the AFV's gun is fixed or limited traverse, the gun will be found pointing at nothing. Worse, your AFV will wind up under the guns or infantry AT weapons, with ultimately predictable results. This is exactly what happened to my Jagdpanther in tournament. Your ATGs will have lifespans measured in seconds, and will likely not hit anything if they do manage to fire, but you'll be seeing question marks, if those, while fighting his, and they will kill your AFVs with veritable impunity. In one CMBN QB, I ammo exhausted one Sherman and badly depleted the load of another to deal with a single gun on which I never had a spot until I was practically on it. One lousy leIG 18 which killed one of my Shermans long before what I'm describing ultimately occurred. It also happened to be a Sherman with almost a full ammo load, too.

 

Putting the above another way, you need to run your battle while hoping for the best and working to make it so, but knowing you may be forced down one or more other paths as a result of the things I outlined. This isn't to say that matters won't sometimes go well; that you won't be able to tear the AI or your human foe a new posterior. You need to be able to succeed despite the unfortunate realities in the top paragraph and despite Clausewitzian friction up and down the line. 

 

I have no idea what else you had in your force, but classically, dueling with ATGs isn't a good idea. This parallels the rule from the Age of Fighting Sail: "A ship's a fool to fight a fort." Both Wittmann and Carius considered ATGs the most dangerous threat of all. Hard to spot, even harder to spot when properly camouflaged,  hard to hit once located, and with significant crew redundancy barring a gun destroying hit or one that Incapacitates or kills the entire crew. The flatter the trajectory of the tank gun, the tougher the problem because of the large resulting miss distances as a result of range and azimuth errors.

 

Let's look at your tank as seen from the ATG's POV, okay? If you're only exposing your turret, here's what you look like nose on. The way gunnery works in the game is that Center of Mass aiming is used. Notice what's smack in the middle of that turret.

 

http://www.oocities.org/desertfox1891/pzpanther/lowres/pzpantherDsk2.jpg

 

Nor does the inbound shot have to hit the gun directly head on, for with any glacis exposed at all, your gun barrel is also exposed to attack from shot bouncing off the glacis and into your gun from below. Thus, what happened to you is not as insane as you might imagine.  Maddening? Frustrating? Certainly. You don't say whether you rolled up and kept shooting once you had, but to do so is inviting a swift death. You have to do what the American TDs did at El Guettar, Tunisia: bring weapons into firing position, fire, then swiftly reverse, doing this with your tanks  down the spine of the rise; staggering their coming into battery in order to confuse the AI or human defender. I don't know how good the gunshields are on 6 pdrs, but the ones on Pak-40s will stop 14.5 mm fire. How effective MG fire would be depends on cover, shield characteristics, gun orientation, thus, crew exposure, and things like suppression state, fatigue, casualties and morale, only some of which you'd know.

 

On balance, I believe you would've fared better (tactical concept only) putting HE and smoke on both guns, then repositioning to, if possible, get out of LOS of one gun, while pummeling the other gun when it next appeared--then dealing with its sibling in turn. Restated, try for two initially, but, if possible, focus everything thereafter on taking one ATG out of the fight for good, then taking down the other one. Combining MG fire from one Panther and main gun fire from another in crossfires would likely create additional possibilities. The Panther that fires its cannon reverses out of position, but the MG firing one continues to hose down the gun. Having moved a bit, the Panther which fired its cannon comes into position some distance away and opens up with coax, and the former MG tank fires main gun and then itself repositions. Sounds great in theory, but I've never tried it in reality. YMMV. Were JasonC here, he would be talking Rocks Paper Scissors, and a tank isn't the remedy for ATGs. That's what mortars and tube artillery are for, but since you mention neither, I suspect you're stuck with DF assets only, which is doing it the hard way. Major unknowns in this whole informal analysis ere the experience ratings and other factors for your Panther crews and the ATG crews on the other end. 

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bloody Bill,

 

I clean forgot to ask. Did you Hunt your Panthers into their initial firing positions, or did they just roll up on Move and act from there? The thought just came to me that how you encountered those ATGs may've had something to do with your gunnery results. But you said you had a spotter in place before your Panthers trundled up. Wonder what the German hand signals are for "Warning! Enemy Pak (clock position) x meters!" What was the range for the F-Kill fest--a string of terrible die rolls even worse than some of mine? Would like to know whether it could've gotten through your turret face armor had it not hit your guns.

 

Regards,

 

John Kettler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...