Little glitches/observations/suggestions

[Oliver_88]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

I suspected it would be a problem of this nature. The 6in cruiser is probably being called heavy cruiser due to a similar limitation. I suppose Battlefront has been aware of these things but there always are more important things to work on. As has been pointed out, most people don't even notice, and naval artillery is not used often.

Keep your moneys on the Colony class  [Left to right: Hunt Type II, O-P class destroyer, Dido, Colony class, Nelson and R-class battleship]

Phew heh.

Recognised the Dido and Nelson also of course dead giveaways they are even at that detail. Though I kinda got an soft spot for our destroyers of that era bugger that trying to guess them. You could have used the O and P for both the destroyers.  

Edited December 20, 2017 by Oliver_88

[c3k]

On ‎12‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 12:35 AM, Drifter Man said:

I've been playing around with my CMBN and made a few observations along the way... I'll dump them here in case they could help polishing the game. Nothing game-breaking really 

- A soldier with a Schiessbecher without grenades waits a long time after emptying the rifle before he starts reloading. As a result, his rate of fire is about half of a normal Karabiner 98K. Maybe intentional?

- Another soldier (battalion commander) who used his Walther P08 backup weapon after spending all his rifle ammo makes a similar pause before starting to reload the pistol. In the meantime, he is waving the empty rifle around, holding it in one hand as if it were a pistol. Finally he puts it down, grabs a pistol magazine, reloads and gets back to shooting.

- Upon entering a supply truck, troops with no ammo sometimes automatically take a few rounds just to reload their weapons once; sometimes they don't.

- I didn't find a way to give units cover arc orders in the same turn after they exit the vehicle. This may cause troops to open fire even if I don't want them to. The best thing I found to prevent them from firing was to give a fast/disembark order followed by a hide order at the destination.

- Also, it would be nice to be able to give troops order to exit one vehicle and enter another in the same turn.

Gotta check out the grenade launcher. I know that they fired a wooden round off the end of a cartridge to launch the grenade. The cartridge gasses sent the grenade on its way. The wooden "bullet" impacted the grenade and was used to arm the fuse.

I always thought that the launching rounds had to be hand loaded, one at a time, instead of being loaded, en bloc, into the K98k's internal magazine. If true, that meant a longer firing cycle to load each round.

It could be that the game has carried over the lengthy hand-loading routine for those cartridges into all aspects of that weapon's use.

[Drifter Man]

9 hours ago, c3k said:

I always thought that the launching rounds had to be hand loaded, one at a time, instead of being loaded, en bloc, into the K98k's internal magazine. If true, that meant a longer firing cycle to load each round.

It could be that the game has carried over the lengthy hand-loading routine for those cartridges into all aspects of that weapon's use.

I don't think it's a very likely explanation because the behavior of the soldier is different when firing grenades (reloads single shots) vs rifle rounds (reloads five). I checked the whole sequence in a separate test by giving a Schiessbecher an area fire order at 40 m:

00:00 - 00:23 Fires 3 x HE, reloading a new round before each shot. Ammo goes from 3 x 30mm HE to zero.

00:29 - 00:57 Reloads the rifle and fires 5 rounds. So far so good!

00:57 - 01:10 Fires 2 more grenades although the unit has none! There are no friendly units nearby... He reloads the rifle before the second grenade.

01:10 - 01:32 Does nothing, although his status goes from spotting to reloading about halfway through

01:32 - 02:01 Reloads and fires 5 rounds.

02:01 - 02:31 Does nothing

02:31 - 03:02 Reloads and fires 5 rounds

And so on. Really odd things happening there. Where did he get the extra two grenades? Is there a secret ammo dump somewhere?

[Drifter Man]

14 hours ago, Oliver_88 said:

Though I kinda got an soft spot for our destroyers of that era bugger that trying to guess them. You could have used the O and P for both the destroyers.  

I could have, but it felt kind of cheap  And yes, the war emergency classes are hard to tell apart at this scale. I also think they are the most beautiful destroyers ever built.

[c3k]

3 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

I don't think it's a very likely explanation because the behavior of the soldier is different when firing grenades (reloads single shots) vs rifle rounds (reloads five). I checked the whole sequence in a separate test by giving a Schiessbecher an area fire order at 40 m:

00:00 - 00:23 Fires 3 x HE, reloading a new round before each shot. Ammo goes from 3 x 30mm HE to zero.

00:29 - 00:57 Reloads the rifle and fires 5 rounds. So far so good!

00:57 - 01:10 Fires 2 more grenades although the unit has none! There are no friendly units nearby... He reloads the rifle before the second grenade.

01:10 - 01:32 Does nothing, although his status goes from spotting to reloading about halfway through

01:32 - 02:01 Reloads and fires 5 rounds.

02:01 - 02:31 Does nothing

02:31 - 03:02 Reloads and fires 5 rounds

And so on. Really odd things happening there. Where did he get the extra two grenades? Is there a secret ammo dump somewhere?

Thanks! Do you have a savegame???

 

[Drifter Man]

7 minutes ago, c3k said:

Thanks! Do you have a savegame???

 

Here it is - no passwords for either player.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kds8vjslef579ck/Schiessbecher_test.bts?dl=0

Edited December 20, 2017 by Drifter Man

[c3k]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

Here it is - no passwords for either player.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kds8vjslef579ck/Schiessbecher_test.bts?dl=0

Got it.

Off to test...

Thanks.

Edited to ask: Is this CMBN?

Edited December 20, 2017 by c3k

[Drifter Man]

20 minutes ago, c3k said:

Edited to ask: Is this CMBN?

CMBN with CF (but no Market Garden or Vehicle Pack), 4.0.

[Bulletpoint]

Thanks @Drifter Man for doing all these tests and sharing them here. Some of this seems puzzling, such as the K98 being so useless. Obviously it was no machinegun, but it was no pea-shooter either

Would be interesting to see a comparison with the other basic rifles of the various nations...

Edited December 21, 2017 by Bulletpoint

[Drifter Man]

On 21/12/2017 at 8:45 AM, c3k said:

00:57 - 01:10 Fires 2 more grenades although the unit has none!

@c3k I think I resolved this. The extra 2 grenades are AT grenades listed along with the unit's equipment. It's not a bug. Only the long break before reloading possibly is.

[Drifter Man]

19 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Thanks @Drifter Man for doing all these tests and sharing them here. Some of this seems puzzling, such as the K98 being so useless. Obviously it was no machinegun, but it was no pea-shooter either

Would be interesting to see a comparison with the other basic rifles of the various nations...

I'll see how fast it goes... I now control the test with a python script - I still have to set up the test scenario but running and evaluating it is now automated. I'll come back when I have a comprehensive set of results. Then it will be the right time to get puzzled

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

I'll see how fast it goes... I now control the test with a python script - I still have to set up the test scenario but running and evaluating it is now automated. I'll come back when I have a comprehensive set of results. Then it will be the right time to get puzzled

That's clever. But you still have to manually read the results of each test I guess?

I'm not sure if you're aware that there was a guy some years ago who did a test of the accuracy of various CMBN weapons? He was analysing kills per bullet, whereas you're looking at kills per minute.

 

 

[Drifter Man]

13 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

That's clever. But you still have to manually read the results of each test I guess?

Fortunately no, that's about 80% of all manual effort. The script counts casualties and records the time at which they occurred for me. It sounds high-tech but it's actually quite primitive, I'm just looking at certain places on screen to see if some colors are present. For instance, red color in the weapons icon box indicates a casualty (red text "Casualty" shows up).

Thanks for the link to Migo's tests, I wasn't aware of his work. He did pretty much the same think as I am doing now, although some details are different. For me, kills per unit time are more helpful than kills per shot fired, although the latter is an useful input for debate. It's time that usually limits you, not ammo - the priority is to get the enemy under the heaviest possible fire to get him suppressed or killed, so that he cannot shoot back. However, I am also recording average rate of fire, so I will be able to evaluate both.

There's one more difference: he claims he expended 250,000 rounds. I spent over 360,000 just on the MP40

Too bad his results are gone, but from the comments I gather he observed similar patterns as I do.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Drifter Man

[Bulletpoint]

6 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

Thanks for the link to Migo's tests, I wasn't aware of his work. He did pretty much the same think as I am doing now, although some details are different. For me, kills per unit time are more helpful than kills per shot fired, although the latter is an useful input for debate. It's time that usually limits you, not ammo - the priority is to get the enemy under the heaviest possible fire to get him suppressed or killed, so that he cannot shoot back. However, I am also recording average rate of fire, so I will be able to evaluate both.

There's one more difference: he claims he expended 250,000 rounds. I spent over 360,000 just on the MP40

Too bad his results are gone, but from the comments I gather he observed similar patterns as I do.

As far as I remember, the main points of that discussion were that the SMGs kept their accuracy out to max range (200m), and that the K98 was not very accurate at range.

I agree with you that it's more relevant to players of this game to test for effectiveness than for accuracy - though of course those two things are very linked.

[Drifter Man]

Why does the German 50mm PaK 38 carry a 150mm HEAT round?

 

[Drifter Man]

It's probably just a typo in the name - they can fire it.

[Drifter Man]

Ah, ignore that. Stielgranate 42

[Drifter Man]

But this looks like a bug report: Troops in foxholes at the end of my test lanes get suppressed by units that are over 600 meters away, area-firing in the opposite direction.

First save - Axis command phase (13 "Axis" Bren detachments with an area fire order):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pjyg362t1yj7x7k/Weapons effects Bren (Team Leader) BUG TEST 001.bts?dl=0

Second save - Allied replay phase (13 ammo bearer teams - I use them as targets in my tests - feel suppression)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nhmwgfe6vjkp1at/Weapons effects Bren (Team Leader) BUG TEST 002.bts?dl=0

[Vanir Ausf B]

Interesting find. I don't know if that is intended behavior but it does not strike me as unrealistic. I imagine a large number of enemy weapons firing at once would make most exposed infantry nervous. The amount of suppression various from almost none to moderate but no one is getting pinned or panicking.

Edited January 5, 2018 by Vanir Ausf B

[Drifter Man]

21 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Interesting find. I don't know if that is intended behavior but it does not strike me as unrealistic. I imagine a large number of enemy weapons firing at once would make most exposed infantry nervous. The amount of suppression various from almost none to moderate but no one is getting pinned or panicking.

It's a plausible explanation but further investigation revealed even stranger behavior. Suppression only mounts if the fire is in the direction, or 180° away from the direction, of the target troops in foxholes. Area fire orders to the sides result in little or no suppression. Suppression from an area target order at close distance is higher that what could be achieved by firing at the troops directly at 600 meters.

Worse yet, I got the same effect from a submachinegun, well out of maximum range of the weapon:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sn7jjza9twi7ysw/Weapons effects MP40 (Leader) BUG TEST.bts?dl=0

I was able to get them pinned when I concentrated the firing troops into a single lane. The target troops are fanatic so I don't know if a less motivated unit could break.

In summary, it looks that if you want to suppress enemy troops with an MG that is placed far away, an area target order at short range from that MG is more effective than direct fire at the distant targeted unit, and you can even achieve suppression outside of your weapons range.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Well that is very strange. I've logging it in BFCs bug tracker. No promises on what becomes of it. My guess is that in actual gameplay this is rarely of any consequence but a bug is a bug. Nice job catching it!

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, Vanir Ausf B said:

Well that is very strange. I've logging it in BFCs bug tracker. No promises on what becomes of it. My guess is that in actual gameplay this is rarely of any consequence but a bug is a bug. Nice job catching it!

Agree - apparently direct LOS is needed for the effect to take place, and I doubt that players would tend to abuse this "feature". Thanks for looking into it though.

[c3k]

Could be the deep-seated effects of enemy troops wearing their uniforms backwards. This makes it look like they're firing AT you when, in fact, they're firing at someone else. Frequently used by armies which found themselves surrounded. Not something the average buff knows about.  

Good catch.

Edited January 6, 2018 by c3k

[Oliver_88]

Noticed some graphical strange-ness on some units that appear to be uv mapping errors with the model. As though one side of the model does not have an region on the textures so the texture from the other sides gets stretched across it. But I imagine they have been seen before as are not that un-obvious. Should I post them in any case, not seeing any obvious posts referencing them during an quick search?

Edited January 7, 2018 by Oliver_88

[Drifter Man]

On 07/01/2018 at 1:24 AM, c3k said:

Could be the deep-seated effects of enemy troops wearing their uniforms backwards. This makes it look like they're firing AT you when, in fact, they're firing at someone else. Frequently used by armies which found themselves surrounded. Not something the average buff knows about.  

Good catch.

Ah, that explains everything. It also reduces suppression of the enemy they ARE firing at, which makes their targets easier to hit 

@Oliver_88 feel free to post own your "little glitches" in this thread if you like.