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Pak 40 gun glitch - mysterious crew casualties and subsequent abandoning of guns


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13 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I wonder what the "certain death" ranges are for the various shells against prone infantry. I'm playing a game right now where I had two guys prone - one took a nearly direct hit from what seemed to be a 105mm... he died but the other guy was fine 2 metres away from the crater.

Isn't this "vagary of the system" intended? My understanding is that even prone soldiers in the open get a "saving roll" to represent micro-terrain. This guy passing that "roll" could be assumed to mean he found a little depression, or there's there's an abstracted boulder in those 2 meters between him and the crater. So there would be no certainty of injury at any range.

(I assume in CM, unlike in real life, this "saving roll" is made afresh for each shell? That it's not "remembered" to give permanent protection for a given soldier against blasts in a given place, the way a real-life boulder would be, or the way "real" terrain that's actually shown in the game does?)

More generally, @domfluff, thanks for this table! -- do these radii assume standing targets? Or prone?

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6 hours ago, General Liederkranz said:

More generally, @domfluff, thanks for this table! -- do these radii assume standing targets? Or prone?

I assume it's generalised - I don't know how the values are derived, but the intention is surely worst-case (since the point of it is "how not to get your own men killed")

From vague memory of a discussion here, I believe the way CM models HE shrapnel is an explosive effect, followed by a number of randomly drawn straight-line traces, from the impact point. That inevitably will mean that in some scenarios it'll be better to be prone (they'll pass overhead in the y-axis), and in some scenarios it'll be better to be standing (if the path is grazing the ground, then being prone will create more x-axis targets to hit.

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7 hours ago, General Liederkranz said:

Isn't this "vagary of the system" intended? My understanding is that even prone soldiers in the open get a "saving roll" to represent micro-terrain. This guy passing that "roll" could be assumed to mean he found a little depression, or there's there's an abstracted boulder in those 2 meters between him and the crater. So there would be no certainty of injury at any range.

Not saying it's impossible, I'm just curious what the real-life "PI 90" and "PI 99" would be for the various shells.

Edited by Bulletpoint
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OK I finally loaded this up and figured out what is happening.

TLDR: The gun teams are *not* suffering any casualties. Therefore nothing wrong here regarding HE or ricochet effects. They are abandoning their guns due to the game feature /  limitation of casualties suffered in one team of a platoon effecting the morale state of the entire platoon. Even though the effect on other team is not large when you have teams in a very bad morale state, like these guns were, it can be enough to push them over the edge.

The full analysis:

On 2018-04-03 at 3:32 PM, ChappyCanuck said:

I was recently playing the CMFI battle, "Alvano Anvil", with a friend.  Two of my Pak40's were out of sight and spread far apart from each other.  They were suffering no incoming fire, indirect or otherwise, and my friend confirmed that they were not targeted.

First things first the guns do not suffer any casualties - they abandon their guns and the gun get a red base when that happens. So if you just quickly look you can mistake that for a casualty for sure. See images 5 and 6: notice the red base on the gun in the game screen but also notice all the members of the team are fine.

 

On 2018-04-03 at 3:32 PM, ChappyCanuck said:

At the EXACT same second of the same turn, both crews experienced a mysterious casualty and subsequently abandoned their guns. Their ammo bearers also panicked and ran at the same time although they did not suffer the mysterious casualty.  I can only assume this is a glitch of some sort.  In any case, I have kept the file.

The ammo bearers reacted the same due to poor morale just like the gun crews. Also there is a 5s time span for the events in question.

There is a game feature / limitation whereby the combat stress, especially casualties, that happen to one team have morale effects on all other teams in the platoon. Someone did a nice post that showed this effect but I cold not find the post - I thought it was @MOS:96B2P, or @Bulletpoint or @Josey Wales - if anyone can find it please post the link. Basically casualties effect the morale of a squad but it turns out it also effects the morale of the rest of the platoon too. This happens regardless of if other teams can see the casualties happen of if C2 is maintained. Frequently we do not notice this for two reasons: 1) platoons are often located near each other so if a squad is taking casulties the sister squads can see those casualties too, so we don't really find it surprising that the suffer too. 2) frequently morale effects are not as drastic or cut and dry as abandoning a gun, so we are not surprised if squads in a bad way become shaken. In this case we have teams that are separated by a significant distance and we have a noticeable event, the abandoning of the guns, that is an important and significant change.

Here is the condition of the teams and sequence of events:

First we have the team that will take the casualties 4 Squad / Team B. They are shaken and will be under fire from a several enemy units during the turn.

01 Team that gets hit:
20180411025711-0864a59e.jpg

The two guns are in the same platoon as the above team (1 Battery). Both gun crews are broken.

02 One gun:
20180411025717-6f92feed.jpg

03 Second gun:
20180411025722-467b4d89.jpg

At 31:34 the Sherman shell explodes near 4 Squad / Team B and three men become casualties.

04 Team take the hit and three casualties:
20180411025730-b1b70631.jpg

At 31:31 the gun Squad / A Team are shaken and have had enough. They abandon their gun.

05 One gun abandoned:
20180411025736-3c7ec504.jpg

At 31:29 the other gun (also called Squad / A Team) become shaken and abandon their gun.

06 Second gun abandoned:
20180411025741-4bd2a9de.jpg

So, the bottom line is this even is due to the way the game works and is not a problem that needs to be fixed. Although I suppose we could debate if the game should work that we or not. Frankly I am not sure that would be a worth while use of our time though :)

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@IanLyes, great spot!

It looks like an example of how Combat Stress (the effect upon morale of the build up of casualties within a unit) works in the game. Although the video below was made to show the effect of the Leadership modifier on a HQ unit, it also shows an infantry platoon in which one of the squads takes casualties.

As it does, from 1:36 it can be seen that the persistent morale state of the other squads in the platoon and the Plt HQ is reduced. This happens regardless of another squads geographic proximity or LOS to the unit that is taking the casualties as the effect is distributed via the platoon structure.

To relate this to the OP, as all the units in the AT team are from 1 Battery, then any team suffering Combat Stress in 1 Battery due to the build up of casualties will cause other teams within 1 Battery to suffer Combat Stress, regardless of how many hundreds of meters apart the units within 1 Battery are located from each other. Basically what IanL said.

Additionally, because both of the gun teams are already in a Broken morale state with the red 'Brittle' icon showing in the suppression indicator, the slightest hit on morale is going to cause them to go Shaken or Panicked.

Edited by Josey Wales
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1 hour ago, IanL said:

OK I finally loaded this up and figured out what is happening.

TLDR: The gun teams are *not* suffering any casualties. Therefore nothing wrong here regarding HE or ricochet effects. They are abandoning their guns due to the game feature /  limitation of casualties suffered in one team of a platoon effecting the morale state of the entire platoon. Even though the effect on other team is not large when you have teams in a very bad morale state, like these guns were, it can be enough to push them over the edge.

Great run down and explanation, Ian. Seems so obvious now in hindsight. Like turning the last page of a murder mystery. It was the butler all along!

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9 minutes ago, Josey Wales said:

It looks like an unrealistic example of how Combat Stress (the effect upon morale of the build up of casualties within a unit) works in the game. Although the video below was made to show the effect of the Leadership modifier on a HQ unit, it also shows an infantry platoon in which one of the squads takes casualties.

As it does, from 1:36 it can be seen that the persistent morale state of the other squads in the platoon and the Plt HQ is reduced. This happens regardless of another squads geographic proximity or LOS to the unit that is taking the casualties as the effect is distributed via the platoon structure.

Yep that shows it perfectly. I had thought I read about this effect but it could have been your video. Either way that video shows this effect nicely. Thanks.

 

1 minute ago, Bulletpoint said:

Great run down and explanation, Ian. Seems so obvious now in hindsight. Like turning the last page of a murder mystery. It was the butler all along!

LOL the sticky wicket in determining what happened was the OP said the gun crews took casualties too but that turned out to be a mistake. So, to solve this one we really needed screen shots or to look at the turn.

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Thanks Ian and Josey (nice video!)

Stonecutter (my opponent in this battle) and I reviewed this footage over and over and we couldn't figure it out.  We both have hundreds of hours (thousands?) of CM gaming experience but this situation was unique in the scope of our own experiences with this game.

I can only imagine the visual and audio horrors of witnessing the demise of fellow section/platoon mates, and I fully understand game mechanics that attempt to replicate the negative morale effects of such experiences. However, in this case, both gun crews were not only distant, but also occupying a reverse slope position and out of LOS of the casualties who were on the forward slope.  And this makes it difficult for me to accept what happened in this instance.

Cheers everyone!

 

 

 

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Agreed, the Combat Stress mechanic would be more reasonable if its propagation was governed by audio/visual proximity to the unit sustaining the casualties as opposed to organisational structure. 

The other end of the spectrum of the current system is that a conscript/-2/-2 unit from a different platoon as a unit which is being massacred 20m away in front of their eyes wouldn't suffer any impact on their morale. 

Combat Stress does eventually propagate between platoons, but the casualty rate in the engaged platoon needs to be high before this effect is seen. 

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44 minutes ago, ChappyCanuck said:

I can only imagine the visual and audio horrors of witnessing the demise of fellow section/platoon mates, and I fully understand game mechanics that attempt to replicate the negative morale effects of such experiences. However, in this case, both gun crews were not only distant, but also occupying a reverse slope position and out of LOS of the casualties who were on the forward slope.  And this makes it difficult for me to accept what happened in this instance.

I think we should call it quantum morale entanglement. :D

This is defiantly an abstraction in the game.

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