Vehicle reaction time

[The_MonkeyKing]

2 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

I was most looking forward to playing CMSF2 red-on-red battles because 1970s technology Russian tanks are not the überweapons that 21st century tanks are. T55s vs T62s, T62s vs first generation T72s. The battles are less likely to abruptly end after 3 minutes of one-sided carnage. The closest equivalent in CMBS is playing the baseline T64 on the Ukrainian side, which behaves most like a 1970 Cold Warrior.

I too am looking forward to these. A nice middle ground between WWII and modern.

[slysniper]

Just to show the drastic difference between how the game models the capabilities of western vs eastern tanks.

I did a battle in CMBS 

4- M1A2 with abs vs

31- T72 B3 range 1500 meters  at the time the abrams roll into place to take on the advancing reds.

ground basically flat with no advantages. Crews of the same quality for both sides

losses were 18 - T72's to take out the 4- M1's

 

Now does that seem like a realistic number, hard to say. what I did find interesting was the Abram kills were 2,3,3 & 10 for one tank

I ran him behind a dead comrade and between that and the smoke drifts that happened, he managed to get lucky and take on small groupings.

 

I think its always hard to decide how accurate the game is to RL. But we do have some real events that show just such results. but mostly these events were Israel conflicts and the tanks are not of the same era. Kuwait also, but there is still plenty of variables. but both have some very one sided results.

 

I find within the game, the basic rule is eastern tanks need to get the jump on allied tanks from flanking positions and even doing that, normally they need to have 2-1 odds and for a sure thing 3-1 odds. With that approach, they will normally have time to spot and at least one will fire before the allied unit. Now in truth, in the real world situation I would expect the same. Because no smart eastern tank commander should ever want to engage head to head without a massive advantage, since they are outclassed in many factors.

Point value wise its easy to get a 2-1 tank ratio. so game balance wise the game might not be all that bad between the two forces. 

But in scenarios where you might not have such advantages. learning how and when to use eastern tanks to take on western tanks is a skill to develop.

The trick is still to only engage if possible when multi units can attack and the tank has to choose to engage one target. letting infantry bait a enemy tank to engage them as your tank positions and fires from another direction is a good method to take away the western tank advantages.

In otherwards, trying to figure out if they have the modelling just right is worthless. Learning good tactics and getting realistic results is the goal.

Presently the game portrays most things pretty accurately. That is all that matters.

 

[SlowMotion]

I agree that most things are modeled accurately enough - for me at least.
But I think these delays make things look as if there are human crews inside vehicles.
It takes time for people to spot, think etc. If all those things happen in a fraction of a second it seems like it's a robot army.

IMO these human delays make battles look more interesting, even if events progressed alittle slower.

[JoMac]

On ‎10‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 12:03 PM, SlowMotion said:

When playing CMSF2 and maybe earlier modern time CM games also I've noticed that especially western tanks and vehicles can have very rapid reaction times.
I've seen cases where an enemy unit moves on map and opposite side's armored vehicle seems to spot it immediately and also act on this without ANY delay.

I have no real life experience of such vehicles, but I assume that crew members have to communicate when they spot something and shout orders so each crew member knows what to do. IMO it seems that often no such communication delay is involved, but things happen as if everything was controlled by a computer in a fraction of a second.

Any comments?  Especially from people with real experience from tanks etc. How long does it take from the moment when a crew member spots an enemy let's say on the right side of the vehicle to the moment that the vehicle has turned its hull (like happens in CM) and turret and is ready to fire at the enemy?

Ahh, and your not the only one that notices these things...I have said much the same in the WWII Titles.

If BF just slowed down the reaction times a bit by maybe an Action\Spotting Cycle or half, then it would feel a little more realistic.

Edited October 30, 2018 by JoMc67

[SlowMotion]

13 hours ago, JoMc67 said:

Ahh, and your not the only one that notices these things...I have said much the same in the WWII Titles.

If BF just slowed down the reaction times a bit by maybe an Action\Spotting Cycle or half, then it would feel a little more realistic.

Such game would be an interesting thing to try.

I notice this spotting speed more in modern games - CMSF2 and Black Sea - because tank turrets rotate so much faster than in WW2 tanks.

[JoMac]

58 minutes ago, SlowMotion said:

Such game would be an interesting thing to try.

I notice this spotting speed more in modern games - CMSF2 and Black Sea - because tank turrets rotate so much faster than in WW2 tanks.

Keep in mind, it's not the "Faster Turret Speeds" we are talking about, but rather the too fast reaction times (to get that turret moved in the first place) in general...However, and unfortunately, there is a lot of downtime/un-decision making in between turns that's not accounted for in CM...So, just think of it as 1 minute in CM=2/2.5 minutes in RL Combat, and you will sleep better at night.

Now, I don't play modern much (except a little of SF Demo), but in WWII I tend to make Armor 'Conscript'/Green with lower Leadership & Motivations in an attempt to help slow down the reaction times, and reduce the normal 90-100% hit chances.

Edited October 30, 2018 by JoMc67

[SlowMotion]

Just a small note about why modern tanks can spot things so much faster than older.

I watched a short video about Lynx - a new armored vehicle that is one of the competitors to replace current Bradley. That new vehicle has 20 cameras. 12 in turret and 8 in chassis.

[MikeyD]

Most battles, even on larger maps, take place at what might be called 'knife fight' ranges. You don't even have to calculate range because the round trajectory's basically flat for the first 1200 meters. I'm not saying this for certain because it happens so rarely, but engagement times above 2300m might take longer, especially against not-moving targets. You can sit there and sit there and slowly [?] icons start popping up and eventually resolve themselves into targets. Its at these longer ranges that having many eyes scouting for trouble (and a strong command link) shows its advantage.

[Erwin]

Hopefully CMSF2 will feature the larger maps that are needed to properly feature modern accurate long range weapons systems.  In WW2 games it's not so bad to have 500m-1000m ranges.  For modern games one needs 2Km+ to do what the weapons are designed to do.  Otherwise there is little point in having RL weapons systems designed to kill at 3Km-4Km ranges.

 

[The_MonkeyKing]

59 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Hopefully CMSF2 will feature the larger maps that are needed to properly feature modern accurate long range weapons systems.  In WW2 games it's not so bad to have 500m-1000m ranges.  For modern games one needs 2Km+ to do what the weapons are designed to do.  Otherwise there is little point in having RL weapons systems designed to kill at 3Km-4Km ranges.

 

There are whole countries that have close to zero terrain that has >500m visibility and still use all these modern weapon systems. Example Finland.

[Erwin]

That's odd - why have  expensive systems that can kill at 4Km range if that is not required?  You'd think that if 500m is the max visibility all over Finland, they would load up with weapons that had that as their max range.

Nevertheless it's still more fun when one can deploy with a 2Km+ LOS - as is more frequently found in the more open CMSF1 and 2 landscape.. 

[Michael Emrys]

4 hours ago, Erwin said:

That's odd - why have  expensive systems that can kill at 4Km range if that is not required?  You'd think that if 500m is the max visibility all over Finland, they would load up with weapons that had that as their max range.

They are looking forward to when their successful invasion reaches the open country of the steppes.

Michael