Issues with tank targeting accuracy

[Erwin]

The issue is that this goes against the "common wisdom" that it's best to be hulldown.   As said b4, maybe the RL issue is that hulldown the tank is more likely to kill its target than vice versa in the first 2 or 3 shots.  What the game demonstrates is that if the duel goes on for more than 2 or 3 shots, the PzIV and other similar AFV's become more vulnerable cos their mantles are more easily penetrated than their glacis.  

If that reflects RL, then that's fine.  The question is whether that does reflect reality.  Also, could the apparent high KIA rate be cos CM2 AFV's are more accurate after 2 or 3 shots than in RL?

The 2nd question is whether the % of gun hits we experience in the WW2 titles also reflects RL data.

I have no idea, and it doesn't spoil the game experience for me either way.  Am just posing the questions.

[wadepm]

It would appear that after the first couple of ranging shots the gun is super accurate.  Seems a little problematic but fixable.  We need to remember that trading shots with an opposing tank is not SOP.  The internal model is trying to get the first 3 shots about "right" and after that I'm guessing the extension of the accuracy model is not great but acceptable as it shouldn't happen except rarely.  

But I would like to see some data on weapon kills, they seem too easy.  But maybe not...     

[holoween]

I was trying to replicate the P4 vs Stuart test by having both sides use the hulldown command to get into position. I didnt manage to replicate the test but i did find an easily repeatable case of why i never even use the hulldown command anymore.

The tanks dont actually move up sufficiently to get a spot or be able to fire.

[RobZ]

I will do more tests soon, try to get some weapon kill data and some more with panzers and Stuart's.

[RobZ]

Gun damage tests

Tests were done with Tiger as target and sherman 75 as shooter. All tests done at 500m

I did 10 tests of each tiger position and did 2 different scenarios (total 40 test runs). The tests were done within sort of realistic expectations of how many times a tiger would be able to resist hits in a normal scenario, so each test lasts untill the tiger has been hit 5 times.

 

First scenario is testing random shots. This is done by having 5 shermans engaging the tiger at the same time, and since none of them will have time to zero in properly before the tiger is hit 5 times, its more random dispersion.

0 = no gun damage

1 = gun damaged

Tiger hull down 2m hill vs 5 shermans :

0,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,1,1 = 40% chance of main gun damage

 

Tiger in the open vs 5 shermans :

0,0,1,1,1,1,0,1,0,0 = 50% chance of main gun damage (tilted forwards)

1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0 = 20% chance of main gun damage (flat ground)

This one is a bit odd as the first run i had i noticed the tiger was not completely flat on the ground, but slightly tilted forwards which resulted in vastly greater chance of main gun damage. I redid the test on flat ground to get proper results.

This small tilt (left pic) gave 50% instead of 20%. Pretty interesting.

 

Now for the secound scenario where i was testing zeroed shots. This was done with just 1 sherman firing untill 5 hits was recieved and this gives it time to zero in and have the accurate zeroing aim.

Tiger hull down 2m hill vs 1 sherman :

0,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,0,0 = 60% chance of main gun damage. This one had 2 tests where the main gun actually was hit but didnt break for some reason so the chance could be as high as 80%.

As pictured here.

 

Tiger in the open vs 1 sherman :

0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0 = 0% chance of main gun damage. This one can be assumed to be less than 10%, more tests would eventually lead to atleast one main gun hit during the first shots.

 

Conclusion

Hull down is bad for a tank like tiger and most likely panther aswell vs enemies that has no realistic chance of killing the tank anyway. And for some reason, tilting the tank is also bad, dont know what to think about that one.

For refrence this is how the weapon is hit in order to get main gun damage, the mantlet is too armored for the 75mm gun, so only the muzzle can get destroyed in this way.

Edited May 10, 2020 by RobZ
mistakes were made

[Erwin]

Thanks for doing the tests.  That's valuable info when playing the game.  Gun hits do seem to happen with irritating frequency in CM2.

Dunno what RL data there exists re gun hits, but presumably if such data was not collected it was because it happened so rarely in RL that is was not worth worrying about.  

So, at least we know we have be aware of and work around the CM2issues of hulldown being worse that being in the open plus gun hits...  The only thing that seems to be clear is to (whenever possible) avoid multiple shot duels whether one is hulldown or not.

Edited May 10, 2020 by Erwin

[holoween]

On 5/8/2020 at 7:18 PM, RobZ said:

Did another test

5 stuart vs 3 panzer IV @700m, no target refrence points used

First 5 rounds was with the panzers in hull down position

This is how much is exposed from the stuarts perspective.

When in hull down position the panzers won 2/5 times, and those 2 times they lost 2 tanks the first time and 1 tank the last time.

 

I just finished my own hulldown test at 700m

5 m5a1 late regulars vs 3 Pz4J late regulars.

In 5 rounds the stuarts managed a total of 5 hits while the p4s destroyed 24 stuarts with one getting away with a pen.

The p4s suffered 1tank with destroyed maingun and coax from 2 pens, 1 with a partial pen that wounded the tc and one with light damage to the radio from 1 pen.

One stuart survived a pen that killed 2 crew. all others were destroyed.

So ill keep using my hulldown positions.

Id love to see how you managed to get your p4s to loose.

[RobZ]

16 minutes ago, holoween said:

I just finished my own hulldown test at 700m

5 m5a1 late regulars vs 3 Pz4J late regulars.

In 5 rounds the stuarts managed a total of 5 hits while the p4s destroyed 24 stuarts with one getting away with a pen.

The p4s suffered 1tank with destroyed maingun and coax from 2 pens, 1 with a partial pen that wounded the tc and one with light damage to the radio from 1 pen.

One stuart survived a pen that killed 2 crew. all others were destroyed.

So ill keep using my hulldown positions.

Id love to see how you managed to get your p4s to loose.

Did you drive into hull down position or did u start the test with both units already in hull down position? due to your results i will do more testing now for those units and see if i get different results than when i tested the first time (5 rounds isnt a lot)

[holoween]

Just now, RobZ said:

Did you drive into hull down position or did u start the test with both units already in hull down position? due to your results i will do more testing now for those units and see if i get different results than when i tested the first time (5 rounds isnt a lot)

I did move into hulldown positions.

This is the scenario i used for it. You have to manually move the tanks into hulldown positions because the hulldown command doesnt work.

Tank accuracy test2.btt

[RobZ]

1 minute ago, holoween said:

I did move into hulldown positions.

This is the scenario i used for it. You have to manually move the tanks into hulldown positions because the hulldown command doesnt work.

Tank accuracy test2.btt 8.75 kB · 0 downloads

In that case i might have to double testing, in my scenarios they all start in final position to have completely fresh spotting for both. Moving atleast the panzer into position would mean the commander can probably spot much quicker before the panzer exposes itself.

[holoween]

Just now, RobZ said:

In that case i might have to double testing, in my scenarios they all start in final position to have completely fresh spotting for both. Moving atleast the panzer into position would mean the commander can probably spot much quicker before the panzer exposes itself.

Both sides have to move into their hulldown positions and have their tc up. So that doesnt really give any side an advantedge.

[RobZ]

17 minutes ago, holoween said:

Both sides have to move into their hulldown positions and have their tc up. So that doesnt really give any side an advantedge.

For refrence here is actual video footage from the test i performed, 3 panzers hull down vs 5 stuarts in the open at 700m. I had the difficulty set to elite this time as i forgot to change it from playing yesterday. Either way it shows the same results i got earlier.

https://streamable.com/mbsky1

 

How can you control enemy units during testing?

[holoween]

3 minutes ago, RobZ said:

How can you control enemy units during testing?

Play in hoseat mode.

[RobZ]

1 minute ago, holoween said:

Play in hoseat mode.

ahh i see thats smart.

[RobZ]

So now after another test.

I tested again on my setup, but this time the stuarts were also hull down. The results are interesting to say the least.

Panzers won 5/5 rounds, took 0-1 losses each time. 3 losses total.

 

So what can we conclude from this? I dont know exactly lol. These results are so odd to me. When the stuarts are placed in a better position (hull down) they all of a sudden loose all rounds. It's like the panzers are less accurate or worse at spotting when the stuarts are on flat ground. Stuarts also missed quite a lot and it took them longer to spot now than when they were placed in the open.

[holoween]

14 minutes ago, RobZ said:

So what can we conclude from this?

My conclusion would be that the ai has bonuses on higher difficulties and as such testing should always be done in hotseat mode.

[RobZ]

49 minutes ago, holoween said:

My conclusion would be that the ai has bonuses on higher difficulties and as such testing should always be done in hotseat mode.

I didn't use hotseat though, as there was no movement needed and AI automatically opens the tank. It still gave similar results to your test. And yes there seems to be some hidden accuracy bonus when facing hull down enemies. All hits on Stuarts in my cases was pretty much straight down the middle center line of the tank.

[holoween]

So ive tested it a bit more and it seems that for some reason the majority of the spotting potential from the stuart comes fromm the driver and bowgunner.

5 stuarts in hulldown position barely spotted 5 p4s in the open while 5 stuarts in the open easily spotted 5 p4s in hulldown.

Trying the same with shermans there was a similar effect but not as drastic.

 

What seems to be clear though is that being hulldown doesnt seem to give any benefit to being spotted for some reason and in CMFB at least for all tanks ive tested so far noticably decreased their spotting ability.

[AlexUK]

The penetrations in the mantlet have been a worry for some time. Is this an official bug? 

[RobZ]

59 minutes ago, holoween said:

So ive tested it a bit more and it seems that for some reason the majority of the spotting potential from the stuart comes fromm the driver and bowgunner.

5 stuarts in hulldown position barely spotted 5 p4s in the open while 5 stuarts in the open easily spotted 5 p4s in hulldown.

Trying the same with shermans there was a similar effect but not as drastic.

 

What seems to be clear though is that being hulldown doesnt seem to give any benefit to being spotted for some reason and in CMFB at least for all tanks ive tested so far noticably decreased their spotting ability.

That is interesting, and I was thinking about that maybe cus the driver and co gunner isn't looking it spots worse. However the commander is up the hatch and should have best chance of any of them to spot and confirm a target. All this combines into mixed negatives and positives with hull down position or terrain infront of your tank. More types of tanks might need to be tested to give more practical results. I think CM could improve somewhat with this, hull down seems very terrible for what it's supposed to be.

That's brings the other subject, how many shots on average does it take to hit a full Target compared to a hull down target? Needs to be tested to kind of confirm an accuracy bonus vs less exposed targets.

These target issues seem to be a lot deeper than I thought.

[Erwin]

Fascinating... 

It wasn't clear...  Would a AFV in the open, cos it has more eyes spotting, spot a hulldown AFV b4 the hulldown AFV (which has only the CO spotting) spots the AFV in the open?  (Say that quickly 3 times lol...)

If so, since spotting also plays a part in whether one AFV spots a target early enuff that it can start shooting, that "hulldown waiting in ambush" could also be detrimental to its life expectancy.  

Of course, ideally one ambushes from a flank, not from the front.  So, in that case perhaps all the crew's eyes are pointed forwards and would not so easily spot an AFV on its flank?  In that instance perhaps hulldown in ambush on a target's flank is the lesson that the CM2 game at least teaches us - since the target would not only have to spot successfully, but would also have to rotate its turret.

[RobZ]

55 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Fascinating... 

It wasn't clear...  Would a AFV in the open, cos it has more eyes spotting, spot a hulldown AFV b4 the hulldown AFV (which has only the CO spotting) spots the AFV in the open?  (Say that quickly 3 times lol...)

If so, since spotting also plays a part in whether one AFV spots a target early enuff that it can start shooting, that "hulldown waiting in ambush" could also be detrimental to its life expectancy.  

Of course, ideally one ambushes from a flank, not from the front.  So, in that case perhaps all the crew's eyes are pointed forwards and would not so easily spot an AFV on its flank?  In that instance perhaps hulldown in ambush on a target's flank is the lesson that the CM2 game at least teaches us - since the target would not only have to spot successfully, but would also have to rotate its turret.

In this clip I posted earlier you can see the stuarts fire first.

https://streamable.com/mbsky1

so it's safe to assume they do infact spot the hull down panzers faster.

 

As for the flank ambush. I expect that scenario to go like it would IRL with the ambush tank winning majority of those cases. If this game shows otherwise I would say it's broken beyond function, but from my playtime the game works well most of the time and I would assume that scenario to go as expected.

[Erwin]

2 hours ago, RobZ said:

In this clip I posted earlier you can see the stuarts fire first.

https://streamable.com/mbsky1

so it's safe to assume they do infact spot the hull down panzers faster.

Yup. Pretty convincing...  Have always assumed that since this is a game, that there will be abstractions and phenomena that do not reflect RL, so doesn't spoil the game for me.   But, it's nice to have the evidence when one gets into those arguments with folks who insist that CM2 is super accurate and it's all WYSIWYG.  

[Attilaforfun]

On 5/8/2020 at 4:10 AM, Hapless said:

 

The Sherman gunner's main optic is 4x IIRC, so it looks even smaller! Im not 100% up on my Sherman fire control and gunnery mechanics, but I don't think firing the gun is going to change the gunner's point of aim... so why would the gunner voluntarily aim somewhere else once he's on target?

The gun moves every round and the target must be reacquired.

[Attilaforfun]

3 hours ago, Erwin said:

 

Of course, ideally one ambushes from a flank, not from the front.  So, in that case perhaps all the crew's eyes are pointed forwards and would not so easily spot an AFV on its flank?  In that instance perhaps hulldown in ambush on a target's flank is the lesson that the CM2 game at least teaches us - since the target would not only have to spot successfully, but would also have to rotate its turret.

Tanks do not default to 'looking ahead.' Every tank in the platoon has an assigned sector. When you see a group of tanks move tactically you will note 2 things: a) the guns of the tanks are covering at least a 270 degree field and b) tank turrets are constantly moving searching for targets within their assigned sectors. 

ETA: I have many many hours in M1 simulators. When attached to the Strykers all the tankers got sent to the sim center twice a year to maintain tank skills. I can recall our driver sighting a target exactly once in a hundred battles.

Edited May 11, 2020 by Attilaforfun