'Cover Armor' failing?

[Steve McClaire]

Searched and did not find anything on this.

In a recent PBEM I had a set a unit on 'cover armor', predicting that enemy vehicles were going to appear in the covered area. Sure enough, the enemy AFVs moved into the covered area and came straight at the covering unit. The covering unit did nothing. No target line. It just sat there. The enemy drove right up to within 50m of the covering unit before the turn was over, and still they refused to engage. The next turn I ordered the unit to target one of the enemy AFVs directly, and then it did engage and destroyed them both.

The covering unit was not hiding, had AP ammunition, could easily penetrate the enemy tanks from any angle, and was in command of an HQ unit. Any ideas why they refused to fire?

I have a movie of this if BFC believe it could be a problem of some sort.

Thanks,

Steve

[walpurgis nacht]

what was the "covering unit"?

[Kingfish]

What was the visibility in the scenario? Did the covered arc extend beyond the unit's LOS? What type of unit was it? Was it buttoned up?

If this pertains to a ROW scenario you can e-mail me directly

[MikeyD]

What was their range when the enemy first appeared?

I have noticed a range-related anomaly that sounds something like your bug. I put a German and Brit Valentine side-by-side (for mod testing) in a scenario. I started the game and hit 'GO' and they both placidly sat there for two turns without so much as looking over their should at eachother. I know that if I had placed them 100m apart instead of 10m they would've immediately opened-up on each other.

[Panzerfest]

I was playing a QB in a dust storm and my PzIII stumbled onto a pair of valentines, in the confusion of battle the lead Valentine and my Panzer drove right up to each other, to my surprise, my panzer changed targets at roughly 10 meters and engaged the second valentine, cursing my rotton luck i expected to be blown sky high at point balnk by the first Val, didn't happen, the panzer blew away the second Val and just sat there staring at the first, both had their turrets pointing at each other, next turn i ordered my panzer to engage the Val, nothing happened until some supporting infantry started lobbing grenade bundles at the val and it backed up and at about 15-20M was destroyed by the panzer. I figured that it was modelled that if AFVs are too close to each other they can not engage. i guess it makes scense if you have a panther ram a sherman there would be a problem traversing that long 75. but looking back, it seemed very strange as the PzIII had a short 50mm and they were within 5M for at least a minute and a half.

I dont even know if this sort of thing is modelled or minimum range for that matter in CM ,but i have been rountinely surprised at the depth of detail in CM (I fliped when i saw that the Nahverteidigungswaffe was modelled!) are minimum ranges for AFVs modelled?

[Moon]

What unit was the targetted enemy unit? "Cover armor" will not be triggered by lightly (or un-)armored and lightly armed AC's for example.

Martin

[Steve McClaire]

Originally posted by Moon:

What unit was the targetted enemy unit? "Cover armor" will not be triggered by lightly (or un-)armored and lightly armed AC's for example.

That must have been it. Thank you, Martin.

Steve

[GreenAsJade]

In fact, previous threads concluded that "Cover armour will only trigger on enemy units that can hurt armour". Therefore an HT with an MG will not trigger it but an HT with a 37mm gun will.

(I haven't actually tested that specific example, come to think of it, but I think its right!)

[phil stanbridge]

I had something similar to this occur to me the other day in the Bocage scenraio Wittman against the entire British army

A Tiger was right smack bang next to a British Sherman, and yet it would not attack - in fact neither unit attacked each other, they just sat there, next to each other until the end of battle (which was a turn or two later). I even used an armour arc and it still refused to fire!

[dieseltaylor]

Ah! new tactic revealed rush up to Wittman and box him in. Brilliant : )

[Jaws]

I discovered also a other problem. A tiger passed a US bazooka team (11 meters) in his cover armour. Then when the tiger drove 1 meter out of his cover armour (and stopped 12 meters form bazooka team) the bazooka team rotated back to his sector and didn’t fire anymore on the tiger. I can't remember this behaviour from previous CM versions?

[farmerch]

Cover arcs are always a little bit of a gamble. It also happens when a vehicle is driving quickly entering and passing a cover arc so your units doesn't have enought time to shoot and then just seems to think: Gosh, let's forget about it!