Tero

Originally posted by Sergei: Maybe the sniper's TacAI just isn't that complex, so it could avoid engaging strong infantry as it knows it can't make much more difference than get killed itself, and it could target a HQ team as it knows that's a juicy target for it, BUT it can't prioritize properly when these two situations are presented simultaneously. This leads into what we consider as illogical behaviour, as we usually put our lives to the first place, fulfilling the task to second. Agreed. The sharpshooter propably saw a target it could not leave alone. As there is no "memory" for it it propably forgot about the full infantry squad not 10 meters away and opened up on the HQ unit. The shots fired during the reaction phase were almost simultaneous. I expected the sharpshooter would get killed and I was surprised to see it had taken that HQ with it. This is of course just a guess, and TacAI sure is too complex to just say "BTS fix or do somefink", but I hope (and trust) Charles will present great improvements to it in CM2. Yes. These Kodak moments are the ones that baffle us the most. It may well be that the sharpshooter "heard" commands but since the player does not get nearly the same amount of data the AI uses to calculate stuff the player has to go by what he sees.

Originally posted by Graaf Spee: But when he was rushed he acted in self defence . As for picking out the HQ, thats what sharpshooters are programmed to do (if there had been a schreck team nearby he probably would have fired at it instead). Agreed. Except the squad emerged first and it was right next to the sharpshooter when it opened up on the HQ unit. By opening up on the HQ the sharpshooter effectively commited a suicide by enemy. If you think the result was strange you probably shouldnt use sharpshooters at night as they prefear to shoot at ranges over 200m. It is a scenario, not a QB.

Originally posted by CMplayer: Why? First rate soldiers often act on mysterious 'hunches' and intuition. Some people are like that, and your pixellated sharpshooter just must have been one of them. Kudos. Well..... in the case of the first squad I do agree it was propably better to leave sleeping dogs lie. But how did it know it would be prudent to delay opening fire against the second squad and wait for the yet unspotted HQ unit instead ? Why not delay opening fire until there was better a chance to survive the engement AND kill off the HQ unit ?

Seems we überFinns need to find a new market we can corner and set up a monopoly on.

In a recent night time PBEM (LOS in the 45m region) I had an Allied sharpshooter hiding in brushes 10 meters from a German infantry contact. I figured the sharpshooter was history anyway so I targeted the infantry contact. In the reaction phase the sharpshooter refused to open up and the infrantry unit moved away. About halfway through the reaction phase my esteemed opponent made a rush towards the sharpshooter with full squads (as I had expected). Bang bang, one killed German HQ unit (which I take had sustained 2 casualties in a previous engagement) and one killed sharpshooter. Sharpshooters are supposed to be cool under fire and it not opening up on an uncertain target was OK as such but this demonstration of clairvoyance and ESP in picking out the HQ unit in brushes at night with enemy squads moving towards it raised my eyebrows. The enemy units may have been sneaking so that would account for some of this but not all of it.

Would it help if the point allocations for different types of formations was altered when Rarity option is selected ? Say the player would get different point allocations based on the rarity selection. No rarity selection would draw a different point allocation than a Fixed rarity selection. Also force types could effect the allocations differently. With Rarity on infantry/support point allocations should (?) be increased while armour gets less allocated points.

Originally posted by Ogadai: Out of a matter of interest, does anybody know the arming range for the Panzerfaust? It might a case not so much of a miss as a failure to explode because it hasn't armed (in otherwords, you're too close). As far as I know it being for all intents and purposes a rocket propelled HEAT round there would not be an arming distance on it. The cone casing would detonate the charge some distance away from the armour. It would require some velocity to detonate though. IIRC the propellant burned away on the tube so the initial "muzzle" velocity would be reached within a few meters of the firing tube and the velocity would drop sharply after the initial momentum was expended. I do not know a "safe" velocity that would render in inoprable even if it hit a target in the right angle. [ 11-15-2001: Message edited by: tero ]</p>

Originally posted by wwb_99: I wonder not why they missed, but why they hit. Some ÜberFinns scored first shot hits when firing their first ever Pzfausts while a buddy was reading the untranslated manual to him to guide him through the procedure of making it ready, aiming and firing it. Seriously: while the weapon was nondescript by modern standards the operating principle and the deployment procedure was extremely simple. My beef with the hand held AT weapons in CM is the fact that they are too consistently unlucky in their first shot hits. IRL you would wait until you were 95% certain you can get a hit with the first shot. And have at least a sporting chance of getting out of the firing position. The way they are modelled now they expend all their shots during a single turn because they use maximum ROF as if they were artillery pieces. And they do not take heed of the tactical situation and they do not care if they make it out alive.

Rounds out !

Originally posted by redwolf: Except for hit probability (see below). In a recent PBEM I had a Churchill CS fire at an yet-unidentified SP gun (thought it was a Marder and did not switch to AP, it later turned out to be a Stug) with HE ammo for several turns without hitting it. Then another SP gun, instantly ID'd as a Stug showed up on its other flank and the Churchill nailed it with the first (AP) shot. (The graphichs showed the turret facing the other SP gun when I issued the retarget order but when the reaction phase started the turret was facing the Stug and it fired at it within 3-5 seconds into the reaction phase. Straight between the eyes). Then it resumed sniping the other SP gun with HE with the usual inaccuracy. (I later took it out with a PIAT.) Talk about coincidence.

Originally posted by Big Time Software: A small dose of reality here... very little information out there agrees on a particular issue 100% of the time in 100% of the possible situations. True. So like any good researcher/scientist, all things must be looked at in as broad a context as possible. How did you combine and disseminate factors from this broader context ? For example I get a gut feeling the weapons and weapons systems are rated by their mount more than by the "inherent" qualities of the weapons themselves. The penetration values stay the same but there seems to be more mount related factors that affect the outcome of a shot. A Sherman on the move performs better than a stationary concealed (which is not truly concealed) Stug. There seems to be indications the non-turreted weapons systems for example get short changed as things stand. And that seems to be by design, not necessarily by some historical facts of ability to KO them but because there are aspects in the game engine that are geared to favour the other weapons systems (turreted tanks in this case). It also seems the the difference in the silhouette values between the two vehicles engageing each other has more impact on the outcome than it realistically should have. Gut feelings and other ellusive things raising doubts one can not quite put the finger on. If two pieces of "real world" data (forget about CM for now!!) don't agree with each other we have to figure out why. This is unfortunately what we spend much of our time doing because so little can be counted on as "correct" or "complete". What kind of a sample base did you cather to get a statistically representative and relevant database to work from ? It is all a balancing act of detective work, if you will. It is subject to error and interpretation, which is why there is often disagreements between people who are looking at the same exact "facts". Yes. There are millions and millions of possible different permutations that would have to be recored, multiple times, for this method to work. Since this is practically impossible, it was not done. However, when we (BTS, testers, or customers) found a situation which did not appear to be correct, then tabulation and experimentation was done. I take it things like the penetration values were not tested within the game engine as they would have been tested in RL test grounds. Ordnance fired at a slab of metal X millimeters thick. Instead, the test was made by firing the gun (weapons system) mounted on a mount fired at the finished product ? How were the adjustement made and how were they balanced with relevant factors correlating with each other ? How were anomalies treated ? What was the threshold for accepting the anomaly to stay in ?

Originally posted by Bullethead: It's a lot easier to get spare parts for a machine than for an animal You can also mix and match parts from several wrecked vehicles to make at least one of them functional. You can't do that with animals. True. But How many spare wrecks did they carry along ? You're missing the point. One tractor replaced a whole team of horses. Thus, a team short 1 horse is analogous to a tractor with the engine not firing on 1 cylinder. Both still function at reduced capacity. What if it is the engine block or radiator we are talking about ? The analogue works both ways. Again, the tractor replaces a whole team. How big a target is a team of 16 draft horses, compared to a tractor? Which guns did they have to pull with 16 horses ?On the road the team is bigger bigger, on the firing position the single horse is smaller than the tractor, provided the gun crew is not a bunch of idiots and they do not disperse the horses properly. However, I do know that normally they don't lie down very much--they even sleep standing up. Their normal response to danger is to run away, not hit the deck. The Finnish war horses at least learned to take cover when they heard a plane. Or they came under fire. After the war the farmers had a hard time when they would still go through the routines even if there was no danger but a plane flew over head or there was a sudden loud bang. Tractors neither run away nor hit the deck. However, you can at least dig a hole to put them in. Try getting a horse in that The Finnish soldiers did construct dug out shelters for horses just the same way they did for themsleves. It's a lot easier to break flesh and bone than it is metal--tractors are much less likely to fail than horses under the same level of adverse conditions. Ever had a diesel glog up in mild zub zero temperature ? And a horse with a broken leg from "wear and tear" over a bad road is not fixable in a militarily practical sense. Hell, they're usually not fixable in a peacetime civilian sense. But the tractor will not even notice the pot hole that breaks the horse's leg. Unless the main axel breaks. I disagree. Run a team of 16 straining draft horses over soft ground and see how they tear it up. By a tractor I mean fully tracked vehicle. Not the wheeled modern one. In such conditions, horses wouldn't be able to move either. But when the thaw finally comes, the tractor could be made to move again. The horses will be corpses. In the case of Germans in the Eastern Front the Russian horses were more resilient. And the Finnish horses. I also wonder if the gun crews were derelict in constructing shelters for the horses. By and large, there isn't any horse forage in the woods. Horses are creatures of open, grassy plains, not forests. So both horses and tractors would need fuel carried along on such a trip. In which case, the tractor has the advantage by requiring far less supplies over the same distance traveled. How far can a vehicle travel with half a ration of fuel ? Compared to horses. Also, there is a lot more food to be found in a forest than you might think. Being animals the horses would eat bark off the trees and so on.

Originally posted by Michael emrys: Well, there is the small matter of being able to produce the necessary machinery. All countries able to produce the machines in sufficient quantities made the transition as speedily as their economies would allow, including the Soviet Union who were actually somewhat pioneers in this area. Why then did the Red Army still use horses to draw artillery in 1944-45 ? There are reports of Finnish Stugs running over teams of horses during counterattacks. Transportation is always a problem for all armies that intend to go anywhere. Granted, Continental armies were not normally concerned with marine shipping space, but they all had to think about how much they could move efficiently by rail. There is also the thing about POL resources in Europe being very limited. Fodder for horses was easier to come by. Not much, as the figures that Bullethead quoted should serve to illustrate. It should, yes. But what about actual numbers ? How did the projections made based on WWI figures apply to the WWII ? Besides, sometimes armies could in fact scrounge POL, though it isn't something they should have counted on (witness the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge). QED. But for instance, the Germans in their dash across northern France in 1940 were occasionally able to refuel their tanks at French filling stations. How much of that was due to German planners wanting have their vehciles be able to do that ? Which other armies could do that (fill up at a civilian petrol station) ? Rommel frequently ran his army in North Africa on captured fuel. And look how far he got with it.

Originally posted by Michael emrys: Don't count on getting much work out of them that way though. Pulling heavy loads like artillery requires heap big energy, like you only get from lots of grain in their diet. And if it's winter time, don't count on many of them staying alive for very long on what they can forage in a given area, even if idle. Who would be idiotic enough to use wheels in (deep) snow when you can put skis under the gun and slide it over the snow (or on ice roads) with that much less effort ? Many (most ?) Finnish horses were commandeered from civilians and they had worked lumbercamps during winter and the fields during the summer so they were used to pulling heavy loads in the same conditions they were required to pull the guns. And the gun crews knew the conditions and how to take care of the horses.

Originally posted by Michael emrys: Do you think you could rephrase this statement, tero? As it is, I find it confusing. I don't know how you'd get it against the top armor. The case in point is Finnish 20mm ATR firing at a KV-1 which has its commander hatch open (a totally random example based on RL Finnish instructions given to the ATR gunners about engageing the KV-1). The open hatch stood up at a 90º angle from the turret roof and aiming at it you could get shots or molten metal and splinters deflecting into the turret. The 0º degree refers to the turret roof when the ATR is at the same level as the turret roof. The "OR worse" bit refers to the ATR being at a lower level than the turret roof, say on the ground. The results of these shots deflecting were hoped to vary from crew casualties to at the extreme case brew up or catastrophic explosion of ammo. I do not know if this ever worked IRL but those were the instructions given to the ATR gunners. I hope this was more accesible.

Originally posted by Bullethead: On the subject of horses vs. motor vehicles for towing arty, it was realized early in the 20th Century that over-all, vehicles were far superior. This quote is from Fred Crimson's US Military Tracked Vehicles, page 145, in the intro to the section on Gun Motor Carriages. The internal quotes and cites are from the US Ordnance Department's Handbook of Ordnance Data, published in November 1918. The data used in this handbook was based on careful studies of the AEF experience in France: WWI examples make very poor comparisons. Besides, if the findings were relevant for the continental armies they would have phased out the horses from service entirely forthwith. The transportation overseas was indeed a factor. But only for those armies who crossed oceans. At the time this report was written, horses were being compared to simple crawler tractors, such as Holt's 10 ton Artillery Tractor M1917 and the 2.5 ton Artillery Tractor M1918 by Holt and RIA. These things looked like bulldozers without blades. By the time of WW2, improved technology had made the horse even more obsolete. Not really. How much of the transportation capacity freed from the transportation of these beasts of burden was taken up by transportation of fuel (as ALL of it had to transported, not many chances for forraging locally) ?

Originally posted by Germanboy: The Shrapnell that goes through the radiator of the HT has created a nuisance and some repairable damage to the prime mover. Provided you had the sparepart at hand. The same Shrapnell tearing a whole in the horse has created a prime mover casualty, and you have to find a new one. How many more extra motorized vehicles were in a motorized formation ? Also, you could move a gun with a team short of one horse. With the tractor it was either go or no go. Also, any shrapnell hitting the horse is going to put it out of action, while in a vehicle there are large areas where it does not matter at all. The German horses must have VERY big if they were as large as tractors. And the tractors could be made to lie down and take cover. but there are also problems of exhaustion of the beasts How many trucks and tractors were written off in a year due to wear and tear ? How much more time did it take for the horse to recover than to completely overhaul a tractor ? speed, Granted. cross country mobility for anything larger than a light field gun Then again a track left by a tractor speeding across the field was more conspicuous than a track left by a horse team. (ever had a look at the limbers and their wheels?) and whatnot. Many guns game with separate models of wheels and liber suitable for motorized and horse drawn mode of transport. There was also the slight problem with the original German horses dying in droves in the Russian winter, because they could not deal with the temperatures (only one source for that, but it does not sound too far fetched). How many German horses died of exposure in France ? While the truck will run again once the temperature goes up, the only thing you can do with the dead horse is (b)eat it. What about a dead battery, cracked block, doors frozen solid, no vision through the windshield, wheel wells frozen solid with dirt and mud ? Both are equally unspooked by gunfire sounds though, as it seems. The horse can be acclimatized up to a point, yes. And they learn faster than a tractor to respond to battlefield stimuli on their own. On balance I take an unarmoured HT over a 12 horse limber anyday, even in the primeval Finnish forest, I hope you can piss petrol if you wind up too far from your supply source. The horses can at least keep going after that 100km's march (which would be perhaps 20kms as the crow flies) through the wildeness by forraging food from the woods. where the BMX bandits roam (thanks for that Simon). What the heck is a BMX ? On balance I believe the German army would have taken trucks if they had had the choice. Given the terrain they fought over that would perhaps been better. [ 11-10-2001: Message edited by: tero ]</p>

Originally posted by JasonC: Exposed crew is already open to TC results. The rest is a rare weak point penetration. Actually rare weak point penetration of top armour at 0º OR worse with a direct fire weapon potentially resulting in a critical hit which blows up the vehicle. Firing the gun is louder. A 1-2 million joules high caliber AP might exceed the noise of the gun, but not a 20mm AP bouncing off. What about a Flakvierling bouncing them off at high ROF ? But scads of crazies in bomber and tank crews from the 20mm terror are not in evidence. Can you direct me to a source on that ? Insane was perhaps not the best choice of words. Take a basic physics course and you will see why this is laughable. So the energy of a sustained burst of 20mm fire can NOT make your aiming device vibrate the least bit ? Or vibrate the vision block loose ?

Originally posted by Big Time Software: Of course not. That would be the incorrect way to make a simulation. I meant RL AAR's. I mean, how did you reconsile real life reports that contradicted your findings. The correct way is break the whole down to its componant pieces and simulate each in as great of detail as possible. As I understand it you tested the interaction of each variable using extensive play testing. Did you form statistics from these playtesting results to get some sort correlations between each variable ? And if so how did you appreciate them in the order of relevance ? For example, ballistics and armor. Then you put them together to form structures, like tanks and buildings. All penetration values are equation based, not test data based. Which is fine. How were the values tested "clinically" in the CM engine ? By applying as much science as possible to the process and double checking each componant piece and then the whole. What about the interaction of different variables and how various combinations affect the outcome. Science or feelings of the playtesters ? If you see something in the game that real life documented wasn't possible, then there *MIGHT* be a need for change. Or it could be that the documentation was flawed or did not mention key conditions which resulted in the situation as noted. This is the #1 problem with penetration data tables being taken at face value for example. The bazooka penetrating the side armour of the KT is a case in point. The first shot hit accuracy of the German armour and guns is another. The former I have not formed an opinion yet. The latter I think just plain feels it is too low. Especially in ambush/surprise situations when they open fire undetected and have had time (supposedly) to track the target for some time.

One noteworthy consideration is how different armies utilized the cover of woods when planning prepared defenses IRL. IIRC the German army preferred to dig in in front of the woods. IIRC the Red Army army dug in inside the woods. The Finnish army dug in inside the woods, I know that for a fact. What about the Western armies ? The trick was to clear fire lanes and LOS so that the woods seemed untouched from afar. Undercrowth and lower branches were cut down and removed. But not all of it in a fashion that told the trained eye that there was something lurking in those woods. This means that the LOS from inside the woods was not that obstructed by tree trunks and foliage as one might think. Also, positions were picked out so that the LOS and firelane would be the best possible with the least amount of work.

Originally posted by Big Time Software: By instructing Tigers to use "normal" tank tactics it is, in no small way, confirming the fact that Tiger tactics were more risky than tactics used by other tanks. My point of quoting this was to demonstrate that misuse of a heavy tank will get it killed. What about proper, cautious use getting them killed just the same ? There is a mixture of variables that affect the outcome and most of them favour the Allied tanks by design (cross section targeting, fast turret, stabilizer, first shot hit accuracy etc). Take the Villers Bogage scenario for example. Normally Wittmans Tiger gets whacked by the third turn at the latest (or gets that pesky gun hit). No matter how you try to act out the battle, in the historical way or the cautious way, it is very rarely he survives the battle. So unless you are looking at a large number of Combat Mission engagements which closely mimic real world situations, you can not with any degree of certainty compare this to real life. When you were designing CMBO how did you verify RL occurances to weed out anomalies ? X amount of tac level AAR's which you yourslef turned into statistics ? How did you verify the CMBO approach was historically accurate if there were no RL occurances to compare the CM results to ?

Originally posted by Wolfe: According to that website the 57mm ZiS-2 was L/73 (erm L/72.9) for both M1941 and M1943 versions. The L/63.5 version was never introduced. And so it is. I stand corrected.

Originally posted by Germanboy: Contrary to tero's claim, Anglo-American writers do mention the horses, at quite some length when it comes to the Falaise pocket. But you do agree that the German army (along with its horses) did travel and fight elsewhere in the beautiful French countryside. And Eastern Europe. And not just in the Falaise area. They somehow fail to mention the stout Germanic warhorse that dragged the Pak40 right up to the FEBA for emergency use though. They had to get there somehow. Can you give any narratives about how they pushed them for miles into positions manually ? Or drove comfortably on their SdKfz-10's or Krupp Protzes all the way to the position and just drop the damned piece there ? Shurely some oversight. It must be, I'm shure. Could it be that it was so commonplace they did not think it was worth mentioning in their memoires. I do not recall ever reading the recipe for the German army bread but I'm sure the field bakeries made millions and millions of loafs of it.

Originally posted by Hans: Of course there are LOTS of things wrong with horses too, like the time the Army provided him with a blind horse......... Of course no mechanical tractor fresh out of the factory ever sufferend from technical problems. But a tractor did not bolt off in panic when it came under fire. Then again staying put would make it vulnerable to beig KO'd. You can get the paniced horse to work again but a KO'd tractor stayes KO'd.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Scott B: Why the note? That it's included in a report about IS-2s, or that they don't mention the 85mm on T-34/85 and SU-85 while they're at it? Seems pretty clear that the 57L73 could pose a threat to the Tiger I. Scott<hr></blockquote> My first reaction was the same as Steves. BTW: the 57mm ZIS-2 was actually 57L63.5 It would seem the appearance of the IS-2 and the 57mm AT gun were of more consequence and concerned the Germans the more than the 85mm tank mounted guns and the ZIS-3 76.2mm field gun. http://history.vif2.ru/guns/atg_4.html http://history.vif2.ru/guns/field_7.html Comparing the ZIS-3 76.2mm field gun and the ZIS-2 57mm AT gun reveals the Tiger could take a hit from a ZIS-3 even at close range while a hit from a ZIS-2 at the same range was more dangerous. [ 11-08-2001: Message edited by: tero ]</p>