Dan Robertson

How is the new vehicle damage model going to work, or for that matter is the vehicle damage model going to be changed? The current vehicle damage model is a little crude as it gives all vehicles a rectangular turret with sides inclined at a given angle. Thus it cannot simulate a vehicle like the Tiger II where the majority of the frontal surface of the turret was actually the sides of the turrets at an extreme angle. (hexagonal turret) Personally I would love to see the attack of vehicles physically modelled rather than statistically modelled as they are at the moment. So when a unit fires at a vehicle it would sight the other vehicle, aim off (using FCS if available) and launch the weapon. The weapons ballistic (or guided) flight would then be modelled and this would determine if the weapon strikes the target. If the weapon strikes the target its impact position would be determined by the point where it calculated flight intersects with the wire frame model of the vehicle and penetration calculated by the estimation of the armour underlying the struck area. Additionally the same model could allow for instances where the round travels through an external object before striking the vehicle such as a building or a sand berm.

Hmm I wonder if this King Tiger was the one that took part in anbush on an allied collum. It was hit be a WP round and the crew abandonded it. Later a US soldier tried out a Panzerfaust on it from a range of about 30m and was surprised when it blew a small hole directly through the Glacis plate. The vehicle could have been evaluated as a PIAT or other HEAT strike later on as they wouldn't have known that it was a capture German weapon that did it.

What about the fact that the Japanese and Germans were Axis partners? -dale </font>

Many posters appear to have interpreted the question as what would happen if Hitler had conquered the UK. For reasons of logistics the German were at no point capable of invading the UK, and as time moved on the chances reduced. Since the UK and Germanys economic capabilities were not that much different the Germans would never have been able to produce enough equipment to achieve superiority over the UK, especially since in all things naval (bar subs) they were vastly inferior. We therefore have to look at the possibility of an arranged peace. Churchill was not universally popular and many people believed that the war on the continent need not be spread to the UK. So what would the terms of the UK-German armistice be? To be acceptable the settlement would have to be something along the lines of a mutual acceptance of the status quo. I doubt that any conditions of security could really be imposed. The chances of the UK allowing the Germans to garrison forces there are minimal. Even if such a deal were struck the government would be out in a day and the people of the UK would be ready to fight. The population were against the war because they thought that we were getting bombed because we were interfereing in a war on the continent. People would be willing to give up the war if it results in someone else being conquered, but not if it results in they themselves being conquered. Any deal has to allow the UK to retire gracefully or it would have to opposite effect and harden the UK populace against Germany as the bombing eventually did. Also Hitler never had any territorial ambitions to take the UK, in fact he modelled his future empire on the British Empire and under the racial policies of the Nazis the Anglo-Saxon people of the UK would probably have been considered Aryans. In fact Hitler never actually wanted conflict with the UK and invaded Poland on the belief that France and the UK wouldn't declare war on him. The greatest concession that Germany might be able to demand is that the UK does not import weapons from US and they may demand the right to inspect vessels from America. They would also probably demand that the UK does not itself export weapons to fight the Germans by proxy. Thus the UK would still continue to build weapons should they need to fight the Germans again. The population will probably not be willing the put as much money aside to build weapons but this will be counter balanced by the fact that there will be no losses from enemy action in this time. Thus Hitler will not be able to leave Western Europe completely undefended. However he will still gain a benefit in the numbers of men he can field against Russia, he will also have a much greater number of aircraft (1600 or so more). However the main advantage will be a loss of Lend Lease. The Russians will not receive any equipment from the Western Allies. Without the UK to provide a link between the US and the USSR I doubt that US equipment would be shipped to the USSR and I believe that the Germans could successfully demand that the UK provide no lend lease to the USSR either. Since Hitler declared war on the US because they were an ally of the UK. With the UK out of the war he probably wouldn't declare war on the US after the Japanese strike the US at Pearl Harbour. The additional manpower and the lack of Lend Lease in my opinion would have cause the Germans to win the battle in the East. As it was they came quite close to achieving this. These additional factors would swing it Germanys way. Once they captured Moscow the Germans would be in a very advantageous position to win the in East since the Soviets were very centralised and many of the countries key transport and communications links ran through Moscow. After the capture of Moscow the USSR would still be very powerful but they would cease to be a fully functional state and the Germans could defeat what remained individually. However occupying and pacifying the USSR would take the Germans years. Personally I think this would ware out Germany. In the mean time the war in the Pacific would go off pretty similarly the Japanese always want a piece of the Americans and British. The Japanese would probably lose even sooner because the entire British and American effort will be concentrated on them. What happens next depends on one thing, nuclear weapons: We can safely say that the Germans are unlikely to create nuclear weapons first. Post war secret recordings of the top German scientists (records of private conversations between then record secretly) showed that they didn't have a clue how to actually make a nuclear device, and previous to the Americans detonating one they didn't believe it was possible. Their idea of a device was to drop a nuclear reactor that was going critical. Thus we can assume that the US will be first to develop and atom bomb and will probably use it on Japan. However what happens next will depend on whether or not the Germans can recreate the atom bomb like the Soviets did. Should they be able to create the atom bomb then what we will see is a similar situation to the cold war with the US/UK verses the German controlled Europe. Both sides armed with atom bombs so they cannot directly fight each other so they fight each other by proxy until the Nazi controlled area fragments under civil war due to the corrupt and oppressive regime of the Nazis. This would certainly happen with the death of Hitler, who wasn't a young man so would almost certainly be dead by ~1960. Provided MI6 didn't do it first In the event of the Nazis not managing to build an atom bomb we then arise the situation in 1946/7 where we have a UK and US fully tooled up for war with nuclear weapons. What is more the brutality of the Nazi regime will almost certainly leak out and details of the holocaust would probably be enough to rouse the US/UK into action. A small number of nuclear weapons are dropped on Germany (either that or what is described below simply happens with the threat of nuclear weapons). The upper echelons of the Nazis go into crisis with the groups that think they can get away with what they have done trying to oust the hard core Nazis who know that they cannot make a deal for their own personal survival. In the ensuing civil war the armies of the allies storm through into Germany as the German army has been spread all over the empire and is still engaged in the vastness of Russia. Personally I think it unlikely that the Germans would develop nuclear weapons in time. The Soviets were able to develop nuclear weapons in such a short time not lease because they had capable spies in the US/UK. However with the capture of the USSR these spies will be lost, since most spies at that time were Socialist sympathisers. German spying efforts were by comparison clumsy, with the majority (sometimes it is claimed all) of Germany spies actually sending their reports back from strangways prison. In conclusion we can see that even a relatively small decision between two nations could have had massive impacts. Possibly no cold war, possibly an entirely different (later) ending for the British Empire. Possibly a free Europe or one that could live 20 years or more under Nazi rule. Who really knows? Interestingly while writing this I did come about thinking that the entire idea of WWII 1939-1945 is really based on the British perspective. Really we have a German war of conquest from 1938 onwards and a Japanese war of conquest from 1935. It is British involvement in both that linked the two together and actually created the concept that it was a global war. [ November 02, 2003, 07:59 PM: Message edited by: Dan Robertson ]

How armour is supported is usually covered by the principle of latteral confinement. This is as far as I know not covered in the game equation. The actual meathod of support for the plate is pretty imaterial unless it is eleastically supported with the intention of causing yaw in the projectile. Lateral confinement is related to how far an impact is away from an edge. When a shell penetrates a thick plate it will push a certain mass of armour through the plate in front of it, this is called plugging. However it will also bulge the plate and force the armour out of its path laterally, producing petals of metal on the armour as it splashes out of the way. This will happen if the plate is large in area. However if the shell strikes a small plate or a large plate near the edge the amount of armour between the shell and the free edge of the plate decreases. When the shell penetrates the armour it will push it aside, but because the plate has less material to the side of the shell there will be less of a resistive force since the shell has to move a lower mass of material. This is partiularly prevelent around openings since there is no armour in the opening to resist latteral movement. The outer edges of the turret are less of a problem because they are backed up by the side plates of the turret. So in actual fact the penetration of armour is counter intuative in that the lefthand impact being further from an edge would offer a superior resistance. I suspect that the free edge effect is probably covered under the random penetration at weakspot part of the algorithem.

I still recon a Korea game could be drivied from CMBB. The North Koreans could be achieved with graphical mods from the Soviets who used the same equipment. The American infantry most vehicles and support systems are already modled in CMBO.

I think you could almost certainly move CM in to the post war scenarios. Korea was fought with WWII eqipment, and could probably be done very easily as an add on too CMBB. The North Koreans used essentially Soviet equipment and formation including T34/85 tanks. The Americans used the same personal weapons and mostly used MAE8 tanks. The only totally new equipement you would need to add is The Centurion Mk3 tank and the M46. I recon you could go up to about 1973 with the Yom Kippur war. Once you start getting past this point the weapon system range become too great for example you start seeing weapon like TOW's being fired from ranges of 3700m. Helicopters would also present a problem, to effectively cover Vietnam you would have to include them, however it would be very hard to effectively controll them using turn based system. Helicopters are persistant so couldn't be modeled as an airstrike, they can loiter above the battle field or off it, what is more because they can move at ~130mph they can move in and out of the battlefield in one turn. I suspect the only way you could have them would be to make them entirely computer controlled, they would would move about the battlefield autonomous straffing targets. The player could then designate specific targets that the helicopters may or may not attack, and also call fro helicopters to resupply, drop men and take out wounded. Once you get into the modern era, you also start running into some truely awsome weapons like MLRS, ICM and precision strike weapons. An MLRS strike would probably take out about 50% of the infantry in a single CM style engagement and about 70% of the armour. Essentially the game would be about whether or not you have said weapons in your forces. In real combat these weapons are limited in their power because the attacking force will generally not know where the enemy intends to mass and fight. So they cannot be fire until a signficant enemy force is found. In a CM engagement you know there is a substantial enemy force in each game or it would be a boring game. I think modern stuff is best represented either in a small level simulation like Steel Beasts, or in a higher level game like Tac Opps. However until the 1970's most of the worlds forces were opperating equipment and docterins that were essentially WWII in origin just with more advanced weaponry.

Re: HEAT The HEAT effect is cause by colapsing a metal cone using high explosive. The effect is purely mechanical, the metal from the liner of the warhead moves a sufficent velocity to move the metal in the target plate as if it were a liquid. However at all times within the HEAT warheads opperation the jet remains solid. Plasma is the fourth state of matter caused when the temperature becomes sifficently great that the electron seperate from their atoms. This is also known as an ionised gas, this generally occurs at 13000K or so or in the presence of radiation.

Actually a drop of 5m is sustainible depending on how it happens. In fact one of the first tanks was demonstrated "jumping a tall building in one bound" to King Geroge V in WWI. The tank went over a reproduction of a "German bunker" which was about as high as the the tank was long ~8metres. The tank was undamaged but all but one of the crew was knocked unconcious in the fall. Incedentally part of the tests on Challenger II the british armys new tank included driving off a vertical drop of about 5metres or so without damage. It would depend on how you tok the drop and the factor would be uncomputable. Hence it isn't in the game. For example a t34 drops of bridge at and angle of 21 degrees fall 4 metres, lands on its side looses a track, the crews heads all hits somthing hard. For the purposes of a battle it is knocked out. Or T34 tank falls off bridge at angle 21 degrees fall 4 metres. Tank rolls full circle onto its tracks, crews head don't hit anything hard. Tank carries on after a short delay.

The 32pdr was developed from the 3.7inch Anti aircraft gun. This works out as 94mm. The 20pdr was developed as an anti tank gun designed to equal the 88mm/L71 in power but at a about 5/6 the size. Orginally I think it was to be produced as a towed mount. It would also have been integrated into the Centurian by about 1946 if the war had gone on. As it was the Centurion developement was froze until 1948, and the 20pdr was just fitted in time to serve in Korea. By all acounts the Centurion it was very acurate and with APDS very powerfull, (in penetration however it was not very effective in causing enough damage to brew up some abondoned Centurions in that conflict) The 20pdr was bored out to produce a trials weapon for the 105mm program and it shared recoil systems and a breach block with the 105mm L7 gun.

Interesting stuff on the MMP system, I'm going to try and prduce some figures for later stuff like M1's. The Esienhower report was actually posted in it entirety of this site about 2-3years ago. (befoore being copied by me)

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Andrew Hedges: The real ally of gunpowder wall-breaching weapons is gravity and the weight of the wall itself. Meaning that the proper tactic is to fire at the bottom of the wall you want to breach; as it weakens, a strip of wall from the bottom to the top collapses. So, for example, if you use HESH to blow large holes in the bottom of the outside wall, large portions of the outside wall will eventually collapse, which permits you to attack the rear wall.<hr></blockquote> The specific wall I was on about has an earth filling, and is roughly as wide as it tall. Very few castles actually have to vertical solid stone walls you may see in famous castles like Winsor or the Tower of London. The castle at the end of my road was captured after a siege with cannons, the outer walls are tapering stone built on an earth bank. In the lower part they are wide earth filled. Cannon balls failed to breach the walls because the lower slope of them were too strong. The cannons demolished the keep of the castle and damaged the upper parts of the wall but the castle was still too strongly defended to storm. In inhabitants only gave in because they had no food and didn't want anymore damage to take place.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Andreas: Case in point, siege of Kenilworth Castle (Warwickshire) during the English Civil War. The castle with its royalist defenders held out for a long time, and was not actually taken in an assault. The attackers had cannons, muskets, the works. <hr></blockquote> Kenilworth has a very well designed wall, it is very thick with a earth filling. I would be surprised if modern ground lauched weapons could breach it very effectively. Piercing weapons would drive a hole throught the stone into the earth but would not spread the damage. HESH would blow a large hole in the outer stone a facing but the earth would not transmit the shockwaves to damage the rear. Only really big HE would be any good, 8 inches plus.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by wwb_99: 4) Stirrups: now you can put a Viking (aka Norman) on a horse and he can charge effectively. Roman cavalry could actually charge on their horses with their saddle which featured two large leather horns which firmly attached the rider to the horse. Its not quite as good as stirrups but modernday reinactors have managed to effectively fight from horseback. 5) Gunpowder: now you can shoot the heavily armored viking off his horse. And pound castles to dust to boot. Again it is rather interesting to note that well built castles with reinforced stone walls resisted cannon balls very well, in the same way that reinforced concrete bunkers have resisted modern weapons. Even with cannons castles still achieved their major purpose, which is to allow the defender to fight numerically superior forces, since even a castle with a hole in the wall requires more men to take it that it does to defend it. <hr></blockquote>

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by busboy: In the desert, an environment where a heavy tank like the IS-3 would in theory dominate, the Israeliis TORE APART the IS-III. The M-46 and M-47, and Centurion tanks admitedly couldn't penetrate their front armor, but through superior tactics they flanked and wasted 'em. Combat experiance is all I need to see to show how horrid those tanks are. <hr></blockquote> The 20pdr and 105mm guns on the Centurian should be effective against the JSIII. They may not be able to guarentee penetration at all ranges but will be able to suceed in a large portion of hits. ISIII verses 20pdr APDS Lower Front Hull: 2000m Glacis: Invulnerable Turret Front: 3500+m Mantle: 3000m ISIII verse 105mm APDS (capped APDS rounds) Lower Front Hull: 3500m Glacis: 200-1000m Turret: 3500+m Mantle:3500+m These are based on the armour figures for the onwar.com site, and do not include any Rexford esque modiefiers for shapper gap, brittle plates ect. Does any one have a range for 105mm APDS against Nato medium single taget since that is based on the ISIII glacis. The 105mm was considered by NATO to be effective against the ISIII since it was this effectiveness which cause the US to can the M103 and use the M60.

Combat mission models accuracy as simply a function of velocity. Which while generally true is not the only factor. Aside from gunner skill to actually lay the gun on target accuracy is a function of velocity, windage, manufacturing tolerances. So your most accurate weapon will be the largest gun with the highest muzzle velocity and the best manufacture. On the allied side the 17pdr had a high MV of 878ms and a heavy shot of 7.71kg (verses 7kg for the comparible American round) When firing the APCBC round this gun was very accurate. First use of this gun came as a shock for the Germans, when some Tigers which had been standing off at 1500m from British positions suddenly starting catching fire. The American 76mm APC (tungsten) round was at close range the most accurate of all WWII projectiles. This had a high MV but poor density, at longer ranges the light projectile slows considerably and is effected by wind. In theory the best projectilewas the 17pdr APDS in the game this is the most accurate round. However manufacturing tollerances require for APDS were not yet understood, and consquently some rounds were wildly inaccurate. The muzzle break on the 17pdr also disturbed the breaking off of the sabot, which is why modern tanks don't have muzzle breaks. Post war APDS was and still is very accurate since it has high velocity, high density (less wind effects) and good manufacturing tollerances.

Well considering how many errors are in that you shouldn't take it too seriously. AP, APC and APCBC don't have to contain a burster, this was usually dependant on which country they are from. Some countries also ad HE to the designation while others such as the US don't. APCR can't be used from a squeeze bore since it is Rigid. Armour Piericing Composite Squeeze Bore may be used in this sort of gun. HEAT rounds do not actually melt the armour. They apply sufficent force to more the armour in a liquid like manner but the metal is actually still nearly as strong as it was before. Spalling is a result of virtually all armour piercing weapons to a greater or lesser degree. However early HEAT rounds were known for not producing very good terminal effects within the vehicle. In fact unless they hit amunition or fuel the vehicle can usually be driven away. Zeiss optics aren't a type to themselves they simply include a stadia ranging set. You rotate a dial until a triangle is the correct size. The triangle is 1 m across the bottom so you manipulate it until the enemy tank is 3 trianges wide across the bottom. You now have the range. However the best Tiger gunners like Bobby Wohl set their range finders to 800m and then estimated the aim over or above.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by JunoReactor: GPS guided shells? Isnt cost a problem?<hr></blockquote> Not really, modern electronics is always reducing in price. Chemicals rarely do, it still costs nearly as much money to process propellant and explosives as it did in WWII. IIRC the cost of a sabot round for the 120mm gun is $5000. I would expect a cluster artilery shell to cost even more. So the price of adding a small about of digital equiptment is not going to be that high. The advantage you get is that with a shell that is accurate to tens of meters. If it is bursting shell this is well within its leathal zone. This means if you want mine a road with artilery deliverd mines you only need one or two rounds. For attacking mobile military targets using GPS will make artilery much more capible and cheaper. Conventional rounds do still have their place, they can blast out deep bunkers which cluster munitions cannot reach, intense artilery fire will also clear through mine fields. Where as instense cluster munitions fire will actually create a low level minefield from unexploded munitions. If you want to see the effects get about 50 2inch morters to fire on one target at a time. For MLRS get 644 to do it at one time.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Germanboy: Ah thanks - I seem to have a dim recollection of reading this. Age is quickly catching up with me, obviously. You can't be that much older than me, you did go to Warwick Uni until recently didn't you Would that concrete not shatter on the impact of a round, and be pretty useless against a follow-on shot? Also, what are the weight implications? Was it seen as useful? The Concrete would be totally shattered, if it was not rienforced, however I would be very surpised if it isn't. In which case the concrete would shatter until it reachs the nearestintact stell bar. Around the impact restance would be nil to KE, HEAT would be proportional to however much concrete is left, minus subtractions for containment.Away from the impact the Concrete would be pretty much intact. The weight of the concrete would be around the equivilent of 2inchs of steel. So as you can see it is equivilent to steel armour against HEAT (esentially a rough compositie armour) but not against KE. Though obviously it is cheaper than steel to fabricate in the field. <hr></blockquote>

Modern spin stablised rockets, like those fired from MLRS have an accuracy of less than 1%. Firing from 32,000m you would expect a CEP of about 320m. However since each rocket covers a huge area and you fire 12 it is still effective. The 155m G6 is has an accuracy of 0.37% when using base bleed rounds, so at 40,000m its cep will be 148m. Both will be improved to about 15m with GPS guided rounds very soon. WWII artilery rounds are not going to be that far behind modern ones, the only advantage modern ones really have is more precise manufacture. At 10,000 (typical ranges for most WWII guns like 25pdr) this would result in an accuracy of 40-50m. Rockets fired from 5000 with modern acuracy would have a CEP of 50m, however WWII rockets are very much less accurate. Even if you watch them go on old news reals you can actually see the dispersion as they fly. Interestingly as a section if you are calling morter fire you are not meant to call fire on targets less than 800m away, that is to allow for a 200m inacuracy in your own position, a 200m inacuracy in the morters location, a 200m inacuracy in your range to target estimation and finally a 200m miss by the mortor. These are peace time training guidelines for infantry sections without specialist equiptment. In combat you can call for morter fire wherever the enemy is.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Germanboy: Regarding the concrete on Stugs - you don't mean Zimmerit, do you? <hr></blockquote> No some Stugs carried a 6 inch thick piece of concreat on their lower hull. Concrete has a resistance of about 0.15 steel vs KE and 0.35 verses HEAT. KE 2.2cm CE 5.33cm SO its not much use aggainst 76mm guns but it would be stoppping 75mm rounds and Bazookas when added to the original plate.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by CMplayer: Originally posted by Dan Robertson: In combat leaders are often create extra tasks to get me ocupied, digging a second line of defence would be one of them. No way! Get out! Were YOU in combat? Where, when? <hr></blockquote> me = typo men I was in the army for a short time never went into combat. However it is SOP to keep men busy (without exuasting them) to stop them thinking about what is going to happen soon.(or playing Russian Roulette, raping the locals shooting the prisoners ect ) Also when on the defencive you really can't have entrenchments built strongly enough, the longer you are at a position you will generally reinforce it until you reach a point when you start then concentrating on making it more comfortable. You some times even hear of bunkers in Vietnam containing fully equipt bars

I'm not of the opinion that digging double fox holes are gamey. In combat leaders are often create extra tasks to get me ocupied, digging a second line of defence would be one of them. In the game you do suffer a penalty of the second line of trenches since you mst split your reasources to build them. At the start of the game you must bring your troops out of one set of fox holes to get the full effect. In CMBB will we be getting dugouts, where troops can move to become imune (to casualties not moral penalties) to all but the largest artilery? At the expense of not being able to fire.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Wreck: Here is a solution to the problem that will make everyone happy. Set the armor quality to 100%, then make the front plates be 9/10 as thick. Or, leave the quality at 90% and make the side plates be 89mm. Is there something I don't understand about the penetration computation that would make this not work?<hr></blockquote> Actually there is a bit of a problem with this. I'm not quite sure which version and with which constants they use but BTS use a variation on the DeMilne DeMarre formula. When rounds hit a plate at and angle (virtually all shots have some angle) the effect of the slope is determined by the TD ratio thickness (of armour) / diameter of the shell. Thus is you change TD it will resist differently, so 120mm @ 60 degrees (80% quality) will not resist the same as 96mm @ 60degrees 100%

I have seen statistics on Russian test of steel APFSDS where penetration went down up to 20% when the rod was cooled to -20 degrees. I suspect this would happen to AP rounds too, though they are heated more by friction since a DS round has a sabot.