Slapdragon

Copyright issues are very complex, but if you send Matt something without a residuals contract then in all probability you own copyright but Matt is within his bounds to post it and make a secondary profit (iEN being a bunch of skunks with a terrible banner posting system I would be surprised if even they make a profit). The only thing Matt cannot do is repackage for profit past the understood contract of putting it on his site, so producing a CDROM and selling it he would owe residuals or compensation to the people who contributed no matter how much work he does. If Matt comes to my site, down loads a creation of mine and adds it to his site and makes a profit, then it is totally different, he has essentially stolen from me and I can recover damages, but he does not do that at all. Keep up the good work Matt. iEn (if that is who the provider is) are lousy titmice. Steve Jackson

I like campaigns a lot, because it makes people think about use of resources. One thing that would help RPG use of Combat Mission was a detailed end of game report saved as a text file listing KIA, WIA, MIA, vehicles destroyed, vehicles capable of being returned to service, and a break down of unit conditions. This text file could then be the basis for the next game if that unit reengages. The file should be hackable so a PD can add replacements and such. It would also allow text file based tracking of units. I should add that CM needs to continue generating revenue for the creators, and a campaigns hack could almost be sold as a "gold" updat or as part of an "advanced" pack. I would not complain one bit. Steve Jackson

I do not know if this helps, but I saw a civil engineering friend who teaches in the College of Engineering, and he owes me a few favors (but thinks war games are stupid). So I asked him about placing sensors in cobble stone and paved roads that detect cars but not human, or perhgaps a human detector. How easy is it? He said he would mail me. Here is part of his answer- ----start excerpt----- "...anyway Steve, you cannot just pry up the stones, slap down the type of mechanical sensor you are talking about, and walk away. First, it would cause the stone to be higher than the others and drivers would avoid it, ruining your data. Next the large mechanical device you described to count cars is silly, why not use a pass wire? (note: I told him it was to count cars). Now we come to the place people mostly don't know, but any stone or cement road made in the past century or two by competent engineers is not just rock thrown on the ground. First it is leveled, then a layer of crushed rock or some other heavy material is added and tamped down, then the stone or cement is laid down. So here you have two choices: either get a work party or some big machine to dig out the substrate material to emplace your sensor, this can take you all day and tie up traffic (note: ahem....). Or you can pry up the stone, attach a metal plate to the sensor, and simple throw in it without the stone. " -------End Excerpt-------- Now I am betting that a mine placed in a hasty manner in the road would use the same idea, just pry the stone and drop the mine, otherwise you have to do a lot of pick and ax work, and when Hell on Wheels is breathing down you neck you may not have that sort of time. Steve Jackson PS-- I am not Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson games! [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-18-2000).]

If anyone wants to write a FAQ subject I can offer you server space on an industrial Webten server. There are of course restrictions with anything handled at an academic site, but between this and the excellent Mac site FAQ already up it would be a good start. One thing is that it can collate and post past discussions on this list so long past discussions can be referred to, reducing the need to yell "go to hell, newbie" at someone who can't find a subject in the search engine.

One further note: This is not a critique of the engine, since this is exactly the place were a small design team has trouble : ironing out all of the little questions, because it takes a lot of drudge time to properly document a problem such as tungsten. The beauty of open source software (which this not, I know, but this discussion is similar to an open source discussion) is that lots of people look emprically at problems and come to a concensus solution. It can be very messy, since you find many people have a vested interest in the weirdest status quo. A very similar thing has happened in other games. Steel Panthers on the alt.games discussion group had a discussion of play balancing in Desert Scenarios between the British and Germans. Turned out that the engine never really could handle handing out points so that the game was fair, and still hand out points so that fighting in mountains and towns was fair. So tourney strategy in Steel Panthers was: choose the Germans. The reason turned out to be the 88. It would get wiped out, but would kill enough Brits that it was worth like 8 times its printed value. It took lots of arguments and back and forth to get that established, and lots of people who relied on the 88 to tip the game to a hands down got upset. (Of course SSI never fixed it that I know -- we players just hacked work arounds and kept going.) Steve Jackson

The trick is, I cannot get it to reproduce in tests.

I had a similar event happen with an M18 stalking an armored car. the Armored car went behind some bushed and the unit lost its lock and went into dumb tank mode, when the armored car came back out (it was not moving, my hellcat was) it did not get its lock again and proceeded to sail right by.

For anyone who needs a test range, I have posted my firing range at: http://www.slapdragon.org/combat/firingrange.txt . Some PC format computers may have trouble downloading the file but I do not use Zip files on this server, only raw data files, so you may need to do a right click download to get it. It is listed as a .txt so you must manually change it to .cmb -- this keep me from having to add a new MIME type to my computer. [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-18-2000).] [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-18-2000).]

We have not been testing crew quality (that I know of) but it is a good idea. Nor have we tested other units speciality rounds, like case, but that too is a good idea. The trick is that you have to test each variable seperately, and you have to do enough tests of the variable to create a statistical universe. So, to test crew quality you make sure range is not a variable, and you see how often it gets used at a set range with a set unit facing the same tank. Then you change one variable, in this case crew quality, and you rerun the test. The minimum number needed to use parametic statistics is around 40 tests. At 40 tests you can have a largish standard error but it is good enough, at a hundred tests your standard error has fallen quite a bit and you can be more sure of your data (Panther front turret penetration was so low at 500 yards that it was eaten by standard error in my first test and I did not observe it, likewise I could have seen it twice as often. That is why multiple people doing the same test is good. The important thing to remember is that this is a program, with a set of numbers ruling its behavior, and that makes it easy to crack as long as you isolate and test a single variable at a time. It is also important to remember that many events are incredibly unlikely but can happen, so be careful about war stories. My favorite is the King Tiger being killed by the Stuart -- sure it may be possible in some weird combination of factors but if we test it imperically we may find it happens so infrequently it is like a solar eclipse. So when someone comes on the list and says, the Stuart is to powerful and the KT needs beefing up, a Stuart killed my KT! Then you have to set up a test and see what is the actual chances. Finally, if everyone uses the same test in the same environment The numbers can be compared with two tools, correlation and regression, to see if a certain factor contributes to a kill and how much it contributes. You also get a number called residual that tells you how much of what you are finding is caused by some other factor than you are looking at, called residual. Even if you leave the freshman statistics behind you can use grade school stats and just say: in 100 tests at 500 yards of a regular E8 crew shooting at a regular VG crew tungsten was used x times at 500 yards is good enough. Front turret penetration is important for tank duels because it tells you the range that a tank is likely to be able to tackle its opponents in a gunfight: ie. when two tanks spot each other at suddenly and start shooting. This is especially true with defending units since they can more often choose a hull down attitude than an attacker who has to move from place to place. [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-18-2000).]

Satchel charges were not "really" antipersonal weapons, and I am not sure you could throw a satchel of composition 4 far enough to avoid becoming a statistic (anyone in the service who has actually thrown one of these things of course could say better than I, I have only seen a little peice of an M115 block on a commercial set -- I base this on the ounce we used had a safety range of a dozen meters that I had to keep crew back from). Satchel charges were used for a dozen thing, but in infantry fighting they were one of the methods of street fighting discussed by Mcdonald. In town fighting, running from house to house is a good way to get killed, so they would use explosives to open a breach in a house wall and would "tunnel" from house to house. Bazookas were also used (and it was not a very safe practice) to blow and entrance into the next building. They were also used to destroy tanks in city fighting, blow up barricades, clear wire, and all sorts of "terrain modification" tasks.

One thing -- if your run a unit (or fast move an armored unit) you are more likely to get detected and identfied, and then that sticks to you unless you go sneaking through some big woods. So you sneak through the open and someone hears you you get an ?Infantrry designation. You run from cover to cover and you become an antitank team. You run into a house and hide, you are still an antitank team, just not one whose location is clearly known.

With regards to tungsten, Fionns comments don't make sense in some respects and I agree with Jeff. Most tank and tank destroyers will dies with tungsten in their racks because they will not use it at all. Now -- if your routinely play Germans this is great! Because in all likelyhood it makes the American tanks more expensive without adding any value. I have already stated this is a complex variable with likely 3-4 numbers interacting, and decoding these numbers will take a lot of work. At 500 yards E8 Shermans used tungsten around 1% of the time when their was a 15 to 1 round ratio. In a 440 yard free for all on open ground between 10 Panthers and 10 Shermans repeated five times the Sherman's with the same ratio never fired tungsten, and died with it still in their racks (7-10 kills ratio btw at 440 yards). At 700 yards the kill ratio was 4 to 10 and tungsten still was not used. As for the proper kill range for a Sherman -- Fionn has misread my test. I tested for front turret kills at 500 meters and found them very rare, not overall kills at 500 meters -- hits on other locations that the turret are effective farther out. The thing about emprically testing means that when I test turret kills, that is all I can claim, and I never claimed that the Sherman could not kill at a farther range, only that front turret penetrations are rare, and that when the turrets of the Panthers turned they became much more vulnerable. The front turret may be Fionn's "ideal" hit location but it did not test out as ideal. If on the other hand I was testing the best "kill range" of the E8 on the Panther, I would devise a new set of tests that did not use terrain to restrict me to front or side turret hits, use multiple range bands, and if I had enough time, test range versus aspect factors. My current findings though on this are just turret front kills, although my last set I relaxed that and just waited for a kill of anytype and saw what type of kill I got (since I was testing range kills rather than turret penetration) Now that I am testing Hellcats it again seems the same -- a reluctance to use Tungsten in what boarders on suicide on tanks unless the Hellcat is seriously overmatched (KT v Hellcat) even though the Hellcat does not have a good chance of killing its target without them. Now if I played Germans a lot, I would like to keep the Tungsten just the way it is, mostly unused. Each M10 that dies with its ammo hold full of tungsten after peppering me with AP is a good thing. All the other testers are saying is that tungsten is not used by the AI in situations it is clearly needed in, and that a Sherman historically fired it off if it had it, while in the game they die bravely rarely using it. [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-18-2000).]

In 134 shots the E-8s actually used Tungsten once: I had them loaded with 30 AP and 2 tungsten firing at 700 meters. Tank Destroyers may actually be more prone to use their Tungsten. I suspect that there are several variables involved in the question.

No problem: we were trying to empirically test the question. At work during research I get "war stories" all the time, so we test them empirically. We use observational data (ie: a game files showing a 76mm kill at 700 meters) or an some sort of test (ie: a firing range where the 700 meter kill can be observed). Vanir did observe a 500 meter turret kill, and at 100 tries I was getting like 2%. My comments were more for those reading the post: War stories are passed around, like the old saw about the Stuart killing the King Tiger from 500 meters and how unfair that was. People should take war stories with a grain of salt. Scientific style tests though, the same types used to backwards engineer software or invent a new vaccine, with a data set and available, downloadable "proof" should always be taken to mean more than war stories.

Godbless 24/7 ethernet to backbone.

Ok, I reran the series letting the Shermans plug away at the Panthers. In 10 range exercises of 10 tanks each at 490 meters: 2 turret penetrations kills 2 armament kills 12 surrendered 53 upper hull kills 29 abandoned tanks with no penetration 1tank, with 21ap left, sued a tungsten round I had forgoten to unload. Interestingly enough, 500 meters is sometype of cut off, because my earlier tests at 520 meters resulted in no turret penetrations. So, at 500 meters their is a 1-7% chance of killing a turret (with margin of error figured. If you ever have several happen, you are the victim of collosal bad luck.

Try a game in fog at night: Tanks start teleporting all over the place.

My tests support Vanir 100 percent here. Until the E8 was down to 2 AP for 1 tungsten, they plain old did not use it. In game terms very few American tanks use their basic load of AP, they usually die before that, so it is the same as not having any Tungsten. More realistic than bracketing would be simply saying that the battlesite round was AP, and tungsten is fired next. Many tankers will fire away an HE or AP battlesite round rather than take the time to reload. But the second round would be tungsten -- which in the game never happens. Regular American tanks did have tungsten rounds - not stolen from the TD boys (although some where) but sent to them by Division supply against regulation. In the book "Seven Six One" the first sergeant pulled strings to get tungsten for an attack they new would face a Panzer unit. They used it all also. While a Sherman may not normally carry a tungsten as a battlesite, they certianly would when intel said "Tigers!". TDs carried far more tungsten and routinely used it as a battlesite. The practice of braketing was not widely used because if you fired one at a Panther (in real life and in the game) the Panther was going to hand you your ass, so Americans tried to duck in and out of cover, or if not -- they ran away. (McDonald, Gattner, Christie, and others recount "cowardly tank" stories where the tankers simply refused to move forward in fear of the Tiger and Panther). [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-17-2000).]

The horn is a "picklehaub" and it is a throw back to medieval uniforms used to identify the wearer -- it had no practical use and was phased (mostly) out with the fall of the Weimar.

Oh yes, the other solution: You are playing a different version of the game, or your game has been "hacked" somehow. As it is every simulation done by three people cannot find supporting evidence for your claim. Your tanks were hit by something other than 76, the range was considerably shorter than 500 yards, or they hit something other than the turret face. If you can send me a turn of a game that has a 76 killing a Panther at 500-700 rounds with a front turret strike then I will have to modify my position, as it is you are just mistaken for some reason: the 76 cannot reliably kill past around 350 meters unless it strikes some other part of the tank.

Ehh Phillistine, an ambulance chaser? I had three damn law courses in the law college for my Masters and one of them the Professor was a Maritime Lawyer and he always had us read from Maritime laws on the wonderfully exciting subject of Torts (gag). Then I went to the Ph.D program and had to take a torts class again -- turns out no one uses Maritime law on land for anything! Since then -- I saty away from the law College, even though my major professor is a libel lawyer with a PhD in communication, and my teaching department head is authorized to teach legal history in the Law College. I almost slit my wrists with 3 law course, how can anyone survive 30?

I will post my range tonight. Note that you have to tweek it -- change AFVs, and the like to test different settings -- I am posting my default 500 meter shootoff range Panthers versus E8s. It will be somewhere in the slapdragon domain: more on where when I post it. Steve Jackson

The Stuart with its fast ROF and endless HE rounds (in real life they had the only cannister rounds and were deadly to exposed troops) is almost as deadly as Infantry as the 76 and 88 armed tanks. Thus is has an absurdly high price: for good reason -- used right the thing is a killer. For Infantry, the safeest thing they can do is stay down. You have to tell them to crawl away or run, because it exposes them to more danger, not less -- in the short run. When they break, they get killed in droves. I think the Infantry seem well modelled. Screwing with them will make Infantry to likely to abandon a safe defence line.

My findings though agree with Wolfe, if you are getting multiple 500 - 700 meters kills from an American tank it is not a 76mm armed one. More likely FOW is misidentifying a Jackson or a Firefly. [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-17-2000).]

Wolfe Are you using lanes in your tests? I use lanes and dug in panthers, the lanes are culverts at level 3, 4 levels below ground, otherwise the E8s will try to attack from the side and the Panthers will swivel their turrets. I cannot get any penetrations at 500 meters with an E8 on first round fired. Slapdragon (ps- we should send each other our ranges).