Slapdragon

Finally, just to test, I have done 10 tests on random maps of E8 penetration on Panthers front turrets at 500 meters. No penetration, never used tungsten in 6 turns of firing. Next, I returned to the firing range and tested with a date of May 1945 set (maybe the date matters). Same deal, they still don't fire tungsten. Using these results, it is likely you will never see a tungsten fired in the game from an E8 (cannot say for other tanks that I have not tested) as the E8 life in battle versus a Panther is far lower than the number of rounds needed to expend to get down to the critical number. In this case, the E8 would actually be more powerful if it went into battle with only 10 rounds as long as some of them were tungsten because it is likely to choose them against the Panther and thus survive to use its HE on infantry. What these test all show is that the Sherman 76 is probably over valued vis a vis the Panther / Tiger in terms of points unless it was carrying an entire load of tungsten -- especially since it wont use tungsten until it has used almost everything else.

Phillistine: The rule you are quoting was pushed by the French (they have good reasons) and was designed to protect brand types from dilution -- for example American sparkling wine (Methode Champaniose) manufacturers marking their cheaper lower quality products as Champagne, or wine produces calling swill a "Burgandy" (Ernest and Julio Gallo for example). These lower quality products may reduce desire for the higher quality but more expensive French products (The French don't care about the better American vineries -- the costs are similar and the market is different). The only way to make this rule work would be by implying the new Hasbro Squad Leader was using the term "War Game" improperly, and that would involve a court case. You best bet is to register a domain squadleadersucks, and keep it in your pocket, then when the game comes out post a nice fat cirtical web site on the game.

The Meeting Engagement By Steve Jackson Ken orders his Mark VI to stop. The metal of the heavy Panzer is biting cold as he removes his gloves and pulls out his map. The American "Seventeen" Armored Divison is up ahead, commanded by his old flame Barbie. Why oh why did the Americans allow women into combat? Was it political correctness, desperation, something else? "What the matter Ken?" his driver Mark says. Ken shakes his head. "We are going to kill a friend. Sometime Ken wonders how the world came to be this way. His flat grey tank with the black racing stripes learches forward as Mark gives the gas. He coudl remember a time when the driver of his tank would be named Hans or something respectable, but no more, now it is Mark, and Jeff, and Scott. And he is Ken. Suddenly he turns, from the side he sees it, a Sherman! And Barbie is in the turret wearing fashionable tankers cloths with a Armin Coteia leather jacket, a wool scarf, and a bikers helmet. How could this happen? How could Barbie do this? The lime green Sherman tank, called an I-tank, pulls a stop and its deadly 76 trains on Ken's "Endangered Large Cat" tank (he remembered when they could call them Tigers and Panthers...). He hears her call out, "Ken -- I never thought I would see you again!" "Barbie, great tank! Well, get it over with! Its over, and now you have one, shoot!" "Ken, don't you see, I still have a cursh on you! Can't we hold hands like we used to?" Ken remembered a time when he thought of more than holding hands, that was before General Hasbro came to the Army. "And a picnic lunch Barbie! We could have a picnic lunch! With the rest of our crews!" Barbie squeels, as her multi-ethnic, multi-gendered tank crew pokes their heads from her tank. Fran, the Lesbian West Indian Sous Chef, Tommy, the deaf, mute, and blind accordian player - tank gunner from Seattle. Lewis, the 75 year old retired driver who is just doing this to be "with young people", her whole crew looked over joyed. Barbie and Ken climb from their tanks and run together, kissing each other on the cheek. The world is good! "Ken", Barbie says shyly, "How about we go to a prayer meeting after the battle and then help out at the nursing home they have set up at Corps HQ" "Sounds swell Barbie!"

Basically, some thrid factor is at work because on a level ground shot at 500 meters the E8 with APCBC never penetrates the front turret of a Sherman (or I should say, "very rarely" since I only ran 40 tests and there could be a small percentage of fires that do penetrate (1%) that through luck would not show up). So: here is the possibilities: 1) Your turret was turned. The Sherman APCBC kills out to 620 meters when hitting turret sides of the Panther. I tested this by adding a tempting target that forced the Panther AI to turn its turret side on to the Sherman. 2) The Sherman had a considerable height advantage on you. When I place the Shermans on a hill side firing down on the Panthers -- penetration occurs at longer range. 3) You were facing something other than Shermans, and fog of war identified them wrong. 4) The Shermans, against all expectation, were using tungsten (which as the German player you would not have known). Basically, I can create no situation through testing were the Sherman E8 will penetrate a Panther front turret at 500 meters . You can test this yourself out in studio land, as I am always willing to send my firing range and data set for comparison. Also, you can use my firing range in a "scenario" which you can then e-mail results to someone else for verification. Finally, if a real world e-mail battle results in a Sherman AP penetration at long range, both players should preserve the turn so it can be closely looked at without fog of battle to see what was happening. Now my next test was to see when the Sherman would use tungsten. Instead of checking only first shot results, I let the Shermans plug away at distant Panthers. They had 30 AP and 5 tungsten. I let the game go for ten shots (with smoke turned out to be 4 turns) to see when the tungsten got fired. It did not get fired. This is one of the overbalancing issues with the Shermans, since their value takes into account using tungsten which they sometimes have, but never fire, making them unable to kill Panthers in a shootout. Finally, on a pool table with wet weather (to give the E8s and advantage in bogging) it was a slaughter at 500 meters, only two Panthers dieing (from side shots because they turned their turrets) for all the E8s. No tungsten was used. At 200 meters is was even, and still no tungsten was used. [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-17-2000).]

This type of testing that Abbott started and Bulletthead and Wolfe also do is excellent for those of us who want to "kick" the tires and really know what is happening, not just use antecedents (your Stuart killed my Tiger, fix the Stuart so that cannot happen). For those of you that want to try scientifc testing (experiment): here is how it is done: 1) Come up with a problem 2) Figure out what factors effect the problem then choose one and only one to vary. For example: how are rear shots on Tigers effected by distance. If you let other factors creep in (different types of guns, experience, smoke was over part of them but not over others etc) then you will not have a valid test. 3) Run the test and measure the results. 4) In any system that has any random elements, you need to run the same test 40 times for each variable difference. For example, when I tested how often M4A3's used tungsten, I did two sets of 40 firings of the first shot only at a Panthe dug in which accounted for all the variables. You need at least 40 so you can say with some confidence that this is happening (if you get into advanced stats you can know exactly how confident you are.) 5) The best stats to use are the simplest: mean, percentage, and standard deviation. If you know stats, you can use correlation and regression. If you really want to get weird, you can use nonparametic stats, but no one will understand you. 6) Once you discover something, tell everyone else but tell them exactly how you did the test. The ideal thing is for someone else is to see how you did the test and go test it themselves. When they come back with the same or similar numbers then you know you were right. If they come back with different numbers then you have to figure out what you did differently. If you don't tell people how you came up with the information, they wont be able to see if you were right. 7) If this sort of accuracy is not your cup of tea, don't worry. Steve Jackson [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-17-2000).]

Les Français ont un sens de l'humour impair. C'est pourquoi je les aime!

Also, the engine has the squad do a moral check before attacking, and they wont attack on their own unless they have a good chance of nailing the tank. That means they need a rifle grenade or Panzerfaust, and a "morale check", or a good chance to do the job with grenades. A leader in direct contact almost assure that the unit will attack the tank. A unit that has been paniced will almost never attack a tank. If your Morale goes down lower than around 50 infantry become reluctant to take on a tank. There are some AI problems: what I call the "dumb tank syndrome" (which may actually be the tank panic-ing more than any flaw) which sometimes effects tanks, and the tank choice of tungsten, but this does not seem to be an AI problem: it actually seems more like a nice feature of the AI. Not every unit has the gumption to billy a tank.

A sad day when a grim fact gets in the way of a great theory! Yes, I was looking at the King Tiger section by accident. BTW-- For anyone's use I have the data set and the firing range available for others use.

Finally: my theory on why this is happening. The E8 costs 170 for a regular unit, while the Panther is 188, making them rough contemporaries. All AI modelling is based on probabilities for some action to occur when faced with some event. The AI probably (note I say probably because I have never looked at the source code math for events) bases its ammo selection and firing choice on three basic variables. 1) is what type, hard or soft target. 2) what is the probability of causing damage -- if you cannot get it, you don't fire, if you can really cream it you fire immediately, 3) what is the value of the unit which is more than likely the "cost" variable. Ammo selection for special ammo such as tungsten probably makes it say -- if this is not a big bad bastard don't fire this valuable stuff until we are almost out of ammo. -- Now -- the E8 and Panther are closely priced, so the AI driving the tank things "hey, we are roughly equal, maybe he is a bit more tough than I am, but not that much" (only it does this by consulting a table and running some math). The human players know that a well handled E8 is going to trade 2 of itself for each Panther, maybe more that two at long range duels, so they want the tungsten used before the E8 is dead. The Tiger, which is priced higher, would get more tungsten awarded it since it essentially scares the E8 more (because it is a higher price). [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-17-2000).]

Ok -- two more tests. When given 2 rounds of AP, 2 of smoke, 2 of HE, and 2 of tungsten to fire at a Panther at 400 meters, past the effective reach of APCBC, the M4A3E8 chooses tungsten each time. But when given 30 rds of AP and 2 of tungsten, it chooses AP each time. This is based on 4 sets of 10 firings. The simple answer is the "conserve" knob is twisted up to high on the E8. When down to 2 rounds of each type of ammo the E8 chooses the tactically best round, but when at 30 rds AP / 2 rds Tungsten it will never choose tungsten even if it cannot make a kill with AP.

Recently there has been a discussion of how far away the American 76 can penetrate the front turret of the Panther. Basically there are two sides to the question: PSK says "I have had the oposite experience concerning Panthers as Sherman 76mm in my games regurly kill Panther frontaly at 500 - 750ms with front turret penetrations using APCBC." While Wolfe says from his tests: "Just tested. Nope. At 800m Hellcats reported the hull down (dug-in) Panthers as 'OK' kills. 3 of the 4 Hellkitties bounced 10~20 rounds each off the Panther's frontal armor (turret and upper hull only) without penetrating (a few gun hits) before the Panther crews abandoned their tanks. The 4th Panther hung in through all 31 AP rounds from the Hellcat. Only after it had completely burned through all its AP shot did the Hellcat use its Tungsten rounds to finally kill the Panther. Seems the 'OK' kill message means don't *ever* use your Tungsten rounds. The Hellcats had 4 Tung rounds each, BTW." I decided to test who was right on this issue, so I set up a firing lab with 10 hull down Panthers (no ammo) facing 10 E8 Shermans at different ranges. The E8 Shermans had one Tungsten round and the rest AP. Each time I ran the test I got data on 10 firings, and I ran the test 4 times at each range group: 220 meter, 320 meters, 420 meters, and so on up to 1022 meters. The data was put into SPSS and a report was created. The range and the report along with the data are available if you want it. Only ithe initial shot was looked at as the Panthers would pop smoke and/or turn their turrets and skew the data. Basically the findings were: (1) The E8s never fired a tungsten once in 40 runs of the scenario, of 400 firings. Even one run where I increased the Tungsten to 10 rounds they still did not fire it even at ranges where that was required for a penetration. (I did not see if they fired tungsten on consectutive shots.) At 221 meters 42 percent of rounds missed, 42 percent killed the Panther, 8 percent knocked its gun out, and 5 percent bounced off. At 314 meters 20 percent killed the Panther, 45 percent missed, 13 percent bounced off, and 2 percent killed the armament. At 409 meters 70 percent missed and 30 percent bounced off. No other effects were observed. Findings: Somewhere between 320 and 400 meters the 76mm gun can no lonnger penetrate the turret fron of the Panther. Pzk may be seeing other weapons than the 76 taking out his Panthers at long range, or they may be Shermans who have fired all their AP off and have switched to tungsten, but they are not penetrating his Panthers with the 76 APCBC round. Another interesting finding is that Armament Kills are rare except close range, even in this shoot out that made a turret hit more likely.

I am using statistic to look at various aspects of the game, and the tungsten issue is coming up, While I do not have enough data yet to measure with confidence, I am getting a handle on the statistical average of certain events of if certain factors correlate. Right now I have seen a reluctance to use tungsten in standard American tanks related to what I call the "dumb tank" syndrome. American Mediums will, even on hunt, sometimes just quit doing anything when faced with heavy enemies, going "dumb". Also, they will sometimes burn through their entire ammunition supply before switching to tungsten (if they have any). This may be because of how the tank defaults to its battlesight rounds. American Mediums routinely carried AP as a battlesight round unless ordered to carry something else. Often, when faced with infantry, they would just shoot the AP first and reload with HE rather than switching shells. M4 seemed to never waste a tungsten, they only carried as a battlesight round when they were expecting trouble. Perhaps this reluctance to load tungsten is rather high, and when faced with German heavies they know the AP battlesight round can cause no effect so it goes dumb as the crew either reloads, panics, or just plain stalls. Tank destroyers seem to do this much less. They carried tungsten as a battlesight more often (leading to some shootings of Lynx type tanks with this valuable round, somthing I think I saw in the game with an M18 and a Lynx.

One thing to remember about sales to some countries (Aussies may be in this boat) is that when currency takes a plunge, revenues can fall, so import tarrifs can creep up. I remember ordering something for my parents in Honduras and finding out that the tarrif for it was higher than the cost of the item. I am sure the same thing is true if you send a commercial product into the United States also.

You know, on the TMC site that I am on, it is etiquette to post a Cite with the URL of the previous discussion. Some of the "DO A SEARCH" stuff could be easily solved by saying : Hey -- Groggy, this was discussed earlier at URL.... Then maybe someone will come back and say -- yeah, but ut got flamed down before it was fullyt discussed (happens a lot on all discussion groups that flames end an otherwise adult disagreement) Or maybe they will say: uh, yeah, that answers it. Many people run FAQs for newbys. By the way, I don't know if this has been asked before, but I lost a tank in one game and killed a tank in another, can I just let them cancel each other out? Steve Jackson

No, I belonged to the Panzer Leeader group before the Grognards existed (1988) but I have never joined the online version of that ancient and defunct mailing list. As to points value, no linear point system will ever model the edges well: In other words in tight hilly country the King Tiger is worth what it says, but in somewhat open ground it may be worth more: If you kill a King Tiger while loosing 4 M4A3(75)W people will pat you on the back and say damn good exchange, but the King Tiger is only around 2 for 1 points wise.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> *Note: This is not directed at Slapdragon etc, it is a general statement of my personel opinion on gamer classification in general. Regards, John Waters <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Heck Waters, I ain't no Munchkin -- nothing anyone can really say offends me, no need to point that out -- you amke a good argument that I disagree with (and having sat down to many uberfests against 6 King Tigers I think I can even give you a scientific definition of Munchkin rather than a subjective one -- I will work on it tonight!) Anyway -- before anyone jumps to my defense and this gets out of hand I am a big boy, and as long as the Nazi lovers, bigots, and that sort stay out of my posting vision I never take offense at anything. Not even Abbot blowing up my Cromwell (the bastard).

Oh, one more thing-- I never said it was fair to load down with Sherman 76ers, and I am not against facing a wall of Tigers or Panthers -- That is more historical than knowing that in every tourney game you play only the best comes out to fight. I am for tackling a couple of Panthers with my 75 armed Shermans -- I will have two of them for every one of his.

I guess the solution is just like ASL -- Munchkins fight Munchkins in Munchkin Tourneys with 8 King Tigers, Grognards fight Grognards with whatever is at hand -- and the rest of the games are historical so who cares (really) who wins (Playing a hopeless defense is a lot of fun -- I used to be partial to playing the Partisans in the Warsaw Scenario in ASL.) The tactical availibilty is what I was talking about -- what did the units have in the field -- and I still am for balanced games, just against Munchkin contests. That said, I should also stress I do not want to remove the chance of two Munchkins getting together and going all out with the Munchkin thing -- if it makes them happy to Munchkin then I have nothing to say about it. But for me it is sort of like Soccer. Sure having a bing dumb guy on your team run down the goalie is good strategy -- especially if you can break the goalies knee cap and get him out of the game. The other team can get a big dumb guy to and break your goalie's knee cap. And we can get a big dumb guy to defend the goalie and maybe a big dumb goalie. But when you need lots of big dumb guys busting knee caps to win rather than the fast agile guys scooting down the corners -- then I am out of the game. For me, I leave when at any cost Munchkinitis kills tunrs any contest into a slugfest. Scott, I can play you it looks like this weekend (if it is ok with you). Lets do a random-random and see what turns up.

Let me get done with the two I am in now, and I will whip you any side any time (go team go team!!) No, I agree with your comments -- although a historical pricing system would not be based on the number of American tanks versus the number of German, but only availability as an expressed precentage of the side it is from, or some form of limits to tactical reality -- Namely lots of Panthers are OK, but not lots of Jumbos -- just did not happen. You system would work also. It could be jinxed to some extent by just redoing the scenario until you got your Jumbo, but that is not so bad since eventually people will twig. Better yet- It could be a setting level: Grognard, Regular, and Munchkin, then the people who wanted to play at any level could do so. Play at Munchkin level and King Tigers cost 1 point to a maximun of 20. Regular is just as it is, Grognard placed realistic restrictions.

Well, here I have to disagree that it would create an unbalanced game, simply create one in which escalation was controlle to some extent in competition. Now with the random chooser -- I have no problem with combat level parity. If they get a King Tiger then great! There are tactics to deal with one, either by close assualting the puppy or peppering it with Sherman fire and getting an M or A kill on it. In your counterargument, you posit a price based on ratio from allied to german tanks -- which would be absurd if it was used. Why not think of a more usuable system that does not prohibit, merely discourage buy lots of the heavies. All sides doles out their heavies. Panthers were fairly common, as were all marks of M4, but the Jumbo was one to a company or worse, and 2 Jumbos would be like seeing a two headed snake, sure it happened, but only in rare assaults that had the eye of the Division commander. Fireflies were one to a platoon. Comets came in bunches near the end (the bunches were rare but they deployed at platoons) but even the Pershing was doled out in the beginning. I just remember the escalation that occurred in Squad Leader when GI and COI came out. You go to Suncoast Skirmishes for some back room tourney competition, and sit down to the design your own. In the beginning, people would bring their historical OOB, buy platoons and companies, and go at it. Then there was a creeping escalation, as the German guy decided it was easier to win with all Elephants and King Tigers, people quit playing Americans, and switched to British will all 17 pounder armed vehicles. Soon, a build your own competition was no fun anymore because you could predict what the other guy would have right down the line, and you new to play you had to counter or die an early and glorious death. Instead of being rare and fascinating, by 1990 the descendent of the Skirmishes that played informally in Clearwater, it was rare to see a Sherman tank, while only a fool bought a Stuart or MkIV. I saw more JSIII versus King Tiger clashes than I care to remember. Competition was dead. So now as it is I stick historical matches, and just refuse to play design your own ASL. This same thing could happen in CM. As for the Hotchkiss: It was common only in the first month of the war in Normandy, then it should probably be more expensive since they were all dead or lost at Falaise (at least according to Gerbner). [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-13-2000).]

This has more to do with competition play and not personal level v computer or v office mate games. In discussions with another gamer, I heard an interesting story. He was playing a QB designed by points rather than random (which I prefer for ladder play). By the end of the game it became apparent that he had fought a British unit with 3 Fireflies and no other tanks. Likewise, horror stories of fighting the guy with all KingTigers or all Jumboes from time to time arise. This led me to an idea. In random QB picks, the price of the unit is the price of the unit, and if your nasty Sherman A3 is facing a Panther -- deal with it or die trying. No one is going to call you a wuss because you fail to take out the Panther when the best you have is a 75, and next game you may have a Jumbo facing a Stug. But in purchase QBs maybe how common the unit is should effect its value or the ratio of other support tanks needed to buy it. That way it would discourage the practice of loading up on Jumbos. Of course, this would not effect the historical scenarios.

At first, this seemed like a good idea, but now I am not so sure, mostly because of the KingTigers. If the game had random units showing up at random times from a point pool on both sides, yeah I would buy it. Then full price / half price does not matter. But in real life, reinforcements don't wait for the end of "the game", they get their watched screwed up, show up late, show up early, get reassigned, land on the wrong beach, get lost (well, rarely, but it happens) get caught by my two friends Art and Jab, take a pee break, and so on. The idea of 3 King Tigers or 3 Challengers, or 3 of anything rolling out of the mist on turn 26 right when they are needed the most but have been saved off board where my hunting Panzerchecjks cannot get to them. From the point of view of a battle, anything other than random should be worth maybe 10 times as much, to represent the cost of keeping them safe in a pocket until the other forces are almost worn out.

Damn Martin, you are from Germany! I wish I could write in my foriegn languages as well as you write in English (or speak for that matter, my brain refuses to function in other languages anymore). I sound like a pendantic six-year old in Spanish and my French is come se come sa also. It would be wonderful to have a brain that lets you be totally fluent in two languages. [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-12-2000).]

Ok, I just spent an hour with the manual instead of grading my student's tests. What typos? I found two comma splices, but that is usually acceptable in manuals. Martin and Steve seem to have a good grasp of English, they would get an "A" in one of my communications classes. They write better manuals than I do and I am a year away from a PhD in History / Mass Communication with 6 academic publications and 2000 hours of television programming to my credit. Where are the typos, or am I loosing my grasp of English? [This message has been edited by Slapdragon (edited 09-12-2000).]

We have evidence of sighting losses in tanks, we can also take a page from the "A great many more Iraqi tanks had armament or motive kills that catastrophic destruction, but JFACC insisted that the tanks be "on their backs like a cockroach" before they were counted. (1)" Weapon and Motive kills are common enough that they are given their own designation in military records, K-Kills and M-Kills (as opposed to K-Kills which is a catastrophic or crew killing, tank destroying kill. On American tanks, you just have the tank dead. You notice A-Kills more because they happen with good non shattering hits that do not kill the tank, and those happen more on German tanks. (1) Conduct of the Persian Gulf War--Final Report to Congress (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, April 1992) The comment in question is supposedly from General Norman Schwartzkopf