Ex Bellator

Can I just remind some posters to read a whole thread, and that I've played CM for years. Kindly address my second post where I tried to explain further or please do not make comments which are already answered previously: I sincerely hope I don't see any more stupid comments like 'Why didn't you try for a flank' or 'Play with FOW off'

Wow, this is turning into a hot topic To all those who say this could happen and isn't a problem I'm afraid I still vehemently disagree. Some have said that from a certain angle a Jagdpanther can look like a Panther. May I respectfully remind them that I had hundreds of men on the field, Veterans at that, it was clear, the Jagdpanther was almost constantly moving around on the top of a small hill and eventually came down to within 70m of my lead troops, my men were taking views from many angles, all 360 degrees by the game end and probably 180 degrees on any particular turn, we were at an average range of 150-200m, many had binoculars, some had gunsights, and yet after 20 plus minutes of everyone watching it swanning around from all angles I'm expected to believe that the prevailing opinion was that it was a turreted medium tank :eek: We all love the Mis-ID feature in CM, no one would ever wish to be without it, but I'm afraid in this particular case (like choice of the Gun Tractor for an unspotted Halftrack, remember the fun I had with that) BFC have chosen the wrong unit to show, it should obviously be shown as an Assault Gun, or better yet a new category of Tank Hunter. I have just done a quick test scenario where I purchased a whole variety of German AFVs in 1945 and had a Veteran infantry platoon sat on an open flat map trying to ID them at around only 150m range. Most of the estimates were eminently sensible... PzII = Light tank Hetzer/Stugs/Jpz/PzIV-70/Brumbar = Assault Gun Marder/Nashorn/Hummel = SP Gun PzIV = PzIV PzIII = PzIII Panther = Panther Tiger = King Tiger and then we get the silly ones Jadgpanther = Panther Sturmtiger = King Tiger Jadgtiger = King Tiger It is obvious that anything with Tiger or Panther in it's name is classed as it's tank namesake when not fully ID'd. I really cannot see how any of those three when looked at from 150m away especially with binoculars could be mistaken for a turreted tank by all kinds of onlookers and from all sorts of angles. However in the case of the Sturmtiger and Jadgtiger it isn't such a problem because the gun and armour on a possible King Tiger is enough to scare any unit away from trying to take it on. However, the Jadgpanther crew is laughing, everyone apparently thinks that it has a nice soft turret sat on top of it will stand around trying to get through it and wondering why they just seem to be getting upper hull ricochets. I'm afraid it did cost me the battle, as I was assaulting I was quite happy to trade probably a couple of ISUs for what appeared to be a Panther by penetrating its relatively weak front turret, so had no hesitation in trying to overwhelm it frontally. I don't care about losing, never have, but it shouldn't have happened. Some people have already gone down the wrong track completely, Mis-IDing was certainly very common and no-one says it wasn't, but if you think about the examples we all know then turreted AFVs got mis-ID's as turreted AFVs, and the constant tendancy was to exagerrate the threat, not downplay it.

Oh c'mon guys. Do you think that of the hundreds of men I had looking at it, one of them might at least have seen a TURRET before? I'm lost for words at the moment if you think this is acceptable. Let's take a few more posts and see.

Here we go...

In our regular Sunday afternoon TCP game my buddy decided to go for the uber-cat and bought a Jagdpanther to the field. We normally stay away from the very heavy stuff so I hadn't seen this problem before. For about half of a 37 turn game he kept it in full view at the back of the map dominating the objectives, sensible chap. However my VETERAN troops of all kinds for the whole period were reporting it as a 'Panther'. At the end of the game I had squads just 68m away from it and they still reported it as a 'Panther'. Obviously I know that it wasn't fully ID'd (which I also find very odd at 68m) but why on earth is a Jagdpanther being reported as a Panther of all things? Surely 'Assault Gun' is much more appropriate, a Jagdpanther looks like a Panther in the same way that I look like Jennifer Lopez This single thing lost me the game, and I suspect it may cause the AI problems as well. Obviously I had AFVs (ISU's and T-34s) which could get through a Panthers front turret, so deployed them for a mass attack and even opened up with a pair of 76.2mm AT guns with Tungsten at the weak 'front turret'. My buddy couldn't believe what I was doing, and the air turned blue as I repeatedly bounced off the front of the 'Panther' at ranges between 100-300m while he shot everything to pieces. So then the problem is that a totally inappropriate depiction of a huge turretless tank hunter with impregnable front armour and uber-gun has been put into CMBB. Aside from confusing human players who are confronted by a mere 'Panther', I will happily bet that the AI will try and take them on frontally as well. As I doubt that BFC will care to fix this before CMAK, the moral of the tale is to buy Jagdpanthers when you can, and also that the medium turreted tank that you are looking at from close range is actually something utterly different.

Sure it's possible, but it isn't probable. I've started more all random generated battles than I can remember, and given up on seemingly most because the majority of the time you will get an open type map and an infantry type force. If you look at the parameters and assuming each choice has an equal chance of occurring it is easy to see why. Hills, 3 out of 5 chance of being virtually flat. Trees 2 out of 4 of being almost none. Force type 3 out of 6 chance of being massively infantry heavy (check out a few C/A AI selections!). I think the force selection problem may occur because either A) The AI attempts to buy whole platoons of tanks and gives up when it can't, or The AI buys the biggest single infantry unit it can immediately (eg. a full regiment or company) and then is often left with nothing to spend on armour. I've been interested in how the AI buys it's forces for some time, and if I'm way of the mark as usual then I look forward to being corrected by those in the know. [ August 07, 2003, 09:28 PM: Message edited by: Rex Bellator ]

[ August 07, 2003, 08:32 PM: Message edited by: Rex Bellator ]

OMG! If you are losing to the AI then your only option is to keep quiet you muppet

One piece of advice if you are playing against a new TCP opponent, I would agree whether any heavy tanks, or any of the early war medium tanks, are allowed beforehand. The majority of new players I've fought against did not hesitate to pick a KV2 in 1941 or Tigers in 1943 etc. until we started agreeing on this.

If you are playing smaller or medium QBs (1500 pts or less) then the Combined Arms setting definitely causes the Ai problems purchasing tanks, so you will rarely see any worthwhile armour to pound with or against. ISTM that the Ai usually tries to purchase a whole platoon and if it can't gives up on even a semi-decent tank arm and goes for the odd halftrack instead. A sizeable tank force will be chosen if you select 'Unrestricted'. Of course if you know this it can spoil the fun somewhat. If you leave the force type to 'Random' then from my experience you will almost always get a very infantry heavy force. Also if you set the map type to 'Random' you will usually get a flat and open type map, which will often lead to the pointless situation you found yourself in. When I do play the Ai I'm always attacking it, for me after all these CM games defending against it is way too easy. So I'd pick something like 1500 Pt Probe/Attack/Assault, Unrestricted Force, Farmland/Lt Trees/Lt Hills (I prefer open maps in Russia). You can randomise everything else including date and you will have a good but winnable challenge on your hands.

I did some checking myself and compared the SU-100 and SU-85M. The points difference wasn't as marked as I thought, in fact it is barely worth bothering about. Both these machines can seemingly eat the German cats for breakfast, but the SU-100 can do it at twice the range. It seems that SU-85Ms can rely on regularly penetrating Tigers frontally at around 750m meters and Panthers at around 500m. An SU-100 can do it at twice those ranges. The main advantage of the SU-85M is that it carries twice the ammo loadout. The big disadvantage is that it relies on it's Tungsten until close. They both have the same excellent upper hull armour, and if hull down a German cat will have to get very close to rely on penetrating them frontally, probably less than 300m, although I saw them getting partial penetrations out to 500m. They are both nice pieces of kit, guaranteed to terminaly trouble anything less than a King Tiger, but on balance I'd agree with Other Means, that the SU-100 is better at long distance Kitty killing by some way. In closer terrain, or against lesser enemy armour, or if needed in more joint AP and AT role, then the 85M may be better.

I think the SU-85M version can do the same job as the SU-100 but at a cheaper cost. It's upper armour is also virtually invulnerable, and it's gun usually has a good tungsten loadout as well as more ammunition for other types. Might be worth considering.

Luxury. We used to have to kill ourselves with the family frozen haddock twenty seven times before we could even get up, eat a Soviet tank division for lunch while working a 78 hour day in the toothpick factory, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken Molotov bottle if we were lucky.

Very nice site. Your browsing for no particular reason is certainly adding to my favourites list. Cheers.

Another good link - well worth a read. For example: War is hell.