c3k

Are your friendly unit icons off? Having them on will make it obvious when you still have multiple units selected.

It was interesting to me when I learned that there existed a "donut" of invulnerability to the enemy's ships. Closer in and they could penetrate the hull's armor. Further out and their shells would drop from above and penetrate the deck. It put the pre-battle maneuvering into a new context, going beyond the classic "crossing the T".

It is my men who are bloodthirsty, not me! I do not see any anomaly in the data set. It follows a very predictable path: as the unit gets bigger (meaning the number of riflemen make up a smaller percentage of the total force) the casualty rate decreases. That makes sense. Not too many officers got injured clustered around the corps hq map table. A rifle company is about 99% riflemen. (You can dither around the edges with the accounting for radiomen, attached FO's, corpsmen, etc.) Let's just say a rifle company of 250 men is "pure" riflemen. They're all in the front line. A division (US, WWII, Infantry) had 27 line companies. (Ignoring the weapons companies.) That's 6,750 men in the front line. The division had something on the order of 15,000 men in the TO&E. (Going from memory; forgive my gross approximations.) Of any division's casualties, the great portion (90%+?) will be borne by the 6,750 front line soldiers. If the companies take 30% losses, (2,025 men), the division only takes 13.5%. All the above is commonly known. I only post my (gross) example to ensure we're all on the same page. Another note on casualties: not too many of my men shirk away from fighting. No one sits there waiting for the other guy to go over the top first. They all go. Every time. (If their morale is poor, they'll go eventually.) No one lags back with a suddenly lame leg. There are many survival strategies of which my pixeltroops do not avail themselves. They also never get trenchfoot, etc. Wound mechanisms: I -think- the game differentiates between rifle and handgun rounds. I do not know if the energy level is taken into account. A 100 yard rifle shot to the torso is different than a 1,000 yard hit. Yeah, both guys are out of the battle, but one is probably dead or dying, the other is just really hurt. (Ignoring heart/aorta, CNS hits.) I don't think any of my guys get credit for their bibles, multiple layers, etc. Just tossing ideas into the pot...

My men know that there will be no coin toss regarding their fate: they all rush forward to eagerly join death's cold embrace. Those that survive are forlorn, and are filled with hope that they may get another opportunity to enter the halls of Valhalla! Which is another way of saying that our CM battles are always going to be faster and bloodier than the real thing.

Terrain Fog of War is important and non-existant. - When a fence falls down, I can hear it and see it. Now I know a vehicle is over there. - When a wall falls down, now I know a tracked vehicle is near it. - Splashes: already discussed. - Entrenchments and bunkers also fall into Terrain FoW. Having one, true, representation of the terrain in the game produces these issues which break FoW. A solution would be to create 3 maps. One, the "true" map. The other two would be FoW maps visisble to each respective player. Given this setup, perhaps the designer could then introduce MORE Fog of War by limiting the player's knowledge of the terrain. A defender could, say, have a 100% knowledge: he would see all the map at setup (subject to FoW due to the other player's actions.) The attacker would only have 25% knowledge: He would only see the first 1/4 of the map. The rest would be greyed out until he gains LOS to it. This setting would reflect the lack of maps or terrain information. Recon would become very important. And perhaps tedious? Just some thoughts... Ken

Sigh. Really? Another strawman? Fine. Tell me again about how divebombing carriers is the same as divebombing tanks. Tell me again how artillery doesn't damage tanks. I'm all ears. I am very aware of testing and how and when it can be useful. Sheesh. Theory is fine. Testing is better. Real world proves it. Or, am I wrong about that? (This is your opportunity to draft a magnum opus on testing methodology, the scientific method, and all other sundry aspects of testing. Really. But, please, do it in another thread.) Regards. Ken

I'd like to add a clarification to the above use of "REAL" tanks. It was not meant in the sense, "The Pzkpfw I is a girlie tank. Now, take the Panther. That was a REAL tank!" It was meant in the sense that a LOT of debate is based on theoretical work. Whereas theory and academics are a good starting point and can often point in the right direction, they fall woefully short of real world experience and testing. Listing them in order of closeness of prediction: Actual use with all conditions exactly correct. Actual use with most conditions correct. Actual use. Testing with actual units/devices. Academic theory regarding the units/devices. As an easy example, take the Panther. How many of those were SUPPOSED to catch on fire during road marches? The theory (design/paper plans/etc.) did not predict that. Oops. Despite many predictors about artillery or airpower against armor, the reality is often different. It takes REAL tanks being tested against REAL artillery or REAL air support to find the truth. Even better if it is not a test, but the real thing. (Of course, by then it is too late to modify the operational use or weapons fielded.) Ken

Not being a fanboi, but that 88 seems to be dug in. It is, after all, sitting in barnacles. Would that help resist HE? The emplaced guns may not LOOK different than unemplaced guns, but perhaps they are treated much differently. Ken

4. If you use the HIDE command, your troops will keep their heads down while in a trench (or other fortification). That will allow them to survive a lot more firepower. 12. As mentioned, infantry close assault weapons against tanks are abstracted. If you stop a tank next to unsuppressed infantry it is likely to get immobilized and possibly destroyed if they have hand grenades. The number of hand grenades represent bundled grenades, and other field expedient means to attack tanks. The game does a good job of punishing armor which gets too close.

Split a squad. Or, at worst, use a whole squad. Ninja'd by Baneman.

Thank you. From that article: The model predicted 30 percent damage to armored vehicles and tanks; however, 67 percent damage was achieved. Fragmentation from the HE rounds penetrated the armored vehicles, destroying critical components and injuring the manikin crews. (See an example of such damage in Figure 1.) In addition, the HE fragmentation damaged tracks, road wheels, and tank main gun sights and set one vehicle on fire. Interestingly enough, none of the damage to the armored vehicles or tanks was the result of direct hits—all the damage was caused by near hits. This test confirmed that US Army models did not accurately portray artillery effectiveness. Direct hits were not required to damage tanks and other armored targets. Now, let's see what they tested: Test 1: The targets were manikins placed in fighting positions, US trucks, M113 and M557 armored vehicles, and M-48 tanks. If we stopped reading right there, you would be correct about the old stuff. (By the way, why isn't an M-48 tank being targeted by 155mm shells a good indicator of WWII effects?) Test 2: The second test was conducted over a period of seven months. It was designed to provide updated fragmentation damage data for modern armored fighting vehicles and tanks. An M109 howitzer fired 155-mm HE ammunition with PD and VT fuzes. One round was fired at a time, and a detailed analysis was completed on the effects of a direct or near hit of each round.A direct hit with an HE round with a PD fuze consistently destroyed the various target vehicles. Near hits damaged or destroyed road wheels, tracks, main gun sights and vision blocks. Aerial bursts of HE rounds with VT fuzes damaged or destroyed gun barrels, vision blocks, antennas, sights and engines and destroyed anything stored on the outside of the vehicle. (See Figure 2.) My bold. Hmm, no direct statement of vehicles used, but Figure 2 shows a modern IFV. (Aluminum armor basis.) Other figures show T-72's. Test 3: The third test was against a simulated US mechanized infantry team in defensive positions. The target area consisted of a forward defense area with a tank ditch 250 meters long, minefields and wire obstacles. The infantry was dismounted and had prepared positions with overhead cover. The fighting vehicles and tanks were in supporting positions, dug in with both “hull down” and “turret down” positions. For this test, a 24-gun 155-mm battalion was used to achieve the Soviet criteria of 50 percent destruction. To accomplish these effects, the fire plan for each of the three iterations of the test required 2,600 HE rounds with a mix of PD and VT fuzes. In each iteration, 50 percent of the infantry fighting positions were destroyed and about 50 percent of the personnel were wounded or killed. My bold, above. Images include the aforementioned IFV (Seems like a Bradley, to me.), a BMP 1, two different T-72's, and a totally demolished M-48. Of interest would be the statement that near misses destroyed the vehicles' fighting ability, not that steel penetrated the fighting compartment. Tracks ripped off, barrels snapped and bent, optics destroyed, etc., all were the result of blast and splinter effect. Great article. Thanks for the link. If nothing else, I'd direct your attention to page 10, figure 5. That's a T-72. I consider that a REAL tank. Do you? For a given weight, air bombs have far less splintering than an artillery shell. If the above test has splintering as the primary damage mechanism (as I think it does), then for a given weight, air delivered ordnance would be less effective than an artillery shell. A 100 lb shell has more steel and less filler than a 100 lb bomb. The blast effect of an air-dropped bomb would be greater, for a given weight. Of course, 250 and 500 lb bombs don't have ready artillery comparisons. (Ignoring such beasts as Anzio Annie, et al.). Then we can get into the 1,000 and 2,000 lb class. They produce a LOT of blast effect. The splintering effect is good, especially with modern bombs and metallurgy, but less so than the SAME weight artillery shell. The bombs don't have to be a direct hit to knock out tanks.

I did not see anything to read. Just the link to a youtube video. I base my conclusions on the video. Bolded part above: there was an interesting link to a cold war study showing just the opposite: using Soviet fire techniques how effective 150mm-class artillery was against armor. I'll see if I can find the link. Regardless, the tests showed many mangled T-72's (etc.) from near (and not so near) misses. The used REAL guns firing REAL shells agains REAL tanks. Funny how that kind of test gives results at variance to computations. Modern artillery was found to be far more effective than the US models had showed. That's taking us far afield from air support.

You have just insulted the entire fair lass-dom! Reminds me of a story involving a transvestite. But we won't go there.

Nah. Look at the wind direction: it is blowing the plume towards the position. The dirt coming over the top of the lower outcropping is from the near edge of the effects. The darkest part (visible in camera) is still on the far side. And this is why anecdotes are useful in a qualitative sense, but not often trustworthy quantitatively. (I was under a SCUD path, once upon a time, in a land far away. Patriots were firing to intercept from nearby. (Within a klick.) We were under no danger whatsoever. Later I heard some of my guys talking about being targeted by SCUDs and how close they came to death. Yeh. It would've been okay if they'd been talking to some fair lasses after many a brew, but that was not the case. They truly believed it. Shrug.)

Hmm, the salient point would be whether or not the PPSh'es still have ammo. If not, about 1m. Great clubs, and after used as such, they'd still work fine. Otherwise, in game, within 80m with effectiveness getting better closer. (Anecdotal and experiential, not based on tests or formulas.)

Cylindrical tanks on the engine decks of Soviet AFV's were/are fuel tanks. I am not sure about the specifics on which ones could be (or were) able to be jettisoned. SOP was to run on them first. (Similar concept to aircraft external tanks: you always want to keep your internal tank topped off.)

...and that's why the moon laughs at the owl.

Huh? What cans? There are two sheet metal stowage bins (sometimes) mounted near the exhaust pipes, just above the treads on the rear hull. They were NOT fuel tanks.

15 meters my ass. Sorry for being so blunt, but I just watched the clip. Other than being an indictment against whichever coalition member was on CAS duty, the bomb landed on the OTHER side of that outcropping lower down the slope. These guys (thankfully) had a lot of solid rock between them and the impact. Plus, they were very well protected by their dugout. My estimation is that the impact was more like 100m away. Or more. That's based on looking at the footage as opposed to listening to the verbiage. ................^..U ...............| ..............| ........||...| .......|..|_| ._X_| ASCII art. The "X" is the bomb impact. The "U" is the US mortar position inside the ^ dugout. Solid lines are rock. Periods are space fillers for artwork. The horizontal distance X->U is ~100m. Check the video. The vertical distance is also on the same order. Again, check the video. This was not a 15m close hit with survivors. The :40, 1:05 and 1:13 mark show the terrain relationship and bomb impact.

Panther fuel: internal in the engine bay. The Soviets were the main (only?) users of external fuel tanks in WWII. And, my understanding is that the external fuel tanks were supposed to be empty before combat. Burn it on the approach march.

The bombs do seem to be more of the tac nuke scale.

A carrier is a strawman, JasonC. You know better. A carrier was almost ALWAYS in the middle of a battlegroup. It was formed to PROTECT the carrier. They used massive amounts of AAA. They manuevered at 30 knots (or so). They also (sometimes) had fighters around trying to shoot down the incoming flights. Now, if you want to simulate something like that on land, look at the flak that the Soviets ringed around Moscow. The German pilots were awed by the amount they ran into. Using carrier hit/miss ratios to extrapolate hit/miss ratios at the forward edge of the battle is totally inappropriate for that purpose. The amount of flak at the front lines was minimal. Germans kept most of III Flak Corps well behind the lines in Normandy...for their own survival. The batteries of 88's encountered around Caen were almost without exception unable to fire on ground targets. They were ensconced within small bocage fields. Their survival against ground weapons was not good enough to be front line weapons. (Dug-in 88's.) The mobile flak were limited in numbers and employment. A panzer division would only have enough to accompany a single kampfgruppe, or guard a single bridge. Given the rarity of effective AAA on the battlefield, I don't think that the accuracy of Stukas was all that bad, operationally. They were far more accurate against point targets than any of the horizontal bombers of the period. Now, is the game treating Air Support with the fidelity it could? Perhaps not. But, it is within the correct order of magnitude. Or so. Carriers? Pshaw.

Carbon on the armored glass would be an effect.

No, there's not a listed document of known issues...unless you're a member of the beta cognoscenti, like some who have posted in this thread. I could tell you about it, but I had to pledge an oath to the Northern Democratic Alliance, or something like that, which has some sort of monk-like vow of silence. The details are lost to me, but they all kept talking in hushed tones about the "NDA" and the need not to talk. Some monastery with Belgian beer is my best guess. "Hey," I said, "Let's tell the guys about the fancy new phased plasma rifles we're working on!" They said, "Ken, don't whisper a word about it! The NDA! Don't you remember?" NDA this, NDA that. Shrug. All I know is that every Tuesday I get a new parchment scroll delivered by FedEx with the entire list of known issues written on it quill pen with cool little pictures inside the capital letters which start each paragraph. It's edible, too. Meanwhile, if your pond or stream starts rippling, you'd best get some weapons trained on it. Mum's the word... Ken

Get three of the 110" 'ers! Think of the immersion...