c3k

So...I've got to ask: does the library know what you've done with their book?

Some vehicles use Dismount to get the crew to leave, others use the Bail Out. I don't have a hard and fast way of figuring out which is which. (Bail Out seems to be for dedicated crews. Dismount for vehicles which can accept anyone to drive them. At least, that's how I think it works.)

^^^ Yep. Sabot peeling has to be very symmetrical. This was one of the earlier attempts, under some crucial time pressure. Modern ones have benefited from decades of development.

Given the choice between an AVLB or a MicLic being added to the game, well, I will always vote for "boom" over "flume". (C'mon, THAT was good!) c3k "can a bridge be derailed?"

...and one that seems more likely to succeed. If there is opposition, the "bridge it on the go" method will be ugly. Very ugly. I'd love to defend against an enemy who has to bring up a vulnerable, slow, large device to cross an obstacle. In CM terms, the fight will be over before the AVLB is brought forward. (Unless we really enlarge the maps?) In CM terms, the Russians will fight on the map...and only bridge the obstacle after the CM battle ends. Buy, yeah, it'd be nice to see.

Love the bucket under the fuel tank for the leaks. The concrete pad pivots up. That thing is putting down some serious ground pressure. What's all the fluid under the engine? Good thing there are some pits dug for the end-supports. This strikes me as a video of a museum piece which can still operate...if not actually move.

An Abrams at full throttle (with a running start) could cross that in a jiff.

AVLB is...meh. It is about two Abrams long. How many obstacles are two Abrams long, with strong banks on each side...which an Abrams cannot just cross? Looking at the videos (even of the Russian one), shows the AVLB being deployed...in a field. This does not seem like anything that is either tactically useful or should be in the game. To me.

The role of a muzzle brake is simple: it works as a braking device to slow/ease the recoil of the weapon. "Brake", not "break". The way they work is to divert some proportion of the gasses to the rear. (Note: the German "acorn" muzzle brake was considered a high-tech secret and Germans erased their existence from pictures for some time.) (Think of the barrel as a rocket engine. Once the projectile clears the muzzle, the large volume of high-pressure gas creates a thrust pushing the barrel back. If you can vent some of that gas to the sides, you remove the "bad" thrust represented by that portion of the gas thus diverted. If you can bend the gas so some of it tries to "pull" the barrel forward, by venting the gas to the rear by some angle, you get a dual benefit of removing some "bad" thrust, AND adding some "good" thrust to counteract it.) Most weapons are limited by the recoil forces that the weapon mount can withstand. Small turret rings are particularly bad for this. Muzzle brakes allow a much more energetic weapon in a smaller/lighter mount. Now, in order to get some of the gasses to the rear (or divert some from going straight out), those gasses have to go SOMEWHERE. You need to vent them in a balanced manner, or you'll bend your barrel. If you vent it up and down, you'll get a dust storm, debris, and fire all in front of the weapon. So, you vent the gas to both sides. Get out to a gun range with some high-power rifles. Stand to the side of a non-muzzle-brake rifle being fired. Then do the same with one with a muzzle brake. The impact and shock effect you feel is quite distinct.

Agreed: for modelling armor penetration, the smallest fragments are inconsequential. If we were looking at personnel danger zones, then the smaller frags would be of higher importance.

Depending on the radar band, they load libraries of known military vehicles and run algorithms to suss them out. A tank has a lot of roadwheels. A car has two. There are other, more advanced, techniques. My personal preference would be an APS-seeking guidance system on an energetic kinetic penetrator.

Excellent correlation between your work and the real life test.

That last graph is certainly well worth the effort! Smoothing out the noise would be very simple. Of course, now we need to see how that compares with real life and with existing in-game stats. Nice.

Got it. 6 meter long fragments seems a bit much. Talk about flogging with spaghetti...

Thanks for the explanation that you're using flat-faced cylinders to model the fragments. Here's a thought (from someone who doesn't have to do the work. ): 1. Take the same cylinder, but "invert" it, to produce the worst-case penetration model for that fragment. 2. Using the "worst-case" and the "optimal shape", plot the difference penetrations. I'll expand in a moment. The over-arching thought is to remember that, as effective as artillery CAN be as an anti-armor munition, in general it is very inefficient. Assume a shell thickness of 10mm. If, (totally fictitious numbers), given that 10mm length of the cylinder, it seems like the mass is what produces the diameter in your model. So, again, a made up number, a 5 gram fragment, in the shape of a 10mm long cylinder, it would need, say, a 2mm diameter. (This is what I've gathered from your posts.) That 2mm x 10mm cylinder strikes the armor face-on and has a certain penetration value. (Modified by the slope of the armor, hardness, etc.) This is similar to piece of pencil lead. Now, to simulate the random tumbling of the fragments, but keeping with your model, is it possible to change the cylinders so that their diameters are all equal to the thickness of the projectile and their depth is modified to produce the mass? In the case I gave above, that would yield a 5 gram fragment with a 10mm diameter and a 2mm thickness. This would be similar to a (small) coin. (I've totally ignored geometry and volume for this example. The takeaway is that the length is dependent upon the mass, rather than the diameter.) This would produce a plot with a very rough first order (half order???) of a tumbled fragment striking armor. In this case, the value of thicker cases would still be important: mass is mass. That new plot would be a worst-case of penetration. Your current work would almost be a best-case. Picking an intermediate value from between the two would seem to give better/more realistic results? (Or simply taking your fragment count and reducing it by a percentage to take into account the fragments which hit the "wrong" way?)

Artillery and air delivered anti-tank mines...by the bucket load.

I love what you do with your weekends. You made a statement about the effectiveness of the penetration based on the cylinder wall thickness. Hmm...quote function: (My bold.) Whereas I agree that the thicker artillery shell casing presents a much more dangerous fragment than a thin mortar shell, the "presented area" would be somewhat random when compared to one another. As well, the artillery shell has much crystallized structures so that the fragments have a very sharp edge. Think a very sharp rhomboid on the acute angles. Keep it going. You KNOW some of this will get into the game.

Modern optics allow, adrenaline excepted, 1" accuracy at 100m. At 300m, hitting a 4" circle is easy...under range conditions. IRL, adrenaline, fear, suppression, etc., all degrade that to quite a degree. Even if you make accuracy 10x worse when in combat, at 300m, shots are coming within 40" of the target. Support weapons should be BACK. 300m in WWII was close. In modern combat, 500m is close. Get your Strykers further back.

Think of leaves as being able to move in slight breezes which you can't see and thereby open up LOS paths which would otherwise be closed. The leaves are not totally stable.

Yes..."drag them to a left a bit" is what I meant by "squash" the plots. The plots are great. I truly love the colorized graphs and plots (and gifs) you've posted. Maths in action, as it were. The angle of impact would change the distribution of the plots...not the penetration. (I don't think that gravity would matter nearly as much as aerodynamic drag on random-shaped bodies of ~gram masses.) My point was purely that your plots were for horizontal shell orientation rather than the normal, non-horizontal, approach that shells are on prior to their detonation. (Gotta love a pun...) Ken

...or just "grab 'em n go". When you reach in the bag, what's in there is what you use.

kraze has a point. I believe this behavior was reported (internally) a while ago.

@HerrTom great stuff...but a quibble. Your artillery fragment plots are very nice. The classic dispersion looks like a butterfly's wings, and your plots come very close. However, your plots are not directly translatable into fragments striking a target...unless the artillery round is travelling parallel to the ground and detonates over the target. In reality, they would come in with a vertical component to their trajectory. A significant vertical component. That will "squash" your plots. In a perfect world, you'd be able to plot these at various trajectory angles (measured from the ground up) from as flat as 40 degrees all the way to 90 degrees (vertical). Thanks. Ken

Great stuff! Keep 'em coming...

Kasserine Pass was being referenced to as the unit's introduction to the NTC. (If you're not familiar, search it.) Independent Tank Battalions. Neat idea...but. Historically, independent battalions were attached to the same parent formation. It fosters all sorts of good things. And it eventually means that, for all intents and purposes, that independent battalion is now part of the parent unit's TOE.