c3k

Turn 29 to 28...ish. more...

The Glory of my Men! Their actions surprised me, but not unexpectedly. They do, after all, fight for me... more...

The finale. The end. The denouement. But first, a word... Ian was a FANTASTIC opponent. Sure, he was a gamey bastard with his choice of kit, but who isn't? Totally kidding... This AAR was meant to be fast and furious with engagement ranges meant to shed those of lesser fortitude. We were facing a time crunch with my real life deadlines. In the last week of February, I was scheduled for some work which would have me away from my gaming machines 5-6 days out of every 7, up until, well, about now. Knowing that, we thought we could get it in. Then Ian got slapped by real life intruding on his end. That slowed us down enough that we ran into my scheduling conflict. My apologies for the stilted nature of this beast, and my thanks to those who kept their interest in it despite the syncopated nature of our updates. Enough of the words...let's look upon the glory which was the last 3 turns... 31:00 to 30:00... more...

This AAR... sigh. Too long, gents, too long. It is almost done. Later today there will be a gloooooorious update...

Dive bombing was done to decrease the CEP of the bombs. Stukas could get VERY accurate results, especially before widespread auto-fire weapons appeared in the air-defense role. They could (and did) press to very low levels. The vertical dive "aimed" the bomb. Horizontal bombing (or the modern loft-bombing) introduces a great degree of lateral dispersion. A millisecond's error in release timing could result in no effect on the desired target. Back to the OP. The cupola mounted MGs disappeared from German tanks because they weren't worth the bother.

Cool. Thanks for posting them. I'll look at them in a bit. Ken Edit: hmmm....the Mac thing may throw a spanner in the works...

^^^ This. Please try to make a savegame when this happens. If there's an issue, a savegame is the only way to share exactly what you're seeing.

Please re-read my admittedly terse post upstream. There's a nugget or two in there. If you've never fired at an airborne target, a couple of issues may not be apparent. The first is range estimation. If you don't correctly estimate the range, you WILL miss. Bullets drop. You need to correctly account for that drop when firing at a (distant) target. 300m is ridiculously close for an air-to-ground attack. That would be the break-off distance for a kamikaze strafing run. Seriously. If there were any AAA coming up, no pilot would press to 300m slant range. 1,000m would be a bit more "normal" for an aggressive attack run. At 300mph, that ~1/2 mile distance is covered by the aircraft in (2,600ft / 440 ft/sec = 6 seconds) about 6 seconds. Think about the drop a rifle round would have at 1,000 yards. A quick check of a table or two shows that a .308 168gr boat tail round (equivalent/better than Nato 7.62x51 which is similar to WWII era 7.92) has a drop of 421 inches at 1,000 yards. That's 35 feet! (Note that this drop is in comparison to a 100 yard zero. The gunner has to estimate the range. Then, he has to estimate the correct hold-over. 35 feet at 1,000 yards? Wow. Okay, at 500 yards it's only 5 feet. It is non-linear between (and beyond). And, that plane is changing the range at the rate of 150 yards per second. Correct range estimation is CRITICAL to landing rounds on target. And, that range is changing at a great rate. Any error in range estimation means the round misses. What's next? Oh, yes...the plane may be moving laterally, strafing a nearby target. That introduces the need to lead the target. Let's look at that... It takes that same round 665 milliseconds to travel 500 yards. (Again, it is non-linear, so you cannot just extrapolate other ranges. 100 yards is 111 milliseconds.) If that aircraft is 500 yards away, it will cover 300 feet before the bullet gets there!!! So, the gunner, in an oblique position relative to the path of the plane, has to estimate the range (let's say the true value is 500 yards to make it easy on the gunner), and he has to realize that he needs to aim 300 feet in front of the plane (try doing that into the air: really, try to estimate a point 500 yards in front of you in the air, and then try to imagine where a point 300 feet in front of that is.) Next, the gunner needs to adjust for drop. In the case of 500 yards it's only 5 feet. So, aim 300 feet in front and 5 feet above. And that solution changes by the second. And none of that takes into account the vertical aspect of firing. Third, the human eye CANNOT distinguish distance via binocular vision at those ranges. Depth perception simply doesn't work. The gunner has NO FEEDBACK other than the plane is still flying. His tracers may be going high, low, in front, or behind the aircraft. The pilot knows...but to the gunner it is just a stream of tracers which overlay the image of the aircraft. (At least, if he is competent at all.) Again, as I already posted, the ONLY purpose of such weaponry is to keep the strafing pilot "honest" and force him to stay a little further away during his attacks. Ken

...and if you check out the last few turns of MY aar, you'll see where that ammo ended up!

Try DDU (video driver clean utility), then reinstall video drivers. Next, look at the thread ( can't link atm) with Nvidia settings. DDU is great, but caveat emptor. I don't know your skill level.

They ARE my family. ...just because they're made of silicon, doesn't mean they're not alive!

Good plan. If the free Win10 path isn't available to you ( because of vista), then you can find oem copies of 10 pretty cheap.

Agreed: I'd be cautious before spending money on a game which may not be compatible with your OS. (FWIW, I used to be a Vista guy. I went to W7 and loved it. I am not a huge fan of MS, but I did upgrade one of my machines from W7 to W10. Based on how well it runs, etc., etc., I've also updated 2 other machines from W7 to W10. All is good, so all my machines will become W10. At this point, unless you have some software which requires XP or Vista, I don't know why you wouldn't go to W7 (at a minimum) or W10 (preferably). XP was excellent. So was 3.11 back in its time. I understand the whole concern about W10 and auto-updates, etc. I suggest going to W10 based forums (tenforums, for example) and see if any possible concerns you may have are supported by reality. XP support is over. Vista...I'm not sure about. W7 will lose support from MS in summer 2017. W10 is free until this summer. Yeah, they're pushing it... If you really need your old OS, set up a dual boot system and run the old one in a VM sandbox, thus avoiding security flaws from unsupported OS. Shrug. FWIW.)

As well, lighter rounds have shorter range. 7.92mm is outclassed by wing-mounted .50, or any cannon. Strafe, and pull up before you're in effective range of 7.92. Their only function was to keep strafers "honest" and not let them press too close.

I would prefer a round count and intensity call for indirect missions. E.g., "20 HE, rapid" or "12 Airburst, medium". Putting TRPs where previous missions landed is not optimal. In-game, a TRP gives an advantage to EVERY weapon, even machineguns. Instead, I would like a "Linked TRP" which is only usable by the asset which fired. (That would then open the can of worms: is every 81mm mortar firing indirect colocated with the same FDC? What about offmap 155mm? Should they be considered the same asset? Or, if I have 6 81mm indirect tubes, do they all have individual "linked TRPs"?) Another solution would be to keep it internal. E.g., after that one particular unit fires at the hilltop, it, and only it, would be able to fire at the hilltop with a greatly reduced delay. But, how would that information get relayed to the player, and should it? Currently, to represent monstrous ammo depots for artillery support, the designer can add reinforcement indirect assets. I.e., at turn 20, 6 more 105mm batteries become available. That lets/prompts the player into blowing through all the ammo that the initial 6 105mm tubes have, since he knows he'll get more. If the TRPs are linked to the first 6 tubes, then all that targeting benefit is erased when the "new" tubes show up. (Remembering that the new tubes are used to buff up the ammo stocks, not necessarily trying to show that a new battery is suddenly available: the old one just has double the ammo.) Ken

This. Nicely explained.

Deleted.

Yeah, it's been raised in the past. Apparently, if the vehicle has the Cullin device, it can pass through hedgerows...even backwards. If the TacAI had to create pathfinding based on FACING, then it would be very difficult to achieve any sort of pathing. Apparently. Instead, if the unit is toggled that "hedgerows are passable" and the game is coded so that "vehicle passing through hedgerow eliminates hedgerow", then you see how this happens. It's a property of the unit, not a property of the FRONT of the unit. At least, that's how I remember it being explained. Not a bug, per se, but a gameplay/coding compromise.

That 37mm canister is usually very effective. The M8 fired 3 tounds at Jerry. One if the rounds produced 3 crosses. (I think the 37mm canister is on par with the Abrams' canister...or so it seems.) I need to get some in command status updates and get some better morale. Some of The Dell survivors are marked with the Red Routing Broken Mark of Shame. There's not much I can count on them to do.

...and another Welshman walks down into the depths, rarely to surface ever again... Yeah, what you said.

It happens when the pixeltroop feels immediately threatened. Faster to pull a poor weapon than to delay using a better weapon. Get him out of the line of fire and he'll set that mg up.

I put them in the halftracks for a couple of reasons. There's a slight ridge there, so the halftracks can spray the woodline if needed. Plus, the men can man the machineguns when the current gunners get hit. Finally, even if they go out of command, if they're in a halftrack, and the halftrack's morale is okay, I can still pull the team back (in the 'track) rather than being forced to leave them in open ground. They are somewhat sheltered from bullets, so they have a better chance now. (I'd say "a fighting chance", but that ship has left!) However, that's like half a dozen halftracks sitting there. I'd get laughed out of the O Club if I pulled out now. I'll have to think about what I can do with mobile, armored, assets. Hmm.... The next few turns should be bloodier, still.

34:00 to 31:00, Part II, continued, more death... Summary: it's not over, but the fat lady is about to walk onto the stage. My offensive power is not where it was. My deep left has two immobilized vehicles; the M15 and the M8. My right is pretty much spent. The men are all in halftracks and are recovering morale and fitness levels. If Baneman gets autocannon on them, it'll be ugly. I'll probably pull them across the Uncanny Valley, just to get some space. The village is stuffed with corpses, both green and grey. Their uniforms also have colors. Nasty. Entering a building is death. Baneman still has 6-8 autocannon tracks/halftracks/achtrads/PSWs. That's alotta cannon. His positions in the Village and on the high ground around it enables all sorts of bad things to happen to my men. We'll see what the next few minutes bring. My flamer died. That was as sad as it was foreseen.

34:00 to 31:00 Yes, a THREE MINUTE update!!! There was some action, but a lot of non-action (just like my recent postings...). Real life has kept me busy. You know that Monty Python opening cartoon from the TV show? Where the foot of God squishes some poor sap? Yeah, that was me. Without any further ado, let's get to it! more...

This. PzIII's, I think. Pretty successful, as I recall. (Going from memory. Not too many detailed references to their use; you'd think there would be for something as unique as that. First wartime underwater crossing, and in big numbers. An entire battalion?)