Larsen

Thanks Ian, the Black Sea manual says precious little about APS so i've been running tests to figure out exactly how they operated.


So far I've identified that:

Trophy
- Maximum 4 intercepts (360 degrees)
- Intercepts Javelin
- Intercepts TOW-2

Zaslon
- Maximum 4 intercepts (270 degrees from front)
- Maximum 2 intercepts(90 degrees from rear)
- Intercepts Javelin
- Intercepts TOW-2

Zaslon's intercept is unique in that it does have segments


Arena
- Maximum 4 intercepts (360 degree)
- Will not intercept Javelins
- Also seems poor at engaging TOW-2



I doubt we're going to see any patches for Black Sea again, but if we do, it would be nice to increase the Arena cartridge count from 4 to at least 6. Since that would better represent its strengths (more intercepts) compared to Zaslon/Trophy while still maintaining its weakness to Javelins. As an aside I suspect Zaslon/Trophy should not be intercepting Javelins as readily as they do but there isn't a ton of info on it.

 
So the vehicle will correctly intercept projectiles in a 360 degree circle. It just operates closer to Zaslon/Trophy than Arena. Actually its fairly close to the new Arena-M which has 8 charges (4 per side) rather than the old Arena.

Tenguska kills all except the Global Hawk (I think that's the one - whichever one is the biggest/most points expensive US drone) unless it decides to do an attack run.

I've been playing PBEMs on the huge CW maps imported into Black Sea, and one of the things that's become quite obvious is how important sheer distance is for survival.
As in AT-14 at 2.5KM+ is an outstanding weapon system and hard to detect even with thermals, and the player will have time to relocate the team after they give away their position after a missile or two.

Spot infantry is a general statement. Troops moving in the open yes. Troops firing from cover yes. Troops hiding in buildings and other natural cover are hard to spot. Until they move or fire.

Yes
Yes
Yes

AT-14 can kill , better still get side shot. Khrizantema is good but you had make sure first that abraham is behind smoke screen. sou make blind and bring Khrizantema then to kill it.

Oh gosh, there's a lot there to consider here, and probably learnt by experience or reading the manual, very carefully, and then looking at wikipedia for arms and ammunition types. CMBS does cry out for a wiki of its own with much of the answers to what you're asking. This is extremely apt when doing a QB or DYO scenario. Also, spotting is extremely important in CMBS, at very long ranges, and still well within killing range. For example,  in QB i had two Abrams hit my T-90 three times from 4km.
You can set up in a home made QB the forces to test all the gear. Many players do these tests so they get first hand experience with what the weapon systems do.
Maybe some tips.....
1. The manual describes Krasnopol-M and Kitolov-2M which are laser guided etc and Kitolov may be top attack. If they hit an abrams in the right place often enough eg sides/rear, maybe one will knock it out or degrade its systems.
2. Those with ATGMs and big bombs might damage an Abrams.
3. The damage panel will show vehicles with IR optics, but the better question is which have thermal sights, the answer to which can be found in the manual or maybe wikipedia.
4. Nope. But, there some chance if the russian is on a crest and is reversing away, or has APS.
....and there are many more ppl here with better insight than I can give.
THH

There are a number of layers in CM games.
Strategical layer - you overview the map, analyze it and you the best way (and in case of QBs the best force selection) to achieve the best result. the player has the full control over how he wants to fight this particular battle.
Tactical layer - usually the battle consists of a number of small encounters (unless we talk about really tiny battles) that involve a company, platoon and a number of supporting assets in a particular situation that came to be during the strategic battle execution. Again, here the player has the full control over which units do what and where they move.
Unit level - this is how one specific unit behaves during the battle. And at this level for CM2 the player has absolutely no control over the specific unit. And that, in my opinion, is a big problem.
Let me explain. In CM1 units were represented by abstract entity that had some abstract firepower which depended on the distance and types of weapons the unit carried. Teh firepower would change as the unit would suffer loses. At no time we actually had to worry where and how individual soldiers inside this unit were located. Not so in CM2. From one hand we, as a player have no control how the units within the teams are spread out over a specific action spot and from another the outcome of the way the soldiers are positioned directly affects its effectiveness. Supposedly, BFC spent tons fo time making the units behave in the most natural way to relieve us from the micro managements. Well, the best I can say is that the result is mixed. 
1. One action spot is 8m by 8m. It is occupied by a team - 3-6 soldiers, or 4-6 soldiers of a support unit (MG, mortar, gun etc.). That is a lot of guys in a small, compact space. It is bad already. It gets worse when the artillery or direct HE or MG fire start hitting this particular spot. Normally, if you look from the top the teams, the way they are spread out in an action spot, resemble a small gay orgy - one of the top of another one. If it happens so that an HE shell from even the smallest mortar or a tank 75mm shell lands in the spot the whole team probably will eb wiped out. Given how the moral is affected by losses such a poor management of soldiers' positions has a direct effect on the morale of a much bigger unit. And here we can't do anything because that layer of abstraction is not available to us and is handled by the TacAI.
2. LOS. This is also a direct result of the troops' position inside the action spot. One of the guys might see something but the gunner can't. And rearranging the direction of the unit might or might not solve the problem (most often it does not). Frankly speaking the CM1 abstraction worked much better in terms of how individual units spotted and fired at targets. Here I am not talking about the borg spotting but rather the unit either saw something as a whole or did not and we didn't really need to worry about which guy in the team or vehicle saw something and which didn't. And to add an insult to this the gunner might lose a sigh of the target that did not move. Just like that. One turn it sees it and the next turn it does not. Go figure.
3. Foxholes. They prove descent cover. But... if you look closely at the units int eh same action spot as foxholes more often than not a few of them will be outside of foxholes and since CM2 is so particular about single soldiers those guys that are not int the foxholes will get killed really fast by artillery or small arms fire. Rearranging the direction in which the troops face helps putting them in the foxholes. But they tend to get out once they start firing and change the direction at which they face.
4. Armor. Here I am not sure what the right behavior should be. Maybe guy who served in the armor divisions can help. In CM1 if a tank is faced with a thread that it deems formidable it would pop smoke and reverse. Sometimes they do that successfully, sometimes they get knocked out but they tried to break the LOS with the better tank. In CM2 the default behavior is to dismount... to be killed by MG, HE or artillery fire. I just don't get it. Isn't the chance of surviving higher if the tank pops smoke and reverses rather than bailing out? And the level of troops has very little effect. I just had a crack tank with a descent armor bail out after the internal armor spalling
Summary, although CM2 is supposed to be a better, more realistic simulation than CM1 I find that this TacAI behavior is inferior to the simplistic representation of CM1 engine.
What do you think?

I've been testing the bogging probability of different vehicles by driving them Fast for 1000 meters over clear terrain (grass) in damp condition, with regular crews. I also tried to correlate it with ground pressure data - it worked well for US-made vehicles for the most part, where I have data from Hunnicutt, but the rest is all over the place. I don't have good ground pressure data for British, Soviet and German tracked vehicles and what I find on the web is often contradictory/unreliable.
Bogging chance
Off-road rating
Vehicles
< 4%
5
Marder I
4% - 6%
5
Marder IIIM, SdKfz 135/1, FlakPz 38(t)
SU-76M
Universal Carrier, Bren Carrier, Loyd, Jeep
Humber III LRC
6% - 9%
4
Panther, Tiger, King Tiger, Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger, Nashorn
Flammpanzer B-2(f), Marder II, Grille, Wespe, Hummel,
Wirbelwind
T-34-76, IS-1, IS-2, SU-85, SU-100, SU-122
M7B1 HMC/Priest, Crusader III AA, Stuart III
Stuart III Recce, Stuart Kangaroo, Priest Kangaroo
German AA halftracks, PSW 231, 233
2.5ton 6x6 Deuce, Studebaker US6
BA-64
9% - 11%
3
Pz IIL, Gw. 39H(f), Ostwind, Mobelwagen
T-34-85, ISU-122, SU-152, ISU-152
M8 HMC, M18 Hellcat, M12 GMC
Sherman V (M4A4), Sherman VC Firefly, Cromwell, Challenger, Stuart V, Sexton
US-made halftracks (incl. mortar, AA, Lend-Lease, GMC)
11% - 13%
3
Pz III, Pz IV, R-35, Hetzer, JPz IV
M4/M4A1/M4A2/M4A3 Sherman, M4A3(75)W, M4A1(76)W, M4(105), M5A1 Stuart/Stuart VI, M10 GMC/Wolverine/Achilles,
Sherman IC Firefly, Churchill
M8 Greyhound, M20 Armd Car
13% - 15%
2-3
JPz IV/70(V) JPz IV/70(A), Valentine
M4A2(76)W, M4A3(76)W
Daimler Dingo, Daimler Mk II, Humber IV, Staghound, White Scout Car, GAZ 67
> 15%
2
Elefant*
PSW 222, 223
GAZ MM
 
*Elefant has off-road rating 3 but performed very poorly in tests.

Fully tracked vehicles only. Blue = American, Green = Commonwealth (can be US made), Red = Soviet (incl. some British and US made), Grey = German

An update on the spotting tests. First, overall spotting rating (remember - it is a measure of spotting ability in the forward direction at 200-1400 meters, relative to the Pz IVH). It confirms the previous find that open topped vehicles spot far better than fully protected ones and are nearly unaffected by being buttoned up.

Second, I also plotted the spotting rating as a function of distance for selected fully protected vehicles (the trends tend to be the same for all) when opened up. At close range (200 m), there is little difference in the spotting ability among the different vehicles. As the range extends, some gain an increasing advantage of up to 15-20% over the reference Pz IV. If you have a vehicle that can spot well, it is advantageous to engage at a longer range. If you have one that doesn't, you may be able to reduce this handicap by getting closer.
I have included an outlier - the SU-85/SU-100/SU-122. It spots poorly at close ranges. I have only seen this behavior with this one and with the T-70. The heavy assault guns (ISU) do not have this problem.

The same plot including a representative of the open-top gang, for perspective.

The same plot with hatches closed. At 200 m the spotting improves and being buttoned up is less of a disadvantage than at 400 m. From 400 m up, the disadvantage of being buttoned up gradually decreases with range. Unless you have a SU-85/SU-100/SU-122, which again does its own thing.

I think I want to make a quick detour for those who think that the better gun makes the StuG so expensive (thinking AT capabilities make the majority of the price formula for some reason).
Sherman 105 - 217 points StuH 105 mm - 270 points Why? How? The StuH has 31 HE shells, 2 HEAT shells, 1 MG with low ammo. The Sherman has 53 HE shells, 5 HEAT, some smoke, apart from its own smoke launcher, 3 MGs incl. .50cal and a turret, one with thicker front armor than the StuH front.
 

I have no idea how what you say is relevant to the current discussion.

I have no idea how what you say is relevant to the current discussion.

I have no idea how what you say is relevant to the current discussion.

I really don't understand how the origin of the particular gun on a piece of armor has anything to do with its pricing. All the guns have their characteristics. That's it. How it was developed, by whom, for what purposes has really nothing to do with the fact that for combat arms battles StuGs are priced out of the game.

I have no idea how what you say is relevant to the current discussion.

I really don't understand how the origin of the particular gun on a piece of armor has anything to do with its pricing. All the guns have their characteristics. That's it. How it was developed, by whom, for what purposes has really nothing to do with the fact that for combat arms battles StuGs are priced out of the game.

I see that @chuckdyke is undeterred by logics. OK. Let me try a different approach. It looks like you are a big fun of big guns - the bigger the better. The StuG gun is at 75mm gun The armor is 80mm, I believe upper hull has 10% slope. It costs 299 points. 
M4A3 (76) early is 256. It has a bigger gun, sloped lower and upper hull armor (45 and 55 degrees, I believe) and a similar turret armor to StuG (I think it is something like 75mm) that is also a bit sloped (correct me here if I am wrong). I know you don't care about the HE, MG and everything since those deal with the guys that carry really small guns but it has 40 rounds of 76mm HE and over 6K of MG ammo. How that is fair? If StuG is 299 then M4A3 (76) should cost like Panther at the very least.

Ah... you are at it again.
First if all the US 76mm gun is a gun designed specifically for use in tanks (at least according to wiki). Second, I don't see how that is relevant. Its characteristics are very similar to what StuG fields in.
M4A3 has more HE, turret, 3 MG with abundant ammo, better spotting, somewhat similar armor and yet it is more than 40 points cheaper.
Giving extra points to one side is not a solution. The whole idea of points is to access a value of certain unit in general situations. StuGs are prices out of QBs as of right now. 

Ee... This whole thread is about understanding why StuGs, Pz IVs and M4 s are priced a certain way. There are different arguments but the only people who can give a definite answer are those who built the game and who don't participate in the discussion.
Allegedly, there is some kind of formula. And nobody knows what is inside that formula.

Yes, in a way this issue negates the rarity system.
It's nice that a Pz IV, a StuG and a Panther have zero (standard) rarity. So that, in theory, people usually roll around in a mix of these most common vehicles. But it doesn't do any good if the purchase price of the StuG is 299 and a Panther is 365.
All the while a Sherman is 190. Regardless of whether you want to compete with the Sherman on anti-armor capability or anti-infantry capability, either way the Panther is the better choice at only 66 points more.
And as you say, we better fix it before or at the same time we hit Steam and PBEM+++. Otherwise we will have this same debate, but with people who will just stay away quickly.

Ee... This whole thread is about understanding why StuGs, Pz IVs and M4 s are priced a certain way. There are different arguments but the only people who can give a definite answer are those who built the game and who don't participate in the discussion.
Allegedly, there is some kind of formula. And nobody knows what is inside that formula.

I really think that these tank vs rank discussions detract from the main point.
StuG with its 18 HE shells and literally no MG can support infantry for 4-5 turns. After that the Allies infantry can pretty much ignore it. The rest - mediocre armor, no turret just adds questions about its QB pricing.
I don't know what QBs you play, so far the ones that I played had rather short LOS (300-500m) due to trees, bocages, houses etc. The largest maps I saw were something like 2km by 2km and they are very few of those. 

The panther being picked in every game is a good point. My friend and I were just talking about how many vehicles go unused for the Germans in CMRT. 

I agree with weighting turret front armour higher, as tanks are very often hit there. This is due to the game engine counting the tank as hull down quite easily - just abit of hedge or similar between the tank and the attacker will trigger partial hull down status and elevate the aim point. Also of course players naturally seek out hull down positions.
However, I think the weighting should be based on absolute turret thickness, rather than how thick the turret is compared to the hull. This would avoid strange effects for the Panther etc.