Vanir Ausf B

Leadership has no effect, but higher experience actually increases rate of fire, by about 10% per experience level.

The love the mega battles. The scale is what convinced me to try the CMRT campaigns (I'd never played a CMx2 campaign before).

Thank god it wasn't a PPSh. You would've never known what hit you.

Keep in mind that most "AP" rounds in the game are not actually AP. German AP is APCBC while Soviet AP is usually (but not always) APBC. There are sometimes huge differences in penetration between these types of ammunition. Soviet 122mm AP can only penetrate unflawed Panther glacis plate at spec thickness out to a few hundred meters, but 122mm APBC will penetrate to 1500+ meters. Some Soviet tanks and assault guns have AP, some have APBC, but unfortunately the game doesn't tell you which has what. As for the King Tiger, are you saying that your in-game tests show the 122mm penetrating the front upper hull? That would be surprising. The ballistics calculator says that should impossible. The KT armor would have to be of very low quality.

What 122mm-armed vehicle are you using to test, and what are you testing against that gives differing results than the calculator? You may have discovered a vehicle in the game that uses uncapped AP, which I was not sure existed.

Yeah, I think "they" is whoever made the calculator. He was apparently not aware that he can change the values to whatever he thinks is correct.

It's good for a quick and dirty check when you don't want to take the time to do the calculations by hand. But like I said, there are limitations. It does not separate the turret armor from the mantlet, and it ignores the lower hull entirely. Also, for some strange reason the ballistic K factor is often incorrect, as is the FHA penetration for Soviet rounds. So I always double check the numbers in the advanced options against WWII Ballistics. Thankfully, the values are all user adjustable so you can just input whatever value you want and it will use it (I'm pretty sure it uses Bird and Livingston's formulas.

I have a copy of WWII Ballistics, and the gun penetration values that calculator uses are based on that work. The armor thickness values appear to be official spec.

Oh hoo hoo!

http://www.wwiiequipment.com/pencalc/ It's got a few minor errors here and there, and has some obvious limitations, but it's fairly accurate for most match ups.

10 tests each consisting of 1 MG vs. 3 men equals a sample size of 30. That is way too small to show anything unless the expected difference is huge. Which begs the question to be asked (hi womble): what is the expected difference between the MG42 HMG and the Maxim? When I was testing the effectiveness of low walls for cover a few years ago I did several different tests that each produced 2-3 thousand casualties. EDITED to add: also, testing against men in buildings introduces bullet penetration of materials as an additional factor to muddle the interpretation.

I see a lot of problems with those tests. For one, it is not run in scenario author test mode so spotting is a factor. It takes a long time, 15-20 minutes, for the infantry to even move into range of the machine guns. I presume the infantry is being given it's movement orders in accordance to an AI plan, so where the infantry end up being engaged will vary from iteration to iteration. The ground the infantry are moving over is not of a uniform type or elevation. The machine guns themselves are arranged at different ranges and elevations. In short, the test has too many variables in play to prove anything except that running towards massed machine guns over open ground is a bad idea.

Tempting, but I'm also playtesting a QB map for MarkEzra right now and have a lot of other stuff going on, so maybe next time

And I thought Emrys was old...

What sburke said. Plus, I don't think it's a major problem. Yes, firing accuracy is not as crappy as in reality, but it's still pretty crappy. Tanks are terrible at spotting while moving, particularly when buttoned and when the target is not in its forward arc. Maybe not terrible enough, but that is probably more true of all unit types rather than anything specific to tanks. I have seen infantry teams moving at Quick speed spot enemy tanks sitting motionless behind bocage 1 km away.

Give the German side to the stronger player... and expect him to lose anyways,

Yes. You and me both. Fortunately, more detailed unit information is on BFC's to do list.

I like 'em big also. But this sounds like it would choke my 5 year old laptop.

What is the point of arguing the merits of 1:1 in 2014? Does anyone really think they are going to talk BFC into scraping the CMx2 engine and going back to CMx1? If you think the CMx1 games are more realistic then play them.

Vehicles do block LOF -- for enemy units -- but not LOS unless burning.

I feel the same for WW2. But the modern warfare Combat Missions need REALLY big maps.

Hmm, that might work... if there were any Sturmgrenadier squads in CMRT to test them against. It could be done in CMBN but the new variable ROF for automatic weapons in 3.0 would likely throw the relevance into question.

In reality, the Sherman couldn't even lock one track and pivot on it. It turned by slowing the rotation of one side, so it's minimum turn radius was quite large without a lot of short forward/reverse maneuvering, like a wheeled vehicle.

It is not clear how relevant CMx1 firepower ratings are to CMx2. That may be an interesting test, but unfortunately there are no German units equipped entirely with MP40s that I am aware of. They are always mixed in with other weapons in a squad, so isolating their effects would be difficult. That is not a solid basis for an opinion.

Yes. No. From the front, yes, but I'm not sure about the rear.