Vanir Ausf B

There is a way to over ride the TacAI in this situation. Give the tank a movement order in the direction you want the hull to face, with a Pause order (usually of indefinite duration). Then place a Covered arc centered where you want the turret facing. The paused movement order will keep the hull locked in the direction of movement.

While that is certainly interesting, there seems to be a lot of speculation here based on scant evidence (i.e. something about the same "type" of bullet being used, based on a conversation with a single person, relayed second hand). It's quite a leap to go from that to the apparent conclusion that this was a US-orchistrated coup. I think there needs to be more of that all around, not just among those who see the world differently than you.

Got a source for that claim? Obviously.

Did anybody notice the hidden bone? There will be French forces.

Very odd. The hit text says penetration through the glacis place. I'm reasonably sure that neither 85mm APBC or APCR should be able to penetrate the Panther glacis plate unless the T-34 is at a significantly higher elevation.

Looks like "gg" time for Elvis.

This issue was debated only a few weeks ago when decals were first announced. To reiterate, there are already "gamey" means of locating a shooter. 1) Hit text. 2) If the incoming round is seen before impact pause the game and trace it's path back. 3) Move the camera around the sound of the shot (which is always at the shooting unit's location). This last method is far more accurate than lining up the holes in a tank since it is not limited to one axis. In other words, worrying about decals is pointless.

Interesting article. Thanks for sharing. I'm not so sure that the knock on Soviet armored tactics was that they were mindless so much as it was that their forces lacked situational awareness and C2 capability due to 2-man turrets, lack of radios and commander's cupolas -- limitations that are largely irrelevant in Combat Mission because of the player's god-like perspective.

This is what I'm talking about. LOS from unit without a gunner. LOS from unit with a gunner (gunner out of position)

We know that the effect of HE has been deliberately nerfed down to some extent to compensate for the "bunching" of men required by the action spot system, and it's entirely possible that it's been dialed down too far in certain situations, such as against men standing/kneeling or riding. But I agree with akd that it is if anything too effective against men who are taking deliberate action to find cover from it. I have tested US 60mm mortar lethality against published US Army expected results and found that against soldiers lying prone in open fields 60s in CMBN produce casualty rates several times higher than expected. This is not necessarily a sign of overpowered HE, but could be a sign of too low micro terrain bonuses.

It is correct, and no you can't have LOS from team members other than the gunner, at least not according to the target line and not in a unit with no casualties. I have tested this.

Thanks, John. That was honestly the best laugh I've had in days.

No, they just aren't the word of God, in the same way that his labeling of the infamous Apache video as "murder" turned out to be sensationalistic nonsense. I'm not sure if you are referring to Putin or Assange, but it doesn't matter. Having a lot to say does not make one worth listening to.

Impossible, clearly, and one has nothing to do with the other. Relying on Julian Assange for your views of the US military is like asking Vladamir Putin about Ukraine.

A few things that should be obvious, but apparently are not to everyone: 1) The political justification for a war and the behavior of the armed forces directly engaged in the fighting of a war are two very different things. 2) Anecdotal examples do not prove or disprove a general trend. 3) Take any group of several hundred thousand people from any population in the world, demographically skewed heavily male and young, and over a period of years a certain percentage of them are going to engage in criminal activity. And that's in a peaceful environment. The fact that the US military is not magically immune to that inexorable fact does not constitute a condemnation of the institution or it's members.

Small arms tracers aren't there for looks. They are there as a game play aid so you know which of your units are firing and what they are firing at.

I probably missed something, but why didn't Elvis finish off the abandoned ISU-122?

I wonder how feasible it would be to spread out over time the spotting checks of individual team/crew members. For example, instead of doing a spot check of all 5 members of a tank crew every 5 seconds (I'm picking a convenient number here), do 1 crew member every second. I am, or course, assuming the game doesn't already do this.

Two things to keep in mind about spotting in CMx2 is that 1) Units do not spot continuously, and 2) There is a very high degree of randomness. My understanding of the spotting system is that if the LOS map says units in action spot X may have LOS to units in action spot Y then spotting checks are done for every individual soldier or vehicle crew member in both action spots (since LOS must always be reciprocal). This is unlike CMx1 games where units were treated as monolithic for spotting purposes, both in terms of spotting checks and positioning, making it much less CPU intensive. The interval between spotting checks seems to vary depending on circumstance, but you can definitely run into corner cases where an enemy unit will move into LOS of a friendly unit and who spots who first comes down to which unit is up for a spotting check next. This is particularly noticeable when the range is very short. Increasing the frequency of spotting checks is the obvious solution, hardware requirements permitting. In my opinion there is a bit too much randomness in spotting. Admittedly, I base this on spotting tests I have done at a much greater range than the examples cited here. However, the odds of every member of an infantry team failing a spot check on a tank at 8 meters should be at or very near 0. Of course, we don't know from the description how long the the Sherman was in LOS after the smoke cleared. If it was just a few seconds then they may not have lived long enough to get a spot check.

This is true, however a sound contact would presumably make spotting of the Sherman more likely, in the same way that spotting information passed along via C2 does.

That is probably correct, although the end result is the same.

I don't know what the values were on the PSW 223 specifically. For German armor, generally speaking, think armor plates such as that seen on the front of tanks were around 260 BHN if good quality. Thin armor plate such as seen on armored cars would have been around 340 BHN.

Ian touched on this already, but basically the game treats hull down status differently for cover and concealment. There is a concealment bonus applied to the hull down unit (or penalty for enemy spotting units, however you want to look at it). This probably is a flat modifier, and it is binary. You must be completely hull down to get it. Partial hull down does nothing for concealment. Cover bonuses are granular. They give a reduction to enemy hit % roughly proportional to the amount of tank visible. Partial hull down is good, full hull down is better. As mentioned previously, there is presently a bug or two affecting how well fully hull down tanks spot but as far as I know the cover aspect of hull down is working properly.

BHN = Brinell Hardness Number

Fortunately, it is not. If it were, then hull down tanks would be un-targetable. What the game does is aim for the center of mass of the portion of the tank that is visible. You could also do it by yourself in hotseat mode.