Vanir Ausf B

Oh I see what you mean by 1% now. That's just because I tested 100 tanks. Total distance/100. Flotation + interleaved road wheels + higher ground clearance (56 inches vs 43).

I have no opinion on whether speed should make any difference. In that respect the last test is just an FYI. I know that with wheeled vehicles going as fast as possible is oftentimes better than creeping along. But as I outlined in the OP I do still think the relative performance between some vehicles is way off. Tiger > everything else is not correct. I assume that when the HVSS Shermans are introduced in the Bulge game it will be Tiger and Sherman > everything else.

A year later and I thought I would update this with some new tests on how speed affects bogging... or doesn't. I chose the Panther A mid and M4A3(76)W Sherman for this run. Except for the change in vehicles and a somewhat larger sample size this test is identical to the ones done in the first post of this thread. Oh, and I changed the weather from raining to overcast, but the ground conditions are the same (muddy). Fast speed Total distance traveled: Sherman: 139316 meters Panther: 138732 meters Average distance traveled before immobilized: Sherman: 1393 meters Panther: 1387 meters Slow speed Total distance traveled: Sherman: 108634 meters Panther: 136935 meters Average distance traveled before immobilized: Sherman: 1086 meters Panther: 1369 meters Conclusion: It has been conventional wisdom since the CMx1 days that reducing speed in mud or snow will decrease bogging chances, but this does not seem to be true now.

It's in the Armor Only section as "Flak (Wirbelwind)".

By the end of 1944 the US had already decided that their towed AT gun tank destroyer battalions were tactically and operationally inferior to motorized battalions.

Stalin was in charge of a world beating military in May of '45 too but didn't do any of that.

Yeah, that 7% figure is highly misleading. Just looking at that you may be forgiven for thinking the Western allies could have never sent anything and the Soviets would have barely noticed the difference. But the reality is much different. Trucks are worth less than tanks but deep penetrations don't work if you can't keep your spearheads supplied. A ton of aviation fuel is worth less than a bomber but a bomber without fuel isn't worth much. Foodstuffs are relatively cheap compared to most other war materials but are critical for a country that can't feed itself. What is the value of a pair of boots to a soldier? The US shipped 15 million pairs. Note that I'm not saying it would have been impossible for the Soviets to finish them off alone, but it would have at least been much more costly, enough so that a deal that gave Stalin most of what he wanted in '44 would have looked attractive, and after having been abandoned by his allies few would have faulted him for taking it.

Going from memory, about 1/3 of the Red Army's food supply was via Lend-Lease, as was most of their aviation fuel and truck fleet. Whether or not having that cut off would be "decisive" is questionable, but that it would have had a large impact on Soviet logistics and Stalin's calculations is not.

The key factor your hypothetical does not mention is if Lend-Lease continues to the Soviet Union. If it does then German defeat is only delayed a few months. If LL is ended then I could see the Soviet machine running low on steam in '45 and Stalin accepting a peace that leaves him everything except Germany itself.

I'm not sure what type of formation the cannon company represents or why it is in the infantry section rather than artillery, but the "cannons" of the cannon company are 105mm howitzers, which I am fairly sure cannot ever be on-map.

Testing the flight time of any on-board munition would be extremely easy to do for anyone curious.

Do you feel that the ability to triangulate the position of unspotted AT guns (and other units) by their firing sound is not an issue? All these changes are nice but it was cover and concealment , not mobility, that was the best defense for towed AT guns.

From my experience sound contacts are like any other un-solidified contact in that their location is not randomized, but rather almost always at the actual location of the enemy unit. The exception is for moving sound contacts. Since the location data is updated every few seconds rather than continuously the contact may trail behind the actual unit location by a short distance, typically no more than an action spot or two.

Oops A girl, huh? Hopefully she comes back. We could use a few more of those around here.

Last we heard from Meach he was confronting his band-mates concerning their musical differences. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=99722&page=2 Maybe that didn't go over too well. I don't know about the other guy.

Also, when you find out if magnification affects spotting it might be worthwhile to ask how field of view affects the same. If either one has an effect they both should since they are inversely related to each other. Whether the sight is fixed or rotatable is a big factor. As you pointed out, a big advantage of the Sherman gunner's periscope is that he can scan around with it without moving the turret. But at the same time the scissors periscope on the Jagdpanther is attached to a rotating plate. Also, the Jagdpanther gunner does have some limited ability to scan. The main cannon can be traversed up to 14° left or right.

Soooooo does CM assume them to be on or off? Judging from the model I would guess "off". Then again, judging from the model the gunner doesn't even have a sight.

Hmm, after looking at it more closely I don't think the scissors were permanently affixed since there is a hatch that had to be opened for them to fit through. But they were standard issue equipment so would presumably have been deployed whenever the vehicle was in combat.

Not when I use it. Moon must really hate you.

That's a good question. It appears that in the case of the Jagdpanther the scissors telescopes were permanently affixed. They are designated SF14z Gi, which from what little information I can gather, appear to have been 10X power with 5° FOV. Interestingly, they are not present on the Jagdpanther model in the game. Also, the gunner's telescope that should be protruding from the left side of the roof is also missing. Whether these are just errors in the model that have no effect on how it functions internally or are causing problems I do not know.

I would think that would be dependent on range to some degree. At some point the distance will become too great to spot anything without magnification. Correct. Which is exactly what I have done

There's more to it than just the Sherman gunner's access to more scopes or the TC's turret override. The Panzer IV has neither of those advantages but spots about as well as the Sherman.

Those are all good points, Steve. But I do wonder how much that would have mattered at 1200 meters. From what I can gather, the Sherman gunner's observation periscope was 1X power.

I'm starting to think there may be something seriously wrong with tank spotting. At first it was just the Panther with it's oddly crappy spotting. But then again, the Panther in CMx2 seems to be plagued with all sorts of issues. So I tested the Jagdpanther to compare to the other results at 1200 meters. The JPanther gunner's sight is the WZF 1/4, which has 10X magnification. That's twice the magnification on the Panther and Sherman 76. It has a correspondingly narrow field of view at 9°. This vehicle was built to be a long-range sniper on the Russian steppe. So it should be in it's element at 1200 meters with the opposing tanks (Sherman 76s, like in all the other tests) directly in front of it. # of data points: 100 Average spotting time: 225.5 seconds 95% confidence interval for actual Mean: 182.0 thru 269.0 By comparison here are the spotting times from previous tests: M4A3w Sherman 76 early: 127.8 Panzer IV H late: 128.5 Panther A late: 139.7 So the Jagdpanther spots around 47% worse than the Panther, and about 55% worse than the Panzer IV/Sherman 76. Note that I stopped the test after only 100 data points collected (the other tests had at least 300) since at that point is was obviously must worse than other vehicles tested. In one instance a Jagd took nearly 20 minutes to spot the Sherman. Just a reminder that these are NOT hull-down tests. All these vehicles are completely exposed in the open.