Vanir Ausf B

20mm sounds a bit light to be penetrating bunker walls. Unless the roof is considered much thinner than the walls you're probably wasting ammo.

Also, it's never been clear to me if the kill counts for individual infantry teams from split squads are for just that team or the entire squad/section combined.

I'm pretty sure that is the what happened. I re-ran the test with normal motivation crews and they only retreat after they get to "rattled" status, even when they can see the flak gun. The biggest problem for the tanks is that it appears to be almost impossible to spot those 20mm flak guns while the tank is buttoned. I tested at 500 meters and 2 of the 5 tanks spotted the flak gun in front of it before they buttoned due to incoming fire. Both tanks lost sight of the flak gun within seconds of buttoning. The earlier advice to fire at an action spot next to the flak from just out of LOS will work. Another tactic is to plot a Fast move to a spot just in LOS and plot an area fire order to the flak location from the end of the more. To reduce time to fire make sure the tank is facing directly towards the flak, or give the tank a covered arc in that direction so at least the turret is facing that way.

To satisfy my personal curiosity I did some quick testing of 20mm flak guns against Sherman 76s. It appears that it is the optics, radio, smoke mortar and roof-mounted .50 that are vulnerable to damage. The main cannon is not. Also, if you up the crew motivation the tendency to retreat goes down. Fanatic crews don't retreat at all, even though their suppression meter quickly hits red.

Yes and yes. IIRC you can install on 3 different computers initially, then one more per year thereafter.

It was an increased chance of "weak point penetration" on hits to the front turret.

Yes, that is my point. I view the ability of US 76mm APCBC to penetrate the mantlet in the game out to at least 800 meters to sort-of make up for the lack of ricochet penetrations, similar to how it did in the CMx1 games. In fact it probably over-compensates, to the extent that if BFC ever did up the ricochet probability they would need to seriously think about also increasing the effects of shatter gap, lest the Panther become much too vulnerable frontally compared to reality.

The "official" comments that I have seen from Steve have been to the effect that the area fire is spread out only within the targeted AS. But I also have probably not read every comment ever written on the subject. I did a quick and dirty test to satisfy my own curiosity. It's just a Sherman 76 on a hill shooting down into an action spot about 100 meters away for 3 or 4 turns. I made each surrounding AS a different terrain. Something I hadn't realized before this test is that when you target an AS with area fire the targeting line does not snap to the center of the AS. It snaps to the lower left corner. Odd.

I think the way it has been described here may exaggerate the amount of spread. While there is some leakage of fire into adjacent action spots -- and I suspect this is just from weapon dispersion and random aiming errors rather than deliberate targeting -- the vast majority of it goes into the one action spot targeted. However, your idea -- and one or two other similar concepts -- have been proposed before and discussed at length. The good news is BFC wants to do it. The bad new is they've been wanting to do it for years now.

I don't know about the 'Schreck, but the ranging scale on the M1A1 Bazooka went up to 300 yards in multiples of 100. The optical sight on the M9A1 went up to 700 yards in multiples of 50.

I never claimed to have proof. But I do have some evidence while you have basically nothing that says otherwise.

Quick battle maps have to be saved into the Quick Battle Maps directory. /Game Files/Quick Battle Maps instead of /Game Files/Scenarios. Also, make sure the Battle Type the map is set to in the editor matches the Battle Type you have selected in the QB screen or it won't show up in the list. The name of the map is actually irrelevant.

Please supply some evidence that the panzerschreck was more accurate. We have the dispersion of the Bazooka. The training regimen for the Bazooka specifies shots out to 300 yards (274 meters). Nobody disagrees with that.

There is more to accuracy than velocity. Stability in flight matters. That the Panzerschreck had much better penetration than the Bazooka is not in question. This thread in not about penetration.

The reason that you should believe you can is because I said you can, and I have confirmed it through testing on multiple occasions. Set up your own test if you don't believe me. Ironically, I was looking through that very same document last night for Bazooka information. I should've kept scrolling. BTW, here is the full link. It's on page 71 in the viewer. http://www.scribd.com/doc/13810984/Standard-Ordnance-Items-Catalog-1944-Vol-3

If you know the range to the target and the aimpoint for your weapon at that range placing a shot within a few feet of that aimpoint at 300 yards is certainly not prohibitively difficult. I can do it consistently from a standing position with my rifle, which is more accurate than a bazooka but then again tanks are not small objects. A Panther tank is about 10 feet tall, 11 feet wide and 22 feet long. But whatever. I'm not really concerned about the Bazooka range getting pushed out all the way to 274 meters (300 yards), particularly if there is no means of separating what range the TacAI will open fire at on its own and what range the player can manually command a unit to fire. But an increase to 200-220 meters would not be out of order along with a bump up in accuracy. Data on the Panzerschreck seems more sparse so it's hard to say how correct it is in the game. The 200m max effective range is on the high end of what I have seen quoted. The only thing that seems clear is that whatever the Panzerschreck accuracy is the Bazooka's should be higher, especially the M9.

Try testing the M9A1 bazooka at max range (175m) again, but this time with elite AT teams. At that range the dispersion is only about 1 meter so a well-trained soldier should be able to hit a tank-sized target at least most of the time.

Hard data is difficult to come by. But the gist of what I am reading around the internet is that the Bazooka was more accurate and had a longer effective range than the Schreck, which is the opposite of how it is in the game. I can't vouch for the sources, but for what it's worth: http://www.ww2f.com/topic/3176-bazooka-v-panzerschreck/ http://www.inert-ord.net/atrkts/pschrek/

I can find pictures of the 75mm M61a1 shell and cross-section diagrams of shells of the same type, but I have not found a cross-section of the M61a1 itself. No idea what the exact dimensions of the mantlet are. It is generally described as 100mm thick, but its actual thickness varied along it's curve. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=448992&postcount=50 As for the material, all I can tell you about the mantlet is that it is cast armor, although for reasons that are not entirely agreed upon it seems to have resisted more like rolled homogenous. Don't know much about the M61a1 shell materials except as a APCBC shell it has a penetrating cap of softer metal attached to the main perpetrator, and then a ballistic cap on top of that for improved aerodynamics.

If you want a match-up that offers roughly even odds then Sherman 75s vs Panzer IVs works. The only Allied tank in CMBN that offers much difficulty for German anti-tank guns of 75mm or larger is the Churchill. On the German side the King Tiger, Panther and Jagdpanther should be avoided. If the Allies only have 75mm or smaller guns than you can add Tigers and Jagdpanzer IVs to that list.

There is a silver lining to this, which my testing of 76mm at 800 meters reminded me of. US 76mm will penetrate the Panther mantlet at ranges well over the 200 to 400 yard maximum that almost all sources give. Penetrations at 800 meters are not uncommon. It's similar to the extra vulnerability given to the Panther turret in CMx1, although in the case of CMx2 I don't think it is intentional.

What part of my post suggests any of that is news to me?

For the TacAI, yes. But I would think the human player would at least be able to order shots at longer ranges (assuming poesel's observation is correct about not being able to). Probably. But 6 mils dispersion is only 5.4 feet or 1.6 meters at 300 yards (274 meters). If that is correct the weapon is plenty accurate enough to hit a tank-sized object at that range. I don't know what the first shot accuracy for a rested, unsuppressed shooter should be when firing at a motionless tank, but i see no reason to think it would be prohibitively low.

Odd that the bazooka maximum range is only 175 meters in the game. FM 23-30, February 1944 (pgs 85-92) lists maximum range for the bazooka as 650 yards, with even moving targets considered hittable at up to 300 yards from a sitting position. Page 85: Page 86: