Vanir Ausf B

I count the gun and breech ring as taking up around 160 squares or 12% of the mantlet area. If you factor that out, as I did in my testing, the remaining area of the mantlet in my shot trap area is 17.7% But to be fair, that shot trap area is just an estimate. Let's say for example I over-estimated its size by a factor of 2. Then it takes up 8.9% of the mantlet. Of if it is actually as tiny as BletchleyGeek guessed then it is 4.4%. You also have to factor in that not all hits bounce. About 53% appear to break up. So then you are down to about 2.3%. But this does not account for the center of mass aiming that will heavily skew the shot distribution towards the shot trap.

If we are talking in-game then it depends on whether the very few top hull hits I am getting are ricochet penetrations or direct hit penetrations. If they are direct hit penetrations then the answer to your question is irrelevant at this point. If they are ricochets the answer is that they always penetrate. So far.

Ok, I re-ran the same test as in the first post. Everything is the same except that the game version is now 2.12 instead of 2.11. And I got a larger sample size. British Sherman vs Panther A mid @ 800 meters. The Panther is partial hull down behind a 1 meter high berm. This covers nearly the entire lower hull, but not quite (I still saw an occasional lower hull hit). Total number of hits recorded is 1096. This is for The. Mantlet. Only. Gun hits were also excluded. I'll give the results by hit text. RICOCHET: FORWARD TOP HULL PENETRATION: 0 FORWARD TOP HULL PENETRATION: Partial Penetration: 6 FORWARD TOP HULL PENETRATION: Penetration: 6 At this point I am seriously doubting that the old RICOCHET hit text is still working. Like MikeyD, the last time I saw it was before Charles messed with this code in an earlier patch (1.11?). It might be bugged. Certainly, if the ricochet penetrations are using the same hit text as direct hit penetration there is no way of telling them apart. So there are two possibilities. Either the chance of ricochet penetration on hits TO THE MANTLET are 0% or 1.1%. Note that there were no non-penetrating hits to the forward top hull. So we may have an answer to c3k's oft-repeated question...

60 would only be the bottom edge of the mantlet. I'm not sure what the "whole area" refers to. My testing is for hits on the mantlet only, not the whole tank so any discussion of shot distribution outside of that framework is apples to oranges. Also, while counting squares to get the relative surface area (as best we can in 2D on a 3D surface) is helpful it does not tell the whole story. Because of the center of mass aiming model used in CMx2 the lower half of the mantlet should be getting hit much more frequently than the top half even though they have the same surface area. I have not done any shot distribution counting on various parts of the tank, but there is no doubt that under the conditions I am testing under (partial hull down behind 1 meter high berm) I would estimate around 40-50% of all hits are on the mantlet.

Setup zones are about the easiest thing to make in the editor. Really, if you can color with a crayon you can make setup zones.

Yep, CMAK actually had the lowest sales of the CMx1 games despite being the most advanced and the cheapest. CMBO sold the most.

Judging from this comparison pic I don't think the 57mm would be any more likely to ricochet. It looks like it has about the same ratio of length to diameter as the 75mm M61, or maybe slightly longer. The only difference that velocity would make that I can think of is that higher velocity rounds may be more likely to disintegrate or severely deform than lower velocity but I don't have any source for that other than common sense. From left to right 1, 37mm AP M74 Projectile, M16 Case 2, 37mm HE M63 Projectile, M16 Case 3, 57mm AP M70 Projectile, M23 Case 4, 57mm APCBC M86 Projectile, M23 Case 5, 75mm APC M72 Projectile, M18 Case 6, 75mm HE M48 Projectile, M18 Case 7, 75mm APC-T/HE M61 Projectile, M18 Case 8, 76mm APC-T/HE M62 Projectile, M26 Case 9, 3in APC Projectile, 3inch MkII case 10, 3in APC-T/HE M62 Projectile, 3inch MkII case 11, 90mm APC M77 Projectile, M19 Case

Ah, multiplication! I knew there was a word for how I counted the shot trap area on the mantlet. The main reason I have little interest in it is that I am not concerned about hits to any area other than the mantlet. But if you want to have a go at it I'll post up a pic of the whole front area.

I have had the same experience. But I haven't had to make any changes before saving to fix it. Just load it then save it.

Of course. But you see my point that a full-sized AP round could loose the large majority of it's penetrating ability on the ricochet and still be a threat to the thin top armor. Because the Panther mantlet is uniformly round I don't think an elevation change would alter the chance of ricochet much if at all, although it probably would affect the direction of ricochet. From what I can gather, AP rounds with a short cross section are more likely to ricochet than rounds with lengthy cross sections. So a 37mm round would be a poor ricochet candidate but a Soviet 122mm round would be a serious threat.

Unknown, at least by me and probably by anyone. I understand that is just another way of saying that whatever Charles guesses is going to be assumed correct because it can't be disproved. But I will re-iterate that the Panther D and A top hull armor was only 16mm thick. By way of reference, a .50 cal. machine gun will penetrate 19mm of RHA at 500 meters and 0°. So my guess is that a fairly large portion of rounds that ricocheted down onto the hull would do some damage, even if just spalling. One curious fact is that in all my testing I have never seen an impact on the top hull that didn't penetrate. That means one of two things. Either ricochets down onto the top hull are extremely rare but almost always penetrate when they do happen, or they are far more common than indicated by the hit text because the hit text only displays penetrations. I am currently doing testing that should shed some light on this (yes, I said I was moving on but counting those squared got me thinking again...)

Oh jeez, no way am I counting that many little squares

If there is something like that out there I have not seen it. Maybe someone made one for CMx1 way back when, but not that I recall. I think it would be difficult to do, and a lot of work since it's hard to reduce such a complex interaction of variables into a simple answer. The chance to do damage varies depending on which part of the vehicle is hit and what type of ammunition the shooter uses. Then you get into circumstantial variables such as how the target is oriented in relation to the shooter, which changes effective armor resistance. Then you add in hidden variables such as shatter gap on some Allied ammunition and reduced armor quality on some plates due to manufacturing flaws. And once you determine the chance of penetrating the various parts of the vehicle in that circumstance you need to factor in the relative odds of hitting those various parts. The good news is that BFC is planning on introducing a new feature at some point that will do this in-game on the fly.

The total mantlet area in this 2D grid is 1311 squares (23x57). Of that 204 (4x51) are in what I would estimate to be the shot trap area. That is 15.5%.

The interesting thing about the Panther shot trap in CMx1 is that because it used a higher chance of "weak point penetrations" of the front turret to approximately simulate ricochet penetrations off the front turret onto the hull -- which were indeed basically just die rolls -- Charles had to pick a specific percentage chance of a ricochet penetration. According to testing I linked to earlier he chose somewhere around 10% of all hits on the front turret. Allowing for margin of error the real number may have been a little higher or lower, but it was much, much higher than in CMx2. Like orders of magnitude higher. It's probably obvious by now that I find the CMx1 number more credible

I don't see how this could possibly be true. Drawing a straight line from the midpoint or lower on the mantlet to the glacis plate shows the deck armor blocks LOS to everything except perhaps the machine gun bulge. It is certainly true that not every ricochet onto the deck armor would penetrate. But that armor is only 16mm thick on the Panther D and A, so it wouldn't take much. It seems odd that what Charles considers to be the proper frequency is a couple of orders of magnitude lower than what he thought it was in the CMx1 games. But if that is his decision then I don't see any way to change his mind absent concrete evidence to the contrary, which probably doesn't exist. But if CMx2 has it about right then it would mean the mantlet chin on the later Panther models was an over-reaction to a problem that barely existed. I don't think that is very likely, but I can't prove it so I'm moving on

Because the mantlet is uniformly rounded I think a steeper angle of decent would simply move the shot trap area upwards on the mantlet rather than eliminating it.

IIRC no, just a pack.

Regardless of the bridge I think I may add a ford across the narrow section of the canal near the eastern map edge to allow the defender some means of shifting forces between the northern and southern sides of the map. The Son Bridge is extremely exposed to fire from areas near the attacker's setup zone which could make it impractical for that.

I would probably put any ford further to the east of the Bridge so as to not radically change how the map plays. But I'm thinking it may just be better to make a gentleman's agreement not to destroy the bridge.

Part? I prefer my QBs large or huge, so it will be the whole map It looks like this would work well as an attack/defend map with the defender defending the eastern end. I'll probably put the attackers entire settup zone on the northern side of the canal and most of the terrain objectives on the southern side, making the Son Bridge the key piece of terrain on the map. Of course, given that is the only means of crossing the canal the defender could win simply by destroying the bridge. I wonder how hard that would be? If that is feasible I may have to add a ford or two across the canal.

... or make a QB map out of it, like I'm about to.

My version is also PC.

Does your Lynx look like mine or Mord's?