Vanir Ausf B

AGEOD sells their games for cheap, 30-35 US dollars. But that does not seem to have resulted in a huge customer base for their products. They were recently acquired by another company. So you can add me to the list of those who question if lower prices would significantly expand the customer base for product that has niche appeal at any price.

The entire purpose of attacking Canada was to dupe them into taking Detroit. Then they snatched victory from us at the last moment by giving it back.

Combat Mission: Insane in the Ukraine

Um, yes it is going to happen, albeit without replay.

This appears to have been an "Attack" QB so the terrain VLs were worth a total of 650 pts and units worth 350. 4 VLs of equal worth relative to each other divided by 650 is 162 each (the game apparently rounds down). http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1302280&postcount=16 http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1433435&postcount=2

One advantage is that all East Front maps would be compatible rather than the situation we have with CMBN and CMFI.

From this test I'm guessing 700 to 800 meters. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1306604&postcount=11

I think CMBN is getting 2 modules and a "pack". But even with just 2 modules you can run into the same issue if you bought the base game and module 2 but not module 1.

I had to look that up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Bunny_Foo_Foo

If Redwolf was dead he'd be rolling over in his grave.

Thanks. Another nail in the proverbial coffin. Not that it really needed one. I didn't realize before now that "allah-ackbar!" means "ah, my ears!"

That's not how it works. If a hit on the "bulge" deflected off onto the glacis plate it would be much less likely to penetrate than a shot which hit the glacis plate directly. There are three reasons for this. One is that the deflection will reduce the velocity of the round. Second is that the force of the impact on the MG bulge would likely deform the projectile. Third is that a steeper angle of impact on the glacis plate would increase the plate's effective resistance. However, the armor directly surrounding the machine gun port would have reduced resistance because of edge effects. When a projectile strikes armor it attempts to penetrate by pushing the resisting material out of the way as it moves through the armor. With an impact well away from any edges the armor's resistance is fairly uniform in all directions. But when a projectile strikes near an edge of the plate the resistance is reduced in the direction of the free edge because there is only air backing the armor in that direction so the material is more easily pushed in that direction. How much the effective armor resistance is reduce is basically a function of projectile size and distance from the edge (larger projectiles produce edge effects at greater distance from the edge). This is complicated by other factors. If the plate edge is bolted or welded to an adjoining plate then the edge effect is greatly reduced. In the case of ports, they resist better than edges along the outside of the plate (unless those outside edges are attached to adjoining plates). Smaller ports produce less edge effect than larger ports. In any case, the projectile will tend to follow the path of least resistance though the armor. That means that when edge effect is in play the projectile will tend to deflect towards the free edge. On the Tiger I mantlet hits along the top edge would deflect outward away from the tank while hits along the bottom edge would deflect downward towards the top hull or maybe turret ring. Hits on machine gun ports will deflect inwards towards the ball mount.

More precisely, it confirms the weakness of the machine gun ball mount which is inside the opening in the glacis plate. But that was never in question. It's more about how often it got hit and whether that is reflected in the game. Hits on the opening itself would also constitute a weak point, particularly if the distance from impact to the edge were within the diameter of the shell.

Panzer IV vs Tiger at 750m and 10° horizontal offset (control group) Hits on driver plate: 106 No damage: 1 (1%) Spalling: 24 (23%) Partial Penetration: 72 (68%) Penetration: 9 (8%) Sherman76 vs Tiger at 500m and 10° horizontal offset Hits on driver plate: 105 No damage: 6 (6%) Spalling: 47 (45%) Partial Penetration: 50 (48%) Penetration: 2 (2%) The proportion of full and partial penetrations for the Sherman is 50% of hits compared to 76% in the control group. I suspect this is our shatter gap found at last. Panzer IV vs Tiger at 964m and 10° horizontal offset (control group) Hits on driver plate: 113 No damage: 4 (4%) Spalling: 46 (41%) Partial Penetration: 62 (55%) Penetration: 1 (1%) Sherman76 vs Tiger at 800m and 10° horizontal offset Hits on driver plate: 108 No damage: 20 (19%) Spalling: 66 (61%) Partial penetration: 18 (17%) Penetration: 4 (4%) This is the most dramatic difference I found in my testing. The Sherman76 only manage a full or partial penetration on 21% of hits compared to 56% of the Panzer IV control group. M10 vs Tiger at 800m and 10° horizontal offset Hits on driver plate: 45 No damage: 4 (9%) Spalling: 31 (69%) Partial penetration: 8 (18%) Penetration: 2 (4%) A quick and dirty test with M10s replacing Shermans to make sure the above results are not unique to the Sherman. Panzer IV vs Panther A mid (hull down) at 750m (control group) Mantlet Hits: 142 No damage: 86 (61%) Spalling: 0 Partial Penetration: 33 (23%) Penetration: 23 (16%) Front turret hits: 106 No damage: 13 (12%) Spalling: 44 (42%) Partial penetration: 45 (42%) Penetration: 4 (4%) Sherman76 vs Panther A mid (hull down) at 500m Mantlet hits: 187 No damage: 123 (66%) Spalling: 0 Partial penetration: 37 (20%) Penetration: 27 (14%) Front turret hits: 109 No damage: 17 (16%) Spalling: 53 (49%) Partial Penetration: 35 (32%) Penetration: 4 (4%) Against the Panther mantlet the Sherman 76 achieves partial or full penetration on 34% of hits compared to 39% for the Panzer IV. That is a very small difference and may even be within the margin of error. If there is shatter gap in effect against the Panther mantlet at 500 meters it is a very minor effect. Against the front turret armor the Sherman penetrates 36% of the time compared to 46% in the control group. This is a more significant difference and does suggest some shatter gap, albeit only very occasionally. Conclusions 1) My initial statement that there is no shatter gap in CMx2 appears to have been incorrect. Probably. This conclusion rests on the validity of using the Panzer IV as a close approximation of the US 76mm. I can't think of any reason it wouldn't be but I may have overlooked something. The shatter gap in the game is much more subdued than Rexford's book suggests. I don't have a strong opinion on this either way, although the almost complete lack of shatter gap against the Panther mantet at 500 meters is a little troubling given real world US test results that showed no penetrations of the mantlet at that range. 2) Hits on the Panther mantlet never produce spalling. Odd. 3) Although I was not testing for it specifically I couldn't help but notice that there was not one single ricochet off of the Panther shot trap down onto the hull. Not one. This was in 544 recorded hits. If you include "weapon" hits that I didn't record the total sample size was well over 600. This is an issue that has been around since the game came out and was supposedly fixed in the 1.11 patch: Panther "shot trap" on the lower turret mantlet (potentially) deflects shots downward into the hull as expected. Apparently not.

No more "Shock Force 2", eh? I like the change.

Your version of the tactic is probably closer to reality.

I'm not sure. What did Oddball say?

Grab your (PBEM) partner and dosey doe.

The inventiveness of players amazes me. I had never considered the idea of leaving food out in the open and then observing from a distance to see if enemy soldiers approach looking for a quick snack. I bet it only works against the AI.

The Tiger has unusually thick rear armor. At 80mm it is only 20% less thick than the front armor.

BTW, one other factor is the shot trap created by the round mantlet on Panther D and A models. I have unfortunately seen no evidence of this in my testing so far and I am well over 200 recorded hits on the front turret (I am testing on ausf A mid).

The mantlet is rounded so the angle of impact varies considerably depending on the exact spot. A hit near the apex of the curve would have an angle of impact near 0. Ideally CM would model armor degradation from impacts but it does not. Statements by Charles suggest that armor quality is modeled as a straight percentage of impact resistance, which is also how BFC did it in the CMx1 games. This goes without saying and my assumption was that you tested on level ground. The only weld seams would be around the edge of the plate where it connects to adjacent plates and probably around the edge of the machine gun port. I do think the number of weak point penetrations is too low given the size of the machine gun port but proving that could be difficult.

BFC -- manifesting at the time in the personage of Steve Grammont -- said after the release of CMBN that they do intend to implement that feature at some point. But I haven't heard anything about it since.

Not really. The Panther glacis (upper front hull in game terms) resists 76mm APCBC equivalent to 202mm at 0°. US 76mm M62a1 penetrates only 124mm at 100 meters so there is no chance of penetration other than a weak point hit on the machine gun port. These do happen but are very rare in my experience (less than 1%). The center of mass aiming does become more pronounced as range decreases due to less dispersion. One of my tests in the Tiger mantlet thread linked to earlier shows this. Hard to say for sure, but I suspect not. My testing shows shatter gap manifesting as an increase in spalling and non-damaging hits and a corresponding decrease in partial and full penetrations.

I recently had my opponent bail (apparently), on both of the games we had going. We should start a Hall of Shame thread