Vanir Ausf B

Spotting, like most other activities, is semi-random. All of the above advice is sound, but it is stacking the odds in your favor, not guaranteeing a result. One of your units or one of the AI's units can always get lucky and with only 2 examples it is likely that luck played a large role in the outcomes.

Are you adding a pause PLUS a movement order or just a pause? The pause order by itself does nothing. It's the combination with a movement order that causes the problem.

Yeah, it does make one wonder what effect the gyro actually has in-game, if any. In the CMx1 games it was modeled by giving equipped tanks a small in-motion accuracy bonus, hence my test.

Do you have any idea how long it took to train that agent and get you to accept him into your confidence? And then he botches the job! You'd be frowning too.

Sorry about the imprecise labeling. The tanks were not actually moving. The tests were identical to the first test except for changes to the type of movement order given in 142 (Fast+indefinite pause instead of Move+indefinite pause) and switching the Shermans for Cromwells in 143. As I mentioned earlier, I originally wrote down the incorrect range at which these tests are done. The range is 500 meters, not 300. And yes, the results do suggest that speed of movement has no effect on accuracy, and that the gyro does nothing while in motion. But without testing the tanks when actually moving we can't say that for sure.

I just realized something that I'm kicking myself for not understanding before. AKD (I think it was him) was exactly correct that the proper way to model a tank that has been in one spot long enough to quickly and accurately judge the range to a target is to give it an accuracy bonus if it doesn't move from setup (and use of TRP bonuses as well). When a tank fires at a target in CM the first 2-3 shots are much less accurate than subsequent shots. When I tested the control group Shermans -- with no movement order -- all 6 of their misses were in the first 15 shots. The last 85+ shots fired were all hits. The early shot inaccuracy is range estimation error. So people worried that removing the Paused+movement order penalty would mean the removal of the "we just got here" accuracy penalty have nothing to worry about. That penalty is already factored in separately and would be unaffected. We know that the Pause+movement penalty cannot be intended as a range estimation penalty because it persists after the target is hit, at which point the range is known. In fact, it never goes away no matter how many shots are fired and how many hits scored! I'm a complete dunce for not realizing this sooner.

No. That would be impossible to say since "just move" has not been tested. All of these tests have been done while Paused indefinitely, although I may not have been consistent in labeling them as such.

I tested the Cromwell Mk VII with a Move + pause. It's 75mm cannon should have virtually the same ballistic performance as the Sherman's, but it doesn't have a gyro stabilizer. I did 3 tests then went back to do 1 more test on the Sherman to get 300 hits each. (And BTW, I noticed that I had incorrectly listed the range these tests are done at as being 300 meters. They are at 500 meters.) Sherman Hits: 95 (31.7%) Misses: 205 Cromwell Hits: 90 (30%) Misses: 210 Nearly the same. It looks like we'll just have to wait for an explanation from Charles.

I re-ran the test with Fast orders. I ran the test twice to double the sample size, and did a second run of the first test with Move orders to get an equal sample size there. The totals are: Move Hits: 66 (33%) Misses: 134 Fast Hits:72 (36%) Misses: 128 Only 3 percentage points difference, and I suspect that with a larger sample size that would near zero. This suggests two conclusions. One is that the accuracy of a unit with pause + movement commands is not the same as a unit that is actually moving. The other is that for accuracy purposes the game considers movement to be a binary state; a unit either is moving or it is not and speed is not factored in. If I had to guess I'd say the latter conclusion is the more likely one.

You just asked John Kettler if he has links to websites. :eek:

Government sleeper agent.

Good points and valid concerns.

*shrug* Doesn't matter. I presume Charles knows. What we do know is that A) The accuracy penalty is massive, and It is caused by the movement order since a pause command alone has no effect on accuracy.

I may do that this weekend. If anyone wants to do their own, the save game and scenario files are in the Dropbox in the original post.

No, it's an assumption, albeit a reasonable one IMO. Testing accuracy when actually moving would be far more time intensive than the tests I did (which took a couple of hours).

In that case, because the real world paused accuracy would be much closer to the "been here all day" accuracy than it would be to the "rocking and rolling over rough ground" accuracy the more realistic decision would be no penalty at all, and give tanks that do not move since the start of the game an accuracy bonus (if they don't have one already).

It may be a good idea at this point to examine why firing while moving was inaccurate for WW2 tanks. First and foremost, it was because the main gun was not stabilized*, so unless the tank was moving over perfectly flat ground any bumps or undulations would throw off the aim. * The gyro stabilizer on the Sherman stabilized the gun in the vertical plane, when it was working. Next is the jostling of the crew itself, which makes viewing anything out of the sights or vision blocks more difficult. When a tank is not moving, either at the end of a movement or before the beginning of a movement, those factors are not present in any way. It has been suggested that tanks ending a movement should have an accuracy penalty because they have not familiarized themselves with the ranges to the surrounding terrain features. That is not unreasonable. However, it has also been suggested that this is better simulated by giving an accuracy bonus to tanks that have not moved since the beginning of a battle. Another factor that has been brought up is the fact that very flat shooting tank cannons such as the Panther's 75mm did not need to know the exact range under a certain threshold, which was at least 1000 meters. So you have 3 factors influencing firing on the move accuracy, the 2 most prominent of which are completely absent when a tank is not moving/paused. There is no possible justification for a paused tank having the same accuracy penalty as a moving one, or even close to the same.

I was... unavailable.

It is a mystery. I wonder if it is for performace reasons. Is fog expensive to render in the CMx2 engine? Phil?

No one has suggested scrapping the penalty for firing while moving. No one. What has been suggested is redefining Pause as a non-movement order, since paused vehicles aren't actually moving. Of course, you already knew that.

Hey, I thought you had thrown in your lot with the good guys? Perhaps. As I have stated about 7 times before in this thread, I am open to the idea, although there are others who don't see a need. In any case I did say the penalty should not exist, not that a penalty should not exist. But if there is a penalty it should be much less severe than the present penalty, and it needs to be applied only to the end of movement, not the beginning, and it need to be applied consistently. None of these characteristics describe the status quo. But if BFC is going to continue with a one-size-fits-all general rule such as we have now, no penalty at all when motionless would be much more realistic in every conceivable situation than the status quo. We've gone over the "hardly anyone ever does this stuff" argument before. I'm still not buying it. How often these situations crop up depends on the type of game and personal play style. I noticed the strange results that prompted me to do the tests while playing Huzzar, which is a very vehicle-heavy scenario. I personally have not used stop-fire-move type tactics much as of yet, but based on comments I have read on the forum I think there are players who use them extensively. OTOH, pausing to fire before beginning a move is something I do frequently. But besides all that, no one has been able to put forward a justification for the status quo that has held up to scrutiny. Admittedly, I am not an unbiased observer But I would suggest that "clear" flaws that no one has been able to demonstrate using logic/facts may not be all that clear, and may not even be flaws. Of course, this is a long thread and it may be that we need a refresher. What holes have been punctured in by arguments, exactly? Was it when you claimed that "No player will ever under any circumstance give a move order and a 60 second pause in a 60 second turn"? Or perhaps it was when you informed us that "stopping in WW2 was a matter of hours/days not seconds as in CM"? My memory fails me

Yeah it was played in 2.01 from the beginning.

If you have no choice be but stop to even have a chance to shoot, then stopping is not a benefit, it is a requirement. In a situation where you have a choice whether to fire while moving or to fire while not moving there is no benefit to not moving, assuming you have made the choice that letting the tank stand motionless for a large chunk of the turn is an unacceptable risk. That is a realism problem.

But if you only pause, accuracy will be no different than if you kept moving. That is a penalty, and one not based on realism. Therefore the penalty should not exist. Of course there are ways of ensuring your tank gets to the firing position at x number of seconds before the turn ends. The most straightforward way is to give it a movement order paused for a certain time. But oh, that introduces the risk that it will unexpectedly have to engage a target during the pause, and do so with artificially reduced accuracy. Sad biscuits you say? The mere fact that something creates a risk/reward situation does not justify its existence. It needs to have a basis in reality. By your logic BFC could introduce a 5% chance that every time a King Tiger fires it's gun it will explode, thereby creating situations where the player must decide to accept the risk of firing or play it safe and forgo the shot. But beyond that, it also forces -- or at least encourages -- the player to game the 60 second clock. That is not good. Which brings to mind another tactic that becomes problematic. If your tank is on a road or in-between lines of bocage you may not want the TacAI to rotate the tank hull towards a target thereby putting impassible terrain to the front and rear of the vehicle. The game gives us a way to override the TacAI in this situation, but that override is now compromised. Sad biscuits do not justify this. Yes, but as I already said, those cost benefit decisions need to be based on real tactical considerations to the extent that is feasible. In the above example, if I decide that I want to take the shots but not at the risk of leaving the tank out to dry for half the turn the logical tactic is to have the tank fire the shots while moving, because there is no benefit to stopping*. That is not realistic. * And lets dispense with the nonsense about stopping and pausing being two distinctly different things. There are the same. The tank is no longer moving, period. Whether or not the tank is planning to resume moving in the very near future is irrelevant.

There is no accuracy benefit. There is an accuracy penalty. What is pushing me away from it? The fact that the tank has to spend the rest of the turn at whatever position it opens fire from. If that happens to be near the end of my turn, no big deal. If it will be near the start of my turn that could be a very big deal if it's in an exposed position. What is pushing me away from ordering a tank to pause at the start of a turn to fire before beginning movement? The knowledge that those shots will be taken at the same accuracy as if the tank were actually moving. Any more questions?