Vanir Ausf B

For most people, yes, but consider who it is you're quoting there.

Looks like he said "updated" engine.

As Sergei said, the British did not start putting 17 pounders on tanks until 1943. But they did design a 17 pdr version of the Churchhill called the Black Prince. The problem was that it turned out to be much more difficult to fit the 17 pdr cannon on the Churchhill than it was the Sherman. The Churchill's turret was too narrow. Widening the turret ring to accommodate the larger turret necessitated widening the hull, all of which added about 10 tons to the tank which was already underpowered. Only 6 prototypes were built and they never saw action.

Map design is an issue. No shooting around corners is an issue. Spotting is an issue. But to say that not allowing AT rockets to fire from inside of buildings isn't an issue is not true. At least some AT weapons should be allowed to. BFC has said in the past that the current blanket prohibition against it is just a stop-gap measure and not intended to be realistic.

I think it's because we can't place infantry in an exact spot like you can vehicles. I have a hunch that the action spot system may make peeking around corners for infantry difficult to implement. I don't know how you would do it without requiring a specific command, but bigger brains than mine may think of a way.

Except if you actually read the original post he says 50 to 60 meters. That is not an impossible shot by any means, but the maximum effective range for your typical non-scoped pistol is 45-50m. Most shooters will struggle to consistently hit anything at over 30m.

No, not exactly, although I did test by splitting each squad -- US infantry -- into 3 teams and watching the reaction of each team. I saw no instances of soldiers reacting to units not visible to the player.

As a follow-up to Ranger33's comments regarding the other forum thread, I set up a test with isolated and out of C2 units spotting and reacting to previously unspotted enemy units and did not have any instance of a unit reacting to an enemy unit that was not visible on the player's screen (Iron difficulty). I feel I can state with a fair amount of confidence that the game doesn't do this, unless there is some factor other than being out of C2 that must also be present for it to happen that I did not test for.

It was released 4 months ago... :confused:

I understand it isn't cut and dried, and reasonable arguments can be made either way. I'm looking at the larger problem of AT weapons being unrealistically difficult to use in urban environment. There are clearly several different issues that together have contributed towards making armor the queen of the CMBN urban battlefield. My position is that allowing AT rockets to fire from buildings is the one change that would have the most effect. It also appears to me that it would be by far the easiest change to implement, and by extension probably the only change we could expect to see made in CMBN. I don't want to wait 2+ years to see if things are better in the Bulge game when it could be better now.

I disagree. One of dieseltaylor's posts references a US Army test that has been discussed previously on the forum that shows the danger posed by firing AT rockets from buildings is largely mythical. "Firing these weapons from enclosures presented no serious hazards, even when the overpressure was enough to produce structural damage to the building. Little hazard exists to the gunnery or crew from any type of flying debris. Loose items were not hurled around the room. No substantial degradation occurs to the operator's tracking performance as a result of obscuration or blast overpressure." This test included weapons such as the Dragon that have more back blast than any WW2-era equivalent (IIRC. Someone posted the exact explosive charges for the various weapons in a previous thread that I could look up if needed). That being the case I see no need for separate rules for different weapons, and I do think an across the board change would be a net increase is realism, not only because the original justification is rather dubious but also to compensate for other engine limitations that work against the use of AT weapons in urban areas (specifically I'm thinking of the inability of AT teams to use corners as partial cover while firing, an issue which is not going to be addressed any time soon).

BFC could improve the situation immensely by simply allowing AT weapons to fire from buildings. Their decision to not allow it really does make the game less realistic.

I doubt the AI will ever be coded to use it. AFAIK the AI does not use covered arcs at all.

One of the devs who made the Take Command games is doing SoW. His divorce from the other guy at Mad Minute Games was somewhat less-than amicable. There was internet drama. I had one of the Take Command games (the last one, don't remember what battle it was), and really liked it. I may take a look at SoW.

... Except for the G model with the mantlet chin. I tested for that in 1.00. I recorded 2 ricochets off the mantlet into the top hull in over 700 impacts on the front turret area. I mentioned on the forums at the time that if that was realistic then there would hardly have been reason for the Germans to bother adding the mantlet chin. Apparently someone took notice because there is a blurb in the 1.01 patch notes about correcting an issue preventing such ricochets. I haven't retested to see what the difference is.

I just thought of something else. Although I've never tested for it specifically, it's been my casual observation that only hits on the mantlet can damage the main gun. The guy mentioned his Panther met the Shermans as it was cresting a ridge. If the Shermans were at a significantly lower elevation it's possible the Panther's mantlet was blocked by the hull so few if any shots would have hit it.

I've done a fair amount of armor testing in CMBN (albeit version 1.00) and in my experience for a tank to take anything close to 100 hits and still have a functioning main gun would be rare to say the least, but probably not impossible. Were the optics destroyed? Optics are typically gone in a half dozen or so hits. If there was no damage of any kind to the tank including optics then that would almost have to be a bug.

Thank you, hoolaman. That is exactly what I thought but I don't have enough street cred to say it and have anyone believe me

True, dat. But I can't replicate it with out-of-C2 infantry either.

I just tied to replicate this in a test environment. I put 3 US squads isolated from HQ units and each other so all 3 were out of C2 (battalion, company and platoon HQ units were on the map, however). I split the squads so I could get them to line up at the edge of the map. The squads are all regular/normal/+0 leadership. I then placed 3 German infantry squads hidden behind a wall about 150-160m away. As the turn begins the German squads run out behind the wall using a Fast command and run perpendicular to the US squads. This was run on 3 lanes separated by high walls so each German squad could only be seen by 1 US squad. I selected each US team during playback and noted when they began reacting to the German squads. The test was done on Iron difficulty. In every case the US teams did not react to the Germans until they were spotted and visible on the screen. Even in cases where a team had suspected contact icons while the team next to them had a solid contact and was already firing the teams would not react prior to the Germans squad appearing on the screen, and by not reacting I mean they wouldn't even start rotating towards them. I only ran the test 5 times because it seems to me I was wasting my time. Either there was something wrong with my test or this shooting at invisible (to the player) units phenomenon is contingent on some factor other than being out of C2.

Was it like this in CMSF?

I tend to play large battalion + sized battles, so I do not pay real close attention to every individual squad. However, I don't think I would have missed a tank opening fire on an invisible enemy tank. I track practically every shot my armored vehicles take. If this is in fact an undocumented feature that would be a significant step in the direction of making CM more of a command level game. That surprises me since BFC have steadfastly resisted requests to do that in the past.

*Sigh* That quote by Moon was already posted on the first page. I would appreciate that. I'm going to set up a test later tonight and see if I can replicate this behavior.

I'll pay closer attention and see if I find examples of this. Tomorrow I may make a test scenario to see if I can catch an example of this. What I do know is that I have run hundreds of tests with tanks firing at each other for various reasons and have never seen a tank open fire on another before the targeted tank appeared on the screen. Frankly I find whole idea of enemy units randomly being invisible to the player disturbing. The player is not part of the chain of command so it's hard to see what part of the C2 model this would represent. It also runs counter to the design philosophy that in CM the player isn't any one particular command, but is the commander of every individual unit.

Well that is very interesting. Because... I haven't. Ever.