Vanir Ausf B

Interestingly, the arms race has actually resulted in a reduction of the amount of padding worn in recent years. Players at positions that put a premium on running speed have been cutting down on the padding they wear to the bare minimum required, even at the cost of increasing the risk of injury. Link

I haven't watched enough of Rugby to pass judgement on it, or really to even form a solid opinion. I share your doubt about "Gridiron" football becoming an Olympic sport. Even if it did we would never see professional players in it. The chance of serious injury is too great. As for helmets and padding, it's interesting to note that there is a lot of debate over here about whether wearing helmets makes players safer. The helmets seem to give players a somewhat false sense of security. Although I haven't watched a lot of Rugby, I have noticed that when ball carriers are tackled they are typically wrapped up and pulled to the ground. They do that in Gridiron too, but what I haven't seen in Rugby is the prevalence of "blowing up" a ball carrier by a player launching himself into the carrier at maximum velocity in an attempt to knock the ball free. Linky

No. It allows the head to be used as a battering ram. Which is a really bad idea from a player safety perspective, but that is the net effect.

In addition to the PBEM issues there is the out of memory crashes that Phil said they were still working on. Machine gun firing animation and inescapable bunkers have also been mentioned. I too am curious if there is a second patch planned, as it is doubtful we will see the Brits Ect. module before next year.

If a 30mm cannon is overkill, what's a 500 lb bomb?

I was going to post something very similar to this but you beat me to it. It all sounds great in theory, but I agree that in practice the A-1s would likely end up operating out of the same large airbases as everything else. Upgrading all the electronics and senors to the latest and greatest raises the cost.

Recent upgrades have given the A-10 a high resolution FLIR and a data link with Blue Force Tracker. If I were a grunt on the ground I think I'd feel more comfortable with the Warthog above me.

Hard to say. The A-10 has about twice the carrying capacity as the A-1 and nearly twice the range. I'm guessing it's gun is more accurate than the A-1's cannons. If you factor in cost the A-1 may be more bang for the buck. Then again, against low tech opposition a Sherman may be better bang for the buck than a M1A2 Abrams.

I reran one of my old tests to make sure of my observations. 76m Shermans shooting at Panthers at 100m. Sure enough, the Panthers held fast to their CAs no matter how much punishment they took. But then I remembered that I always used fanatic crews in my testing to reduce their tendency to retreat. I lowered their motivation down to normal and BINGO, they started ignoring the CAs and shooting back. Not all of them, but most of them did. So it does appear that my earlier claim that vehicles never disregard CAs was incorrect. Sorry about that What it does show is that their willingness to ignore a CA to defend themselves is closely tied to motivation. So if you have a vehicle with a highly motivated crew you do need to be extra careful about how and when you give it a CA. Also, even tanks with normal motivation did not always ignore the CA to shoot back, even against another tank shooting at it from only 100m away.

Oh, I don't know about that. The plane that replaced it is more capable, albeit more expensive.

I've done a lot of gunnery range testing of tanks in CMBN. And by a lot I mean many hundreds of turns of tests that typically have 10 tanks in 10 separated rows getting pummeled by something at around 100-500 meters away, usually another tank but sometimes snipers. When doing these tests the way I keep the target tanks from returning fire against their tormenters is to give them a covered arc (one that does not include the unit firing at them, obviously). It is 100% effective. They will just sit there and let the enemy unit shoot at them turn after turn. If they are penetrated and take casualties they may bail out, or they sometimes pop smoke and retreat, but I have never seen one disobey the CA and shoot back.

I cannot say for certain about infantry, but vehicles will never do that.

I'm fairly certain units do not accrue fatigue unless their legs are moving.

Yeah, I don't know where the idea that the US assumes heavy AA comes from. We just ordered another 16 AC-130s. But the AC-130 has operated in environments with significant AA. 6 of the 8 AC-130s lost in combat were shot down over Laos or S. Vietnam. One other was shot down in the early phases of the 1991 Gulf War.

If a tank's turret is facing a threat when it appears the time it takes to get the first shot off will certainly be less than if it is facing away, so CAs are useful for that. Tanks also presumably spot better in the direction(s) the hull and turret are facing. But I don't know that a tank facing directly towards a target without a CA will react any slower than one with a CA. That would be an interesting thing to test.

Are you getting out of memory crashes or does your computer just chug? They are working on improving memory management. I'm hopeful that we can at least do battalion + sized battles on 2x2 km maps.

I pointed out two cases in which it may be a good idea to keep a tank's turret pointed in a different direction than the hull. I agree that if you don't have any reason to do that you are almost always better off not assigning any CA to a vehicle. That calculus will change if/when we get a Armor Covered Arc. With regard to infantry it's debatable. What I would really love to see is a return of the CMBO Ambush command. That would allow the flexibility to have it either way, i.e. you could use a rigid CA command or a conditionally expiring Ambush command. I've always missed the Ambush command. In the specific case of the OP's Puma, ideally you would want it to recognize the M8 poses an immediate and mortal threat and react to it realistically. At a bare minimum the Puma should do this if the M8 is shooting at it. Whether it should react prior to taking fire or continue to track it once it leaves the CA is less clear. I would tend to say yes it should in most cases, but I'm sure people will think of situations where they would prefer it doesn't

I was just thinking about this. I envision a little box that pops up every time you set a CA that asks Incoming fire cancels? YES NO I know that given Steve's aversion to SOPs it will never happen. So absent that what we really need is more intelligent, adaptable TacAI. For example, an AFV that is taking incoming cannon fire from a spotted enemy should be able to recognize that ignoring it is almost never a good idea. Admittedly, infantry is a more complex issue. If you are setting up an ambush and the enemy is using recon by fire you may well prefer them to hold tight.

Depends on the AFV. In the case of medium and heavy tanks the effective range of the main cannon against most targets is larger than the maps. We do need more control over what is considered a significant threat. That is the purpose of the much-requested Armor Covered Arc.

For infantry it's mainly a concealment tool, so they don't reveal themselves by taking pot shots at stuff 500m away they have little chance of hurting. For vehicles, which can't be effectively concealed in most circumstances, the only point of a CA, IMO, is to keep the turret pointed in a direction different than the hull. This can be useful if the vehicle is on the move and the expected threat is from a different direction than the direction of travel, or to deliberately position the hull at an angle to increase effective front hull protection levels.

Should a unit ignore a SPOTTED enemy unit that is firing at it if that enemy unit is outside a covered arc? I think that is a valid question. You can say the OP made a mistake by giving too narrow a covered arc, or giving any cover arc at all, but that does not mean that it is realistic for a unit to exhibit that level of disregard for it's own life.

No. Absent a target, a vehicle will keep its turret centered in a covered arc, but the hull facing is unaffected.

It sounds from the description like the Pumas' slow turret traverse speed allowed the M8 to get off shots and then move out of the covered arc area. As for covered arcs: be very careful of when and how you use them. Units in CMBN, at least vehicles, will NEVER disregard a covered arc command (if they do I have never seen it), even when an enemy unit outside the arc is plugging AP rounds into it. The main purpose of a covered arc command for a vehicle is to keep the turret pointed in a particular direction. When I give a vehicle a covered arc command I typically make them huge 180 degree arcs, often covering the entire portion of the map in front of the vehicle.

Turrets were cast. Hulls varied. Generally, the Shermans with rounded hull edges were cast, the ones with welded edges were rolled.

I'm fairly sure the Shermans were homogenous plate.