Vanir Ausf B

Realizing that I am feeding the troll, but... As sttp pointed out, by your definition of the term most of the campaigns, scenarios and maps BFC has ever sold were "mods", and therefore reductio ad absurdum should have been given away for free. As for the financial arrangements with the author, I presume they are satisfactory to the author else he would not have agreed to them.

Apples to oranges there. A German WW2 tank battalion is 96 tanks, a pioneer platoon and a flak platoon. A Russian Tank Battalion 41 is 41 tanks and nothing else. Originally the plan for Black Sea was to set the total QB purchase points so that a US Stryker battalion (mounted, sans UAVs) plus a platoon of Abrams tanks would proportionately cost roughly the same as a German armored panzergrenadier battalion (mounted) plus a platoon of Panther tanks. This equation got knocked out of whack in one of the Black Sea patches when the cost of infantry was greatly reduced, which effectively increased the total number of purchase points available unless you are playing an armor-only QB. Regardless of that, the fact is that it isn't possible to match up QB unit counts in Black Sea and the WW2 titles because the disparity in unit prices between US and Russia in Black Sea is much greater than the disparity between Germany and any Allied nation in the WW2 games. If you normalize Black Sea point totals using US units you will always be able to buy a lot of Russian and Ukrainian forces. If you normalize using Russian units then your US force sizes will be relatively small. Ultimately what I would like to see is the Force Adjustment toggle given more granularity and extended to both sides.

Probably the same way dust is.

From Baneman's latest post it seems that Bil's lack of infantry is forcing him to use dismounted tank crew as a forward screen/lookout. It's not clear if these are from the knocked out TDs or if Bil dismounted them. I am guessing the former, but if it's the latter it could be another bad turn for Bil.

They're damned either way. As you say, playing one of the historical scenarios would keep some people from reading the AAR. Also, the preferences of the AAR players themselves cannot be discounted and Bil enjoys playing "no rules" QBs.

November 9th.

Awesome work, Amizaur! The front turret plate of a King Tiger would be a great follow-up. It was officially 180mm but measured thickness is reportedly in the 185-190mm range.

It's a known bug.

In the CMx2 engine internal components such as engines are modeled abstractedly and armor piercing projectiles do not disintegrate, they keep going until they run out of energy, so you tend to see two-for-one specials more often than in reality. It's not anything particular to Black Sea, it happens in the WW2 titles also.

It's been a while since I looked at this and my previous test was against vehicles that actually did have APS so I made a new test against Abrams tanks sans APS at 1000 meters. I made the Abrams tanks pop all their smoke before the engagement began so that didn't get in the way. The BMP-2M uses a roughly 50/50 mix of 30mm cannon and AT-14. It usually begins with a 30mm burst and then will either continue with 30mm for a while or transition to AT-14. Sometimes it will salvo a couple of AT-14s and then switch back to 30mm. I only ran the test once but at the and of 1 turn of firing 6 of the BMPs had fired all 4 missiles and 4 BMPs has fired 2 missiles. So the bottom line is that, yes, BMP-2Ms will fire their Kornets. But given the brief duration of a typical engagement the odds of them doing that in any given engagement are probably no better than 50/50. As AKD pointed out, this is not optimal behavior for a unit with salvo fire capability and it will be brought to BFCs attention for the next patch.

I'm sure it will be looked at. The problem is the TacAI has to guess if an enemy vehicle has APS. As noted, an SOP would be the ideal solution but BFC has pretty much rejected SOPs so I have no idea what can or will be done.

When choosing BMPs there are two features that are so useful that I exclude any vehicle that lacks either: multi-spectral smoke launchers and air-bursting munitions. That eliminates BMP-2, BMP-3 and BMP-3M ERA. The BMP-2M seems to have some TacAI issues regarding its use of missiles so I avoid it as well. In my view the vanilla BMP-3M, the BMP-3M Arena and BMP-3M Shtora are the only three worth consideration with the Arena variant the hands-down preferred option of you can afford it since it is the only BMP that can operate within several hundred meters of US infantry without getting shredded by 40mm HEDP, XM25 CDTE and M136 AT4.

Well, "changed Relikt" wouldn't be Relikt anymore That would constitute a new generation of ERA altogether. Given that Relikt was adopted nearly a decade ago it is not a surprise that in fact the Russians do have something in the pipeline, but it seems to be earmarked for T-14. I have not seen anything on plans to fit it to older AFV designs. http://www.janes.com/article/52464/russia-s-t-14-armata-mbt-has-new-gen-era That's the company rep's spiel. Ultimately it will be up to BFC to take their best educated guess as to it's actual performance should they decide to include T-14 in the future.

Range to Panther-1 was 800-850 meters. The odds of a hit penetrating are not good but not impossible, maybe 1/4 to1/3 assuming the entire tank was exposed.

But here's the rub: Relict does not necessarily reduce all APFSDS rounds by the same 40%. The general opinion on M829A4 is that it doesn't have more raw penetration than A3, but it is less affected by ERA.

Now that the first major clash of armor has taken place the score is: Quantity 0 Quality 3

Sooner? My first post was on page 2 It's not as if I'm getting paid to post here. As for my opinion on the KT mantlet, I think your take on it is generally correct and I have said so internally to Charles weeks ago (but my opinion carries little weight). Actual pictures of the KT turret with the mantlet removed are damn hard to find and in fact the only one I have seen is of the KT the Soviets shot to pieces at their Kubinka test grounds. Soviet diagram from that same test: The "cutout" does not quite match up with the flattened portion of the mantlet because it is actually oval but I think that most of flat part of the mantlet is backed by armor. Chris's post says the game already models this to some degree (which was news to me).

I figured they were mainly there for aesthetic reasons.

Probably correct.

T-90AM armor will probably get looked at again also. The problem as always is that all the public "information" is speculative so it's anyone's guess how impressed BFC will be by what are mostly posts on forums. That drawing you posted is a good example of what I mean. It looks familiar but I don't know where it came from and Google images can't find a source.

The Abrams side turret armor has been a known bug for a long time. I don't know if the issue with hit decals showing on the tracks counting as hits on the armor is a bug or not but it definitely is not unique to the Abrams. That happens with probably every tank in every Combat Mission game. I also don't know what sources BFC used for the Abrams armor protection but the game does not exactly match Steel Beasts. However, most areas on the tank are not vastly different than Steel Beast either, from what testing I have done. Steel Beasts lists most areas of the Abrams front armor protection at 900-1000mm RHAe vs KE. Most speculation on 3BM-60 Svinets-2 penetration puts it around 700-750mm RHAe, therefore I need to know what basis you have for expecting penetrations on these areas. US and Russian vehicle spotting is likely to get a second look whenever BFC does the next Black Sea module and that is all I can say about it.

Test: 10 US FOs spotting 10 PaK40 at 1500 meters. Ground conditions Damp to prevent dust from interfering with spotting. I first move the Pak40s one action spot to get rid of the camo bonus they get before firing or moving. I then run 15 turns without any shooting. None of the Pak40s are spotted. I then give the Pak40s area fire orders. After one turn of firing 1 Pak40 is spotted, 4 are spotted after two turns and 7 spotted after three turns. I only ran this one time so actual spotting times should be taken with a grain of salt but the gist of it is that the shooting is what allowed the AT guns to be spotted. But what about sound? I ran the test again but with a ridge between the US observers and the AT guns that blocks LOS. After 4 turns of shooting the US observers have zero sound contacts. And yes I am something special

Muzzle flash is absolutely factored in. The contention that difficulty in seeing muzzle flash should not scale with distance is unsupported and IMO completely wrong. Thread is ridiculous. In reality the ease with which muzzle flash could be seen varied between nations. The Germans used "flashless" powder that made their guns quite hard to spot when firing. This is not modeled in CM and is a possible area for improvement.

Agreed. I would do the same thing Baneman has. Dismounted infantry take loses in ones and twos, mounted infantry are lost in squad-sized chunks.