Vanir Ausf B

I see double and triple tree action spots frequently in Heavy Forest tiles in particular. But from a map-makers perspective I think the take-away from this is that there is a very strong relationship between the number of trees and the quality of the action spot as a fighting position. 

Two problems:
(1)  Some of us have no actually training and don't really know what's best in the real world.
(2)  Some who have real world experience still cannot fully recognize its abstraction in software.
This is why there are things like a LOS tool.  In the real world, a shooter should be able to estimate distances by various factors.  This is a simulated world.  Providing aids to be used for quick judgements is not the same thing as trying to turn your game play into an exercise in statistics and probabilities.  BTW, your intuitive knowledge is, in fact, your brain's compilation of empirical knowledge into high speed stereotypical choices.
Lastly, this type of experimentation besides aiding player and designers is good for the devs too.  Many bug and anomalies have been found by players trying to understand the mechanics of the game (former beta tester of 20 years speaking here).

Well, don't take me wrong in that I do not personally understand that it is a numbers game. No matter what it always will be.
I also will say that I do plenty of calculations as to what might happen within the game and with my units. I do think there is a place for it. But in the game now, I see that place with each weapon and how that weapon works. And to me, that is very much how I see what someone does that is leading real troops and is wanting to use the weapons at his disposal to their best effect.
Example, when black sea first came out, The first thing I did was make a bunch of little fire fight scenarios and made determinations as to what effective ranges different rifles were being effective at.
But did I chart it, I guess I could have, and yes many real soldiers have a similar understanding of that with their weapons.So it makes somewhat sense to me that someone would do that.
But It only took only one time sending troops into a barn and seeing them mowed down to understand it is nothing more than concealment and I don't need no chart to tell me that, just like any other terrain on the map. its pretty easy to understand the likely results of the terrain without any numbers to verify it. That is all I am saying. Of course that comes with playing the game and seeing the results of such terrain.
Where as , in cmX1 I will say, terrain was very much more like a mathematical formula. The results were pretty consistent also. Now, I would not say that anymore with the terrain, it can give you surprises.

Javelin is standard US equipment and frankly in the games i've played they shoot once and then get killed by return fire, are supressed by HE artillery  or are severely degraded by my artillery deployed smokescreens. They Kill my tanks 50% of the time since I dash from tree to tree whenever possible so they are not a uberweapon against a competent russian commander  (like sublime). As for Abrams having an excellent chance of surviving return fire , I would say moderate since weapons mount, top armor and lower Hull penetrations are fairly common at the average ranges  in game (depressingly so when I play the US). Even the thickest armored parts (right and left front turret) are ônly 100% effective if the shot comes from head-on. As soon as the shooter is not right in front (a little bit to the side)  you start to see disabling partial and full penetrations on those areas.  You achieve this by having multiple spread out shooters at a single Abrams. The only part of the Abrams 100% invulnerable is the upper front Hull IF the shooter is at the same terrain level. If its higher its à question of luck.  
I always play as or play against veteran and crack Russians .

Finished testing on heavy forest, marsh, rocky and heavy rocks
Combining them with my earlier results:
Exposure
Pavement: 100%
Grass: 95%
Light Forest: 90%
Light Forest with 2 Trees (Tree A in editor): 60%
Marsh: 100%
Rocky: 100%
Heavy Forest (no trees): 80%
Heavy Rocks: 75%
 Some mild surprises there, at least to me. Marshes and rocky terrain provide no more cover than pavement. Heavy rocks turned out to offer less cover than I recall from my old test, but that was a smaller sample size. What does not surprise me is that most terrain types offer little cover unless there is some type of 3D terrain with it such as trees or walls. You see that most clearly with the forest terrain where most of the cover is from the trees themselves rather than the underlying terrain. Given this I don't think I will be testing any more terrain. I may test some buildings at some point.

Targeted ground is flat, shooters are slightly elevated (3 meters). Range is 250 meters. Everyone is Regular experience. If we assume that pavement offers no cover and call that 100% exposure then everything else is in comparison to that. In other words 60% exposure is the same thing as 40% cover.
EDITED to add: The exposure numbers are simply how many casualties are inflicted on targets in that terrain compared to pavement, so troops in grass take 95% the number of casualties as troops on pavement, all else being equal.

Exposure
Pavement: 100%
Grass: 95%
Light Forest: 90%
Light Forest with 2 Trees (Tree A in editor): 60%
 
Note that these values reflect cover from bullets (specifically 7.92mm x 57mm Mauser from a MG42, if you were wondering) and may not necessarily be accurate against explosive ordnance.
  I'll test more tomorrow, time permitting.
 

I believe something simple, in bronze, something tasteful, no more than three stories high, no more than eight Bradleys and four Abrams is appropriate. Lights, of course, at night.
I would prefer to forego a plinth and have a small park, perhaps six acres, no more than ten, with a football grid, a baseball diamond and some basic concession stands.
Out of respect for the dead, the concession stands should be closed during the Saturday night fireworks displays.

Hey guys, long time lurker here, just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on the game.
 
Would it be possible to add a "Force adjustment" option for the defender's side?  It would be cool to have the defender and attacker's force sizes to be equal, while still retaining the size of forces?  For example, the most I can buy as defender with the settings on "huge battle" is ~16k worth of units, while the attackers can buy ~30k worth of units.  This is without any adjustment to the force size of the attackers.  Any response would be appreciated.  Thanks!

Did you use any mines? I consider anti-tank mines an essential part of any defense.

Old age and treachery will overcome youth, strength and skill every time.
 
Edit to add: I agree. I don't care about winning or losing, this is a lot more fun than playing the computer.

Yep. You've probably read the same reports I have.
 
Hodges acknowledged that US troops are learning from Ukrainians about Russia's jamming capability, its ranges, types and the ways it has been employed. He has previously described the quality and sophistication of Russian electronic warfare as "eye-watering."...
 
..."Our biggest problem is we have not fought in a comms-degraded environment for decades, so we don't know how to do it," Buckhout said. "We lack not only tactics, techniques and procedures but the training to fight in a comms-degraded environment."...
 
...The US, Buckhout said, lacks a significant electronic attack capability.
 
"We have great signals intelligence, and we can listen all day long, but we can't shut them down one-tenth to the degree they can us," she said. "We are very unprotected from their attacks on our network."
 
http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/warfare/2015/08/02/us-army-ukraine-russia-electronic-warfare/30913397/

My apologies then.

I think you and Rinaldi are missing the fact that I was merely quoting Jason's sig line as a means of explaining why his posts are the way they are. I was not defending it.

He is quoting Jason's Sig in case one hadn't noticed.  The font or should I say the text is very light.
 
damn sniped by the original commenter, touche!!!

Some odd criticism getting bandied about here:

-seating in BMP-3 "Dragoon" appears better than in Bradley, including more room for personnel seated forward of turret to exit.

-recoil on Armata does not induce a stability problem. You can see that gunner's sight stays right on target when firing. The system does not care if barrel moves relative to sight because the barrel has to move after firing for auto-loader regardless. Also, comparing to recoil on M1A2 is somewhat silly. Bigger gun on lighter tank = more chassis movement. Recoil on the chassis appears in line with, or less than, previous T-series tanks.

-MFDs with touch functionality are pretty much standard in modern AFVs

-decision to stick with cheap, gap-bridging upgrades on BMP-2, BMP-3 and T-72Bs was I believe intentional to free-up funding for the next-generation vehicles, not a cut-back of a more ambitious upgrade program.

The question I have is whether existing BMP-3s can even be upgraded to "Dragoon" level, or if that requires new-build hulls?

"A certain amount of dogmatism and pigheadedness is necessary in science."

"A certain amount of dogmatism and pigheadedness is necessary in science."

Here's better pic of "Derivative" BMP-3.
 
Initially, it was said (by manufacturer's CEO) that this module will be installed on Kurganets chassis (or was it Armata IFV? Can't remember now). Either way, apparently, MoD isn't interested, and they went for pushing it for export. I kinda get why MoD isn't interested. They're following the original plan.
 

 
It started with "Berezhok" turret (used on BMP-2M/BMD-2M). Lotsa same tech is used on today's version of what I call "early Epoch module", that's currently installed on Kurg-25 IFV and Armata T-15 IFV. The plan for 2020 is to upgrade it further with better stuff, particularly new autocannon. Last I heard they were going for telescopic 40mm. Why? 57mm can't do tanks, you still need ATGMs. 57mm+ ATGM launchers might be too big. So 40 is as big as it gets.
 
ADDED:
 
Oh. Some say that BMP-3 "Dragoon" has an unmanned turret (with the same 100mm+30mm weapons). Wonder how it's done.

Exactly. It isn't about eliminating area fire. Area fire is the most common type of fire in real combat. It's about the near instant responsiveness of it in the game. It takes time for information to percolate through the C2 chain. The player can render this irrelevant. If an enemy unit reveals itself by opening fire I can in most cases hit that unit in less than 30 seconds of the start of the next turn using vehicles firing from waypoints.
 
When I think of the number of times I use one unit to spot area fire for another as opposed to using genuine recon by fire the former probably outnumbers the latter more than ten to one.
 
But it is true that there is no solution that would not cause problems under some circumstances. That and the fact that most players don't care/aren't bothered by it are why it's not going to change.

If they were "guided" by other troops, doesn't that imply that they had a partial contact in CM terms?
 
Personally, I believe Area Fire is often abused by players.  The classic case, as discussed here, is when the player uses knowledge gained by one unit to instantly guide the actions of other units (with no contact markers, partial or otherwise from their perspective) and direct their fire on a location.  It's a clear circumvention of the C2 net.
 
But here's the thing, I see no viable solution.  (I always play Iron.)  Because, as many are saying, recon by fire is a real thing.  Sometimes the player wants to target a certain key location with units that have no enemy contact markers (sometimes in the opening stages when nobody has an enemy contact marker).  So when it comes to nerfing Area Fire as a blanket case, the cure may be worse than the disease.  
 
For my part, I always try to ask, "Would this guy REALLY take this shot?" with Area Fire.  Oddly, if there's no enemy contact markers in the vicinity (from anyone's perspective), the answer is always yes.  That's the Recon by Fire or an educated guess about what's critical at that moment.  If there IS an enemy contact marker (but not from the shooter's perspective), it's a grey area.  Sometimes the abuse is obvious, i.e., a tank pointed in a different direction juggling various partial contacts in its sector swivels and starts pounding a random building halfway across the map.  But in many other cases, it's defensible so it's a tough one.

The Soviet SMGs II thread (link here) started by Poesel piqued my interest.  The initial question was the perceived supremacy of Soviet SMG troops:  Is a real phenomenon?  Is it automatic weapons generally?  At what range do regular rifles gain an advantage over the SMGs?  Etc...   I ran a few tests and showed my initial results in the linked thread.  A few members made suggestions about how to structure valuable tests.   - c3k said to limit variables.  - Sgt Joch said to place the targets on pavement to eliminate micro-cover. - Poesel said to only test one thing at a time.  (i.e., if you're interested in testing accuracy, don't worry about ROF)   I took their advice and went back to the drawing board.  I built a range with five lanes for each of five range groupings: 60, 120, 180, 240, and 300m. (1)  The lanes are 11 tiles wide and divided by high walls.  The bulk of the terrain was the default editor "open ground" but I lowered the terrain between the shooters and targets by two meters to reduce / eliminate any LOS blockage figuring that none of the grass types would be six feet tall!  The firing lines are placed on a step at elevation setting 22.  All shooters are Regular.     The floor of the range is elevation 20 and the targets, to match the shooters, are placed at elevation 22 in the middle of three block wide stretch of pavement which slopes from elevation 21 to 23.  To emphasize the point, shooters and targets are at the same elevation. (2)     For the targets, I used five 2-man sniper teams: one in the middle of the range directly across from the shooter and two more arrayed on either side with an action spot gap separating each team.  All targets are Fanatic and given short firing arcs to keep the shooters alive. (3) Yes, it was more tedium to use five two-man teams in the place of a potential single 9 or 10 man squad.  The method to the maddness was that I wanted to focus the test on simple accuracy.  I worried that an entire squad placed in a single action spot would provide a target density that would disporoportionally benefit automatic weapons. (4)  As JasonC put it in the SMG II thread:   c3k - sure, one of the reasons I wanted realistic examples is that SMGs might be favored by massed targets, lack of cover, and movement, as all things that can be benefited by spray and pray and hits on targets *other* than the intended one, especially at close range.  Whereas a longer range shot at a stationary and small / single unit target in good cover should bring actual accuracy to the forefront.   So five two-man targets it was.  Point-of-emphasis:  I am (I hope it is obvious) NOT claiming this represents typical firing conditions.  These targets tend to lay prone and are therfore smaller than a standing or kneeling target.  On the other hand, they are stationary and marooned on a stretch of pavement without so much as a blade of grass to shelter behind.   I marched to the range and fired a combined 261,761 rounds from eight different weapon types.  Does "over a quarter million rounds" sound more impressive?  I tracked rounds fired per range per type along with the casualties caused. (5)  This is what I found:       Now remember, this isn't a promise or prediction that you should expect to fire N bullets at range X with weapon Y to achieve Z casualties in CMRT battle conditions.  I'm simply reporting my results for the given sample size under the admittedly artificial conditions I laid out.  The interesting thing to me is to see how the accuracy of a given weapon degrades with range and/or how different weapons compare at a given range.  All tests were performed on the exact same range and I have the stats per lane so we could see if a certain lane seemed to perform poorly over multiple weapons for example.   For those who prefer the raw tabular format:     Note that I'm not advancing 'Composite' accurracy here as a meaningful metric, but I just threw that in there so that I had something to sort by.  I'm not sure how interesting or useful anybody will find any of this.  My two big reactions were as follows:   1.)   My first-hand experience with shooting and ballistics is dominated by Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood in the Summer of '90.  I qualified Sharpshooter (the mid-tier), hit a few pop-ups at 300m, and by now have surely forgotten most of what I learned although I could probably still field strip an M-16 by rote.   So I'm nobody's idea of a shooting expert but I was expecting the accuracy to degrade expotientially with range.  But maybe that's not how it works or maybe that's only true at longer ranges and 300m and below is within quite reasonable ranges for these weapons and (mostly) iron sights.  I simply don't know.   In particular, it's striking how the accuracy at 180m is much the same as the accuracy at 120m for several weapons.  The range jumps by 50%, but the accuracy (judged by average rounds per casualty) degrades by only 21.44%, 3.08%, 3.53%, and 4.12% for the LMG42, DPM, PPSh/PPS-43, and MP-40 respectively.  Not sure what's going on there or if anything is going on.  Statistical noise?  I dunno.   The related point is how the accuracy of the weapon types relate to each other.  The snipers are best, then the bolt-actions, then the LMG, and finally the sub-machine guns.  Each type is grouped together in its expected place along the accuracy continuum which feels good.     At 180m, it takes ~ 84 Mosin-Nagant rounds or ~ 126 PPS-43 rounds to cause a casualty in testing...  So the PPS-43 is 50% less accurate but it's trivial for a PPS-43 shooter to exceed the rate-of-fire of the Mosin-Nagant by more than 50%.  I know I wasn't supposed to consider ROF, but you see the point here.  Just rough figures: Maybe a determined and steady Mosin-Nagant shooter gets off 10 rounds in a minute.  In the same timeframe, as soon as a shooter behind a PPS-43 exceeds 15 shots he's causing more casualties on average at 180m (according to the test results).   2.)  What's going on with the German Snipers?  Why are they performing so much better than the Soviet Snipers?    I believe I found the answer to this one hiding in plain sight.  Yes, the German snipers performed better than the Soviet snipers but my working theory is because the German sniper test shooters ended up with a freakishly large proportion of designated 'Marksmen' rather than the basic 'Soldiers.'   For the sniper shooters of both sides, I used Sniper Teams at 50% headcount in attempt to limit the teams to just guys with scoped rifles and avoid the SMG-toting buddies.  However, even at the 50%, I found a couple German teams still had the MP-40 guy so I placed those at the 300m range knowing they wouldn't fire.  (See thread about 200m hard range cut-off for SMGs here.)  So those teams would have had improved spotting abilities relative to the singletons but I didn't worry about that as I only cared about the resulting aimed shots and not if the snipers had spotting help.   As I placed the snipers of both sides I idly noted (mentally) that some were Marksman and some were Soldier but I didn't think much of it.  However, I later had the impulse to mark which lanes contained Marksman and it was then that the Germans' relative overperformance made sense.     The lanes with the m notation off to the side contained Marksman snipers and the ones without contained Soldier snipers.  The # symbols designate K98 armament; the balance were armed with G43.  (Digression, were G43 the predominant Heer sniper rifles?)   You see I ended up with only four non-Marksman among 24 active lanes. (240m Lane 1 is the NULL lane referenced in footnote 3.)  As you see, the accuracy of the non-Marksman snipers is significantly worse.  As for the Soviets:     You see they only ended up with two Marksman and they are the best two of their grouping although the effect is less discernable at 60m.  Ironically, I put those two in the 60m grouping on purpose as I noticed they were carrying only 55 rounds per man compared with 150 rounds for the bulk of the Soviet snipers.  My thought was that I wanted them at a closer range so they wouldn't run out of ammo and, at that time, I didn't make the connection between the Marksman designation and the lower ammo count.   Although the sample size is small, we see that the few non-Marksman Germans perform comparably with the non-Marksman Soviets at a given range.  So that riddle is tenatively solved.  The German Sniper "results" should then be accompanied with a big asterisk at the moment and are subject to revision.  But I thought I'd still show what I have for the moment to demonstrate the seeming weight of the Marksman-factor.  Plus, the Snipers are such outliers in the scheme of these results.  Even the regular Soldier Soviet snipers are 6 and 11 times more accurate than the Mosin-Nagant at 240m and 300m respectively.     (1) More specifically, the number of action spots between the deployed shooters and targets were as follows: 7 - 56m, 15 - 120m, 22 - 176m, 30 - 240m, 37 - 296m.  (Yes, I know you guys can do arithmetic.)   (2) I know it's a more challenging shot when there is an elevation difference between shooter and target.  That's not from experience, that's from reading Stephen Hunter novels.   (3) There was one exception.  In Lane 1 at 240m in the German Sniper test, I missed a cover arc on one of the Soviet sniper targets.  The result was a shooter that got shot...  So I threw out that particular lane and then ran another iteration with Lanes 2-5.  Every other test scenario featured 4 iterations per lane wheras that one ended up with 0 iterations for Lane 1 and 5 iterations for lanes 2-5.   (4) Naturally, in CMRT battles, there are occasions when automatic weapon fire DOES hit massed troops and multiple casualties are the realistic result.  But again, I don't want to confuse that with the question of accuracy.   (5) As with my earlier tests, I disregarded light wounds.  The casualties shown in my results are KIA and serious wounds only.

Hi guys
I stumbled across this video series a few weeks ago and found it extremely enlightening – as well as somewhat mythbusting. So I thought I´d share it with you, even though many of you have probably already seen it.
 
It is basically a bunch of tank experts discussing various acspects of tank warfare, primarily in relation to WWII. They are:
 
Steve Zaloga
Harry Yeide
Hilary Doyle
David Fletcher
Rob Griffin
Kenneth Estes
 
The series is called Operation Think Tank and consists of 12 episodes of approximately 20 minutes each.
 
Here´s episode 1:
 

The type of secondary and tertiary costs calculations lead to any number of bizarre results. I could mention how the electricity used for my computers is produced by spinning electromagnetic generators. The increased physical resistance of the increased electrical production produces torque. That torque is transferred to the Earth via the generator's foundation. That force, coupled with the rest of the increased production, is mostly located in the northern hemisphere. This unbalanced force on a rotating sphere is helping to counteract the Earth's gradual slowing rotation.
 
By playing CM, I am saving the Earth.
 
(And getting a bargain for the cost of entertainment, to boot.)
 

 
Ken

Just had this idea: How about making area fire more inaccurate?
 
The idea is that if you spot something with infantry,  you then want your tank to target it, but the tank hasn't spotted the enemy yet. So, you do an area target, but the tank then should target not only that 8x8m square, but all the other squares around it as well.
 
This would represent the tank not knowing exactly where the enemy contact is, and it's very difficult in the heat of battle to indicate the exact location.
 
But: if your tank receives an enemy contact marker through the chain of command, it should be able to target that marker, making its area fire work like targeting a single square. This would further strengthen the value of C2.
 
Area firing at a building should continue to work as it works now, as it would be more easy to direct fire at a specific building than just "fire at that spot on the hedgerow!"