opfor6

Well wasn't that a complete waste of time reading the last few posts. If you don't have anything better to do than try to start fights I feel sorry for you. The topic is Accuracy while firing on the move (or Fast) in CMBO. I didn't see the relevance to the topic in the last few messages. Let's try to stick to that.

I am not sure how the M18s spotted their targets for their hit and run missions. Most of my research shows the germans favored reverse slope defenses and hides to shelter their very few tanks from massed fire and Fighter bombers. I am sure the M18 was used as the book on the 704th describes but again that is a deviation from the normal tanks. The fact they had to design a vehicle like the M18 shows there was a problem with other vehicles being able to cope with firing accurately on the move against enemy AT defenses and AFVs. How the fire on the move for CMBB should be modelled should be a more general fix. Not aimed at tinkering with certain vehicles. The new game will have vehicles from several different countries and time periods (early to very late). Has anyone tried using faster German vehicles on the move? I am curious if the result is just not a Allied slanted item.

The M18 may well have done all that. It was designed to do that. But I am not convinced it was done routinely. Generally speaking to stalk tanks you move fairly slowly trying to find the enemy. Once the engagement starts you may lay on speed. But flying around the battlefield makes it very difficult to see anything. The german Hetzer was very small and hard to spot by Allied AT gunners even when they knew where it was. The crews would be able to worm the vehicle into amazingly inventive positions. These are both examples of deviations from the norm. If the M18 had an extra loader then it should not recieve as much of a reduction in ROF for movement. If the crews trained to fight on the move they should be portrayed as crack or veteran crews to gain a benefit because of that. For the average crews for all nations, at the very least, ROF at fast move should be reduced to simulate the difficulty to locate and lay on target as well as the difficulties in loading the main gun.

All the historical references are quite interesting to see. After spending nearly 20 years in the tanker business, seeing the changes in doctrine and gunnery skills required is amazing. These changes have evolved during a time period filled with alot of combat and a fairly mature weapon system concept. Computers and electronic simulations have given tank gunners a huge boost in performence. (Anyone that has had to sit in their tank practicing firing commands and targeting the motorpool guard shack or the radio towers on the hill knows what I mean.) Just imagine what happened during the WWII years. The only "tank" combat had been in WWI and was primitive at best. The book was being rewritten almost as fast as the crews threw it out. Each country had it's own doctrine based on the particular needs of their army. The limitations of their vehicles often drove the tactics. There are alot of myths out there about who was better at what. When it came down to it, it was training. Individual and unit training. The Germans were exceptionally good at transferring lessons learned to the troops. They had very very veteran crews and commanders in the units. They did not like to fire on the move because it wasted rounds and was generally not as effective as short halt. THe American and British spent much of their combat time on the offense. Firing on the move was going to be unavoidable. The Soviets believed that massed fires will supress and disorient the enemy. Accuracy was a luxury the crews would learn on the job. My solution for CMBB play is the same as I listed before. 1- At 500 meters or less a 14-20% is not that out of line...assuming the gunner can lay on target. 2- The acquisition/spotting percentage has to be greatly reduced for moving fast. This is the hard part of gunnery. Popping the cap once the croshairs are on target is easy. 3- Rate of fire should be reduced by 50% on a fast move order. The loader has a tough job trying to sit/stand, grab a new round and put it in the tube. (This by itself will help lessen the problem) 4- Machine Guns should suffer a major penalty for firing at fast speed. They do not have a real sight, they do not have stab and gunner is being bounced around like a pinball. 5- Crew quality should add a postive effect for the ability of an experience crew to co-ordinate for a better shot.

Steve, I understand about the various "Lab" conditions vs normal game conditions. My point is that acquiring and being able to lay the gun on target are the hard parts of firing on the move. The actual to hit and penetration etc of the shot does not seem to be that skewed...given that the gunner can see the target. For example if the tank is running over rolling terrain and the gunner kept oriented on the target, he could pop a cap when the crosshairs were on the target even for a moment. IF he hit is up to all the firing modifiers and how good he was. The absolute spotting problem can be overcome with a aquisition check that takes into account movement of target and shooter, terrain, crew quality, target size etc. This has to occur for each unit wanting to fire. Previous spotting by another unit should be a very small modifier. It is very hard to tell someone else where a target is with any accuracy especially in a combat situation with all the chatter on the radio. "MKIV in the woodline at your 11 O'clock" is about the best you can get. This does very little to help a gunner lay on target. It helps him to know where to search. But if he is rolling all over the place and is having trouble orienting his weapon the information turns into knowing what shot you. I real life we did not practice much on engaging short range targets. Primarily because it was closer that we would like to engage the enemy. Secondly because given the training times available the best use of time was to engage harder targets. For an M-1 a five hundred meter target looks like it is climbing up the front deck. The magnification on the WWII tanks was not as high.

I agree with the other former/current tank gunners, it should be very difficult to hit a point target over a few hundred yards away. A 14% rate is not that far out of the realm. A tank moving cross country will have short periods of time where the gun, the gunner and the target will all align. What is missing is the target acquisition phase of the engagement. If the gunner can acquire the target he should be able to hit it atleast 1.4 times out of ten shots. A rate of 3.3 times in ten is not bad IF the acquisition of the target is modelled accurately. The main problem in tank gunnery is finding the target and laying the gun on the target. After the trigger is pulled all the other stuff (temp, humidity, barrel whip, cant etc etc) takes effect. The higher the velocity the less effect the "other stuff" has. I found it interesting that many of the tests people ran had some sort of spotter placed to "see" the targets so the test firing tanks could get shots of at the right range. This is a basic flaw. NO ONE but the tank commander can spot for a tank gunner. He has to acquire and engage on his own. If you take this away from the equation everything is skewed. My suggestion for how to address this in CMBB is fairly straight forward. There needs to be an acquisition check of some sort for each vehicle before it can fire. The penalty for movement should be substantial. But if it does acquire then the ability to hit is ok in the current range. The Soviets will have to fire HE at area targets on the move if they want to get supressive effect. That is what they did and there is no need to acquire a woodline to your front. You lob rounds and they land based on the gunnery tables in CM area fire. IF they want to fire at point targets with any chance of hitting they will need to slow or stop. Again this mimicks real life as the Soviets found that HE suppresion did little to the German AFVs. Thus the change in doctrine between 42 and 44.

I agree with Treeburst. At 500 yds/m it should be very difficult to hit even if the ground is nice and level. Anybody that has tried to go cross country in anything but a M-1 or a Leo 2 at 20 MPH should know how uneven unprepared ground is. You spend most of your time trying not to bang against the inside of the vehicle. We could also get into barrel whip, cant, obscuration of the target due to muzzle blast and crew quality. It was mentioned early in the thread that a gunner could tell the driver to slow down or take it easy for a second so he could take a shot. This is a very valid point, a short stable period would allow a gunner to get a shot off. This period could be anthing from a slowing to finding a less bumpy path. I don't think it is very easy to model that in the CM graphics engine but could be accounted for in the formulas for crew quality. I have not checked the stats on this but I think the Stuart has a fast turret and Gyro. These are a very powerful combo. It allows for a quicker lay on target during those stable moments. Combine this with a fairly accurate gun and the somewhat lax spotting rules, bada bing, you have a nice platform. In my earlier post about TD tactics I tried to point out that tank hunters spend alot of time moving from one firing position to another. This is true on the attack as much as the defense. If there are no more worthy positions then a charge might be in order. Sending rounds down range as fast as possible whether on the move or stationary is preferrable to being passive and hoping the enemy doesn't pop you. I have not run any tests to prove or disprove the theories here. I only know what I have done and what has happened in games I have played. If you are someone that likes to send tanks out on fairly unrealistic moves to take a chance on a flank shot go for it.

I have fired gunnery in M60A1,M60A3,M1,M1A1,Leopard 2 and Bradley. Of these only the M60A1 was not fully stabilized. In most cases a stationary vehicle at 250 yards is going to get hit. Only if it is very rough would a crew miss a barn sized target like that with three shots. 13% or 14% (or 1.3 shots out of 10) is not very high given the risk the shooter takes getting that close and moving. What is happening is players are making very "gamey" tactics to take advantage of the fact there is no morale in vehicle units. I seriously doubt I could convince very many crews in my platoon or company to race their tank or AC at some stationary Panthers in the hopes of getting a 13% silver bullet shot. It would definately be harder after the Panthers killed the first few as they broke from cover in their charge. Allied TD crews were taught to move constantly. This was in large part due to the fact when you fired you drew attention to that area. If you fired more than once or twice from the same spot odds were that a highly trained enemy gunner would put a round into you. TDs did not have the armor to risk a hit. The Hellcats had the fast acceleration and speed to get from one firing position to another in a hurry. Not to make a dash at the enemy. If my Panther get that close to Allied tanks he has made a mistake as well. In most cases I have had experience with in CMBO stationary tanks rip up moving ones. The exceptions have been when there have been ALOT of enemy tanks (30) and the percentages are real bad for survival(13% x 30= not good). I agree with BTS that the code is correct for the scale. Moving 15-25 mph and getting a 13% chance of a hit at 250 yards is in the ballpark. The large drop off due to range is the key part. At 250 yards the target is much bigger and easier to track than at 400 or 500.

As a former tanker with the US army I have read this thread with some interest. While I was stationed in Germany I had the chance to talk to several WWII German tankers. The general substance of these long conversations was the following: The heavy armor was often employed on the Eastern front in carefully selected sites to offer the best fields of fire. They usually had rather sophisticated standard operating procedures for setting up the site including surveying of the firing arc. Crews were selected to fire at areas based on their skill level. It was not uncommon at all for crews to fire test rounds to get a feel for the drift at various ranges. When they were not set up in such a deliberate manner their engagement ranges were shortened except for the very "elite" crews that were allowed to try longer shots. In the attack the heavy tanks enjoyed the fact the Russian guns created such large smoke clouds. THe german gunners could acquire their attackers and fire fairly accurate return fires using short halt fire. The people I talked to were more of the opinion that the reason they outgunned the Russians in most situations was not because of the material factors but because of the human factors. A good Russian crew was just as dangerous as a good German one and vice versa. The general concensus was the Russian crews were not trained well enough and suffered for it. Veteran Russian tanks crews were fairly rare according to these gentlemen. They did not mention the sights as being one way or the other except to say that they could see the Russian at lower light levels than the Russians could see them. Leading to nasty early morning situations when the Russians were moving to a dawn attack thinking they were not visible in the gloom. They learned from their mistakes. They did not like the Russian tanks because of the "primitive" internal layouts and tendancy to have ammo explosions from AP hits. Evidently recovery of damaged tanks was very important and having them explode easily was frowned upon as bad design... Overall the impression I got was that the average German tanker thought the Russian tanker was not as well trained and attempted to take as much advantage of that fact as possible. My own experience as an M-1 tanker is that the better the FCS the easier it is to train the gunner/TC to hit the target. FCS is more than the optics. It is the layout of the controls, the stability of the gunmount, the speed of the turret and the drift of the gun after it set on target and fired. The ability to see the fall of the shell and re-engage quickly is crucial. This includes the loading of the gun and shell storage. Everything is inter-related.