Bone_Vulture

Try to evaluate the probability of your mortars falling under counter-battery fire: there's no point in using a dedicated spotter for the mortars, if there's no risk of them coming under fire. If you're confident that your enemy won't target it's own artillery at your mortars, then the company HQ will probably serve you better in the front. Also note that only company HQ or higher can rally squad leaders: this can prove to be a crucial factor when attacking.

Probably just tough luck. I've noticed that tanks can go on an incredible streak of resilience, especially against small caliber gun fire. My KV-1 '40 took some five upper hull / turret front penetrations from a German 50mm AT gun, and survived without a single crew casualty. The crew obviously panicked, but otherwise the tank was like brand new.

As it has been already mentioned, the most likely reason for placing the mag on the side might've been to allow the weapon a minimal profile. But do understand that it's alot harder to design an automatic feed mechanism for the powerful rifle round, than the measly (in comparison) 9mm parabellum round.

I was about to say that, but I didn't want to sound like a nitpicker.

If I had to make an uneducated guess, I'd say the biggest factor would be that the designed mechanism wasn't sophisticated enough to allow feeding from below.

Fine, I'm willing to go for that. But was the FG42 really used while assaulting? Or was it more like a stationary support weapon? Fired from prone position, etc.? [ February 10, 2004, 05:19 PM: Message edited by: Bone_Vulture ]

What must the answers be so complicated? The PBEM file hierarchy is following (bar the starting turn, when both need to send orders) 1) Only orders 2) Only movie 3) Movie & orders [start over]

About as "whatever" as the difference between a Bren and an M-16.

An auto rifle, people, not an assault rifle.

There biggest problem is the velocity of the projectile... It's more like lobbed than fired. Try hitting moving armor beyond 100 meters.

Heh, I've clipped a PzIV with a SU-76 too. It's the turret shot that kills.

Meh, I just noticed that the curve can only be adjusted downwards, depending on the target's cover. Otherwise you'll rake casualties with a blast value of zero. It's difficult to have an anywhere near accurate graph, since there are so many factors. Does the protection provided by cover increase geometrically with the reduction of the blast value? How exactly are the casualties calculated? A base chance for each member of the team? :confused:

I wonder where my original response went? Ah well, this graph is available at some other thread as well, I think.

Try Google... I'm sure these patches are available at Fileplanet, for instance.

Goddamnit, I feel like drawing a graph... :mad:

See my last post. The point was that when assaulting a tank, the damage is based on whether you hit the tank with the "thrown" AT weapon, although the throwing itself is an abstraction. And I assumed that a grenade is handled as an individual object that causes damage by proximity, and not by whether it "hits" the target infantry.

No problem. I think that all thrown projectiles are simulated as individual objects: the grenade bundle is a good example. Destroying a tank with one is a hit/miss spiel. But even if the bundle misses, the computer calculates it's "trajectory", and a landing spot. Any soft targets near this spot are likely to suffer.

I never thought of this before, but... Are the blast / firepower values supposed to be directly comparable? Also, are hand grenades modeled like all ballistic projectiles in CM, or are they an abstraction, like the tank assaults?

As the Cruiser / Matilda series tanks clearly exhibit, the Brits had an odd policy regarding tanks and HE ammunition.

That raises a question: I've never read of any signicant Soviet airborne operations during WW2. Germans and the western Commonwealth allies had their historical paratrooper operations in western Europe, but what about Russia?

Yeah, I kinda figured as much after witnessing some half a dozen top penetrations on open vehicles , with no damage whatsoever.

It's ineffective?! :eek:

I wager an important factor in CM:BB combined arms tactics is to keep the probing infantry within an "arm's reach" of the armor. Meaning that the tanks are keyholed, but still have a field of fire wide enough to allow supporting the infantry when they get caught up in ambushes.

The "cherry picking" claim is very much true. If the Stug / PzIV prices were reversed, I'd go for the PzIV. In the current price model, I'll go for the more durable, cheap tank.

What comes to the conflicts between my tactics and JasonC's, it really boils down to game engine mechanics. As stated earlier, the PzIV might be a victim of the hit distribution system. Personally, I find most of my tanks being destroyed by ambush shots, where the tank is pounded before it can return fire. Thus, I feel that the tank requires enough armor to survive several direct hits. Not an über-armor, though, but just enough to make it probable that the tank will shrug of the shots. I see this happening with late Stugs, not PzIV's.