Neuer Art

*bump* and an update: Last night, I decided to place a small victory flag on the German side of the causeway, and a major victory flag on the German edge of the map, (where the paved road exited, to simulate a rapid Russian advance into the German rear areas). The Tac-AI advanced some infantry squads across the causeway, with several tanks (2 T-34/85's of veteran status and a SU-85 of regular status) following closely. Despite HMG and arty fire, several squads made it to the German side of the river, along with both T-34's (the SU-85 having been immobilized by an arty shell, then abandoned). These units captured the minor victory flag, but then the infantry squads got pinned down in house-to-house fighting in a small clump of shacks along the road. Both T-34's went on ahead into the open floodplain - and then just milled around, presenting no supporting fire for the pinned infantry (no clear LOS was present), and not advancing on to the major victory flag, which was some 400m away. Eventually both T-34's were taken out by a Puppchen hidden in some scattered woods 300m away. A reinforcing platoon of T-34/85's that arrived on the scene were likewise destroyed, both by the Puppchen and a Panzerschreck team, while they drove around aimlessly near the minor victory flag. The game then ended. Obviously, I'll need to skew the game balance more towards the Russians if I'm to play a satisfactory game against the Tac-AI. The entire time the victory points were in favor of the Germans, but if the Russians had captured the major victory flag, they could've won the game or at least forced a draw. Anyone have any insights on how to make the Tac-AI realize the difference between a minor victory flag and a major flag, and to go for the real deal? Would bumping the tanks' or infantry's experience to Crack or Elite make the AI more aggressive in advancing on the major victory flag, or would placing lots of cover along the entire route serve as a hand-holding method of encouraging the AI to move out?

I think the availability of close air support depended on the situation and time. There were occasions where Stuka strikes could be requested through the battalion net to pummel Soviet assaults, such as during the struggle for Seelow Heights in April 1945. On an aside, it's interesting to read the stories of Stuka pilots such as Hans Ulrich Ruder, where they mentioned their preference for ground attacks towards the German side of the front line. That way if their aircraft was hit badly, they were already heading back towards friendly territory before having to bail out.

This is related to a post I made a few days ago about the reluctance of the Tac-AI to send its tanks across a heavy bridge, even if that route was the only way across a river [see "AI Tanks and Scary Bridges (Revisited) elsewhere in this forum for a more detailed explanation]. I decided to replace the bridge with a one-tile-wide paved road that crossed the river, essentially creating a causeway. The AI-controlled Russian tanks still stopped on the Russian side of the causeway, while the Russian infantry moved out along the causeway. I then placed a victory flag on the middle of the causeway to try and lure the AI-controlled tanks onto the causeway. This worked, but the tanks still stopped as soon as the victory flag was Russian-controlled, regardless of whether it was a tank or infantry that did the controlling. I did not have time to experiment further, but this AI behavior made me wonder: Does it make any difference to the AI if the victory flag is a small one or a large one? That is, will the AI behave differently in each case? Will the AI stop once it's controlled a small victory flag, even if there's a large one also on the map which is not under the AI's control? Will the AI be more aggressive if the victory flags are under enemy (i.e., my) control rather than being controlled by neither side (neutral gray with question mark)?

Good points made about armor not advancing without infantry suppport. I was thinking of the blitzkrieg days of the 1940 French campaign, and the opening months of Barbarossa the following year, when it was not uncommon for Panzer spearheads to outpace the supporting columns of infantry, in their haste to cover as much ground as possible and to perform the encircling operations for which they were famous. I'd envisioned a scenario where the Russians attempted to do the same in pushing their armor across the bridge to capture it and to exit from the board on the far side. From reading this and related topics, apparently the AI is too cautious and methodical to do lightning strikes. On something of a tangent, perhaps one of the experienced modders could alter the appearance of a paved road BMP so it looks like a low bridge or even a causeway, with water lapping up against its sides? That way we could model bridge scenarios where the AI is less reluctant to send across its armor when it "sees" a section of road, not a bridge.

Being a fan of the smaller, quicker scenarios, I decided to create one taking place in June 1944, where the Russians needed to take a heavy bridge spanning a river about 100m wide. The sole victory flag was on the German end of the bridge. There was no other way to get across the river. The Germans (a depleted mountain infantry company with a pair of HMG's) had some daisy-chain mines at both ends of the bridge, and were hidden along a forested ridge some 300m from the river. I had the AI control the Russians, which included a full mixed-arms company with three veteran AFV's (a SU-85 and a pair of T-34/85's). The scenario was a Russian Assault, and the Russians started out along the single paved road on the map, in some pine forests. The Russian infantry managed to reach the bridge before being forced back by HMG fire. The SU-85 was taken out by a recoilless 105mm gun before the latter was knocked out, and the two T-34's reached the Russian end of the bridge, at which point they just ... stopped. And parked. For 14 turns! The whole time, my German infantry was in waiting in ambush, with only the now-defunct 105mm RG and the two HMG's firing. I know the bridge was passable, as the road was level with the bridge and the Russian infantry was able to reach the center span, but the two tanks just ... sat. And sat. And ... yes, sat some more (and they were undamaged and definitely mobile, as they would occasionally rotate to try and find the HMG teams). I then edited the scenario to remove the daisy-chain mines, but the results were much the same, with the tanks parking at the near end of the bridge while the infantry actually made it to the far end before retreating. I know this has been mentioned in previous posts, but I wanted to let you folks know of yet another occurrence of AI-controlled tanks seemingly unwilling to cross a heavy bridge. What IS it about bridges that has the Russians so scared - some old wife's tale about trolls under the bridge or something??

Perhaps you're thinking of modern-day reactive armor? It's an armor design that uses a layer of PBx explosive overlaid with an angled metal plate. When an anti-tank round with a shaped charge, such as most shoulder-mounted AT missles use, hits the armor and projects its highly focused jet of molten metal, the PBx underneath the impact point explodes and pushes the angled plate out into the path of the jet, deflecting the latter's energy away from the hull of the tank. It's proven to be fairly effective within the parameters of the armor's design, and sometimes is fitted to AFV's such as the Bradley. Here is a link if you'd like to read more about this technology.

John, very thoughtful response here and in your previous post. You make a good point about the different factors involved in "behind-armor lethality." I agree that it could get cost-ineffective to try modelling for the nuts and bolts (no pun intended) of these factors, while other issues could be more readily and more significantly addressed. However, I can't imagine that for AFV's with riveted armor, it would be all that difficult to assign an armor protection value of, say, -1% or -5%, depending on the relative number of reported injuries caused by ricocheting rivets. That shouldn't take more than a couple of hours, and probably would be negligible to the point of someone asking "I had a Pzkw 38(t) that was frontally hit by a grenade with no significant damage, yet my commander was killed. Why??" Just one of the rare and odd variables that make for unusual and often tragic results in war.

Pud, it would make sense to me; if the rivets were to come apart under fire, the armor sheets could come loose, producing gaps and a degradation in protection and in crew morale, to say nothing of injuries. Interesting to see that this drawback, which was noted in WW1, was not wholly eliminated via the use of welded armor for at least another 25 years.

Ok, I decided to look online for references to the ricocheting rivet phenomenon, and found several: Pzkw 38(t) (fourth paragraph) M22 Locust (third paragraph) US/British Mk. VIII Heavy Tank (WW1) (caption of Picture 5) Report on US Army Provisional Tank Group in the Phillipines (see 27.26/27 December entry for reference to wounding of a tank crewman with a rivet in his throat; the tank involved was an M3 Stuart with riveted armor) Those are just a few of the numerous references that I found online regarding the danger of ricocheting rivets inside a tank that has been hit by a sizeable shell. The shell in question did not even have to be of an anti-tank design; the wounding of the crewman in the fourth reference was caused by a field gun firing HE rounds (this incident was also documented in other online references). So, the issue of riveted armor could be significant enough to POSSIBLY warrant modelling in CMBB, along the lines of a slight increase in the likelihood of the crew being wounded or forced to abandon the tank after a hit. Just a thought, mind you. I welcome any and all serious responses ... thanks!

John, thanks for the response. My query was posted in a moment of introspect, not one of criticism, though you're probably right in that I should've rustled up the citation I had in mind when posing the question. I think it was in Tank by Mackesey and Batchelor, but as I don't have it anymore, I'm not positive. I remember reading that riveted armor plate was phased out in favor of welded plate in part due to the ricocheting of rivets inside the tank after a hit (other reasons being it was cheaper and easier to weld). Anyone who's heard likewise?

After playing a scenario set in June 1941 where the Germans lost two Pzkw 38(t)'s in a row to gunfire from a T-26S, while their sole Pzkw IIc subsequently took several hits and still managed to knock out the T-26, I got to wondering. In modelling the efficiency of armor in the game, does CMBB take into consideration the effects of direct hits on riveted armor [such as the 38(t) has], where the rivets sometimes popped out and ricocheted around the interior of the tank? (For the record, both 38(t)'s were 300-350m away, with flank shots on the T-26, and the IIc later got within 200m front to front; all four crews were Regular; and all four tanks were fully exposed to one another).

Folks, thanks for the excellent answers to my question. It makes perfect sense now. Pity the game's engine can't display individual soldiers actually affixing magnetic AT mines to the tank's hull, or slapping a sticky bomb onto its running gear. Wouldn't it be cool if the game could display a scene similar to the one of the Rangers and 101st AB troopers swarming all over the Tiger in "Saving Private Ryan" ? Even with the poorly timed sticky bomb and flying body parts ...

I see what you folks are saying about an abstract representation. Does this mean that the image of an AT charge flying through the air between the AT team (yes, two men) and the targeted tank could possibly be a representation of one of the two men going up and affixing a magnetic mine to the hull of the tank, but we just don't see the actual act? I'd confirm whether it was a Hohlandung or a Panzerwerfer (magnetic vs. thrown), but the team was killed immediately after their attack, so I couldn't check their weapon loadout afterwards.

Do you mean that the distance displayed along the red LOS from attacker to target, is only a loose estimation of the actual distance, even when both attacker and target are stationary?

Last night, I was playing a scenario that took place in the summer of '42, with a Russian armor assault on some prepared German infantry positions. During the nighttime turns, a Russian tankette got into the German lines, so I ordered an anti-tank team to assault the tankette from a house about 60 meters away. The AT team advanced through a wheatfield onto the tankette's flank, and at a distance of 19 meters, stopped and started flinging AT explosives. I'm not sure exactly what they threw, but it stopped the tankette cold. It got me wondering though about the apparent superhuman abilities of AT team members. From what I can recall, the Haft Hohlandung weighed some 8 lbs and were actually designed to be attached to the hull, not thrown. The Panzerwerfer charges weighed more, if I'm not mistaken. Could an average soldier of the time actually throw an 8-lb-plus charge 19 meters, after running some 40 meters through mature wheat? He should be signed up with the Oakland Raiders as their new quarterback, or else become the star shotputter at the next Olympic Games ...