cool breeze

Thank you nidan that is very helpful! seems a munch better deal to get one or two of those and some moderate mount of launchers instead of the normal bunch of launchers with only one shot each. The lack of reloads made me think the stingers were the much better system in game thanks for tracking those down for us!

rolled homogenous steel armour just a big vertical plate of whatever mm thickness

that sure is a nice looking explosion tho, so much more "meaty". The ones we got work alright for the normal calibers but the bigger stuff would be more fun if they looked more like that. Even just changing the dust so its more out sideways and up in a column. like you have the dust plume and the um dust disk, vertical and horizontal, more than the big dust spheres we have now. And its would be great if the dust was thicker and better defined before spreading, like each explosion could have a bunch of little dust spheres in an explosion like layout and then the would spread and drift from there, so it would go from "meaty", opaque, and well defined; to big, diffuse, and drifting. Maybe they could just add a bunch of smoke sources per explosion, change the parameters of each smoke bit so it works, and make it happen without a total overhaul of the graphics engine.

Panzer, I see what your saying but I wonder if the radar guidance might work without LOS, like can't those modern radar arrays set up their sub elements to make crazy interference patterns that let them make not straight lines with the radar "beams"? Or are the "beams" all going straight and the array just lets you point many of them in deferent precisely chosen directions in the frontal arc? I've been under the impression it was the former case but I could easily be wrong and the latter idea is much more in line with the basic electromagnetics stuff I learned in school

What is this Proving Grounds of which you speak? Great work on the website will use! Thanks!

Thanks panzersaurkrautwerfer point very well made, the picture you posted speaks volumes. USA Thermals and image processing seem far better. Still I think the point I made stands, the Russian imager would probably be easier to read in real life than it is in the pic. And while your comparison photo certainly proves ours are more sensitive, the fact that the pic from the Russian one has a hot object while the pic you posted doesn't makes the exposure issue more pronounced in the Russian pic. Now that we talked about al this stuff it would be interesting to see a pic from the russian imager when everything is cold

Some day we will probably get more specialty AT arty and bombs. Don't Russia and the US have a lot of smart AT DPICM? Im thinking about the kinds that deploy the hockey puck smart bomblets that look for their own target to hit 'em with HEAT from the top or EFP from the top.

Thanks for the pics BTR, I think those re exactly what we were looking for. panzersourkrautwerfer, I think it should be remembered that those screens are probably a lot more readable in real life than this picture in a picture. Our eyes are VERY good at seeing things in a HUGE range of different brightnesses, while cameras need to pick an aperture setting and stick to it for the picture. So the details in the dark and light areas on the screen are both washed out and harder to see than in real life. with a camera you can only show the light or dark in good detail, not both.

Dang Jargon that was so deep and good I want to give it TWO thumbs up. It's like I just climbed a mountain to meet a guru and heard the words of wisdom. Although I gotta admit I kinda already knew those particular things (not that I follow them Anywho great post and appropriately positioned if you catch my drift. And Mord I'd give you 2 thumbs ups too because that cracked me up hard was hilarious. Wisdom comes with time. I would really like it if everyone would update their profile with their age, might be interesting what kind of patterns we would find. I'm going to update mine if it's not already.

I also thought the pics were some kind of simulation of what it should look like, I mean it didn't look like a picture of a screen in the tank. Of course that would give an unfair representation of the image quality in its own way, because it would then be double distorted, picture of a picture. But it also seems unfair to look at it blown up on my 40 inch or whatever this is HD tv, I don't think they have those in the t-90.

Does anyone want to agree with me about Valley of Death being a hard map to defend on and kind of an easy one to attack on? What about my assessment that Huge Rough Water Town is a better balanced map to take on the USA at long range?

Well the 120mm DID immobilize the Bradley, so although the engine wasn't destroyed like we would expect the net result was similar... not trying to defend the game particularly but the damage model for artillery seems in the right ballpark. 152/155 severely damages tanks and will destroy them with enough round in the area, while !20 mm severely damages IFVs and will destroy them with enough rounds in the area. enough 120mm mortar will substantially damage tanks and maybe a lucky hit on a weak tank will destroy it. 152/155 easily destroys IFVs and can severely damage them with not many in the general area. I use something like IanL suggest and the result seem reasonable overall. to destroy a tank I'll use 3 precision rounds of 155/152 and cross my fingers, or sometimes will use a short high intensity regular point fire mission. killing abrams with the krasnopol is a little iffy so I might shoot 6 precision rounds or double up with 2 regular heavy point missions or whatever. against IFVs I'll send one 155/152 for an almost guaranteed out of action or quite a few more 120mm rounds for less expected result. If I shoot 6 guided 120mm rounds at an IFV I expect it to be out of action. 6 120mm at a tank and I expect some system degradation. The upside of shooting some extra rounds is sometimes you hit other guys in the area. Oh and I shoot the short heavy non guided missions with the 120mm on the IFVs too like I do with tanks with 155/152. ..... Im starting to thing I might have myself a little confused here and be thinking more about the 122 howitzers. not all the mortars are accurate enough to be that good at it, some of them can barely even hit building so I save 'em more for trees. it seems like the American guided mortar rounds are similarly accurate or less to the 155 unguided.

I noticed those Barrier ATGM's not firing much too. which is a shame because the BTR4E is one of the coolest vehicles in the game in my opinion. I don't find them particularly effective, the spotting seems weak, BUT they look hella cool and I dig those remote turrets, feels great to have em fight hull down and safely absorb a bunch of disabling fire.

Sburke , I think Agusto was just having fun trying to start a debate about the comparative merits of communism and capitalism and such, not actually agreeing with wiggum in any general sense, just pointing out that wiggum sort of brought up an "interesting" philosophical issue. Which would be a more interesting point than trying to convince wiggum that its a good game or whatever. Not sure why wiggum bothers with these posts tho, lel, well responded to anyway guys.

I played as the Russians on this scenario a couple times and quite a few quickbattles, mostly vs. the AI. I was using it to try to figure out how to take on the Abrams and Bradley at long range. After a fair amount of "experimentation" I came to the conclusion that that scenario and map give a terrible representation of Russia's abilities to take on the USA in that kind of scenario. The main thing is that the attackers have better map position than the defenders. The attackers are repeatedly coming online, all at once, all hulldown, all above the Russians, while the Russians are all not-hulldown, mostly on a forward slope maybe hiding in some tree cover but not very deep, and generally are being taken on piecemeal. I think in the scenario its actually more than one platoon of Abrams, but either way the Bradley are quite potent with those big ranges. I think the Abrams also have better crews, and each tank has an extra guy spotting in it. Anyway I really don't think you should draw any conclusions about the Russians at long range on that map. Besides the attacker having the better side of the river, the map is super narrow, so you don't get the flanking shots that are so helpful against the Abrams. If I really want wreck some long range hurt of some Abrams and Bradleys (modern day big game hunting) I load up the huge square-ish map with the swampy winding river in the middle Just looked it up cause im so nice. Huge Rough-Water-Town 3040 x 2000 this map has the long range but also has proper defender advantage with lots of great hull down positions and lots of chokepoints to defend from multiple angles, and did I mention wide enough to shoot from multiple angles? I have a hard time putting a map like valley of death in a like context that makes sense to me. like why is it so narrow why doesn't the stuff over there matter? and why cant the defenders just start farther back where it is higher and hulldown? I like maps that don't seem to be leaving out any important stuff. Huge Rough-Water-Town does a great job of that, while I felt that valley of death did not. And no offense intended to the maker of valley of death... I do like it, you got me to play in quit a few times. But I would like it better if another 100 or more meters were added on the back of the defenders zone to give hulldown positions.

Ok granted, but against an MBT I can see it mattering whether the nose was sharp and metal vs. glass and flat

Oh lol THATS what it was. That pic cracked me up when I saw it but when I saw it got removed I got really curious and was about to ask what it was lol. now I remember. I was just thinking about the meme and laughing while driving around today, thanks for posting it despite the butthurt eyed complainer. I'm with you Sublime about Russia not being that bad in PBEM. I mean you have to be careful to pick a map appropriate force but in the right circumstances they can be very formidable. I find they do a lot better on the more urban maps where the fighting is more chaotic and rpgs and cheaper infantry can be more dominant. My opponent and I are pretty evenly matched, been playing al the CMx2 games tcp/ip with each other, and I haven't noticed any of the CMBS nationalities particularly dominating across the board in our games, its been more about who had the better force pick or plan/execution. Oh, and does the t-90a's eyeball really have pupils or were those photo shopped in? oh dang lol and it looks like I got confused about which thread this was lol oops

Yeah I think what antaress73 says is modeled, the krasnopol seem to me to have much less penetration than Excalibur. Still messes things up but I'll shoot more rounds and expect less to sink in.

I was going to suggest the BTR route when I aw you already did. I find them by far the best deal when I want a good amount of infantry especially on the defense. The spotting is pretty bad but I don't honestly notice that much because I usually use em at very short range, say behind the buildings the infantry they carried are infesting, but covering the crossroad they are ready to ambush. I try to make em just a big gun in the infantry squad laying low till the right time as much as possible. With all the money you save on the btrs vs bmps you can buy more tanks (or btrs with more inf). Plus the ATGM units that come in the btr groups are great. bmps are more cool on the attack tho, style points count. The BMPs and BTRs seem to me more Fire Support Vehicles that Fighting Vehicles. The Btr give more fire support for the price, and it leves more points for the real fighting vehicles.

also terrain objectives are worth more vs casualties in Assault vs attack and probe. conversely in probe the terrain is worth the least and the casualties the most.

Beat ya to it, I already made a thread about Arena intercepting T-heat rounds and we came to the same conclusion

Woot! I did'nt want to sound worried so I kept it shut but I'm glad your back! Long Live Emrys!

I think some of the guns have built in suppressors which may be confusing the issue

But sometimes I'll do it anyway. Gotta be a "team player" they say. UNIT BEHAVIOR: Troops will now "Cower" less readily after being shot at if they are in a low suppression state. Small arms fire and ricochets from friendly units will no longer cause units using the Hunt command to stop moving. Units are better at targeting the exposed portions of a hulldown vehicle. Units with handheld AT weapons are more willing to attack APS-equipped vehicles on their own without needing an explicit Target command. IFVs (such as BMPs or Bradleys) are now better at choosing the optimal weapon system for engaging enemy IFVs. In most cases this means that they will favor immediate use of autocannons over ATGMs. FIXED: Vehicles with a dismounting vehicle commander (such as a BMP's squad leader who also doubles as a vehicle commander) not getting the proper benefit of having a trained crew commander when the leader was in the vehicle. FIXED: Passengers in the bed of a M1152 Humvee not recognized as valid small arms targets. FIXED: Infantry on the move that had their next waypoint adjusted would sometimes turn around and run back to the last waypoint before continuing with their orders. See, toldya it was in the patch notes well sorta. but since spotting is a two way street in this game, I think maybe this means things can spot better from hulldown too maybe? anyway that's what it seemed like last game, I had a krysanthema that shot its whole ammo load at near minimum range of around 1 km (and then the launch tubes got shot up, seemed different than before). and it was out unnumbered and facing Brads and Abrams head on. Oh and something worth noting I noticed, is I think the best positions for atgms and other things like that may be hulldown in the short grass. We are naturally inclined to get em in hulldown positions with good concealment... but I think that works to their disadvantage. The concealment blocks the view unless they get the hull high enough to see over it. but then the hull isn't covered by the cover, only the concealment, and you glow up. if intead you place it hulldown but with only tiny/short concealment, then you can see clearly while hulldown behind solid earth. and their arn't any bushes or trees messing up LOF/LOS so the missiles hit more.

Of course speculating is more fun, I almost always state my vague recollections of half a quote rather than look something up. Unless its just a few pages back in a shallow thread like this and by shallow I mean not 100 pages. Sublime you should really just bust em out and experience it for yourself I think it feels a lot better in patch 1.03