ww2steel

Hello everyone! I have been working on a project for a while and have decided to release it to everyone. I have designed an Excel Spreadsheet and entered all of the data for armor thickness and angle and all of the gun data for all guns in the game (not small arms). It's complicated to program, but fairly straight forward to understand. (refer to the attached image - this is the user page) These graphs show a simplified ratio of relative gun performance to armor thickness. It interpolates the gun performance for losses in penetration over range AND armor angle. (It does frontal engagements only, for now.) For example 100mm of penetration on an armor plate that is 100mm thick is 100%. 50mm penetration is 50%... and so on. Thousands of trials that I have done show that with a % less than 90% very few penetrations (including partial) occur, such as weak points. The worst you normally get is some spall. Above 110% there is over 90% chance of penetration. At 125% there is over 90% chance of full penetration, with either full penetration or complete ricochet. If you look at the included and highly unfair example... On the left we have selected the Ferdinand with APCBC ammo, on the right a T-34M43 with APBC. On the Ferdinand, the turret and upper hull are at only 40%. THIS IS NOT A 40% CHANCE OF PENETRATION! This is a 0% chance of penetration! (There is of course a 5% chance of damage to external drive gear or primary weapons system.) You can see that the more heavily sloped lower hull is much more resistant to penetration versus this ammo type. As for the T-34, you can see that up to 2km in range there is a very good chance that a hit to any part of the front of this vehicle will penetrate. There is an irrelevant, but lower percentage for the highly sloped hull. This gives you a quick and easy visual reference of which frontal surface are vulnerable and at what range. Remember of course that there are many other variables such as accuracy and rate of fire that determine the outcome, but it's great for figuring out safety & danger envelopes and determining shot for shot who has an advantage. It does show the numerical figures on another part of the screen if you want to view them as well. The program is complete. I am just entering all of my data which is taking a long time, but I am nearly done. All I request is a $5 donation to my website. I will email the file to you. If you have already made a donation to my website, remind me and I will gladly send you the file right away. As new data gets entered I will send out new versions of the file as soon as they are complete. If interested, shoot me an email: mdows@ww2steel.com My website: www.ww2steel.com Thanks! Mike

HOLY COW! Thanks!

I know this isn't completely CMBB related... I am making a set of dummy large caliber ammo for German and Soviet tank guns and field guns. Does anyone know a good resource for markings, coloration, etc of these ammo types. Measurements are of utmost importance too. Does anyone remmeber if Aberdeen has the bigger ammo inside in their display? Thanks for any input! Mike [ April 30, 2007, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ]

I am going through all of the BMPs of the infantry weapons and the only one I cannot locate in the game is number 25000, a shiny pistol that looks like a TT-33. Has anyone noticed this one being used? (The only other two are the dark TT-33 and the P-38 looking axis generic pistol.) Thanks, Mike

In my experience, yes - I just had a truck towing one get surprised by a T-34 and a KV-1. It 'deposited' the gun right at the back of the truck where it was. (It was promptly destroyed, the truck escaped.) Mike

Thanks KG I am finishing up a good Italian book that covers everything they fielded. Should be out soon. Mike

Thanks guys, it will have to come out in book form. My trial with the Hungarian Book (for which I did not expect much interest) has been downloaded 130 times with only one $3 donation towards me hosting it. Given the much larger size of the other files it seems hardly worth the time to convert my notes to a 'finished product'. Regardless, it is entertaining to do and a good way to study things I normally would not. (Like the Italian equipment I am doing now.) I still intend to do a book form, but the game might seriously be an antique by then. I may also distribute it by CD. Who knows. See ya, Mike

Hi, The reason there is so much misinformation out there is that so many people keep posting 'results' after only doing twenty or so tests. I have 3000+ kilometers of tests and I still post my information as being still in the testing phase. Fast does cause increased bogging potential, but it seems only in certain terrains, such as scattered trees. That is another reason there are so many mixed results (such as the no reverse bogging myth, which in some circumstances is actually the worst way to travel by both speed and immobilizations). The more tests I do, the more I find that the mobility process is quite complex. IMO, changing the movement order has no effect once a vehicle gets bogged... but I do it anyway. Mike

Uhu - thank you so much for this information. You are making me really glad I have posted this book, because my data is going to be enhanced in many ways. Thank you for this data! Thanks to everybody for their help! We just moved into a new house, so my comms will be as slow as a buttoned KV-2. Feel free to shoot me an email: mdows@ww2steel.com Mike

Hi, the shot above is clearly a resize, but the book uses original size screenshots, though rearranged to fit in a more book functional method. Also I flipped the data block to a negative, so you won't use all of your toner on one book. I met with a guy today about my new shop (what the rest of my website is based on). It is fun picking it out... maybe a 40*50' will be big enough for my projects? Anyway... more books as soon as I can do 'em. Mike

Sweet! I'll use that. I will keep the Word version too, so people can add their own notes and customize their book, but for the people that do not have the latest copy of Word, the pdf is great. Thanks! Mike

The current version is saved in office 2003 format. Older versions of Word will probably have problems, but I would quickly exceed even the high bandwidth restrictions of my server if I started posting the older Word files that are 80 - 120mb. Just this 25 page file saved in 97/2003 format is 73.9mb. I could save it as an html, but you'd have to manually set up your printer to get it to print right... no biggie I guess. I'm going to look more into pdfs. Thanks, Mike

Hi, I saved it in this Word format because when I did so by accident the size dropped from 79mb to 2.2mb. For some reason if it is saved as an older Word format it makes even jpg pics into .bmp format inside the document, causing a huge file size. Cool website. I was not aware of its existance, but I also had no reason to look. There are three reasons I released the Hungarian units first. One, primarily, it's only a 25 page file, and my biggest problem is file size. The German and Soviet files like this are each 100+ mb. The second reason, is that if I get like 200 downloads and no donations, then the 'more desirable' stuff will stay firmly on my hard drive, to be released in a 'you must pay' book; but I don't think this will be a problem. Third, I am interested to see if people want the secondary countries' data tabulated out. I personally have little interest in them (well, maybe just not enough to spend the time to compile this sort of thing). I'll see if I can figure out a better method to get you pics! A pdf would be great! Is there and way that I can build one without having to pay (if I remember it was kind of expensive) for Acrobat? I will be researching this today, as I have no experience with building a .pdf. Thanks for the feedback, Mike [ August 26, 2006, 09:45 AM: Message edited by: ww2steel ]

I just finished the first version of my Hungarian vehicles and armor for download from my website. It is free to download, but please donate, these take time and money to assemble and make available! My CMBB downloads Enjoy, Mike [ August 26, 2006, 07:18 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ]

I just finished the first version of my Hungarian vehicles and armor for download from my website. It is free to download, but please donate, these take time and money to assemble and make available! My CMBB downloads Enjoy, Mike [ August 26, 2006, 07:15 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ]

I found this on a WWII armor website: In March of 1944 Germany occupied Hungary and forced them to commit all their armored units to the front. How accurate is this? I can't find much info on the Hungarian H39. Did Germany sell them to them presumably? Thanks, Mike

...actually I just doube checked. Combined with a small amount of CMBO stuff it is 967mb and 452 files! Mike [ August 25, 2006, 11:12 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ]

Bury the project as in not release the data? Any chance you are doing or have done something similar? What is FIYO? Mike [ August 25, 2006, 03:54 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ]

Hello, I decided today that instead of waiting to finish my epic, great wall of China style book and trying to sell it I am going to try perhaps a better approach. I have about 400 pages and 300+mb of data pertaining primarily to the armor, vehicles, and guns of CMBB. I was wanting to release a grand vehicle guide that I arranged with Battlefront over 2 years ago. The two problems- they wanted me to foot the bill for printing several thousand (full color) copies before sales began, and that the types of data am collecting continues to expand greatly in scope to 'just about everything a tank can do in just about any situation'. Given that both of these are fairly prohibitive to completing/ releasing the book I have been working on for about 3 years now (since whenever CMBB came out) I have decided to do it this way: I will progressively be releasing more and more data as I can carve away greatly on file size. Just one of my two German armor books is about 90% complete... at 115mb. I am changing the picture formats and should be able to get it down to a more readily downloadable 50+-mb. If I get a fair number of donations, I will continue to release this data. By donations I am talking about a small amount. $5, $2, whatever. Everything is absolutely appreciated. My website service alone costs me $280 annually (though I do use it for a few other things, mainly to show people my projects!). You can download it for free. If you think it's worth anything, please kick something back to me. Nothing new has been posted recently, but as I make big additions to what is downloadable I will post it here! I am working on a large Hungarian vehicle file recently. My CMBB page. See ya, Mike [ August 26, 2006, 07:17 PM: Message edited by: ww2steel ]

LOL Man you guys are wierd! ...why can't I stop reading these? Mike

Andreas, same thing happened to me yesterday. All I got were 2 40mm AT and a 37mm PaK. I got rolled on by 3* T-34s and 5* T-70, assorted armored cars and about a company of infantry. (I was security forces). I managed to take out a T-70 and a few armored cars, and the mud claimed a T-34 for me. At 17% victory... I got stomped! Thanks for the info, very interesting! Mike

Mar'43 - Mar'44, where are all of the Hungarian armored vehicles? Is it due to the losses at Stalingrad? I never really paid too much attention to them until a couple recent battles. Thanks, Mike

Crud, looks like I'm going to be playing CMBB for a couple more years. Maybe an expansion might cover urban terrain like Stalingrad or Berlin, or a fictional Moscow, that would post code this ToW. That would be cool. The demo may be awesome enough that I'll still buy it... but the building thing... well, we all know how I feel. Thanks for listening, Mike

I'm glad it's on there, I'm sure it will be fun and I will use it, and I'm sure they will code the gameiness out of it. As Martin has said- it will be fun but most possibly not tactically sound. Still, Köhler has a point. Why bother coding this feature which is geared more like BF1942, than coding enterable buildings (very important to me), mortars (not so important to me), or working on a much bigger task like a QB generator or an editor. Even if we won't buy the game because of these oversights, we hang out here because we hope that they will be fixed before release because the game looks really beautiful. I just want it realistic too. Mike

Good tactics, Evzone, and all comply with my testing. The only thing I have not tested is how to recover from getting bogged. (It's hard to get enough vehicles bogged at the same time to complie a significant amount of data in any time efficient manner. For a while it seemed that pushing a vehicle with another vehicle would give about a 20% better chance of unditching the bogged one, but even the 100+ tests I did does not have a high confidence of significance. I do not think that alternating R/M commands helps, but that didn't stop me from issuing them last night to a SdKfz250/8 that was in trouble! Thanks for the compliment on the web site. Mike