SlapHappy

From an Axis History website: "In the DLM/DCR 80-90 tanks are only light tanks unlike what was initially planned (only medium/heavy tanks). 80% of these light tanks are armed with the 37mm SA18 L/21 gun and only 20% with the 37mm SA38 L/33 gun. The 37mm SA18 is only adapted to infantry support. A tank armed with the 37mm SA18 gun can actually destroy armored cars, Panzer I and Panzer II tanks at 300-400m but has to go closer than 25-100m to have a chance to destroy a Panzer III or Panzer IV, whereas it can itself be destroyed at 300-400m by them." That sort of gives the idea of how limited the gun on this tank really was. Although, I must say, I was not impressed by it's performance in TOW in any event. In the Last Chance mission, I based my whole counter-attack around the Somua with the heavier 47mm. BTW, I'd have to say that Last Chance is my personal favorite battle and I hope to see more of the France '40 stuff in the future. Also, Drawde79, not to worry. All the ammo characteristics of the game are addressable and we will probably see some movement in that area sooner than later

Hobo That's not a bad idea. The hardest part, IMO, would be determining the rules of such a competition. Perhaps a point system like in the game. While you can control such things as movement, timing of certain events, etc. - you can't control how they will engage or react when in combat because of the limited command set. Of course, new scripting commands are always welcome.......developers?

Now, I have made light armor tanks go into full bore reverse-gear retreat by doing what you describe.

Incapacitated crew. I've had it happen with my own crew members. The crew icons go transparent and after a few moments disappear. I assume it means they are unconscious, dead or otherwise completely incapacitated. But I've never had it happen under the circumstances you describe with the units mentioned. Jagdtiger, really?

Finn Please check your e-mail when you get an opportunity.......

380mm rocket-mortar, when fired, made the game crash.

I think you're right. Definitely only semi-uber at best.

Interesting that this one somehow didn't make the cut for vehicle inclusion. Seems rather they went with the Brummbar with the heavier 150mm gun even though the StuH 42 was much more common. This is another one I'd like to see added to the inventories........

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FinnN is 100% correct. All this is completely dependent upon the way the mission is coded. It is possible to code realistic and unrealistic things in the game. The choice is up to the scenario designer. Believe me, the future of TOW is all about the scripting language and the battle/map editor. With clever scripting, the possibilities are pretty much endless. Given that there is a RND() or random function in the game, it would be even possible to create scripts which create random battles, although this would entail a lot of code and balance editing. Still possible, though.

Sorry...mis-post!

Mooyman I never scripted in the victory conditions as I wanted the scenario to play itself out to the fullest extent possible. I mostly made it for my amusement and to also actually see if it could be done. A couple of things I learned from this: 1. Unloading infantry is a mini-script animation. If you do while under heavy fire, expect disaster. The soldiers will not fight back and always seem to put themselves directly in the line of fire. 2. Crew-served vehicle weapons are not aggressive about firing on enemy when under AI rather than direct control. I drove the HT manually up near a manned trench. The gunner fired sporadically at best. When given direct orders he would fire consistently at a target with a very high kill rate. This needs to be looked at. Is it possible the multiple targets confuses AI control? 3. ROF of MG's is pretty pathetic. Plus there needs to be more of a separation between the effectiveness of HMG's and LMG's in the game. Right now their effects are both pretty blah.... 4. Infantry are much more effective entrenched and not moving than on the assault. Mostly it heavily increases their rate of fire. Even with rifles. This is probably accurate, thus not a whine, but an observation. Also light armor assaulting trenches best respect those grenades! Heh Heh. 5. Still need a way for infantry to use vehicular cover better, on the move or otherwise. Most of the assaulting infantry get killed before they can establish a good base of fire and help out suppressing the entrenched enemy. Assaulting troops are only really effective within a very short distance to the trenchline, where they tend to go prone and use grenades heavily. Still would be really cool if they did the Hollywood thing by running up to the edge of the trench and spraying it down with an SMG. Oh well, I guess in the add-on

Fear the AT grenadiers hiding in the tall grass....Fear them!

I think hit probability is largely a function of soldiers gun-laying skill modified by size of target, environmental conditions, firer's health, target's disposition, etc. In other words, loads of things, but not sure of the actual recipe. Most of the penetration stuff is in a file called damage.ini but these again are just the calculations. I think the penetration models are actually calculated using a mass/velocity vs. thickness/angle model rather than just derived from some kind of gun vs. armor lookup table. Which is nice, because if you have this info about velocity and weight of shell and type it should be possible to very accurately reproduce new AT guns into the game assuming the calculations formulas work correctly.

The numbers for the 47mm and 25mm tank mounted guns check out OK with most of the historical content I could find on the internet. Problem is, the frontal armor of the pz 38 is over-done for the period, as mentioned. In addition the missing AT guns had longer bores than their tank-mounted counterparts, so they would have been more effective tank-killers. From what I was able to find, the 47L53 was in short supply, but was VERY effective against German armor.

Good point. However, there may be a way around that. I'll check it out. Have started on the basic setup of the example mission.

Organizing units for assaults and effective formations would be a lot easier if you could set vehicle speed as a percentage of max speed. I'd like to try to use vehicular cover for advancing troops but due to the inconsistent unit speeds it is futile. Even the ability to do it in the scripting would be better than nothing.

Actually pretty easy to script. I was going to work on one of these ideas after dinner tonight. You trigger your air/arty strike from a conditional statement where an individual soldier must have spotting on the enemy. Primarily uses the UnitsIsVisible and CreateRectByObject statements. Of course, sounds easy to me on the surface, we shall see.........

BTW, if you want to experiment with it, the HT unload points and infantry rally points are controlled by the six defined "points". All you have to do is move those on the map to get different deployments.

One thing I think is definitely wrong however is the 20 mm HE rating. All the regular cars and trucks in the game have an armor rating of "5". 20 mil HE has a penetration rating of "3" max. So I scripted up 5 russian tanks and a 222 scout car. I let it blast away at the trucks (close range) and watched. Oftentimes, the driver would be killed, unless you were shooting at the passenger side of the vehicle, but the truck itself went undamaged. Switching to 7.92 mm machinegun allowed me to devastate the trucks while the driver usually bailed. ???? This just seems wrong on the face of it, but I can't present any source to qualify my argument. P.S. Not the MG part, the 20 mm part.......

Oudy One thing Soan mentioned in a different thread was the difference between STORM and ATTACK. Apparently, infantry with STORM orders will continue to advance at a medium rate while periodically engaging any spotted targets. However, in ATTACK units who are moving will stop and engage unit(s) until they either destroy it or lose spotting. I tried changing up the STORM and ATTACK orders and was able to see the difference it makes in the behavior of the troops. One problem with ATTACK is that isolated units who are the first to receive contact invite massed fire from the enemy which is usually effective rather quickly. It actually seems more effective to have multiple troops in contact so that the enemy will "split fire" and give your soldiers a chance to return fire and move up. It's just plain hard to keep those light MGers alive when performing move-attack orders.

Thanks for the input. I was just trying to get the basic idea in place. I think if the HT's were scripted to move in from the flanks, it would be more effective as well. I have run the script several times and the Russians win more often than not. Or, Better yet send one HT from the front and ofload there, while the two others go behind the trench and do the same. That way you have triangular assault. I think it's interesting that you can run one basic script and get different outcomes each time. In most games, scripting means a predictable outcome to the event.

This is an example battle which shows off some scripting capabilities with the editor. This is meant to be watched more than played - although it is possible to intervene in the script with your own orders. Illustrates a German Armored Infantry attack on a Russian trenchline. Get it at www.cmmods.com [ June 01, 2007, 12:52 PM: Message edited by: SlapHappy ]