Bigduke6

I could do nighttime TC/IP, but for now I don't prefer to. Oh well, sounded like a nice tourney. Maybe next time around.

Is that 3 e-mails every single day including weekends? I can put out 3 e-mails a day pretty efficiently during the week, but weekends not.

I would call CMBB's inaccuracy regarding Soviet AP capabilities not just the issue of a few millimeters, but basic errors that often skew battle tactics badly. The TigerI really was invulnerable in some aspects to Soviet basic AP munitions. But not to the degree of CMBB. The Soviets figured you had to get within 200 m. of a Tiger for a sure flank shot with the 76.2mm gun, and at 400m. or more you were rolling dice loaded pretty much against you. When the 85mm weapon started getting fielded it was considered reliable against the TigerI front out to maybe 500m, and when the better ammo came out maybe that number went up to 700m - 800m. Meaning, that at ranges of about 800m and up, in RL Tiger had a fair chance of duking it out with a Soviet medium tank and not getting hurt. Not surprisingly, the RL Germans tried to use Tigers to shoot at Soviet tanks from about 1200 - 800 meters. That was the reality. CMBB makes the TigerI invulnerable to 76.2 period, and pretty much invulnerable to 85mm at ranges of 500m and up. Roughly, it would be like making M4 Sherman unable to get through the side of a TigerI in CMAK, and making the Easy8 unable to punch through TigerI's front at ranges over 500m. It would be hard to find many WW2 wargamers calling that a small issue. Undergunning the overwhelming majority of Soviet medium tanks, for every scenario depicted by CMBB from 1942-45 inclusive, against the Germans' best AT weapon is not what I would call a little mistake.

This is a long post so if you are pressed for time skip it. I will try and write an essay on the Soviet 76.2mm AP shell, and then compare that to the CMBB Soviet 76.2mm AP shell. My sourcing is primarily Russian-language info on the Russian Military Zone, and also Krogfus, Miles: World War II AP. The Russian Military Zone in this case cites official Red Army weapons data used during the war. When in doubt I have gone with the Russian-language version. The first thing we need to remember when thinking about the Soviet 76.2mm round is that, like most WW2 munitions, there were several versions. The round the Red Army started the war with, the BR-350A APBC (Armor Piercing Ballistic Cap), was generally effective but experienced shatter problems against thicker German face-hardened armor. Also the fuse was poor-quality, so an unknown but nevertheless worrying percentage of the rounds were duds. This is not to say the shell never penetrated what it hit, but this is to say the round shattered/broke up/failed more often than the Soviets wanted. Quick note - when I say “shell” or “round” here, I am talking only about the part that flies down range. The logical solution was to improve the fuses and strengthen the body of the shell. Soviet engineers came out with an improved version of the round incorporating these two improvements, unoriginally called the BR-350B. This shell began entering service in Spring 1942. (For fun contrast this speedy response to a battlefield problem with, say, the U.S. organizational response to, and unwillingness even to acknowledge, crappy torpedoes for more than two years. Not bad for a bunch of Soviet bureaucrats supposedly unable to think on their own, never mind creatively, and whose scientific and engineering abilities were supposedly hobbled by Communist propaganda. Of course, to be fair, a torpedo is a lot more complicated than an AP shell.) The weight of the improved AP round (and so most of its ballistic properties) remained the same, although the engineers reduced the length of the round slightly. Also, being engineers, they reshaped the HE compartment slightly, hopefully to improve performance. As you can see in the tables below, the Soviets figured these improvements bought them between 5 and 10 per cent better performance, primarily on the side of “guaranteed penetration”; i.e., getting the round doing what it was supposed to do in most cases. It is worth noting that if the round in the field performed as the Soviet tables predicted, then all German armor until Tiger II, but certainly including Stuermgeschuetz, would have been vulnerable to the Soviet 76.2mm gun at medium and short ranges – just like the historical case. This being the Soviet Union, both the BR-350A and the BR-350B round were in use at the same time, for years. Waste not want not. The pre-war BR-350A ceased production in 1943. The improved BR-350B continued in production until some fuzzy point in 1944. The Soviets did not stop there. In 1944 the Red Army put into service the BR-350R, which was an Armor Piercing Composite Rigid (APCR) round, or as we gamers usually call it, tungsten. It is worth noting that standard load of BR-350R for a T-34/76 was 5 shells. Try and get that from the quick battle generator. Also there was a conventional AP round that continued the improvements begun by the BR-350B. This was called the BR-354B. It had yet another improved fuse, the shell bottom received a slight taper (probably to strengthen it), and there was slightly less explosive. On the other hand the explosive was a new incendiary composition. I don’t have numbers on this round. Performance: The muzzle velocity for all the shells is consistent throughout the sources - 680mps. When it comes to armor penetration, it is worth bearing in mind how the Soviets looked at armor penetration, and how those views differed from West and Central Europeans’. For starters, instead of rating simply penetrate/not penetrate, the Soviets in their tables for the 76.2mm frequequently used the terms “Beginning Penetration” and “Guaranteed Penetration”. BP = “Beginning Penetration”; i.e., 20 per cent of shells tested penetrated this thickness GP = “Guaranteed Penetration”; i.e. 80 per cent of shells tested penetrated this thickness. By comparison, as far as I know, the German standard for simple penetration was 50 per cent of tested shells. I could be wrong, one of you panzer grogs pls let me know. Second, the quality of the steel armor the Soviets were testing the rounds on, obviously, also had a bearing on the results. Since ipso facto they were using Soviet not German steel, comparing the penetration numbers from both sides head to head –and this is precisely what CMBB does – is a bit dangerous. Apples and oranges, potentially. The Soviets in their tests used homogeneous steel (rolled steel) with a Brinnel Hardness listed at 250 to 350. The Germans I believe used a slightly lower number in their tests, if I remember right 250 to 280. Again panzer grogs pls correct me if necessary. In any case, once again we see the possibility of a small skewing of the Russian penetration numbers downward, as the Russians apparently used slightly harder metal to test their AP rounds against than the Germans. How much is any one’s guess. And of course in the field, the types of armor varied as well. As a general thing the Germans used rolled homogeneous steel for their tanks, while the Soviets wherever possible used cast steel for their tanks. CMBB reflects this of course; that’s the crummy Soviet 95 and 90 per cent armor. However, “Soviet cast armour was at least as hard as, or even harder than, that of an equivalent thickness of rolled homogenous armour (RHA).” (That’s a quote from Krogfus, apparently). I don’t know if CMBB takes this into account, and if so, how. A final problem in just taking Soviet penetration numbers and cramming them into the CMBB engine is that the the Soviets in some cases extrapolated some penetration numbers mathematically, instead of actually doing the experienments. Even worse, it's not always clear when the data came from computations, and when it came from tests. The bottom line is there are a several fudge factors out there preventing a neat translation of any historical data on the Soviet 76.2mm AP round into an accurate replication of the round's actual battlefield performance by the game engine. To recapitulate, among them are: 1. The Soviets fielded different rounds, with differing performance, simultaneously. 2. The problem with the early rounds wasn’t they couldn’t penetrate at all, it was that they frequently failed, but sometimes worked. Erratic, not consistently bad performance. 3. The Soviet appear to have defined armor penetration a bit more pessimistically than their opponents. 4. The Soviets apparently used slightly harder armor in their penetration tests than their opponents. 5. Soviet and German tank armor often was significantly different in manufacture, and perhaps slightly different in hardness. On the RL battlefield tankers are pretty unanimous that the upshot of all this was very varied AP round performance. Cases of practical vulnerability or invulnerability were exceptions, and often rare. Still with me? Great, now for the actual Soviet numbers. This is what the Soviets were telling the troops the 76.2mm AP round would do: BR-350A (Pre-war) BR-350A attacking a 30 degree slope/angle 100 m – BP 86mm GP 69mm 300m – BP 79mm GP 63mm 500m – BP 70mm GP 59mm 1000m – BP 63mm GP 50mm 1500m – BP 52mm GP 43mm BR-350A attacking 0 degree/flat slope/angle 100 m – BP 89mm GP 80mm 300m – BP 84mm GP 76mm 500m – BP 78mm GP 70mm 1000m – BP 73mm GP 63mm 1500m – BP 65mm GP 58mm BR-350B (In service by Spring-Summer 1942) BR-350B attacking a 30 degree slope/angle 100 m – BP 89mm GP 74mm 300m – BP 82mm GP 69mm 500m – BP 76mm GP 62mm 1000m – BP 71mm GP 55mm 1500m – BP 55mm GP 48mm BR-350B attacking 0 degree/flat slope/angle 100 m – BP 94mm GP 86mm 300m – BP 90mm GP 81mm 500m – BP 84mm GP 75mm 1000m – BP 78mm GP 68mm 1500m – BP 69mm GP 62mm BR-350R (Tungsten) (1944 sometime) The Soviets for reasons known best to them decided Beginning Penetration numbers were unnecessary for the Tungsten round. Thus all numbers are for guaranteed penetration (per Soviet standard). BR-350R attacking a 30 degree slope/angle 100 m – GP 92mm 300m – GP 84mm 500m – GP 77mm 1000m – None 1500m – None BR-350R attacking 0 degree/flat slope/angle 100 m – GP 102mm 300m – GP 98mm 500m – GP 92mm 1000m – None 1500m – None Again, there also was an improved 76.2mm standard AP round that came out in 1944, but I can’t find numbers for that. Logically, it would have been better than the 1942 round. How does CMBB depict all this? I would say “mysteriously”. I’ll spare you the actual numbers as you can look them up, and limit myself to listing the differences between CMBB numbers and the Soviet numbers for the 76.2mm AP round as fired out of the L/42 cannon. 1. The CMBB Soviet 76.2mm AP round is most dangerous to Germans in 1941. Its penetration ability actually gets worse in 1942, and then improves slightly in 1943. To put it mildly, this is in disagreement with the Soviet data. 2. There is no performance difference between 1943 through 1945, although an improved round went into service in 1944. 3. The CMBB penetration numbers are, for this weapon, consistently lower than the Soviet penetration numbers. The degree of underrating appears to vary between 5 and 10 per cent. 4. CMBB overpowers the Soviet tungsten round at point blank if the strike is zero degrees. On the other hand rates its effectiveness at about half of what the Soviets thought it was, if the round was fired at medium ranges or against sloped armor.

I see now I was misreading the slope numbers, my apologies to Glider and Sergei and any one else I have left out. I understand better why this is happening the way it is. I still smell a rat, but I can see I am back to the subtle "it's in the penetration algorithm," rather than an inherent superiority of German crews. Although I find the accuracy advantage at hull-down pretty suspicious. My problem not yours. Thanks guys for your help and patience, no hard feelings.

I just did a 10 on 10 in hull defilade 800 meters. Over the first minute the Germans managed to inflict on the Soviets: Gun Hit Front Turret Ricochet Upper Hull Penetration Front Hull Penetration Front Turret Ricochet Front Hull Penetration KO Front Hull Penetration Front Hull Penetration Front Lower Hull Penetration Front Turret Ricochet Track Hit Front Turret Penetration Track Hit Front Lower Hull Penetration Front Upper Hull Penetration Front Upper Hull Penetration Front Turret Penetration Front Lower Hull Penetration Front Lower Hull Penetraiton Front Upper Hull Ricochet The Soviets managed to do this to the Germans: Front upper hull ricochet Front upper hull ricochet Gun hit Front upper hull, armor flaking Front upper hull ricochet Turret ricochet At the end of the first minute two Soviet tanks were functional. All the German tanks were functional. Interestingly, there were far fewer turret strikes, although I guess some of them could be somehow in the upper hull hits. It is unclear to me whether the more accurate German shooting comes from their having more surviving tanks over the long term, or something else. In any case, no Soviet rounds broke into a German tank, although you would figure with every one in defilade and something like 30 - 40 rounds fired some one would have made a 0 degree turret hit.

Sergei, Nope. Armor penetration in CMBB is not a 0/1 decision where the engine says "what's the range, what's the angle, what's the shell, okay do I generate a hit or a ping?" As the manual points out, all sorts of hidden things go into the calculation, we can assume including turret angle to target, round fudge factors, chance etc. That number is general guidance, no more. Exceptions occur. I am arguing I have evidence one of those factors is the nationality of the crew. I just ran a 3 on 3 test at 1100 meters. The Germans destroyed all three Soviet tanks, in spite of the fact that at that range, supposedly, even the secret "German" round can't overcome any of the Soviet tank armor. Worst-case penetration is something like 40 meters, and as you point out, the T-34 has 45mm. The Germans lost a TC trashing all three Soviet tanks. Was that just bad Soviet luck? Perhaps you will say it is. To me, however, it is a continuation of the same trend: the German crew outperforms the Soviet crew, far beyond any advantages the ammo supposedly gives the Germans. Your arguement would hold water if, at 750m., the German round had trouble with the T-34 turret. It does not. In the tests I conducted, the German round penetrates the T-34 70mm turret pretty much with impunity. (Edit - I just ran a 10 on 10 every one hull down. I may have to take the above paragraph back, this time the Germans had trouble overcoming the Soviet turrets, only penetrating about half the time. The Germans still won with upper hull hits. So I reduce "impunity" to "a lot easier than it is for the Soviets going the other way.") I can't give you an off-hand count, but roughly I would say that one shot in five, fired by the Germans, pings if it hits the Soviet turret. (edit- the 10 on 10 test in hull defilated was roughly 50/50) I would say a good four out of five, and sometimes more, Soviet rounds ping off of a German 70mm T-34 turret. Pretty surprising considering the turret is rounded, and so you would expect at least some of the Soviet rounds to strike flat, and at least penetrate partially. (Edit-this was borne out, German turrets remained absolutely impermiable to Soviet AP.) Do the test, and tell me if it what you see makes sense to you. [ April 04, 2005, 10:25 AM: Message edited by: Bigduke6 ]

Glider, Ok gotcha. There is a difference in the numbers, I was reading only the zero degree line. As you will see below, there is a reason for that. But sorry, I don't back off one bit. The penetration difference you are talking is marginal, and probably meaningless. The tests I ran were face to face. One line of tanks at one end of the board, shooting at another line of tanks at the opposite side of the board. The overwhelming majority of the engagements I created in my experiment were within the frontal arc. i.e., 0 to 30 degree engagements. With one single exception (a Soviet tank panicked and turned sideways) all were outside the 60 degree arc. All. As your post makes clear, the differences in penetration at the 750 meter bench-mark, if you are outside the 60 degree engagement angle, is in the test I conducted a couple of millimeters. My tests were well outside 60 degrees. I apologize for the confusion about the penetration numbers, my fault there. The numbers you posted show that if it is a German crew is shooting, and the engagement angle is 30 degrees to 60 degrees, the 76.2mm gun rates a theoretical penetration of 69mm at 500m range, and 62mm at 1000m range. If the Soviet crew is shooting the same gun but notionally different ammunition, the numbers respectively are 68mm and 60mm. If the angle is 0 to 30 degrees, the "German" round is 2 mm more effective than the "Soviet" version of the same 76.mm round at 1000 meters. The rated penetration number at 500 meters range is the same, German or Soviet. My experieents showed (to me anyway) the German-fired 76.2mm AP is is decisively more effective than Soviet-fired 76.2mm AP. Not by a little bit. Factors. I cannot see how you or any one else can explain the superiority I saw with 1-2mm penetration rating superiority in favour of what supposedly is German ammunition. This is without trying to account for the game supposedly is rating the armor of a Soviet T-34/76 (43-late) as 5 per cent better than the same T-34 if it is crewed by a German. If I were to do so I would tend to predict an overall edge to the Soviets - after all 5 per cent better armor should be better, than a penetration superiority of less than one per cent. The tests don't bear out that rational prediction. Rule of thumb, if you line up twenty T-34/76 (43-late) at 750 meters, one side crewed Germans and the other Soviets, and have at it, at the end of a minute of firing the Soviet force will have 1-2 tanks left effective, and the German force will have maybe 17-18 left effective. The German rounds penetrate consistently. The Soviet rounds do not. That's the difference. Is any one out there actually arguing a 1-2 millimeter difference in predicted penetration capability can justify the lopsided results I have seen in the tests? Maybe there is something wrong with my methodology, but I don't see it. The CMBB manual never mind our collective gaming experience, never mind real life, tells us those penetration numbers are general guidance which might not be exactly replicated on the CMBB battlefield. If the German tanks were killing Soviet tanks in these tests say 5 per cent better I would not have much of an arguement. But the difference is factors larger. From what I can tell, Dey has replicated it. So I am confused. I could understand how the game engine stacks things against some Soviet weapons. By this I mean I can see how it is happening. (Stricter Soviet penetration standards, yada yada yada we've discussed that subject into the ground.) But for the life of me I can't understand what's happening to make German-crewed cannons penetrate, where Soviets firing the same cannons at the same angles with the (practically speaking) same chances of penetration against the exact same tanks, have big problems doing the same thing. I always thought issues like this are rooted in the way BFI coded Soviet AP weapons, effectively making them underpowered. I don't like it, but I think I understand it. Like the like the rest of us, I live with it. What I am talking about here looks like something different. This is evidence of what to me anyway looks like a slant within the coding itself, to make penetration calculations favor of German armor crews, or perhaps punish Soviet armor crews. Conceivably it could be both. From what I can see this crew-related slant is not big, so it becomes most visible when the difference between penetrating and pinging is relatively small. I know that's a pretty nasty assertation to make, and let me make clear I'm making a hypothesis not stating what I believe to be a fact. Maybe somehow I am reading these results wrong. Of course BFI would never do that. But don't believe me, do the experiment yourself. Line up 20 on 20, 5 on 5, whatever. I say at 750m. with the T-34/76 (43-late) the German superiority is overwhelming. Not marginal, not 1-2mm. Overwhelming. Prove me wrong. I just ran the test again to be sure, same result as before. The German T-34s cream the Russian T-34s. Why? [ April 04, 2005, 09:50 AM: Message edited by: Bigduke6 ]

Glider, What is this, the Twilight Zone? The AP numbers you just posted in your screen shots are exactly the same for both vehicles, just like I have been saying all along. Same vehicle, same weapon, same ammo. Zaruquon, I thought of that, but I also thought of the fact that the CMBB 76.2mm gun can't get through the front of Stuermgeschuetz, or the flank of Tiger, even at point blank, while in RL it was possible at shorter combat ranges (figure 400m. or less). If the game gets that basic relationship wrong, with the most common Soviet AT piece of the war, I have evidence the CMBB's designers for all their brilliance were not on their best game dealing with Soviet weaponry. I can't disprove you're theory of a data entry error on the information screen for the captured T-34/76 (43-late). But you can't prove it, and I already know as an ironclad fact the game depicts the 76.2mm gun incorrectly. Ironclad as in, I have talked to more than one Red Army war veteran, never mind the literature. Thus, the the first place I am going to look when seeking an explanation to the question: "Why does a German-crewed T-34/76 M43(late) in CMBB shoot so much better than the same thing, if the crew is Soviet?" For the forum in general: JasonC for years now has been issuing a challenge to the forum community: find me one historical instance of a Stuermgeschuetz that was impervious to a frontal hit by a Soviet 76.2mm AP round. So far, as far as I know, there have been no takers. Here's mine: Where is the historical evidence the Soviet 76.2mm round never improved in peformance over the war, and further, that the German-manufactured 76.2mm round was better. Where are the comparative tests? This site goes into the painful detail about armor penetration stuff. If you think I'm inventing all these claims look under Soviet. Warning the pop-ups are a pain. www.gva.freeweb.hu/weapons/introduction.html

I am looking at the penetration tables listed on the vehicle when you look at the unit data. They are the same, both for the Soviet-crewed T-34/76 (43-late) and the very same vehicle, but with a German crew. I access this by placing the cursor on the vehicle and then hitting return. I am using CMBB 1.03, and the experiement is set up in July 43. I do indeed see significantly better performance for the captured German ZiS-3 AT gun, as compared the Soviet version. I do not see the same thing when comparing tanks. Where do you see that advantage, Glider? Where are looking? I am not saying you're wrong, but I sure don't see what you saw. To anticipate the direction of this thread a bit, what are the grounds for assuming a German-produced 76.2mm AP round performs better than a Soviet 76.2mm AP round? Especially the upgraded rounds available in 1943?

I tested 20 tanks vs. 20 tanks. I ran the test three times. The results are always the same: the Germans absolutely demolish the Russians, and the main reason they do so is that their 76.2mm rounds penetrate regularly, and the Russians' 76.2mm rounds do not. Dey's sample is too small. 3-4 tanks is not an indicator of trends. The smaller the sample the greater the importance of a chance/lucky hit. I am running a 20 vs. 20 test, and I have run three times. This means I have tested sixty tank-to-tank engagements, while Dey has tested if I am counting right six. My results are more valid. They show the Germans to be overwhelmingly superior, and what's more that Germans are overwhelmingly superior despite the fact that they are using foreign vehicles. Wicky's objection is irrelevant. It is also logically unsound. In the first place even if a German veteran tank crew somehow functioned more efficiently than a Soviet veteran tank crew, that would have no bearing on the performance of the ammunition when it went down range. I repeat, my tests show conclusively the combat difference between two sides to be that German-fired 76.2mm rounds penetrate T-34/76 at 750m. Soviet-fired 76.2mm rounds, general, fail to do the same thing. Second, since when is a German veteran crew superior to a Soviet veteran crew? In a foreign tank? On what grounds? Cthulu's comment is irrelevant. What does year have to do with it? The issue is whether the game makes a tank with a German crew more effective in terms of armor-piercing ability than the same tank with the same ammunition with a Soviet crew. I maintain the engine is slanted heavily in favor the Germans. Do the same test I did, and prove me wrong. I just ran it again. After one minute of firing the Soviet situation was this: Abandoned: 8 Immobilized: 2 KO: 6 Bailing out: 1 Bad Morale: 1 Combat-ready: 2 This was the German situation: Immobilized: 2 KO: 1 Combat-ready: 17 As before, the Soviet side seemed to score hits at the same rate as the Germans. The difference was that German hits penetrated most of the time, and the Soviet hits, almost never. If some one has a better explaination than slanted programming, I am glad to hear it.

Comments/conclusions on above test: 1. IF ANYTHING, JASONC IS UNDERESTIMATING THE "UNTERMENSCHEN" FACTOR USED BY CMBB TO MAKE SOVIET ARMORED VEHICLES, ARTIFICIALLY, LESS EFFECTIVE THAN THEY ACTUALLY WERE. The only diffence between the two forces in the above test was nationality. The vehicles were exactly the same, as were the weapons and ammunition. Armor quality was the same. So was the crew quality. Neither side had better optics, a better tactical situation, a better angle on the other armor, etc. It was 20 German-crewed T-34s firing against 20 Soviet-crewed T-34s at a range of 750 meters or so. The results show the game is stacked against the Soviet, and it is well worse than the 15 per cent "untermenschen discount" that JasonC has referred to. On average, at the end of the shooting match the Germans took something like 10 per cent casualties. The Soviet force was destroyed utterly. I could perhaps understand this if it was Tigers vs. T-34/76. But it wasn't. The only variant was the nationality of the crew. Yet the German crew was roughly nine times more effective, at that range, than the Soviet crew. 2. THE CMBB GAME ENGINE MAKES GERMAN-FIRED AMMUNITION SIGNIFICANTLY MORE EFFECTIVE AGAINST ARMOR THAN SOVIET-FIRED AMMUNITION, SIMPLY BECAUSE THE GERMANS ARE SHOOTING IT. THE ISSUE IS NOT ACCURACY OR AMMUNITION. IT IS THE NATIONALITY OF THE CREW THAT DETERMINES THE ARMOR-PIERCING EFFECTIVENESS. This was not a situation where the Germans were firing 76.2mm rounds supposedly perform better than Soviet-manufactured rounds. A check of the unit data on each side's vehicles showed that both sides were using the plain-vanilla Soviet 76.2mm gun with 81mm of penetration at point-blank range, 65mm of penetration at 1000m, and a muzzle velocity of 680mps. Further, the game engine appears to play the gun accuracy side of the equation fairly. A check using the LOS tool showed that at 750m the rated chance to hit, be it the German or Soviet side, was between 43 and 48 per cent. T Tellingly, the LOS tool informs the German player chance of penetration is "rare". The LOS informs the Soviet player the chances of a Soviet-fired 76.2 AP round of penetrating a German-crewed T-34/76-late are "none." This is a load of crap. Why should the same AP round perform significantly better, just because it was a German pulling the trigger? 3. THE CMBB GAME ENGINE BASED ON THIS TEST MAKES A GERMAN-FIRED AP ROUND, ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, PERFORM AT LEAST 20 - 25 PER CENT BETTER THAN THE SAME ROUND IF A SOVIET FIRES IT. The key data here is the ricochets. In all three tests the number of hits in the first twelve seconds was the same for both sides, but the number of penetrations was radically different, with the German 76.2mm AP rounds breaking through Soviet T-34/76 late armor roughly 6 - 8 times more efficiently, then the same round fired by a Soviet crew in the other direction. Look at the numbers for the first twelve seconds' of firing; i.e., the first salvo. Where the Germans hit and have a chance to penetrate, the Soviets hit roughly the same number of times, but don't have a chance to penetrate. There are two way I can think of to explain this. Either game engine magically directs German-fired rounds to the thinner portions of Soviet armor, or the game engine somehow links AP round performance with the firer's nationality. From what I could tell from my test hits were more or less evenly distributed, and certainly the German rounds were striking, rather than avoiding, the Soviet turrets. This being the case, I conlude a German-fired round in CMBB has a 20-25 per cent edge over a Soviet-fired round. I would note this is far more valuable to combat effectiveness than just 20-25 more points, as that margin generally is the difference between penetrating or pinging most East Front tanks at most East front engagement ranges. CONCLUSION: IF YOU PLAY CMBB AND YOU TAKE SOVIET, YOUR TANKS AND THEIR GUNS WIL BE IPSO FACTOR AT LEAST 20 TO 25 PER CENT WEAKER THAN THEY WERE IN REAL LIFE. WHAT'S WORSE THAT WEAKNESS WILL MOST APPARENT AT COMMON COMBAT RANGES, I.E. 400 - 1000 METERS. IF YOU PLAY CMBB AND YOU TAKE GERMAN, YOUR ABILITY IN THE GAME TO DEFEAT SOVIET ARMOR WILL BE BETTER THAN IT WAS IN REAL LIFE BY 20 TO 25 PER CENT, AND PROBABLY MORE BECAUSE THE GAME IS GOOD AT REPLICATING ENGAGEMENT RANGES OF 400 - 1000 METERS, SO AT THESE CRITICAL RANGES YOU AS THE GERMAN WILL FREQUENTLY BE IMMUNE TO SOVIET AP ROUNDS IN THE GAME, WHEN ACTURAL GERMANS WERE VULNERABLE IN REAL LIFE. IF YOU ARE PLAYING A QUICK ARMOR BATTLE ON A COMPUTER-GENERATED MAP, YOU ARE A FOOL IF YOU TAKE SOVIETS. THE GAME ENGINE STACKS ARMOR ENGAGEMENTS AGAINST YOU.

Dey is blowing smoke. Cthulu is right. JasonC is right. I decided the statiscal samples that were being used in previous tests were too small, so I set up a gun-range scenario with twenty tanks on a side. This is the test I ran: Time: July 1943 Vehicle: Both sides hav 20 x T-34 1943 late Range: 750 - 780 meters Crew Quality: Vets I ran the test three times. Here are the results with all hits logged for the first salvo of 20 tubes, i.e. twelve seconds into the turn, and then results compiled for after a minute of firing. TEST 1 Germans firing first twelve seconds against Soviets, damage/results against Soviets: Penetrations/survived: 2 Gun hit: 1 Panic/retreat: 3 Flaking: 2 KO: 1 Misses: 12 Soviets firing first twelve seconds against Germans, damage/results against Germans: Ricochets: 7 Misses: 13 End of first minute results, Soviet situation: KO: 10 Abandoned: 6 Bailing out: 1 Panic: 1 Shocked: 2 End of first minute results, German situation: Combat-ready: 20 TEST 2: Germans firing first twelve seconds against Soviets, damage/results against Soviets: Penetrations/survived: 1 Penetration/crew casualty: 1 Gun hit: 0 Panic/retreat: 3 Flaking: 0 KO: 3 Ricochet: 1 Misses: 11 Soviets firing first twelve seconds against Germans, damage/results against Germans: Ricochet: 6 Partial Pen: 2 Misses: 12 End of first minute results, Soviet situation: KO: 7 Abandoned: 6 Bailing out: 3 Panic: 2 Gun-Damanged/Shocked: 1 Combat-ready: 1 End of first minute results, German situation: Bailing out: 2 Immobile: 1 Combat-ready: 17 TEST 3: Germans firing first twelve seconds against Soviets, damage/results against Soviets: Penetrations/survived: 1 Penetration/crew casualty/panic: 1 Gun hit/damaged: 1 Panic/retreat: 4 Flaking: 0 KO: 1 Mobility kill: 1 Ricochet: 0 Misses: 15 Soviets firing first twelve seconds against Germans, damage/results against Germans: Partial Pen: 1 Mobility kill: 2 Ricochet: 6 Misses: 11 End of first minute results, Soviet situation: KO: 7 Abandoned: 6 Bailing out: 2 Panic: 0 Gun-Damaged/Shocked: 1 Combat-ready: 4 End of first minute results, German situation: Abandoned: 1 Immobile: 3 Combat-ready: 16 I'll put my conclusions in a separate post.

JasonC, That's incredible, thanks. I'm really more of an East Front person meself but that's one heckuva archive.

That was probably from the unit history of the 737th TD right? I seem to remember they were famous somehow.

Speaking of automatics, for those of you who have a cyrillic type face go here: http://www.shooter.com.ua/Pyramyda/7_62_mm_pystole.html to learn everything about the PPSh-41 machine pistiol that you ever wanted to know but were afraid to ask. If you don't have cyrillic the pictures are still pretty cool. And for those of you that don't have cyrillic, here are some fun PPSh-41 facts: 1. The test model was fired 30,000 times before being put into production. 2. Bullet grouping was "satisfactory" at 200 meters. 3. Reliability testing included drying out the weapon out by cleaning it and then dousing it in kerosine to remove all lubricants, drying it again, and then firing it 5,000 times. All bullets fired normally, no jams. Try that with yer M-16. 4. The weapon consisted of a total 87 parts, most cold-stamped. There were only two points on the weapon that used threaded screws. The parts requiring machining took a total of 5-6 lathe hours. The weapon was designed so that you could manufacture not just at an arms plant, but at a common machine-building plant, say that made sewing machines. 5. That cool-looking shell around the barrel helped reduce recoil and barrel climb, besides just dissapating heat. 6. Early versions of the weapon had sights out to 500 meters (50m. intervals). Later versons of the weapon were simplified: only 100m. and 200m. 7. Lots of German soldiers preferred the PPSh to the MP-40. (Don't get mad, I'm just passing stuff on here) 8. Cartridges included lead jacket, AP-incindiery, and tracer. Towards the end of the war the standard cartridge used unjacketed steel bullets (save on lead and copper) which "increased penetrating power". As to Blue Division, ask him which Red Army Fronts it was Khruschev commanded.

I agree the 82mm is a powerful on-board piece, and I don't know how the point values stack up, but I am a big fan of the lighter 50mm and 60mm as well. Sure the little mortars have their limitations for taking the stuffing out of an attack, small blast an all, although again if you get 2-3 firing a pattern they will deny a patch of ground to movement well enough. The light mortars however are truly boffo if you are infantry attacking, or even counterattacking. First they're only a little less mobile than your infantry squads, while 81-82mm are S-L-O-W, even worse than MGs. Sure you can slow down your infantry attack, but that gives the enemy more time to react yada yada. Second they are just the thing to blast the enemy out of a trench or foxhole. Usually 1-2 minutes, even if the target is something ueber. Part of the effectiveness it of course a function of crew quality, obviously more range means you fire longer. But that said, it seems to me it usually takes a light mortar less than 60 seconds to blast an MG out of its hole, and that pretty much is the key to getting infantry forwards in an attack. Ditto for an enemy gun, hit it with accurate light mortar fire for a couple of turns, and pretty much you can write off the gun. True SP guns often can do the job of light mortars better and sometimes with more flexibility. Also true if I have to choose I want 82mm mortars landing on the enemy's head, not 50-60mm. But for me, light mortars are a real important part of an infantry attack, and sometimes it seems to me like they are the key. I just wish they had more ammo sometimes.

Krautmann, I stand corrected, although it sounds like you were having some bad luck there. At 500m. I figure the 50mm is pretty dangerous to the T-34, maybe I'm just paranoid.

Good point. I'm sure the Red Army had no idea what it was going. They probably got to Berlin by accident, misreading their maps or something.

JasonC, Hm. I'll yield to your experience, but to me it doesn't quite add up. The 50mm AP round officially "beats" 77mm at 500 meters and 61mm at 1000m, which is somewhere between marginally and usefully more than the straight thickness of T-34 turret armor (depending on mark), but then the turret armor is slanted pretty well, and of course 50mm has less behind-armor effect, but then the gunner firing the 50mm has superior optics. Sticking all that into the hopper, from what I've seen, the practical result is that at about 700m or lower T-34/76 must treat the 50mm PAK with respect - and if you're a smart Soviet you respect 50mm at all ranges. 700mm is a fairly standard engagement range if you ask me, your milage may vary.

Krautmann, What can I say, you've got me. I agree, it must suck if you are a German in early '42 and you only have IIIJ shorties and IVFs, while your opponent is armed with a T-34/KV mix. Of course, that probably would never happen in a quick battle. Why? Because you also can buy PzrIIIJ with the long 50mm, or Stug IIIB or IIIE. In spite of the German propaganda, in early 1942 it's not, repeat not, swarms of great Soviet tanks against a few weak German tanks. Here is what I came up with looking at March '42. SturmIIIB Plt - 3 vehicles 248 points SturmIIIE Plt - 3 vehicles 254 points PzerIVF Plt - 4 vehicles 457 points Pzr IIIJ Plt - 4 vehicles 449 points T-34 '41 Plt - 3 veh, 285 points (45mm on turret) T-34 '41 Plt - 3 veh 304 points (52mm on turret) T-34 '42 Plt - 3 veh 376 points (65mm on turret) Individually the T-34s cost between 93 and 117 points each (non-command version). A Stug from this example costs 78 or 79 points, PzrIVF costs 109 points, and IIIJ - the German vehicle with the best gun of the group - costs 107 points. This is not overwhelming Soviet numerical superiority. This is numerical parity. Ok, so how good are the respective sides' armor and weapons? Well, on the German side the armor is easy - 50mm everywhere, not sloped very well. The Soviet 76.mm gun, even as modeled in CMBB, can defeat that at shorter combat ranges, although at longer rangers, say 750m plus, 50mm of German armor can deflect a 76.2mm round sometimes. So basically the Germans are vulnerable across the board. On the Soviet side the T-34 sports well-sloped bow armor 45mm, and as time went on the Soviets made their turrets thicker and thicker. Thus, the most expensive T-34 has 65mm of turret armor sloped at 30 degrees. The Germans in this example have two weapons to try and overcome that armor; 75mm L/24 and 50mm L/60. I'll take the easy one first, the 50mm L/60 will whack a T-34 it is likely to face at pretty much any range. The L/24 75mm has more trouble as its low velocity makes it less accurate at longer ranges, and what's more its rated penetration 60-61mm, usually isn't enough to overcome the thickest T-34 frontal turret armor. This is compensated somewhat by the fact that the typical load-out for this weapon includes between 4 - 8 Hollow Charge rounds, which will whack a T-34. And of course we shouldn't forget, the Pzr tanks have Good optics, and the Sturms have Long-range optics. So at the end of this exercise I am pretty far from concluding the German position in March '42 sucks. If the Germn just buys Panzer IIIJ he can kill whatever he hits, and with his optics all other things being equal he will hit first. If the German has Panzer IVF or Stugs handed to him he will have some trouble with the very toughest/latest T-34 provided the T-34 stays hull down. But otherwise the short German 75 has a reasonable chance of overcoming all the other T-34s, any aspect. Most likely it will come down to who shoots first and more accurately, and like I said, the German optics are superior. Of course, if your definition of an unacceptable German situation is when the German lack a vehicle frontally invulnerable to all Soviets AP, for instance the later marks of Sturm, Tiger/Panther etc., then I certainly do agree with you. Early '42 forces a German player actually to worry about his combat vehicles being pentrated from the front. If some German player thinks that is an unfair situation (I am not saying that you Krautmann are like this), then I cetainly do understand how that German player would intensely dislike the early phases of the war, and maybe even how he could with tortuous logic argue that time period is "unfair to Germans." Which is not the same as my agreeing with him, of course. I have left the KV to the end. KV is obviously invulnerable to 75mm L/24 period, and to the the 50mm L/60 unless it's a tungsten round. An unethical Soviet player can get four KVs for 504 points, while the best the German can do is come up with four PzrIIIJs for 449 points. So yes, if the Soviet player has unlimited access to KVs the German player is screwed. To me, this is proof that the quick battle engine is a really poor way to determine relative force in a human-to-human fight. If the players are more or less equally competent, the KVs obviously will go to town on the Pzrs, just like about a year later Panthers will wipe the floor with T-34s. I would ask why any one would play on either side of a scenario like that. If you want to use CMBB to watch movies of your invulnerable tanks blowing up the enemy, play against the A/I. For human-to-human fights the only real solution is a balanced scenario where terrain and combined arms come more into play. In almost cases, the scenario has to be similar to the real life Eastern Front, where the tactical situation made both sides' tanks vulnerable, somehow, during the course of an engagement. As I and others have pointed out before, problems in the CMBB penetration algorithims make this more difficult, as the game makes Soviet AP weapons something like 10-20 per cent less effective than in real life. Maybe more. And yes, I can back that up with facts. Lots of them. There are ways an intelligent scenario designer understanding the nature of East Front combat, and the limitations of CMBB, can create a scenario where both German and Soviet players have a fair chance of winning. Handing one side invulnerable vehicles is almost always not the way to do that.

I have to second Elmar. I am stalled against Sgian in the Moeltke scenario, waiting on file 011 for about two weeks now - and I'm the Soviet! I want to charge across that bridge and get shot to bits, I really do.

Krautmann, I disagree. You are comparing apples and oranges. The issue is historical accuracy. A Sturmgeschutz invulnerable at normal combat ranges to a frontal strike by the Soviet 76.2 AP round of the day is ahistorical. In fact the Soviet 76.2 round according to accounts on both sides of the trenches say Sturmgeschutz was vulnerable to the Soviet 76.2 round at ranges of about 500 meters or less. Therefore, a CMBB battle including Soviet 76.2 cannon and Sturmgeschutz combat vehicles is silly and obliges ahistorical tactics. Players should not accept it, unless of course players could care less about historial accuracy, in which case why play CMBB at all? The case of the German 50mm AT gun in its various marks against T-34 in its various marks is a different kettle of fish. The historical record shows (and I'll be happy to throw the sources at you) the German 50mm AT gun had trouble with T-34 frontal armor, although it certainly could penetrate sometimes. This is fairly faithfully replicated in CMBB, and so CMBB fairly accurately replicates fights where PanzerIII comes up against T-34. I prefer to play Soves but I don't whine about the historical German advantages, that actually existed. For instance, German tank optics were better, I don't have any problem with a German vet crew in a Sturmgeschutz being more accurate than a Soviet vet crew in a T-34. 88mm L/71 had outstanding pentrating power even at long rangers. I don't have any problem with 88mm L/71 destroying a Stalin II with a frontal hit. The main issue here is modeling the penetrative and destructive capacity of the Soviet 76.2mm AT gun in CMBB. Anti-tank rifles excepted, that weapon was the most common AT weapon the Soviets ever produced. Getting the capacities of that gun wrong is not a little thing you can write off to "the grass is greener." How many "German" players would keep quiet if the AT performance of the 75mm "long" gun went from "penetrates all Soviet tanks at all combat ranges" to "fails to penetrate some Soviet tanks from the front lots of the time, and others never?" Not many, I expect. And fewer still would buy the arguement, hey, CMBB in general is very accurate, why are you complaining about inaccurate modeling of the 75mm?

JasonC, Just for the record I was being sarcastic with that line about angle. Like you, I think the main reason Soviet AP guns underperform in CMBB is that they are modeled as weaker than they were in fact. For the rest of you, I won't weigh in on the technical side of this debate, I think others on this forum over the years have pretty much beaten issues like penetration, steel thickness, quality, angles etc. ad naseum to death. What I will say is that I have read most of the standard Soviet armored commander memoirs, meaning these are first-hand accounts from people like Katukov, Babadzhian, Leliushenko, Bagramian, and so on. There are dozens, and most of them are right there for the reading on the militera.lib.ru site; of course you have to be able to read Russian. Anyway, as regards Soviet AT cannon and German armor, the opinion of these guys is pretty much unanimous. Thumbnail, the Soviet combat commanders in their memoirs said: 1. 76.2 AP generally would take out a Stug from the front at 500m. or less. The impression I gather is it might have been possible at longer ranges too, but Stug was hard to see. 2. 76.2 AP was useless against TigerI and to a lesser extent against Panther front, but could break in both tank's flank armor easily. Not in rare cases, but easily. Both Panther and Tiger, although some accounts say the range had to be 200m or less for 76.2 to reliably hole the side of a TigerI. 3. 85mm AP gave very reliable penetration of all German tanks out to about 500 meters, with the exception of TigerII and Tiger chassis assault guns. At normal combat ranges, therefore, T-34/85 had zero penetration disadvantage vs. its typical opponents. Several of the commanders however do point out German tankers had an accuracy advantage at longer rangers. 4. Once the non-pointy 85mm round came into use, a square strike on pretty much any aspect of any German tank exception TigerII and Tiger chassis assault guns out to 1000 meters meant the German tank was holed, and usually killed. Contrast this to the situation on the West Front. There was no Soviet "panzer complex" by mid-1944. In RL, anyway. 5. 122mm AP was deadly to virtually any German tank at any combat range, period, although I would assume this excludes TigerII etc. etc. I have read several reports not for propaganda but for internal use, praising the 122mm as superior in penetrating power and destructiveness to the German 88mm. I'm not saying that was the factual case, but just reporting what the Soviet commanders seem to be saying. Bottom line, CMBB models Soviet AP performance somewhat differently than what the Soviet commanders said it was. From my reading, anyway. Another general impression I have is that on the RL East Front flank shots on armored vehicles were a good deal more common than in CMBB. My personal guess this is a function of CMBB visibility usually being much greater, CMBB ground being much flatter and empty of cover, and room for maneuver being much more limited on a CMBB battlefied, than was the case in the actual war. Scenario designers can do little about the game engine's relatively inaccurate depiction of major Soviet AP guns. However, they can do a lot towards reducing the importance of big cats in CMBB, if they just design the ground, visibility and force rations more like it was in RL. Lots of designers are great about this, but far from all IMO. I would also say that the quick battle generator and point system is heavily weighted in favour of German armored vehicles, unless you watch it. The idea of 6-7 x T-34/85 somehow being the rough battlefield equivalent of 4 or so Panthers is ludicrious. Well, let me rephrase that. It's ludricrous in CMBB, alhtough in RL it probably would have been a pretty fair fight. A quick fix on the designed scenario front would be to load out Soviet tanks mostly with tungsten ammo, as that would make them roughly as dangerous to the heavier German tanks in CMBB, as they were in real life. Roughly. On the other hand it would make the Soviet tanks ridiculously overpowered against the common German tanks. On the QB generator I see no solution, period. Have fun, but don't look to a CMBB QB to teach you much about the history of the East Front war. Finally I think BFC is a great company and CMBB is a terrific product. I am sure CMX2 will be more faithful to Soviet AP technology, and if they make Soviet SMG squads less effective, that's fine with me.

So why is it that the Soviet histories I read pretty much all say an 85mm AP strike or two pretty much equaled dead panther/tiger out to about 800 meters, and sometimes even further? Must be that Red propaganda again, darn them. On the pen numbers I gotta agree with JasonC on this one, the numbers are pretty deceiving as they're not factoring in lateral angle and so on. The book is pretty clear on that, no surprise there. But underperforming Soviet AP ammunition in CM, wow, the more I think about it the more I come up with the logical Russian explaination: it's all a big plot!