Amizaur

Do you mean - knock out trough the 100mm+ frontal armour ? Or knock it down at all (trough side or rear armor) ?

Well, then I whish the same thing ("Assaulting" withdrawal with covering fire) was possible with any team that has more than 2 soldiers - for example a sniper team.

So the spotting performance of buttoned tanks is inconsistent (well, it should be inconsistent but not in a way I'm talking about). Way to often tanks are seeing things they would be extremely unlikely to see. The instances when their spotting ability is correct, and they do not see what they shouldn't see, do not mean there is no problem at all. Instances when they do not see what they really sHOULD see (like another tank in the middle of the road they are guarding from an ambush position) are also a poor "compensation" for the frequent overspotting issue... This is how I see it.

I wonder if we are supposed to see - someday - a soldier combat behaviour alghoritms in CMBN improved in a way, that when the team was noticed and targeted (and it was were ordered to change position, or maybe the enemy was already too close), the SMG guy spreads bullets on the enemy while the sniper guy disengages quickly using all available cover, and then the roles are reversing the sniper guy puts few quick rounds on the enemy from his new position to allow the SMG guy to disengage. Or if they stay and engage in firefight, the team members (with experience of veteran and up, or maybe crack and up) periodically change their indyvidal positions in the same way - one is shooting, the other get's away few meters and starts shooting at the enemy from new position (osition not covered with enemy fire), then the roles are reversing. Not that both stays stupidly on place - either shooting or covering, or both are running/crawling away simultaneously. (Or soldiers at least breaking their activity and taking all available cover, and better yet cravling away or running away like hell, if they SEE a that a tank points it's barrel at them... That should not be THAT hard to code. If there is a tank, and targets an enemy, do a check if the targeted enemy sees it. And if the tank is seen by the targeted team then with probability based on distance between the tank and the team, starting at 10% on long range and rasing to 90% at very close range - give an "hide" order to the team, so they duck and hide their heads. And if the cover is not good enough (some smart alghoritm to estimate the quality of cover) and a covered withdrawal is possible (team is not in an exposed foxholes, but let's say behind a bocage), then order them to crawl away/run away to a better cover, or just change position under cover, so the tank shells would hit empty position. It can't be done by human player in WEGO, and it's also not possible to micromanage several squads this way in RT, especially if the fight is going on in more that one place. Let's code a bit of sense of self-preservation into the pixel soldier's minds... That would prevent them from doing suicidal things and increase a bit their chances for survival under fire. I believe such behavior is possible to code, only laborous and time consuming (developing and testing). I hope we are going to see a bit more inteligent troops in the future versions of CMx2/CMx3. The infantry behaviours and tactics are the CORE of this game, improving them means improving directly the game quality more than any other change/improvement.

I second that one !! One of the features I miss very much during every play. And it doesn't get better over time...

The SMG guy HAPPILY fires - without order - at enemy targets inside about 200m... And if I put a cover arc, I will restrict the range for sharpshooter too. If I only could put a "negative cover arc" - something like "do NOT shoot to targets inside this circle" I would set it to 200m.

So we need some way do disarm the second member BTW - during my observation of Sniper teams and them taking casualties I observed such situation - if a 2 man sniper team carries let's say 60 rounds of rifle ammo and 150 rounds of 9mm pistol ammo (for the second member's SMG) - and the SMG guy dies - the ammo count for this team is cut in half to about 30 rounds of rifle and 75 rounds of pistol ammo. It seem that his dying comrade managed to give him half of his pistol ammo - "Argghh... Listen... take... this.... ". But also somehow grabs half of his rifle ammo . Or maybe the sniper was asked by his dying SMG comrade to take his pistol ammo and give it his son (of the dying one), but sniper couldn't carry double amount of ammo so he chosed to drop half of his rifle ammo, to be fitfull the last wish of the friend... ?

And do you want to see it all the time ? I'm for a hotkey that switches displaying cover arcs between 3 options - "no covered arcs" - "line covered arcs "or "10% opacity ones" - "full and clearly visible covered arcs".

I tested a simple setup, and it seems for me that a 2 man sniper team (SMG + rifle) with area fire order would consume ammo in a way that both men would be out of ammo at about the same time. So the only way to deplete SMG-man ammo would be to first deplete all the team's ammo with few minutes of area fire, then go to jeep/truck/haltruck and acquire only rifle ammo . During this testing on a small 320x320m flat field with some bocages and some sniper teams and a FO team on each side, I had strange situation. Both sides were positioned behind some bocages, at two corners of an empty field. Occasionaly some of soldiers seen some of the enemies and shot at them. After about 15 minutes of occasional shooting, after all my ammo-depleting test were finished, out of boredom I took a FO team's jeep and driven it out of cover, to the center of the open field, to check how quickly would it die against about 7 sniper teams from 150-200m . To mu surprise, no one was shooting at the jeep circling around the open field. I checked the enemy sniper teams (scenario author test difficulty) - lot's of ammo left, but noticed then that NO ONE from the enemy side can see the jeep that is driving 100m from them in the open field. No enemy icon was lightened, the jeep icon was not lightened too for any of enemy sniper teams. The jeep was circling in open for about whole turn, once I ordered it to drive to the enemy's rear area so he actually SEEN the enemy teams looking from the other side, but they didn't see him. Next I ordeed the jeep to drive 50m in front of the enemy bocage line, the occupants of the jeep spotted the enemy FO team (spotted a Geran FO team behind a bocage from 50m out while riding in a fast moving jeep) and OPENED FIRE (from a moving jeep) at this FO team, and STILL for several seconds (like 15s) NO ONE from about 7 German teams (all with clear FOV on whole field) has noticed the jeep !! Even the German FO team which was fired on by the jeep occupants - didn't see it !! The jeep was suddenly noticed by several German teams at once only about half a minute later, and then died quickly. But first, it circled on open field 50-100m from seven German sniper teams, got tho their rears (and seen them), got within 50m from the front and opened fire on them - still unoticed. I can't explain that. I wish I had a save but didn't thoght about it untill it was too late. It was RT play. I'll try later to recreate it with the same scenario doing the same things.

Sometimes I wished there was a possibility of ordering the sniper to execute the second member . Hmm... just hit the idea - I wonder if I gave a sniper team an area fire order for few turns, would they waste all their ammo on it ? I wonder then, who would be empty first - the sniper with the rifle, or the assistant with his SMG ? Maybe it would be possible to deplete the second member's pistol ammo (for his SMG) while keeping at least part of rifle ammo ? Probably not practical at all but have to try it just out of curiosity . It would be more easy to make such workarounds, if one could set in the editor the exact amount of ammo for each vehicle/squad.

Sure we can. I can live with that. But I would still prefer to put the center of the pattern about two tiles BEHIND a hedge, because that is the place where lot of enemy soldiers are now or will try to escape trough . Why waste half of my HE on an empty ground ahead of the hedge ? I guess the change needed would be to allow targeting arty missions for about TWO tiles further than the LOS, not ONE tile.

Does the observer need to see the GROUND at the place where the spotting rounds are landing ? Sometimes the ground level of the tiles is slightly masked by something like an ordinary grass, the observer could easily see a crouched man at this tile, but has no LOS to the base of this tile. If a spotting round lands there, is it counted as "seen" or "not seen" ? I't quite common that a unit, that is not positioned close to the ground, have actual solid LOS to only part of large terrain ahead, though it can see and spot _other units_ on a much larger part if the same terrain - even on tiles where it has no LOS to the ground. Because those other units also have some height. I hope that spotting of an let's say 150mm HE round is done rather by casting some object (an object represending the huge explosion and the plume of dirt and smoke) - that has some height - at the place where it landed and then actually "spotting" this object by FO, than by simple check of "does the spotting unit has a formal LOS to the ground tile where the shell has landed?".

But he said he waited for your tanks to attack the town and he wanted to attack them from the rear then. So I thought he had to know where your tanks are . I guess, he just wanted to attack from behind your forces in general, not your tanks.

How did he know that your tanks are there, then ?

Imagine a thread with 50 or 100 screenshots - 3MB or 5MB each... Would you like to load or scroll it ?

Next time try Panthers on Tigers it's fun too .

I don't know much about urban fighting... But one thing strikes me when I look like some troops are assaulting a building. In a situation that there are several soldiers inside of a building, and a group of enemy soldiers (a squad) approaches the building, then before assaulting the inside they often just came close to the building and all of them starts shooting at the building and the defenders inside of the building. Those soldiers inside also try to shoot from windows but first, not all of them are close to windows so not all of them can shoot, and those who can shot from windows are outnumbered and seem quite ineffective in shooting at the enemy standing 20m out there in the open ground, while getting heavy casualties themselves. What is strange for me is that it seems (as I remember it) like ALL the soldiers in the building are targeted (even those not at windows, but hidden beside walls and closer to center of the building - just trough the walls, even those at higher floors. And ALL of the soldiers inside were getting supressed, wounded and killed (not only those standing at windows, but all of them - by bullets passing trough the walls). Of course I can agree that rifle bullets sometimes CAN penetrate some kinds of walls and supress, wound or kill people inside, but to make it effective against a larger building first one would have to know WHERE to aim, where the enemy soldier is exactly behing all those walls. A spread, area fire of a squad would be dispersed on whole building (walls) and maybe even several condignations, so I think such "blind" area fire would have little chances to penetrate walls at exactly right places to kill many of defenders, unless the atacking team is equipped with several machineguns. Do the attacking soldiers, being close enough like 10m, actually SEE the enemy soldiers inside the building, even trough the walls ? And can target them ? Or do they "see" only those defenders standing at windows and shoot only at them (at windows) ? Same question for the defending side - do the defending soldiers, hidden inside the building behing walls, actually SEE the enemies that are 10m or 20m outside of building ? Also, those poor ones standing at windows and - usually ineffectivly - trying to fight those outside in the open - if it really happened IRL that they would be so supressed by enemy fire, that they would be unable to defend the approach to the building, wouldn't they rather back up from the windows to internal walls and only toss grenades outside, and setup a defence inside the buidling, waiting for the atackers to show up in doors and windows ? Especially in a large building - because in small ones the hidden defenders could be finished with just grenades tossed inside. Also, those soldiers that are inside, especially those on higher floors - if the enemy fire was so intense, that it was penetrating the walls, wouldn't they quickly back up to center of the building, lay on the floor (on the floors they would get protection from it), and only defend key positions like stairs, at least for the time of the suppresion ? But I consistently see soldiers inside buildings, even on higher floors, being killed by rifle or MG fire from atacking enemy squad. Or by MG fire from a tank which "sees them trough the walls" and kills them with MG also trough the walls. Sure, a tank could kill them with long MG bursts even trough the (not too thick) walls in many situations - but if the tank gunner knew where to aim, at what part of the wall ! How the tank gunner can see them trough the walls it's beside me... is there EVER a window on the path ? Are those soldiers so stupid to not keep away from windows if a tank is shooting at building ? If a tank is aiming ANYWHERE close to the room I'm in, I would dash or crawl for another room and beside a solid wall, before the tank puts a HE into that room... The virtual soldiers seem to be much less survivable than real soldiers. Real people, especially brave ones, can quickly adapt to changing sitiation, make a dash for cover, quickly change positions. Real soldiers can wait for good moment, fire quickly from a window and when spotted - and expecting hard response - run away or jump to next position, in seconds being several meters away or behind another wall, so a reply in form of MG burst cutting the window (and trough thin wall around it), or even a tank shell, would not hurt them. Virtual, CMBN ones would stay in place shooting (or covering) untill the reply in form of MG burst or tank shell kills them. They would only crawl away if they believe it's time to withdraw. It seems for me that the computer soldiers in CMBN can be either unsupressed - and try to fire at the enemy (even if they have to stand in the windows and are getting quickly killed that way), or be suppressed and just lay down trying to cover - but not able to change individual positions or find a better place to hide. So the computer soldiers - at least those with better trainging and experience - they should either get some more sophiscated AI, that would allow them to better handle the cover, to quickly change positions after firing if outnumbered (or move to cover after firing), to quickly crawl away (or even run away) if they see a tank that is aiming at their position, and some things like that. If the AI of the soldiers is able to "find" them a firing position and "find" a cover, then for sure it would be able to find them a SECOND ALTERNATE near-by firing position and alternate cover, and switch them quickly if in danger, or after firing. Or... all those things would have to be abstracted by making the troops in buildings just "more resistant" and "less prone to supression" or "smaller targets" or "harder to kill" or "harder to spot". Effect would be similar, only because there are graphics and animations of individual soldiers and bullets tracked, then such abstraction would mean that sometimes we would SEE strange things and soldiers that were hit and "should die" would not die. But I believe they could fight a little more "intelligently" - at least if there is less than 100 of them fighting (actively, with those complicated alghoritms actually used) simultaneously.

It would be great if there was a set of standard CMBN&CW scenarios - modified, with wire removed - available for download. I really don't want to know everything about the scenario before I play it, so I don't want to remove the wire myself....

I agree something should be done to further reduce the penetration potential of shells after first penetration. The penetration "afterwards" should not be just function of all the remaining shell energy, but should be also randomised (like, say, from 90% to 30%) of the remaining energy, it would be most simple and efficient (we can't see what is happening with the projectile so an abstraction here is ok and should give good results) way to take account for things like the loss of mass (a detonating burster would take away probably at least 1/3rd of the AP part of shell mass), shell tumbling (a shell hitting broadside would have severly reduced penetration, only able to penetrate thin armor) and hitting various internal parts. Better yet would be to add a space inside tank models that would emulate an angine block and the transmission block. That should prevent tank-tank multiple kills, they would still happen but would be very rare, while halftruck-halftruck would be still possible - just not 7 pieces at once (I managed to do this with a 88L71 pak). There would be more "came trough and hit the other tank" instead of "came trough and penetrated the other tank". Currenly this "trough" performance is much too consistent. I didn't know a destroyed tank is "disappearing" from the game before the shell is able to leave it... An obvious oversight. I feel very much of internal CMBN algorithms are very basic, and that there is a BIG room for improvements - of tank behaviour (too fast reaction, spotting, target aquision, too little randomness in reaction times, strange barrel movements, tank target selection alghoritms (big thumb down), tank damage, shell post-penetration behaviour ect. Didn't even mention infantry (which is a bone of this game) alghoritms, they seem (for me, not focusing on them) - with some exeptions like two-man teams - not that bad, but still fine tuning them is probably 10x as much work, as fixing all the tank behaviour... I hope all this work is meant to be done at some point... In this game or next one (but would be nice to have all the alghoritm improvements also in CMBN as a path, after all I might be wanting to play this game with my friends for years, I would like it to be improved over years, and not just replaced).

It's realistic in some way. AP shells could easily came completely trough thin-armored vehicles like halftracks, armored cars or light tanks, and the shell could hit something on the other side. Don't know of any evidence of multiple kills, but shells passing completly trough (especially side hits) are mentioned often, so one can suppose they COULD still damage something if they hit. I can imagine easily an AP shell fired from a powerfull AT gun could came completly trough 3 Halftracks if it didn't hit the engine or transmission on the way. Shells occasionaly came completly trough side armor of tanks, coming in one side and coming out another. Some could retain enough energy to still penetrate something on the other side. The factors that com into play is the HE burster, shell tumbling and car/tank engines and hard parts. After first layer of >=20mm armor is penetrated, any APCBC-HE shell should detonate. If it does, it's rear part would be fragmented to pieces, but it's front half would remain intact and could continue on it's path, penetrate the other side and maybe something yet. When a projectile, even a solid shot, penetrates the armor, especially sloped armor, it usually losts it's stability and becomes to tumble. It may hit the other side of the tank with it's side and that would severally reduce it's remaining penetration potential. It would probably still penetrate a very thin armor if it has enough energy. Thinner and more vertical the penetrated armor is, less chance for the shell to become tubling rapidly. While penetrating a halftruck it may keep it's stability for several meters, but probably it would still become tumbling on it's way after leaving the first penetrated vehicle. But two Stuarts positioned side by side 10 meters away - I think it would be possible in RL to shot one trough and penetrate the other one . Maybe even two Shermans with 88L71 gun. Of course the second penetration would be only by half of the shell and maybe flying backwards, but still it could penetrate, just do less damage. Third factor is that the CMBN seem to simulate tanks as pure armor boxes, empty inside, with no massive internal parts. A shell can penetrate them trough at any point and any angle, even frontally to the rear, trough the engine. One can kill (in CMBN, and sometimes probably also in RL) with 88L71 two Stuarts and accidentally even two Shermans shooting them frontally if they are one behind the other on the road. Maybe (no idea, just maybe) it's possible for 88L71 to accidentally shot a Stuart completly trough, even trough the engine blok, but the shell would rather lost most of it's energy.

The theory and - with a good fuse - the practice. I wrote "APHE" thinking about whole family of Armor Piercing shells with High Explosive bursting charge (that is supposed to detonate inside the penetrated vehicle). The types being used in CMBN would be probably rather APCBC-HE (or APCBC-HE-T - the "T" mens "tracer") but it's a longer name to write . British would probably use pure APCBC (removing high explosive from their shells and replacing it with sand, IIRC because of problems with reliability of the fuses), but it didn't hurt the performance of 17pd gun - the 17pd APBC shell had lots of kinetic energy, and purely kinetic effects of penetration were usually more than enough to knock-out German tanks (often causing katastrophic kills like internal explosions of fuel/ammo). I'm not sure about US AP ammo, if they used HE burst charges or not - AFAIK they did, but with some problems with fuse reliability. The Germans as an "AP" ammo used almost exclusively APCBC-HE projectiles with HE charges and sophiscated acceleration/deceleration fuses, that were designed (and usually did) to detonate the shell as soon as it passed trough the penetrated armor (fuse was armed after launch, by centrifugal forces, activated when it striked the hard armor and finally triggered when it left the penetrated plate on the other side - just when the extreme deceleration of the penetration proces has ended). The minimum thickness of the plate required to trigger the fuse was IIRC in order of 15-30mm. The only drawback of this fuse was that it was prone to malfunction if used against highly sloped armor - the extreme side acceleration and forces during penetration of a highly sloped armor plate could cause some internal elements of the fuse to jam and not detonate it. The shell then worked like an ordinary APCBC. (Maybe this is the reason that - according to some tanker's reports - a Russian T-34 tank was hard to set on fire if penetrated frontally (by Tiger's KwK36) but burned very easily when penetrated from the side.) On the other hand, even if the German APHE fuse was manufactured with low quality materials by slave workers, and sometimes didn't work properly - the excess of energy of German 88mm or long 75mm guns was so big, similar (or in case of long 88s - much greater) to that of Brithish 17pd gun, that - again - purely kinetic effects of penetration should be most often more than enough for causing a casualties and a knock-out. A working (and probably they usually worked fine) fuse and correctly detonating HE burster could only further increase the nasty effects - by it's detonation causing additionaly a flash/flame and an overpressure spike in the inside of the tank, fragmenting the shell case causing more splinters, filling the inside with black smoke ect. But the burst charge was usually very small. From few grams (of high-performance HE like RDX) in smal-callibre shells, to 20-50g in typical APCBC-HE of 75-90mm calibre, to 100g or more in 122mm shells or some early-war low-velocity 75-88mm shells. Such small charge worked well in a confined space of a tank - detonation of 20...50g of RDX (so like 30-80g of TNT) in a thick metal casing was definitely unhealthy for the crew in a closed space, especially when the shell detonated usually not more than a meter from someones body. But in an open the effect would be reduced, the overpressure being like from very small grenade, and the burst causing usually only few large slow fragments of the shell's case. If the shell buried in the ground, the effect would be reduced even more.

I'm not sure it's correct that an APHE shell hitting dirt causes infantry casulaties. Yes, there is a charge of 30-100g of high explosive inside APHE shell. But it is fused with either time or acceleration/deceleration fuse rather that impact one. After hitting ground, it it doesn't bounce, it would probably bury itself deep in the ground, before detonating. It would either travel at least one meter before it detonates, or the fuse would set it off, when the deceleration ends (this is how German APHE fuses worked) so again, it would bury as deep as it possibly can. If that is the case, then the effect of detonation would be partially/fully absorbed by the ground, also the few shell fragments that would be produced - if they manage to get out back to the air, they would lost most of energy.

Hit: Upper left front helmet, Penetration! ;D Hit: Weapon mount

Tiger can push - even sideways - everything that weights substantially less than the Tiger itself. Of course it depends on the surface (like Tiger on a stone brick road, and pushed vehicle in soft ground) but generally the traction given by tracks is so good, it can push almost as much as it weights itself. Generally. Seen that (not in case of tanks, but just large machines, wheeled and tracked ones).

I agree it CAN HAPPEN that a determined crew bails out succesfully and is able to eliminate a pair of afraid and unexperienced young privates. But I've seen tank crews atacking whole squads of infantry, kiling many of them (and even sometimes winning that battles), so I think if we made a "tank crew against an AT-Team" test, either destroying the tanks (better) or just ordering to abandon them, with an AT-Team 20m out, then there would be lot of outcomes where AT team would be killed by those pistol-mens, even if there was no difference in experience. Maybe most of outcomes would be like that. I want to be wrong and I hope someone makes such test - tank crew (after bailing out) vs AT-team. Seem for me the AT-Team, especially the man with MP40, is to slow at engaging those EXPECTED and close targets, and because of that he lets them to recover after bailing and use their pistols...