Amizaur

35. A 15s WEGO mode . I prefer the WEGO even though 1 minute is often a bit too long "without control" for me. If I had an option to chose a 15, 30, 45 or 60s turns... I would be completly happy and never play RT again . Is is hard to code ?

A working "Hunt" command and the "cover arc armor". Fixed optics damage on tanks.

I hope the module will be accompanied by a patch to the base CMBN game code, fixing some of the most important bugs and also some of m"ost simple to fix" bugs and shortcomings.

Probably not. I'd love if they had "reverse" movement order. Is that so hard to do ? They should be able reverse up to one grid with no delay - they could be programmed to do a pack-up later, but DO move one grid without delay first. At least they could withdraw few meters back from a fire position, when attacked. Gun crews did it all the time.

Well, for me it's not an argument that "it doesn't happen always". It just shouln't happen at all (or once in 100 cases - that could simulate a very stupid soldier). The algorithm of two-man AT teams atacking a tank is not working corretly, it has been admitted. Sometimes not all conditions for "open fire with small arms" are met and the suporting soldiers do not shoot, but on the other hand quite often they do when they shouldn't and it's VERY frustrating... It just should be fixed. Even multiple-man teams with AT capability, should stay quite and show some self-preservation instinct if there is a tank nearby. The priority is to stay undetected and get the tank by suprise, untill it's destroyed and then they can return to "normal mode". Sure, if the tank is unbuttoned, buttoning it by shooting at the commander is a good way to help the AT team in their task. But NOT!!! buttoning BY THE SAME TEAM which is going to do the AT work !!! By shooting they would just bring tank's attention to their direction and likely get killed or supressed, also drastically decrease chances for succesfull AT-weapon launch. Other teams, that are not directly involved with AT (have no AT weapons or are out-of-range of their AT weapons) can and maybe should fire small arms at the tank to help the involved team. But the team (dedicated AT team, or ordinary infantry team with AT capabilities) that is going to aim and shoot at the tank, should stay quite and not reveal their position. It could be some rule like - IF the team has AT capability AND a tank is in their range, THEN other members of the team just stay low and do NOT shoot at the tank (even unbuttoned one), the only involved man is the AT shooter. They can shoot only to other infantry if threatened. It's obvious that it's better to face an unbuttoned tank that do not see the AT team, and get's a HEAT round by surprise, than a tank buttoned but aware of the threat that rotetes the turret and starts to spread fire on the "buttoning" team.... The unawarness of the tank and surprising it is MORE important and BETTER than "buttoning" it, if you have to choose one. There is also the other side of the story - I think the tank commanders should be more prone to buttoning up when first bullet ricochets from the turret. If they were not fanatic SS members, they would rather value their life I think ! Instead I often see them unbuttoned for long periods (several seconds, up to 10) while intense small arms or even intense MG fire is hitting all over the turret !!! Then they have lot's of time to notice, where this smalls arms fire is coming from. If they just dropped down (saving their lifes) on first sign of someone trying to hole their heads (first bullet striking the turret), they would have much less time to notice where the shots are caming from and the "buttoning" work of enemy infantry would be less likely to reveal their positions. Do we believe than in real life a commander riding on a noisy tank, would immediately know the source of a single shot that ricochetted from the metal near him or just whizzed by his head ? I believe that he would rarely look in the right direction to notice the muzzle flash, and rarely be close-enough to hear and locate the shots by ear. He would just know "someone is shooting", maybe with some very general info about fire direction. P.S. It would be _NICE_ if the teams/soldiers which found themselves looking directly at the hole in the tank's barrel - stopped shooting and hit the dirt (maybe activated the "hide" mode) - to reduce casualities. It's quite easy to tell, if you are threatened by the tank or not - if the barrel is looking in different direction, you can expose yourself and fire at it relatively safely. If the barrel is rotating and pointing at you - better hide if you want to live. Even the most stupid soldier on a battlefield would understand this, I believe. So - question to BF - would it be much coding, to make our pixel heroes stop shooting and hide, if a barrel of a tank (for simplicity - not ANY tank, but a one tank closest to them that they can see) is pointing the gun within 10 degrees from their position ?? I believe such small modification would make infantry much more survivable against tanks, and tanks much less "infantry slaughters" than now.

Maybe make such things optional ? Some "checkboxes" you can activate or not - like "MG deploying", "ammo bearers" ? I'm sure I would not want to decrease the realism "for all" - but I'm not against making some things optional. On the other hand, I would not be happy if some BF programmer was to spend time coding "optional" realism features, instead of working on much more fundamental issues, like proper "Hunt" command, editable waypoints and also some kind of "preview of computer-generated route" - which would show if tanks or squads are going to chose different route than the human player intended.

"AT Guns don't get a benefit being in a Trench. They are considered fully exposed, though the crew might get some benefit." I understand they are fully exposed for damage AND fully exposed for spotting purposes ? because: "You need to put AT Guns in covering terrain, such as bushes or trees, to get some concealment benefit." a "concealment" means "harder to spot". Not "protected" (well, bushes would give little protection anyway". So basically this would mean than digged-in AT-gun is just as easy to spot as gun standing in an open field ??? And only little bit harder to destroy ? Historically, a well dug-in AT gun was MUCH harder to spot, that a gun just standing in open field. Only the upper part of the shield and the barrel would be above the ground. Russians often removed the shields from their dig-in guns to make them lower and harder to spot. The barrel was basically on the ground level sometimes. If the gun was really well dug-in, it was COMPLETLY hidden, in a somewhat deeper part of the trench, and only when the fire was about to be opened, it was pulled few meters back, to the more shallow firing position (so the barrel was just above the ground). In case of enemy fire, they could push it and hide it again (if they had time). It worked very well for light guns (like 45mm) and even for medium ones (76mm ZIS-3). Would work for PAK40 as well, I guess.

I would like to kindly ask for one UI improvement, that should be very easy to implement (I believie it would be small code modification only). When various AP shells, HEAT warheads, splinters and ordinary MG/rifle bullets are striking a tank, all of those hits are displayed as "hit _something_" text. Often it's hard to notice which of those hits was the important one - from AT gun or some AT weapon. I would like to ask for: - the hits made by AT weapons be displayed in a different text colour. Like red or blue. I'm letting it for you to decide how to discrimine "AT weapons". It could be for example all projectiles of 20mm+ and all shaped charges, or just dedicated AT weapons... whatever. Discrimine them from ordinary bullets please. Thanks !!

I only wanted to point out, that additional angle generated by "look up" or "look down" situations are rarely worth considering at all. It's _usually_ just few degrees and rarely does any significant difference. There is much more random shot-to-shot difference in penetration, than generated by slighty higher or lower angle. A really high (so high to take into condideration) angle-up or angle-down shots are not very common as it would require quite a hill or valley to happen. On the other hand, tanks don't always stand horizontally. A tank may be advancing uphill, going downhill, crossing a trench or just some bump in terrain. 10-degrees "nose down" or "nose up" attitude at the moment of being hit is happening quite often, if the tank is crossing rough terrain, 20-degrees being not unlikely. The fact if the target tank is leveled or not can make a real difference in case of highly sloped armor (Sherman, Panther, T-34). 60 deg vs 70 deg is a whole world of difference, same for 50deg vs 60deg.

The higher ground you are talking about decreases the angle of sloped armor by mere few degrees. Even 60mm of armor if sloped at more than 60deg (from vertical) is simply impenetrable for M10. This part of Tiger's armor is sloped at 80 degrees ! so decreasing it even 10 degrees does absolutely nothing. It will still just bounce the incoming round that would skid into the vertical front 100mm plate. And penetrate it or not, shattered or not, depends on angles and luck, but the odds seems high, even if the shot shattered it most likely would still penetrate, just be less lethal after penetration (no HE).

Let's see: IF I believed that the video shows where the shots REALLY hit , then: - the first M10 shot hit the Tiger's leading wheel from the side, destroyed it and then just skidded from the side armour. No harm done to the crew compartment. - The second M10 shot - hard to say, but looks like it hit Tiger's upper hull armour. The resulting "explosion" is graphically overmodelled.... It could destroy the kill/wound driver or radio operator and damage/destroy some stuff from driver's right panel. The resulting abandoning of the vehicle is quite realistic historically at this stage of war (Normandy). Depends on crew morale. Tank could be disabled anyway. Not sure if the M10's shell is AP-HE type. If it was, it might or might not work, could be shattered. - The Tiger's second shot seems to penetrate M10's front turret - and that would be very, very likely a knock-out with some crewmans killed and wounded. Doesn't seem likely for me, that a gunner would think about aiming and shooting the halftruck, if an 88mm APHE just penetrated (and most likely detonaded inside) the turret/mantlet armour on either his (gunner's) side - then he would be either killed or wounded and NOT shoot - or loader's side - killing and/or wounding the loader and/or commander. Also the gun could become damaged in the process. Vehicle either knocked out (at least the turret crew disabled), or maybe the driver (that sits in the hull and unharmed) would just reverse, if he believed he can do it before a next round arrives. Outcome (the shot to the halftruck) unlikely for me, but possible of course. Just feels very strange to see the shot just after the turret was penetrated.

There is no "need" to tweak waypoints just like there is no "need" to play the game at all. I find tweaking waypoints VERY usefull in many situations, and I miss it very much. Would the game be WORSE for you, would it kill the immersion, if there was a possibility to move the waypoints ?? Instead of deleting the whole line and plotting it again - just to correct one point at the beginning ?? What a waste of time... I could also plot a general movement order for a group, and then just modify the destignation points for individual units in a comfortable way. And many other things. I would prefer having this (movable waypoints), than having ANY single additional vehicle in the game (even if it was a KT). You could just not use this feature, if you don't want too. I need it.

I believe in real life, tanks mostly used just their MGs for fighting infantry. HE were used for group targets, or targets behind obstacles/fortified, not for one or few soldiers that could be just as good killed with MG. There reasons were: - HE ammo is much more expensive than MG - the barrels are wearing - there could be ammo shortcomings (especially for Germans), ammo sometimes was precious - you could need this ammo later that day In Tiger fibel and Panther fibel there are fragments that say to not use HE ammo in situations where MG is enough I have feeling that tanks in CMBN are using their gun too often agains targets that in real life would be fighted with MGs. Like single soldiers or small groups of soldiers in open terrain. It could be tweaked a bit.

How did they get there ? Seems they were standing stationary at least for few months. The wheat managed to grow up around them . Would be great if the tank tracks were shown on at least some surfaces, like in a wheat or plow...

Atually, tank shell should never melt on impact, if it's not made of of lead . A lead bullet can partially melt, partially splatter, depending on speed. But even using powerfull AT gun, there is too little kinetic energy involved to melt a steel shell on impact. Even with MUCH more energetic event - penetration of armor by HEAT projectile, when a metal jet - squeezed out from copper liner by extreme pressure of HE detonation - hits the steel plate with a speed of more than 6km/s, the liner doesn't melt. It acts like a liquid because of extreme forces, pressures and dynamics, but it never actually melts. I would love to see a little less "spectacular", more realistic tracer effects.... I miss CMx1 shell graphics... Now in CMx2 they look like, well, some sci-fi blaster shots...

It was a great post with very interesting data cited ! Thanks !

I think in such a situation when a tank can't fire for several seconds, and comes into "elevating, aiming, firing, elevating, aiming, firing" loop, the AI should drive a little forward at slow speed untill they get a clear LOS for gunner, and if this doesnt' help, then pop smoke and reverse or just reverse out of sight of the enemy. In RT games the player can micromanage that himself, but in WEGO the tank crew is on it's own, tank gunner can do the "aiming loop" for a full 60s turn, and the player can do nothing with that. So there should be an AI alghoritm to handle such situations, just as they are handled in real life - change the position a bit - "Hans, move a bit forward please....".

I would vote for more visible unit bases, like in CMx1. And of course the ability to turn the bases on/off, or at least abolity to select all units (with a hotkey) so all the bases would be highlighted. Then I could just disable those annoying floating icons .

Sometimes (usually?) a unit (ESPECIALLY a specialised one, like FO or AT team) has much more important tasks than just killing any enemy they can see. And to fitfull those tasks sucessfully, they usually have to: A). stay alive and . remain undetected Opening fire on ANY viable target doesn't help them with their PRIMARY and much more important tasks, like guiding the arty fire or ambushing enemy armor. Even in case of an ordinary rifle squad, often you don't want them to open fire an ANY occasion, but when the tactical situation is fauvorable. In other case, you would never be able to do any ambush, to coordinate simultaneous open-fire from multiple units, or just convince the enemy you are not here, so he'll make a mistake. So they should obey the cover arc orders in a way, they did it in CMx1. And not "decide themselves". The specialised units should know they are "specialised" and should use special rules of opening fire - the target of an AT unit is a TANK, NOT the commander's head. There is usually plenty of other, less exposed and vunerable infantry that can shoot the tank commander and stay alive, while also atrracting the attention of tank crew - giving the AT team an easier shot. The AT team DOES NOT WANT to attract a tank's attention by themselves !!! It's the last thing they would want to. And If I wanted the commander to be shoot at by this AT unit, I would give it a target or target light order. For FO units the number one priority should be staying undeteced. Both should also even more strictly obey the cover arcs, hide ect.

Wares your games real time, or WEGO ? I usually get similar results playing in RT (Panther or Tiger against Shermans), because I can micromanage the fight, manually move the tank at the very moment it is needed, react for changing situation, sometimes choose targets. I'm effectively myself commanding the tank against AI crews. In WEGO mode, when the tank crew is working on it's own, and I'm only commanding the crew with my orders in one minute intervals (which is much more "fair" against an AI) - I can rarely achieve such spectacular results. I can still sometimes get quite good results, but it's much more challenging and requires much more carefull play, more planning and predicting. More "tactical" . I would love an option for 30sec turns in WEGO .

Maybe it's done this way, because if the HMGs were laying the fire as accurate as they should, they would wipe out the defenders in seconds and be unrealistically effective against dug-in troops ? Maybe the game can't just properly simulate the soldiers in prone, soldiers in foxholes making very small targets, exposing themselves only briefly ? And this is because it's very hard to properly model this with simulation of bullet ballistics and target soldier exposure . First one would have to realisticly simulate the aiming, the burst and indvidual bullets spread - which is not that hard, and then properly model soldier exposure (how small parts of their body are they exposing firing from fortified positions, and how briefly and _smartly_). And this is much harder to do, considering also soldier and weapon LOS issues and the soldier 3D-models. It can be just close to impossible, without including some hard-coded "modifiers" defining that soldier in such position is just harder to hit - and means effectively considering most of the bullets that are hitting the soldier's 3D models as "ineffective" - abstracting that the soldier really was less or not exposed at this moment, that he was briefly covering or just made a much smaller target than the game is modelling visually. Well, I consider accurate physical modelling of things in wargames a good thing, but in some areas the abstract way (percentage modifiers, probabilistic means) still gives more realistic results, because some things are still much too complicated to be fully modeled. One for example can model all splinters from a HE burst, and track their trajectiories to see if any of the soldiers were hit. But he has to have very good model of terrain and obstacles to do that effectively, and still some oddities would show. It's still usually better to do that with probabilistic means (considering if the soldier is in the LOS or not, and because such HE burst, splinters and chances of wounds have a probabilistic nature. It seems for me (not verly close observations, as I'm rather focused on tank combat now) that dug-in soldiers (or soldiers in buildings) in CMBN share time between laying with faces in dirt (and they are safe then) and periodically exposing good part of their body while firing. If the HMG was firing accurately, then the soldiers would have been instantly killed every time they were exposed to fire, when the HMG burst arrives. Foxholes would be cleaned from soldiers within a minute. So maybe, because the results were unrealistic, the HMG were made to fire the bursts less precisely. This way thir kill ratio against dug-in soldiers is more realistic, while retiaining their suppression value. On the other hand this lack of accuracy also makes HMG very ineffective also whenm they are used against infantry in the open, they can catch walking or running soldiers in the open, or laying soldiers in open flat terrain and are hardly able to kill anybody !!! Now please someone tell me, I'm wrong, and the reasons for pitifull performance of HMGs agains exposed targets is different.... :-\

Hej Pete - thanks for the scenario . Unfortunately it was me that caught the AI and stopped the attack on and before the first minefield . Playing as Germans against the AI, two Panthers are just an overkill against those few Shermans. One or two PzIV would be more balanced I believe. Of course the odds would look differently if this was played H2H. Maybe I'll try as US against AI.... but this would be spoiled by the fact I know the German force composition and where they are positioned...

A scenery after US armoured attack was stopped. It turned into group of black smoke columns...

It's ok to model halftrucks as hollow metal boxes, but not ok to model tanks same way. It's very hard if not impossible to penetrate a tank trough from the front to the rear, if the engine is somwhere on the shell's path. And it is usually. Wow, you are right !!! There is Pak43 in the game!!. I'm going to check it !!! edit: I can't get it to penetrate more than 9... either it's too hard to line up more than nine vehicles or the collisions are not counted after 9 or the penetration is not greater than that of the Panther. So far I believe the first reason is true . In first try, I lined up some 12 halftrucks side by side and placed a Pak43 100m from them. Go. The Pak... didn't ever shoot... it was instantly covered with tons of fire of 12 heavy MGs from the 12 halftracks which shoot one trough the other, just like they were transparent . The ground near and behind the PAK was just boiling from MG fire . Had to give short cover arcs for halftrucks, to give the Flak a chance to fire. But it didn't penetrated more than 9, anyway. After 9th penetration, the shell flew trough (not colliding) or under (between the wheels) the rest of halftrucks (problems with angle and lining them up for penetration), or sometimes dissapeared after 9th penetration (maybe penetration was depleted).

Actually, a Tiger or Panther are able to make better than double . They can penetrate at once up to 9 halftrucks in a row (from the side). I guess the vehicles in game are modelled as engine-less hollow metal boxes. To break this record, we need a long 88. I bet it can penetrate up to 13 haltrucks. Two other "doubles" that happened in actual games: Two Shermans, both trough front upper hull: The above penetration looks like the Sherman had no engine on the way. Two M10, one was barely hit, the second got the rest: Note the angle of right hull penetration.