dan/california

The ceramic layers negate heat rounds very effectively, M1s were given an outer coat of DU and steel alloy or something similar when the Russians improved their top line KE stuff and they were not sure the ceramics were adequate. If the KE penetrates at all in heavy armor it will make a mess on the inside.

Your right, but the look, excellent physics modeling, and basic apparent tech level are so similar that people have a hard time knowing when to quit. I wouldn't be one of people, not at all, not even a little bit.

Well there is this brand new Stryker thing. See the CMX2 Shockfront forum section of this website for more than you will ever want to know. It does have eight wheels. I am fairly certain that their are a couple of European exceptions on the 76mm thing as well. There is a trend to trade tactical durability for strategic speed, the Stryker can go several, maybe many, times as far as an M1 without needing heavy maintenance or new tracks. At one point right after Bagdad fell the army was filling up entire C5/C17s with replacement tracks, it can be a big problem. Also M1 class tracked vehicles destroy most road surfaces just by driving over them, once.

Everybody missed the real point, it was in a regular civilian house as near as I could tell from the interior views. Hezbollah doing things like that is why the IDF is systematically demolishing Southern Lenanon. You don't take fire many times from bunkers that look like houses before houses start to look like bunkers. I think the Israelis would be perfectly justified in cluster bombing it all. I think Bomber Harris called it de-housing.

I really do believ that it will get much better with more players on the servers, especially more good players. I have not noticed any one living very long in Yurch's line of sight. The tools are there once people get the hang of it.

Clay said somewhere that they knew the cutter model had issues, it is just such specialty peice that I don't see it making it to the top of the list for a while.

The cycle of armor vs penetration is very old, it is still going strong. [ August 11, 2006, 12:52 AM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

Fixing the issue with the tire will increase the size of the Paladins sweet spot a lot, especially at long range. You will have far higher chance of getting the tire and the engine for instance. Would it be greedy to point out that, at a fairly large set of angles you would get more than one tire maybe. This is a subtle change that could have significant effects. many more hits would render the paladin almost completely immobile. Immobile paladins don't last long. Would it be really greedy to ask for a shotgun/flechtette round? Best game feed back/support ever, period. Thanks Clay.

As far as neat ricks with current hardware go, 20mm in vacuam is deadly. You can be 500 or a thousand meters from anythings side and shred them. The roundsdon't slow down in vacuam at all. It was the only thing I got right the whole game. :confused: [ August 10, 2006, 11:00 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

Dark the damage is not just from spall, modern AP rounds, if they hit something thick enough turn into shower of molten flaming metal droplets, that go every where in a cone shaped pattern from the penetration. One of the reason that DU is so nasty is that it has an especially energetic burning reaction in this circumstance. If it hits something thin it doesn't experience enough heating and breakdown to make this happen. Bjarmson, I used a bigger number in my earlier post but dark's right about the round weight. It is a trade off between mass and muzzle velocity and that is the point the designers picked. Their are complicated limiting factors involving barrel strength, vehicle weight, recoil system, and god knows what else. Remember it all has to work over and over again. KE missiles that are under development do not have this limitation. The rocket motor body gives them superior performance against light vehicles as well.

If you want one hit kills on shrikes use HE, close most definetly counts. It is the agonizing decision about what to keep loaded that is tricky. Feedback like this is simply unheard by the way, thanks, really. I think AP penetrating through the tire would resolve a remarkable # of these issues. Right now it acts like a piece of armor if the wheeled vehicle is in a position to hurt you already and six seconds becomes a long time. and if it as an ATGM and you can see it...... [ August 10, 2006, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

One additional fact, the shell /missile can't be going above some limiting velocity, otherwise the charges geometry is destroyed by impact before it can detonate properly/completely.

The best example I have seen to explain the way a shaped charge works is the linear charges they use to cut the big beams in building for controlled explosive demolition. It is just a strip of copper bent bent into a V shape. They attach it to the beams and add when detonated the the copper ling cuts the beam cleaner than most welders could. Check picture below http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LinearShapedCharge.png Wikipedia has a very through article. When the Pentagon starts talking about building high performance ones it gets stupid complicated, supercomputer simulations, DU and other fancy liner materials, the whole nine yards.

Call Comcast, or Verizon.

Dark you are correct that some of my number are off, that is why I put them up for inspection, so people could check. Also my calculations are for momentum, not energy. Momentum is more useful for things like how billiard(pool) ball bounce off of each other. It is also more useful for car crashes and the like in many circumstances. I used it instead of energy in this case because I was curious if Paladins should be rolled over by impact on a regular basis, as well as my driving. :confused: The theoretical equivalent of running into a truly large bridge support type of concrete wall is to hit a vehicle with the same momentum(mass*velocity) going the other way. That is the general idea was trying to expound upon. Abrams APDSect. rounds have an energy of six to eight megajoules shortly after leaving the muzzle according to public sources, but the calculations about how much of it go into melting the tip of the sabot and how much into melting the armor, and, and, and quickly get insane. Momentum is easier. Sabot/KE based missiles that will have 4 to 10 time this amount of energy are in late stage development, by the way.

I made the following assumptions in regards to the momentum, not energy, of a 120 AP round. They are based on approximate Abrams equivalents. vehicle mass 35000 kg ,AP round mass 50 kg( that is probably high but kept the math simple), and muzzle velocity 1750 mps. The muzzle velocity is the unclassified Abrams number. Some basic calcs spit out that the round has the same momentum as the tank when it is going approximately 9 kmh. Its not quite 50 mph but, still a heck of a punch, for lighter vehicles it would be like running into a brick wall. Literally if the round penetrated the armor, bouncing off is complicated, either it is like running into the target with a tank moving a few kph or the round makes another hole in the other side. There are no other choices. What does a paladin mass/weigh again Clay? They probably should be flipping over in some circumstances This is at the muzzle, it would trail off in atmosphere depending on air density.

For shrikes the problem has gotten much better with both HE, and coax available. Either one shreds them. Paladins are too hard to kill. For starters 120 Ap should go through the tires without slowing down enough to matter, so anything but a grazing corner shot should proceed right on through the vehicle. 120 AP that breaches the armor should proceed straight through the vehicle making progressively bigger holes as it goes. What the heck is the motor made out of that it stops a round that size? When a lightly armored vehicle is struck by a penetrating large caliber heat round it should die. When a heavily armored vehicle is struck by a penetrating large caliber AP round , it should die, There are just too many things to get broken. Wiring and fuel lines and so on, both rounds have large incendiary effects. The rational design decision if you have a given amount of armor available is to put it on the outside of the vehicle so that unpleasantness inside is avoided. There is a two small hole effect with light armor and an AP round, but a paladin is not a lightly armored vehicle. It has about half as much armor as a thor or more Some tanks use blow out panel on their ammo storage, but that just keeps the crew alive, it is still out of action.

I would even take an 8 second reload, I think it is 6 seconds right now, if it got me a higher kill probability.

Included, I almost feel like I am taking advantage of you guys. Almost. Now we can geek out with real historical data! :eek:

The mighty SquidLord just combined 5 threads in one, I am awed, not shocked, but definitely awed. If they come up with the ability to slave bots to players so that they will target the same unit or at least general area this whole sitting still problem will get much better. Rather it will get much worse for the people sitting still. One the issues with the game right now is that each sides firepower is very diffuse. As that gets better and players can focus more barrels on the high priority threats it will get much better. For that matter if you could just tell one 20mm paladin to follow you around and shoot at the same target it would roll point defense back almost completely. The trick with the atgm vehicle sending bullets after its own missile also works extremely well. The missiles near vertical launch even means I can't complain about trying to shoot down my own missile. However their is this little graphical oddity between the angle the launcher sits at and the angle the missile appears to leave at. i am working on a suitably complicated explanation. [ August 09, 2006, 12:23 AM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

Dark, you are right about many of these things, but it is primarily a a game mechanics issue. Real AFVs have a commander, a driver, a gunner, in the Abrams at least, a loader who spends more of his time acting as a radio operator. The sitting still thing is simply a result of one person not being able to do all of these things well. People tend to sit still to improve their situational awareness and or gunnery. It is just very difficult to coordinate everything to do a proper shoot and scoot. If their were a a few hundred people on the servers all the time, it might be possible to have a driver and gunner, but that and decent bot intelligence are not quite there yet. There might be a small ping issue as well. No one in the industry has decent bots, it an unsolved problem industry wide in unscripted games. I would love to be able to yell, or tap a button and have the driver do something intelligent while I kept trying to kill things. I just wrote something about being able to tell your tank to follow its platoon leader but Clay will need a while if it is even doable. The bot coordination tools that are under discussion might help this a lot.

Go right ahead and fly a viper into Yurch's line of sight. I dare you, please take screenshots and or video of the burning wreck.

Dark, You are right on many of the generalities but missing two subtleties. The first is that game balance is really hard, anything they put in will be put to uses that were not conceived before hand. The second is that "tactical sense" changes with the technology. Part of the endless fascination of a game like this is figuring out what makes tactical sense under the rules at that time. getting back to the game balance issue, the law of unintended consequences is a big, big deal. The other part is arguing about it. Battlefront and TBG are the best out there at explaining why and taking input. Adzling, isn't that what the command track fire mission does now?

Flamingpicky, you are right about the misconception. It just so happens that if you are dealing with it from any perspective other than a CAD screen trying to improve armor or warheads the distinction is just irrelevant. [ August 08, 2006, 02:52 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]

Clay, I basically agree with you. The game is designed to have a different feel than a full up war circa 2006. In any tactical situation right now the use of ground troops is primarily to flush the enemy from cover, at least from the perspective of any major western power. Once an enemy has been forced to reveal himself some thing unstoppable and fatal is called in. If it was an even fight it would be a quick bloody, and ungodly expensive war between the air, artillery, and ECM of each side to establish supremacy first. Then one side is running and hiding and the other side is working the radio. Once one side can park a B-52 on loiter with tens or(they are working on it) hundreds of guided munitions all the other side can do is try to play the human shield card. As repeated references to mad Admiral Stannis point out in the back story it is basically a strategy of praying the other side has a conscience. Actually managing the place once you smash it is a different issue for a different forum. The game is designed to play on a different level where the units on the field have to deal with each other. This means some combination of game mechanics and and back story that account for the lack of unlimited, unstoppable, guided super weapons. I feel that the overall balance is very close to right, I have certainly made enough suggestions about how I think it ought to be tweaked. Still in game terms it is pretty close to right. I don't think people have had the time to absorb how effective the coax is in hammering back point defense yet. With atgms and a little practice you can do with one unit. In fact what is really needed right now, in addition to various unit coordination measures that are underway is a shrike or paladin with a 14 mm or even 10 mm chain gun as a main armament. It would be the perfect counter for point defense, infantry and turrets. It would also be completely helpless against heavy armor and require the kind of teamwork the game is aiming for. Better tools for unit coordination will help tremendously here. If the human players could group a platoon together and then switch very easily(single key even) from vehicle to vehicle within that platoon a lot of this would be more manageable. Th overall commanders job would also be infinitely easier if he could just give orders to platoons instead of vehicles. Thee real world works that way for some very good reasons. I also like the idea of using the Galaxy to lead and the assault and establish a base of operations as brought up earlier. This would allow and encourage people to drop at defined points and start out with some sembalance of coordination. Things as simple as not having the bots leave the galaxies area of influence unless there was group of a specified size would help tremendously. It is the endless onesie twosie dribble assault that really crosses up game play at the moment. if the bots waited for a player and automatically grouped themselves in a (selectable, please) formation the fighting would get a lot more organized. I am sure Clay loves it when I ask him not to sleep for several more weeks like that. Backstory tech is a whole different issue that I am trying to write something longer on. Be afraid, be very afraid. [ August 08, 2006, 02:34 PM: Message edited by: dan/california ]