Kineas

Me too. That's one weak point of the CM series. In a hex based game this is much simpler of course. For me using the '1' camera view helped the most. You have to go to ground level. The worst part is when 1mm is visible of the top of a vehicle to the enemy, and the engine grants a full flank shot with big hit probabilities to them.

+1 for POS's old pages

That's a fantastic source, thank you.

Yes, only the spotter units. So don't lose them because that means losing your artillery support.

It's there, between Apr '42 and Mar '45. Rectangle enough for me.

Erm....why so sure it's 76mm and not 85? Is the 11mm difference so obvious? Not that I take the 76mm ammo incapable of doing that damage, I'm just intrigued how you arrived at that conclusion. I always thought this was a staged photo and it shows the result of a field test on a captured Tiger. Back to the topic: the combat ineffectiveness of the Russian AFVs in the game is evident. (In that particular situation. Many considers the Russian side stronger in the overall game). The penetration model (the formulas which use the historical penetration values) is close to reality, maybe on the pro-German side, but not much. The damage model however is a bit simple for nonpenetrating hits (though still more complex than in other wargames). Engine malfunctions, armor weakening, cumulative structural damage, spalling played a major role in actual combat than in the game, and this also skews the balance.

Good info, thanks. I don't necessarily consider phrases in training manuals like 'under 500 meters the armor provides no protection' as reliable information. It's more like establishing a doctrine for the tankers, they wanted to err on the safe side of things etc. What's remarkable is that wargames model the T34-Stug force relationship very differently. In the CM model the Russian tanks die easily. In Steel Panthers it's almos impossible to get a kill over 1km (Stug 75mm long, T34 front, the usual setup), and even 88m bounces quite often. Stugs seem more vulnerable than in CM, but not much. I guess the "truth" is somewhere in between, I don't think we get any closer unless we get together in a tank museum and start blowing things up.

AFAIK this is a limitation in CM. A HE round only functions as HE when you hit the ground next to the tank. If you hit the tank itself, the round is treated as a weak AP round.

I think you test with the 80mm variant and not the 50+30mm one. Only the 50+30mm version is considered broken AFAIK.

I love this thread.

It's more like the money. Normandy brings in more than Operation Uranus.

I'd say the game's CRT (in boardgame terms), i.e. the combat mechanics is soft, compared to other games or boardgames. It's more suppression-oriented. It is us who play gamey. Taken out of an operational context, in a single pitched battle, you will sacrifice your men till the victory point ratio is on your side. No point to retreat or concede the game after 10% casualties.

I remember getting 3 full penetrations on a Stug F with a 76mm ZIS-3, at close-mid range. The tank stayed motionless about 30secs then started reversing back. I couldn't believe my eyes. But I also remember killing a Jagdpanther with a single (and first) side shot from a well placed SU-76. That was sweet. Both actions happened in PBEM games.

That sounds right to me. If one is used to the 'softer' combat mechanics of RTS games then that attrition rate might seem too high. But the numbers in this game are modeled after the real things, which were designed for killing not for elongated shooting scenarios.

If a tank becomes immobilized and a crew member had been lost then the tank gets abandoned. So don't get bogged now with TCless tanks...

Yes, I also found the graphics of CMBB superior to PzC.

http://www.the-scenario-depot.com http://www.blowtorchscenarios.com/index.html There are a lot of other sites as well

The 80mm variants are the real tank killers. In the first case, the 1200m distance is at the verge of the effective range of the 75L43. The second case was a melee fight. Maybe this also contributed, but I think you had bad luck or the enemy tanks were more (1-2 levels higher) experienced.

You are both right. If we consider only the physics then marching men in the open, in front of an LMG (distance ~400m) would be dead within minutes. Not pinned, not broken - KIA. You can clearly simulate this in any kind of realistic FPS (like Armed Assault). CM's fire effect "charts" (inherited from the boardgame world) are generally good abstractions, but in this extremal case the effect is just too soft. Moving in the open was suicidal even in ASL (a [2,-2] shot or worse). CM also models the open terrain as an undulated sea of molehills. It would be interesting to repeat the tests on pavement tiles. Of course modifying the FP/cover relationships would also result in different tactics - you would simply not march in the open that often.

may I ask what is that cowering behavior?

There was a thread somewhere about the max. casualties caused by a grenade. I think you have a chance to roll a 3-kill hit by a hand grenade. Which is equivalent of a very well placed SMG burst. I don't know the probability though.

ArmA was a huge disappointment for me. They sold it with the '128 player servers' slogan but I have never seen a server even with the capacity for more than 64 players. Few people played it and mostly in coop mode, that is against bots. I stopped playing it after 2 weeks.

If you have an FPS or RTS gaming background you will be amazed.

So how does CMx1 model the hit locations? It's still unclear to me if it uses a real 3d approach (projectile trajectories and collision meshes) or a simpler, statistical one.

It's possible that the first penetration killed the tank. But your units don't see the kill immediately because the 'fog of war'. So they keep firing at the target until they are sure - when it burns or they see the crew bailing out