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GoodGuy

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  1. I remember that you mentioned that in some discussion about HE ammuntion. Parts of the author's conclusions and assumptions point to the right direction, but his conclusion/infos regarding the amount of rounds carried by a German rifleman, the bits about the amount of troops assigned to operate a MG and about the number of SMGs (MP 40, MP44 or StG44 if you will) issued per squad are a bit off, partially due to the fact that he bases his conclusions on Niehorster's 1939 TOE and on TOEs projecting the equipment level of Volksgrenadier-Divisions in 1944 and 1945, which were utopistic for the most part, as in reality the Germans had to manage the omnipresent scarcity of equipment and resources during the last say 3.5 years, especially during 1944 and 1945, even though the German armament industry's output had peaked as late as 1944 (partially due to streamlining or simplifying parts and weapons, which resulted in lower quality here and there). 1) Regarding the amount of troops operating a MG34/42, the KStN (Kriegsstärkenachweis, which was maintained by the OKW) entries for an infantry company (note: NOT a motorcycle company) from 1943/44 draw a different picture. I have several scans of the complete original KStN from 1944, for example, which indicates that the 3rd soldier had been stripped (somewhere between 1940 - 1942, I would have to dig for the pre-1944 KStN to give the exact date, but this info can be found in the literature too), because it turned out that the 2nd soldier could carry a sufficient amount of ammo for a bipod MG (LMG). It took more effort (troops) to move and operate a tripod MG, but these were operated in and assigned to MG-Batallions in the main, anyways. 1941 (H)MG-Company: http://niehorster.orbat.com/011_germany/41_organ_army/kstn_0151c.htm Still, by 1941 even HMGs were operated by 2 soldiers only, means by a gunner (pistol) and an assistant (pistol). An additional number of 6 soldiers and 2 drivers were meant to provide security for 2 HMGs and maintain a proper level of ammunition supply, all of these 8 troops were equipped with rifles. 2) Rounds carried by riflemen: According to German Army manuals (1939, 1941), each rifleman had to carry 6 cartrides (5 rounds = 30 rounds), with some additional 3 cartridges stored on the truck (15 rounds). In practice each of the 2 ammunition "bags" were filled with 30 rounds (=60 rounds), and many soldiers used their tommy-bags (haversack?) to carry some additional 20-30 rounds, prior to heavy engagements. 30-60 rounds used to be the standard layout, though. 3) The Volksgrenadier-Divisions were somewhat favoured when it came to equipping troops with the new StG44, there were quite some newly established companies whose troops were all equipped with either StG44, MP40 or Beretta (in 1944). Ammunition supply for the Sturmgewehr was critical though, as the projected production figures (200 million rounds per month) of this new and unusual round (7.9 mm) could not be reached. The projected figures of 400 million rounds (an utopistic figure from February 1944) were changed to a more realistic output of 120 million rounds per month in February 1945. In practice, this meant that even some Volksgrenadier-Divisions had to fall back to rifles too, as the MP40s were either employed elsewhere or as they did not have the accuracy/impact needed for engagements above 50-80 meters. On top of that, the industrial StG44-output was too low to a) make a vital change and to equip all of the new divisions. The demand to employ these new assault rifles, made by German divisional commanders was spot on though, as especially the US units actually had superior firepower with their mix of semi-auto Garand rifles, BARs and and MPs. The main thought for deployment within Volksgrenadier-Divisions, though, was to up the combat value of these (partially 2nd rate units, as many of them received little to no training or consisted of formerly dismissed soldiers) units, because it took less experience/skill to fire a StG and actually hit something. 4) Rifle cartridges had been changed prior to the war, in particular the charge had been reduced. You or someone else stated that in the discussion I mentioned above, too, and that's correct. The rifle rounds were then only required to provide sufficient stopping power (and accuracy) up to 200 meters (some sources say 250-300), so the Waffenamt had indeed lowered the specs. I believe this had several reasons and may involve some lessons from WWI, one was most likely the attempt to lower ammunition expenditure (which reminds me of the change made to the M16 employed in Vietnam, which introduced a switch that restrict the rifle to fire triple and single rounds only) and to lower allocation of resources (bullet charge, metal), another reason could have been the thought that the typical engagement would take place somewhere between 150 and 300 meters, obviously. Although LMGs and HMGs (and maybe even StG44s later on) were meant to deliver a suppressive rain of bullets, US troops showed that BAR rifles could be used to pick on troops way above 400 meters, with surprising accuracy. The bullet's velocity was the key here. There are accounts that German troops operated MG42s in a similar manner - firing single shots only, in Africa and in France (1944), occasionally. In turn, the Brits mastered ballistic area fire with their Vickers HMGs, up to 4.5 kilometers, with devastating effect. That said, TOW2's small arms are way too lethal. ........ ......... ...... I do like the author's critical article about the HMMWV's bad stand in Iraq, and that it should have been pulled out of Iraq a few years ago, though. http://www.angelfire.com/art/enchanter/guntruck.html
  2. And what's the purpose for using anti-reflection techniques in military applications, in particular targeting optics in heavy guns (e.g. flak 88) and tanks (e.g. TZF)? Reducing reflections???? It's the light-gathering ability of such (anti-reflection) coatings. You seem to think that the coatings just had the function to reduce reflections. In fact, the coatings provide for more clarity and allow more rays of light to pass through a lense (or a set of lenses, which you need for higher magnification levels). I think you're wrong regarding number of layers used in German equipment, and regarding MgG2 use. In turn, a few years ago, when I read about German vacuum technologies employed in optical devices, it seems that I interpreted/translated the shortcut "AR" as the chemical element Argon, a gas that is used in rifle scopes, for example. I'm not a physicist, so I thought Argon was used, after browsing articles and books covering this topic a few years ago. Most of the material is available in English, only. So, I just rechecked articles and books, and I learned that "AR" coating was referring to "antireflection" coating, not argon coating. Now, let's talk about your claims: There are even eye-wittness accounts (Allied veterans, I quoted one account on the first page of this thread, G.Green , Panzers at War", page 60) which testify that German optics were on a different level than let's say the ones in Sherman tanks. A similar or even better magnification level in US tanks didn't necessarily provide a superior level of clarity, even worse, it added a higher percentage of blur with each additional lense employed, unlike in the German optics which used different (or better) coatings and different pre-processing of the lenses. Let me quote the following work: (beware, it gets technical) During the African campaign the shortcomings of the US tanks' optics had alarmed US officials, so - as a result - the US put quite some effort into overcoming what I would call "optics-crisis". Later in the war, Sherman tank optics were somewhat better, but still did not match the quality of most (if not all) of the German optics. The US Army obviously knew that at least proper coating appeared to be vital for getting improved optics, thus they sponsored the conference. Pre-processing the lenses (which the Germans did it seems) may have been vital too, but I don't know if that had been part of the Committee's evaluation, too. The question is what the particular findings of this conference were, and when (and how) that showed on actual production models of tank optics. Afaik, even until 1944/45, US tank optics remained inferior, despite the introduction of optics with way higher magnifications. The Russians, in turn, tried to copy the German optics, and at least the ones employed in IS-2 tanks were really good (astounding max range). The footnotes in Mattox' work: The Japanese got all infos regarding coating and lense technologies, along with blueprints of military applications and weapons shortly before Germany was forced out of the war. Some tech-transfer attempts (like a disassembled Me 262 + blueprints aboard a submarine) either did not make it to Japan, or took several attempts (even with rumors about an alledged long-range flight of the only famed German long-range bomber using the route over Syberia). Whatsoever, the Japanese became the leaders in the camera sector by using the German technologies as foundation, although Canon and Nikon did not own the camera (and lense) patents.
  3. Actually, after installing the Dual Core Optimizer AND the AMD Cool + Quiet driver, the unpatched game was running smoothly (i had low FPS before), even when using FF game speed (where animations were still skipping, but rather in a neat and almost fluid way) or encountering "large battles". With the patched version, the frame rate is still ok, but the FPS rate seems to drop tremendously when heavy scripting is involved or if many units populate the battlefield (means if more reinforcements are joining the fray). Also, maps with lots of environmental effects (animated sandstorms, sound FX) seem to have quite some impact on game performance. I've got an AMD Quad Core 940 X4 and a GeForce 7600 GT - so it was really surprising that the DUAL CORE optimizer seemed to act like a fix, but since the unpatched version got extremely fluid fps-wise at one point, it must have improved something. I don't think that it's my video card (although I know it's not exactly the newest Nvidia thing on earth ) which is slowing down things, since the game worked like a charm at one point. It must be the program code, maybe the fix for the memory leak/savegame bug is causing this, I don't know. My FPS aren't as low as 1-2 fps though, they're still around 15-19 fps during large battles (which is still sad). I used to have 30-38 before the patch, though, with occasional breaks (tiny freezes) when moving around the cam like a madman, due to the limits of my video card I guess. I quit playing TOW2 because of this. Also, the low amount of content (number of missions) and the technical deficiencies (AI code, program code - memory handling) are rather disappointing. I don't think I'll buy a 1.0 version of a BF game before checking the feedback in the forum ever again. So I wonder, is this going to be fixed or not?
  4. But then I'd insist on putting in that 600mm mortar "Thor" or even the 800mm rail-gun "Gustav". ;-) http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=183_1243099583 I've seen a Russian veteran on TV, he was inside one of of the Forts, and IIIRC he said that more than 5 shells were fired, so he might have been in Fort Stalin or Fort Molotov, as part of the Russian garrison when the 800mm shells hit the fortress. He said that it felt like being on a ship, or like during an earthquake, as the whole structure trembled from impact. He said that some comrades went nuts and that this kind of shelling was extremely demoralizing, as they initially believed the Fort would be a nut too hard to crack for the Germans. Back to the "unusual theater"-suggestion: Yeah Romania might be an interesting theater. My granduncle fought (and died) in Romania, which wasn't a pleasant place to be for a German Landser: The Romanians changed sides overnight (the Russians didn't trust them though, and treated Romanian units as POWs as well, afaik), turning Romania into hell for the Germans. Romanians in their back and the ever-charging Russians in front of them... I've heard a German vet reporting stuff like as yet friendly Romanian battalions suddenly attacking them in the middle of the night, with him and a bunch of survivors running through a grainfield, with MG tracers traveling over their heads (pretty much in Forrest Gump fashion). They then had to run for several days before finding a German unit. My mother's neighbor was a Kradmelder (dispatch rider - motorbike), he tried to escape, made it from the border to Moldavia all through Rumania to Budapest (Hungary) just to get picked up by an officer to join a Kampfgruppe and to be encircled by the Russians. He had already dropped most of his uniform, as he thought the war was over for him. The officer didn't consider him to be a deserter, so he was "lucky" - well, still had to fight again during the last days of the war in Europe, so absurd. As to the Italians joining the Allied side, quite a few Italian units let the Germans pass through their control zones, when they were retreating to the next defense line - out of sympathy, as quite some of their commanders had fought with the Germans in Russia or elsewhere, and other Italian units just knew their equipment was no match for the German heavy weapons. Actually, the Germans were ordered to disarm them.
  5. While his problem can be traced back to user access control, the freeze/crash at the end of a mission still appears on my system, once in a while, even WITH the patch installed. The game would just freeze or even crash to the desktop. This happens let's say like with a ratio of hmmm something between 1:8 to 1:15 (one crash per 15 succesful missions). It might be more frequent, but since a battle is pretty time-consuming, most people will save and continue the next day, so it might not be noticed. Saving a game works like a charm with the patch now, though. It looks a bit like there's a higher chance that the game freezes at mission end when I ran (and closed) a lot of other programs before launching TOW2, means if the memory is fragmented. I'm not a windows programmer, so I don't know if XP's memory management is good enough to avoid fragmented memory areas. Btw, I still can't access options.exe on my system. Why?
  6. I forgot to reply to this.... I can confirm this, frame rates are jerkier now, 3ghz quad core (AMD X4 940). It's pretty much as choppy as with the unpatched retail version now, again. Either installing the AMD dual core optimizer or the AMD Cool+Quiet drivers (i can't tell which one may have improved things, since I installed them both before restarting TOW2) gave me a significant performance boost -> with the unpatched retail version. Maybe the boost came from the dual core optimizer, as TOW2 doesn't use 4 cores. After this patch, things got somewhat jerky, especially at FF game speed, where it used to be rather smooth before the patch. What happened there? I can't find that detail in the readme? What are you reffering to in particular, and which OS? I would have expected that a correction for the game, which aims at depicting guns and vehicles with historical accuracy, would be executed by the devs, not by some modders. Questions: Did the patch correct long range-accuracy of small arms fire? I haven't had time to check that with the patch, but before the patch ... running infantry struck by the 6th or 10th bullet fired by a machine gun at a distance of around 700 meters was pretty ridiculous. AT guns are still "sniping" at least, killing crawling soldiers at 500-700 meters. Do you intend to set the ranges/accuracy of guns and optics of German tanks to historical values? (as outlined in my posts in the "TOW2 sniper war?"-thread)
  7. I still can't launch options.exe .... I know i can edit the ini files, but I don't wanna dig in there each time i want to change something. I get the hour-glass for a second, when I try to launch options.exe, but nothing happens, the options window won't come up. (.NET installed) So does anyone else have this problem? Sneaksie!
  8. Well, mission works fine, my ally's (yellow) artillery immobilized a german tank right at mission start (without me seeing it in the heat of the battle), so the tank was halted just behind a hill where i couldn't see it. I searched the whole map, killed inf survivors, tank crews, and finally found the german tank: It had been immobilized OUTSIDE of the mission area, though, so my tanks couldn't go there.... and I couldn't get to the top of the hill either, as the top was right outside the mission area. It took 5-10 minutes to find a way to fire at the tank. Saving works fine now, no crashes when saving yet, no CTDs right in the middle of a game either.
  9. I installed the patch and tested the first US mission, because I figured all the savegames are gone (at least not showing up in the list). I can't finish the first US mission now, i can't seem to find the trigger anymore. All Germans dead.
  10. Maybe it's a language problem: You cannot view/select OTHER maps when you created a 8 player server, if you decide to play smaller maps (4 player map, 2 player maps) with the players that actually JOINED (in my examples host + 3 people, or host + 1 player). YOU HAVE to leave the server and HOST again, each time - to create a server with the corresponding max amount of player slots. This is annoying. Getting it now? My request was to make it possible that a host can select ALL maps, and maybe you could just ADD a check routine that checks if the right conditions (for a given map) are met (minmum/maximum number of players?, slots locked?) before the OK/START button can be pushed. Don't make people leave and re-host a game, each time they change their minds (to play a different map). Thank you!
  11. Well, but the current spotting mode makes it impossible for tanks to spot let's say AT guns (which are positioned in the open !, like in the mission featured in the demo - i forgot the scenario name) beyond let's say ~700 meters, so even with a clear LOS ("attack ground" line/arrow is all red) the tanks CANNOT SEE beyond that range, which is unrealistic. In the demo, the 2 AT guns on the hill (at the end of the valley) can't be spotted by the player's tanks, even if they moved as close as 500 meters (I would have to measure the distance, I am estimating here right now) towards the AT guns. The tanks get hit without ever knowing where the gun fire came from, and without ever being able to spot THEM, although they're not camouflaged/concealed. The reason may be that those AT guns are positioned in spots with thick grass, but i am just guessing here, you might be able to provide an answer here, Sneaksie. Grass can't cover AT guns that weigh 700 - 1300 kg, seriously. Tanks should still be able to spot them at medium/long ranges. I think it's rather a decision to make the scenario design more thrilling than anything else. That's what i meant with unhistorical ranges. German tanks could spot targets at >2 km, when having an unobscured LOS, and they used to hit with the 3rd or 4th shot at ranges between 1300 and 2000 meters. (As I described in the "TOW2 is a sniper war?"-thread.) I actually do that. But new players will struggle with that. Also, why don't you let the user decide whether he wants his units to act independently or not? HOLD always on is annoying, for most users. Yes I know that, but the forum didn't let me edit my post when I figured that I should have explained it in detail. The formation won't be memorized when you select an entire infantry squad (for example), this is disturbing in cases where you don't want to create groups, or where all the number-keys/group keys are already occupied with other groups. The formation should be memorized for any given formation selected/grouped by the user. That's what i meant with clickology, the game features a certain amount of clickology, and where some of the click-fest could be reduced/abolished easily, by tweaking game design/UI design, or your politics.
  12. Hi Wodin! Yeah, I know you like the AA-Series . Well, I'm not like you, but there's a chance that you miss an event or that a certain unit needs micro-management in a vital moment, so that's where half speed comes in handy. Being able to pause the game and issue orders (you can't do that in Close Combat) is a nice feature, too. The amount of units is usually manageable, but the friendly Infantry AI is sometimes so hmmm let me call it unclever (they tend to behave like klutz soldiers quite some times, running into their own nades when assaulting, crouching or standing where they were ordered to go to prone position), so that they need extra micro-management in those moments. It's been like that in TOW1 too, so I don't know if they're going to patch it. Some of the issues and features of the game: Spotting (pls see the "TOW2 is a sniper war?" thread) - where one part of the deal is the fact that i.e. AT guns can spot you but you won't be able to spot them at ranges ~/+ 800 meters (i.e. in the demo mission) so that you have to send infantry as spotters, unrealistic (high) lethality of small arms fire at long ranges (not sure if this is going to be patched), unhistoric short ranges of German tank guns (see same thread), the current memory management (which is being addressed in the first patch, though), Design (UI and Game Design) decisions which are showstoppers in a way: a)Hold is always OFF for all units, you have to issue a hold order to each unit (you can group units and set them to HOLD position though, so it's manageable, still involves a bit of click-ology). It's the other way around with Games from other companies: HOLD will be always OFF in those games, unless you enable "move/charge at will". b)The type of formation won't be memorized, the type has to be selected again each time you re-select a given unit, -- The game holds some bugs, but once the memory/savegame bug is fixed, I wouldn't say that the other bugs have potential to make the game unplayable (the savegame bug has that potential, though). There are CTDs, but they may be caused by the memory-bug. The 3 campaigns are somewhat short. Around 5-6 missions for each side (3 sides). The mission editor is really powerful (complex too, though), so there should be quite some user scenarios, once mappers got familiar with the tool. Someone's working on a Mod, too, it seems. The release version is not exactly a really solid game, but it's still fun to play - if you don't find the silly features or shortcomings too disturbing. Friendly infantry and trenches, 2 ingredients that don't mix? (pls see threads with bug list) TOW 2 is a good step forward, compared to TOW 1, especially visually, but quite some issues that could be experienced in TOW 1 already (especially with infantry behaviour) are still present in TOW2. The game carries the most realistic approach (regarding armor penetration, weapon sounds, and destructable environment compared to other 3D - RTS), but it's not fit to hold a candle to industry (RTS) standard features - in quite some fields: Friendly/enemy AI behaviour, handling of commands and user interface, just to cite a few examples. Check out the Bug report / suggestions for improvement threads, to form an opinion.
  13. I don't think that you understood what I was trying to say. Example: If I host a 8 player game, but only 3 players would join, I could not just LOCK the 5 empty slots and choose a 4 player map, BECAUSE the 4 player maps are ALL greyed out. I would have to ask the players to leave, then I would have to host a game for 4 players. Now let's imagine 2 of these 3 people would be pissed off (so they won't show up), and that only the last remaining player would join, I'd have to ask him to leave for the second time, BECAUSE I can't select 2 player maps, if the limit had been set to 4 players. Do you get it now? С наилучшими пожеланиями
  14. I found an issue in Multiplayer: If you select 8 players before you host a game, you won't be able to pick other maps (except for that one 8-player map for "Domination" mode) and even the 8-player map will be greyed out when a different game mode - i.e. king of the hill, attack/defend, - is being selected. Examples: Let's say the host creates a game for 3 players, but only 1 player would join, then he can't just lock the empty 3rd slot and play a 2 player map, since only the 4-player maps and/or the 8 player map will be selectable (depending on game mode). The host would have to ask the other player to leave, so that he could recreate the game with a 2 player limit. In other multiplayer games/interfaces, you can just close slots that aren't needed, with the host still having access to ALL maps: The host just sets the number of players allowed to play once, and people then don't have to leave in order to choose smaller maps (meant for less than 8 or 6 players), simply because locked slots would be taken into account by the hosting modules of those games: the max player limit will be a) overwritten according to the host's selections and won't influence visibility/availability of maps.
  15. No impassable terrain involved, I chose the sm_001 map (map from the 2nd training mission), and the Kasserine Pass map for another Battle Gen mission. Ok, you say several directions...., what's the time frame for the AI sending out units? Does the AI usually start right away? Does it need certain units (i.e. halftrack, daimler or similar vehicles)?
  16. SNEAKSIEEEEE! Can you answer? The question was how the triggers actually work in missions created with the battle generator, and if there's a delay for computer units (if the computer player is supposed to attack). Yes yes, but even with game speed on FF nothing happened, for 10 minutes real time, and the enemy units were just behind the next hill....
  17. One mo' a single crew member with driver and gunner skills (87 driver skill, 98 gunner skill) can't move a given empty tank off the warzone, as the engine keeps placing the poor bub on the gunner seat. Moving the guy to the driver seat manually will only result in him going back to the gunner seat after a few seconds. (That seems familiar from TOW1 though)
  18. 2 more findings: Panzer IVs with short-barreled gun will NOT stop to fire, once the player issues the command to fire SMOKE rounds at a given location (by using the "Attack Ground" command). Formations won't be memorized. Each time a squad or group of vehicles is being selected again, the formation button reverts to the standard setting, which makes for a good amount of click-ology. (This could be a feature, not a bug, though. I don't know.)
  19. 2 more findings: 1) Infantry will sometimes leave trenches even though HOLD is activated (this happens when right clicking on enemy infantry units), and even though the targets are not obscured or out of range (enemy infantry charged downhill, 60 meters in front of my trenched units, in fact). 2) Infantry will move around sometimes in trenches, even though a HOLD order had been issued. (Not sure if this deals with auto-pickup enabled mostly, but it happened when pick up was disabled too, at least once.)
  20. Left-Click on the stance button to enable HOLD. You will then see a red dash, indicating that a given unit won't move/charge autonomously anymore. From a designer pov, it's not exactly a tailor-made solution if the stance function is using the same button as the hold function, as even experienced (TOW1) players may be puzzled where to find the hold function. Hold works fine for all vehicles though, but be warned, infantry may still move sometimes even with HOLD being activated, IF they're in trenches.
  21. 2 more bugs found: The Campaign victory screen (German side, I think it's the same with the other sides' screen) doesn't display the entire text at 1024*768. It looks like it's in 16:9 format, with the text being over-extended on the left and the right side (thus these parts aren't visible on 4:3 displays). ----- - The last mission of the German campaign (Tebessa) won't finish properly, and it will finish prematurely, at least under this condition: IF the last layer of defenses (at least all the 105mm guns and AA behind the hill) had been destroyed early, or earlier than expected by the scenario designer, means right before or right after the 2nd wave of US tanks (which is the wave before that last wave of tanks coming from the north east hill) had been destroyed, the Victory Message will pop up, along with the Finish button. But then, with the last wave of US tanks starting to pour in, the player won't have time to destroy it, as the mission ends right in the middle of the battle (due to the short time frame players have when scoring a mission victory. The very next screen, where you assign the skills (experience/promotion) will then be completely empty, not showing a single unit. Note: this occured during a test run on Novice level. I wonder what Beta testers are doing these days. Putting their fingers in their noses? Well, it might have been that way in TOW1, but I'm not convinced that it's fully working in TOW2, yet. Both sub-scripts are there, I've found the routines after inspecting a mission (created with the battle gen) in the mission editor, before I posted here. If I call in bomber support, the enemy units would just sit there for a while, while my bombers are pounding those "parked" tanks, then, in one of the missions i created, one of the 2 Daimlers I gave to the English computer force would move a bit. I still had to send some bait, all through the Kasserine pass, to the other side, so it's possible that the Daimler just moved because he saw my armored car. An "Attack Zone" (just like the rectangle for deployment) would solve this already, once the attack zone would be tied to a trigger, during the setup process in the battle generator. Or the delay until a recon run starts has to be set to 1 minute or something (if the recon script works, at all). What does the switch "time limit" do, in the battle gen? Correct me if i am wrong, but I didn't see any recon support missions. And the Computer player won't call in the airforce if there are no targets, that's what i gathered so far, at least. Would this time limit set the delay until the enemy starts his bomber/support run, at least? If the Computer player sees targets, he might at least move. What should I enter as time / delay for the enemy support (air, bombardment). I mean, do I have to enter a time format (as in let's say 4 pm -> 16:00) or the time referring to time elapsed since mission start (say 5:00 minutes)? In TOW1 i suppose? . Can I influence/set the time delay when the Computer starts a recon run (with ground units, or aircraft) anywhere in the battle gen? I might be blind, but I can't see it anywhere. As of now, with all the different missions I created, the Computer never moved his ass for around 20-30 minutes (that's where I got bored / frustrated and sent in my bait). So again, what's the purpose of the gen, or did I overlook a switch in the gen? Does 1C expect people to wait 20 or 30 minutes (and get drinks and food ) until they can finally expect to be able to play a mission created with the battle gen?
  22. Issues found in the Battle Generator: 1) While tinkering with the battle generator, I found a bug when trying to place fortifications: After adding a new force item, when selecting the fortification, the user is stuck and can't press the next button, as the generator warns you that not all values for the fortification had been set (i.e. experience level {uh, for unmanned fortifications? lol}, type of unit, number of units). But the list of types (if you select "tanks" you can choose from several types of tanks in the 2nd column, for example) is empty, so the value can't be set. The user has to remove the fortification if he wants to proceed and save the new mission. --- 2) While the mission area on a given map can be expanded to 2048 x 2048, the amount of units which can be fielded is capped. My PC would be able to handle additional units above the limit, easily. It looks like you can field 32 tanks on one side (i.e. player), and 31 tanks on the computer's side, IF both Armies are using British forces (Valentine tanks). If let's say the player wants to use British forces against the Computer's German force, he can give around 21 German tanks to the Computer Army - which would be the limit for medium tanks, while he can assign 32 Valentine tanks to his own Army. If the player wants to put tanks to the reserve (which can be accessed on the "order of the battle"-screen before launching the "single mission"), he has to take away the corresponding number of units from the "deployment" pool, which is the unit pool that is being fielded at mission start. If you want to field a pure infantry force, you end up with 14 squads. These limits are confusing, and they shouldn't be there, and finding out about how many units you can field is pretty cumbersome, there's no help text or bubble that would inform the user about these limits. It's not document in the manual either. No matter whether the limit would be a result of limited object/texture space in the engine or the result of a "political" decision, the battle generator or the manual should let the user know that there's a limit. --- 3) Once a battle had been generated (with the Computer Army set to "Attack") the enemy units would just sit there and do nothing. They will only attack once you send a unit as bait, to lure them in your direction. After you pull back the bait, they will then track it down, even if it's out of sight. It looks like AI units in the game are cheating, means it looks like they know where you are all the time. Well I don't know what's under the hood, yet. Anyway, I understand, they're just sitting there because triggers are missing, and you can't define triggers in the Battle Generator (unless I overlooked something). I guess people who aren't familiar with (or can't be arsed to use) the Mission Editor, would prefer to use the Battle Generator, but the result makes one think what purpose a mission generator would have, if it would just create missions where the enemy (computer) units have to be kicked in the ass to get moving. In the current state, the battle gen is "not fit for service" - at least not for single player missions. It may be the ideal tool for Multiplayer missions, but I don't know how to convert the missions.
  23. Exactly. The only chance for Allied tanks (in 1943, and for Shermans in 1944/45) was to get to a Panther's or Tiger's side, or to get as close as 500 meters or even closer. Well, a tough task, given the range of these German tanks. Shermans and T-34s were fast though. So it was about speed and numbers. @Sneaksie: Btw, the reticle you posted is taken from a "fire chart" created for the game "Battlegrounds Europe", which contains a complete fire chart for British tanks. This is the original, check it out: http://wwiionline.net/downloads.php?view=detail&id=8&sid=eb14dd3a17da6a6004d5b65eda9e4bba This kind of chart enabled crews who were still in training to look up, learn + memorize how many "Striche" (German for dashes) in the telescope (when measuring the enemy vehicle) would refer to a certain length/height/width of a given vehicle in the chart, where they then just had to collect the distance from the chart, or - even easier - they measured with the chart in the reticle (if avalaible). Example from the game's fire chart: A Crusader III with a length of 8 Striche (dashes) would be 790 meters away from the observer. The gunner then chose a "Visier" above 790 meters, in order to take the ballistic trajectory into account (above 790m to below 900 meters would guarantee a hit, in the game chart). You can also see that the maker of that chart included tank pictures showing spots where hits would be effective (green: knockout, yellow: gun disabled/gunner disabled, red: immobilized). German charts mostly just contained the numbers, afaik. The tiger manual lists the following charts/items, pointing out that it can be found in each Tiger's "Deckeltasche", a bag with charts, manuals and other papers, inside of the tank: 1. Tank identification chart Russia (for the Russian theater) 2. fire chart 8,8 KwK 36 3. Antigötz for: T 34 KW I Churchill III Lee Sherman The Antigötz was a kind of quick chart the crew could easily remember. The Antigötz in the manual: Antigötz for the T-34: 15 8 43 , with the manual stating that the T-34 shouldn't be approached on its front at ranges above 1000 meters (the manual stresses to avoid 10 o'clock to 2 'o clock approaches above that range), as the Tiger's shells wouldn't fully penetrate due to the T-34 sloped glacis. This is what it meant: The first number, "15" was the "shamrock" indicator (explained on another page, indicating at what distances the T-34s could penetrate the Tiger. The Tiger's side and rear could be penetrated by the T-34 below 1500 meters (hence 15), the German tank commander just had to deduct 1000 meters to get the T-34's effective range for a shot at the Tiger's front (500 meters). This number was important for tank commanders when they had to decide about facing or relocation of the tank. "8" indicated that the T-34's front could be pentrated at 800 meters and below. The manual emphasizes that ALL type of enemy tanks can be pentrated on the side and rear at 2000 meters (the manual is from 1943). "4" indicates that at 800 meters (a benchmark value) the T-34's front would be 4 dashes wide (in the reticle). "3" dashes indicates that the T-34 will be 2000 meters away (if looking at its side), 1.5 dashes (at 2000 meter) if the Tiger sees the T-34's front only. The minimum requirement for German Tiger crews (practicing on shooting ranges) was to hit the target with their 4th shot at distances from 1300 meters (1421 yards) to 2000 meters (2187 yards). The training of German tankers was complex, but the optics, the aiming aids, the charts, and the guns actually allowed for that high performance. There were tank commanders who had scored 38+ kills (T-34) within a day, scored with a Tiger. This is the page of the manual explaining the use of the "Visier" to the gunner, showing procedures for long ranges: Once the distance had been measured, or estimated, the gunner then had to pick a higher distance using his Visier, to compensate the ballistic trajectory. He could actually see the effect of choosing a particular visier, and at ranges above 2400 meters, he just added 400 meters after each shot. The manual states that the Tiger on the following picture received 227 hits from AT-rifles, 14 hits from 52mm guns, and 11 hits from 76,2mmm guns (most likely T-34), without any of these rounds penetrating the Tiger. That particular Tiger also received several AT-gun hits on the track, and hit 3 mines. The tank's wheels were badly damaged, and 2 springs ceased working, but this particular vehicle still made 60 km on its own, even after this kind of "treatment". Propaganda? Not sure ... , as there are some vet accounts that back it up: German tanks could even fire when the gunner's telescope had been damaged/knocked out. The gunner just had to remove the gun's bolt, get a cord/string, and put it on the end of the tube, forming a temporary crosshair. They then just looked through the gun (acting as targeting device/reticle) and could then adjust the observation periscopes, in order to use them as auxiliary targeting device/solution, after a few test rounds had been fired. The turret-MG could be adjusted in a similar way, which involved inserting an empty cartridge (with a hole in it, which was part of the spare-part bag of each tiger) into the gun, so that the gunner could look through the barrel (with bolt etc removed). Ok, enough Tank school for today. Taking everything into account, it's pretty obvious that Shermans had major disadvantages regarding target acquisition (optics - i.e. blur), targeting and range finding (reticle, gunner's sights), and firing (lower accuracy and low performance of the gun) when facing German tanks.
  24. I'd like to emphasize the fact that the Germans used an Argon gas coating for their lenses, which reduced the blur (that increased with each lense added) to around 3-4%, a great technological achievement compared to the 10% blur per lense in the US optics. So we're not just talking about quality differences (which could be ignored), but about a substantial technological advantage on the German side.
  25. Yes and no. Here's the complete reticle of a Tiger I, taken from the official "Tigerfibel" approved by Guderian: The tank commander and the gunner could actually measure the distance to the target (if they had the time), using both the triangles in the middle and the range chart on the outer ring. Well, it's not exactly like measuring the distance with a laser , but it's way faster and more accurate than the aiming aid in the M70. This explains why first shots used to hit (according to the veteran account in Green's book) even at ranges between 1000-1300 meters. You might get an idea why, if you look at the Tiger reticle printed in the original manual. The M70 didn't provide a chart like that. Driver and MG gunner in the Tiger could help to evaluate the distance, but they had to estimate. In fact, the manual (which is written like a comic book, with using rhymes and funny examples, to get the readers' attention and to make it easier to remember) suggests that in hectic combat situations all the crew members who are using sights (commander, gunner, MG gunner, driver) should help to estimate/compute the distance - in case that there's no time to measure, using their own sights, with the tank commander choosing a reasonable value in the "middle" of all proposed distances. But in general, it's wasn't like the commander/gunner used to rely on estimations. The gunner set his "Visier" to the distance announced/decided by the commander and just had to pull the trigger. The manual also recommends to measure the distance to the target whenever possible, or - alternatively - to wait until the target is at 800 meters, in order not to reveal the tank's position with inaccurate fire. The M70F reticle is a pretty primitive form of reticle, where the gunner often had to correct his aim using 2 or 3 rounds before he could score a hit, at medium/long range. I understand, that sounds reasonable at first glance, but the US had several technical disadvantages, not only because of lack of penetration power/muzzle velocity of their guns, but because of their inferior optics, too, which provided less clarity at higher magnification levels (i.e. M71D - 5x , or M70 3x) - they were somewhat blurry. These are physics, and not just "subjective quality differences" - means VITAL physical/technical disadvantages on the US side. Zaloga stresses that the Sherman's optics were by far inferior, in that same book, although they provided a halfway usable maximum view distance of around 1000 meters. The Allies did not have the German optics technology, and this should have an impact on the accuracy of the first rounds fired in the game, or even have a general impact on all long range shots. No?
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