Brille

That´s not how things work here. Every unit needs to have a solid spot for direct fire. Units will carry their information to another units in their proximity that is right, but it only assists spotting nothing more. Each unit has to see the target with their own eyes (or optics) before they can fire at it. You mean some kind of so called "borg spotting": One unit sees a target, so everyone sees the target. This was the system in CMx1 more or less, the older games, but in CMx2 it is no longer the case.

It depends... The range of communication between units is drastically reduced besides the inferior spotting. Imagine that a unit on hide keeps his head as low possible, maybe occasioanally looking Up to scout a bit and only whispers to others to not reveal its position to possibly nearby enemies. So if the gun/unit is close enough they may still be able to communicate with each other but only at a short distance.

I might be ill informed but this is the first time I heard about concrete mantlets. As far as I know it was normal steel armor. Later concrete was applied on Stugs but this was additional armor for the front plate, not the mantlet. I would guess that concrete would do not so well when applied on moving parts but Im no expert. Looking at the Panzer IV there would be a rather small mantlet that overlaps with the front plate. Maybe BFC rather simplified it at that point but I never really tested it out to be honest. But I would guess that If an 75mm AP round penetrated the mantlet (50mm) at a point where it overlaps with the front plate (also 50mm) maybe would not penetrate the tank but probably would do nothing good to the gun/ gun mechanism itself. To the problem: To be honest I played with and against Stug rather rarely. The times that I did they were pretty much outgunned so that their front armor didnt really matter. However against T34/76 they were pretty resilient. Only observation I made was that, like with all the german tank hunters, the guns were often out of action after repeated hits due to the "aim for center" mechanic. Would need to test this to make some comments on that but from the feeling I highly doubt that a 37mm could and should penetrate a Stug like that.

Do I understand your problem correctly ? You are wondering why the STUG won´t area fire at a point while being under canon fire, right ? If Iam: Isn´t this kind of obvious why the Stug don´t want to be hit in the side ? It is a general TacAi behavior to face the vehicle in the direction of enemy fire or vague enemy tank/anti tank asset - contacts. More so the TacAi can call for a retreat when bigger shots are intercepted by the armor and the crew cannot see the source of it. And this would make sense as the crew should have some self preservation instinct in them. Staying in there longer the next hits may penetrate the armor or damage important components of the tank. So the best idea would be to displace to another position as your current one has been compromised.

Well the way I understand it is that Combat Mission is abstract in a lot of situations. So a simple line from A to B might be not just that simple or the terrain is not as flat as it is depicted ingame. So fields or even roads may have bumps and rocks in them, sometimes a slope or a pitch here and there. On a driven out dirt road you can have 2 tracks on the sides with a high middle strip. An inexperienced driver may dig the belly of their vehicle on that strip, while an experienced driver would know how to position his vehicle to not get it immobilized. Those little adjustments of the vehicle/tanks position you don´t have in CM. It is just an abstraction. A little anecdote of mine: I once parked my car (me a junior driver, fresh from driving school) on a improvised parking spot, mostly just dirt ground. Later it started to rain and it transformed the place into a muddy affair. I dug the tires of my car to the point that the belly of it hit the ground until I gave up and called my dad. He, a vastly more experienced driver, got the car out again with no additional equipment. So while I dug myself in hopelessly with no means to recover, overheating the gearbox to almost breaking point, my dad just knew what to do. And I didn´t even drove 2 meters... So it tells us that I was a really dumb/inexperienced driver back then and that experience matters. On another note I think that battlefront once stated that immobilisation (by mere movement) is not a cause of a component failure in itself. So engine failures due to overheating, run down gears, a defective final drive or thrown tracks are out of the picture. However I sometimes want to believe it would be just that or maybe it is.

Well that is true but in gameterms more eyes help in the spotting process. And 500m are not that far of that it would not matter. It is not effective spotting but it is spotting non the less, even if it would just be a vague contact. An infantry target is on it´s own very small and easily overseen, especially in a combat environment. Not that it would matter much but the driver and radio operator had actual periscopes/angled mirrors. But as far as I know they were in fixed position and offset to the left and right, so spotting to the front would be rather impractical as you said. Otherwise they have the slits, yeah. For the loader it is only halfway true. Later versions of the Tigers actually gave him a periscope as well...yet also fixed. However one cannot deny that it may help even more in the spotting process...at least in CM terms. One might think so, yes, but maybe at a distance like this it doesnt´t matter all that much ? What has the T64 over the Tiger ? It has a commanders sight via persicope that has a magnification on it. Though it is verry narrow in the field of view. Same goes for the gunners sight but I believe he has an additional rotatable persicope with a narrow view also. Here are some gunners and commanders sights of soviet style vehicles and their charakteristics https://crib-blog.blogspot.com/p/soviet-t01-k0x-sight-family.html I believe the TKN 3 are the ones that were mounted in the T64 but I don´t know about it that much so feel free to correct me. The Tiger has no commanders sight at hand but a cupola with multiple yet fixed visionports. The T64 has one too but while it is rotatable it has only 2 visionblocks. So mayyybe (also due to the more roomey nature of it) the Tiger has a slightly better or on par situational awareness in this point because of the wider FOV and more eyes on the target. That is just a strong guess on my part but maybe in some situations WW2 and cold war tanks are not that far apart as we like to believe.

So you made just 1 test for each side or did you do multiple ? While it is a bit odd that the T64 takes so long to get visuals on the guys without cover it surely can happen. On the other side he did see the ones in the house. So this test dont say much at all at this point in my opinion. Like Mikey and Grey Fox said already the Tiger had a 5 man crew which could be beneficial for spotting, at least on this shorter range and it was taller. On the T64 you had only 3 crewmembers, though the commander and gunner could in theory observe further out than the Tiger. T64 commanders optics had I think 3x magnification while the Tiger had only his cupola I guess (when closed)... But it had max 5x on the gunsight, though on the T64 I dont know sadly. However the T64 was cramped and had optics with a narrow field of view so maybe not the best in crew comfort. The Tiger on the other hand is often described as roomey for a tank and a wider FOV for the optics. Never the less experience and softfactors would be nice to know to get a full picture. And why do you test it against infantry? Isnt there maybe a vehicles/Tank with somewhat similar height and width in both games? Testing spotting performance on such small targets is often a hit and miss in my experience. Sometimes they vanish all of a sudden or the outcomes are different (as it shows).

You cannot mix the gameversions with each other (BFC and Steam)...at least not directly. You need to get your free Steamkey for the main game first, before it can merge with the module there How to you get the Steamkey for the main game you can read in the first posting of this thread from BFC Elvis.

Better open up a ticket at the Battlefront helpdesk https://battlefront.mojohelpdesk.com/ The chances of the right person to see this here in the forum would be rather lucky than anything else.

Little off topic here: Praise to BFC for the attention to detail: The Panzerfaust 60 looks pretty much identical to the Panzerfaust 100. Yet BFC correctly put the different labels on the warheads with their names on it instead of just copy and paste. This way you can see what soldier is carrying which faust if you look closely (when they are mixed in a squad)

Lets just say the german word "Thommykocher" could be applied to this tank. If they have good concealment already I would not do it especially because it hinders their own spotting. When I use "hide" it is often to force the soldiers into a prone position at areas with low concealment. Sometimes they choose to kneel or to stand which would expose them to much. Not just "paint" over the tanks or at least not in general. Note that the infantry will engage the tank with whatever is in range. So they will use riflegrenades too when they have any which are more or less ineffective against medium tanks. Those can be fired farther than panzerfausts and would expose those soldiers before they have a chance. And even Panzerfaust you should not use at the edge of their effective range If you are not desperate enough. The way I do it is to set a circular armor arc (Press Shift while it is activated) 15 to 30m before the edge of the effective range. For Panzerfaust 60 that would be mostly around 40 or even 30m. This way the possibility to hit is higher and they may have the chance to get in follow up shots once the tank is in the killzone and the arc canceled. Yes. If the infantry sees the tank in the armor arc and it is in range of any AT weapon they have , they will engage. Just make sure that when you hid those soldiers,that they really have an arc applied. CM soldiers tend to follow orders strictly as long as they are not put under stress. That means that those hiding fellows probably will stay hidden even If they can see a tank in range when they are left to their own devices.

Panzerfausts are nothing like the RPG7 or other modern rocket launchers. They are still pretty inaccurate. So even when the Panzerfaust 60 says that it´s effective range is 60m (though they were also ranged for 80m), one probably should use them at even lower ranges, especially with troops under veteran experience. You must be pretty unlucky there I guess. Usually a Panzerfaust hit means either a destroyed/decrewed tank or a severely damaged one.

When the "target armor" arc is applied the infantry should only use weapons that can hurt tanks, if they are in range that is. Could it be that your soldiers have some riflegrenades and the respective launcher unit attached ? Though very inacurate and probably not very effective they will happily use these grenades to engage tanks. It might look like the soldiers would fire their rifles while actually lobbing a riflegrenade at the tanks. The Panzerfausts are not usable at this range. The effective range of each faust is implied in their name: Panzerfaust 30= 30m, Panzerfaust 60= 60m, Panzerfaust 100=100m.

So did I. Agreed.

Well preserving at least some stamina of my soldiers is somewhat of a resource management for me. Tired out troops can fight like any other If they stand in place. But If they need to retreat, advance or dislocate fast they are at a disavantage. Thats why I try to not go lower as "tired" because they could still do at least a "quick" command for a reasonable distance. If you then even have weakened troops you have to be even more careful in preserving their stamina, otherwise they can turn into sitting ducks. That doesnt mean that I dont use slow, I use it pretty often in fact. If a tankhunter team can reach a good firing spot with "slow" movement, while totally exhausting them, is is fine with me when they can actually achieve a hit. However If I can achieve this in a similar way while preserving their stamina at least a little bit, Im more likely to go that way.

That wasn´t my meaning. I was comparing hunt with the move order to spot/react to mines. The problem with the move order is that everyone that has it applied will start running once bullets or explosions occur, what will most likely happen when a mine is triggered. Running through a minefield has just that much more potential to trigger another (maybe unseen) minefield too. The hunt order prevents this because everyone will just hold at the spot, preventing them from triggering another mine. Moving slow is an option but will tire out the searching parties way to fast. And especially when you don´t know if there is a minefield or not, it can be difficult getting them to another location afterwards at high speeds.

My experience is that hunt wont give you an advantage in spotting mines. However it prevents soldiers from switching over to quick or fast once an explosion occurs or they get triggered by small arms fire if they would just "move", leading to possibly more mine related casualties. So "slow" or "hunt" orders would be the way to go, combined with "pause" so they have time to find them. However this I would only do on suspected and rather small areas. Usually my mine detection is that someone or something triggers one. If those are AP mines I try to clear the surroundings of enemy presence and then just crawl past or bypass them because I rarely have engineers with me. If those are AT mines they usually got triggered by something of a scout vehicles/APC. So I try another route and let the tanks follow when this one is free of mines. Or I let the dices roll and hope for the best, driving right through.

A clash between mechanized forces:

~1200 rpm with no option to alter it. The successor of the MG3, the MG5, however can be set to 3 different rates of fire. Though even the highest one (around 800 I believe) doesn´t come close to the MG3.

@Centurian52 I watched a YouTube video from Lindybeige once who compared the "Spandaus" with the Bren and give it a little praise. He also came up with most of your arguments. I guess it is not the matter of "which one is better". Both weapons were made with different mind sets and therefore have different properties. It is like the old debate of which bolt action of ww 2 is better. I often read that the Kar 98k has an advantage in accuracy above all the other ones even the Enfield. But more accuracy by what is not so often stated if at all and If it really had much of an impact on the battlefield. And in the end just because one weapons is good or better in one or multiple aspects doesnt make the other ones bad or worthless. I have fired the MG3 2 or 3 times back in my conscription days and could not hit the broadside of a barn with it. But we only got something around 30 rounds for each of the instances which would be somewhat of 2 to 3 bursts when you are not yet trained in firecontrol. So besides of me being a lousy shot we got not much opportunity with it. However we did get to use it in a nightfire exercise in its tripod configuration and managed to totally waste a barrel...and the MG3 was an already downthrotteled MG42. So you really need to take care of the overheating problem.

@SDGRegardless of your claims and if this oddity is right or not: You have been asked multiple times now for a save file for further inspection. You clearly have the file as you made multiple screenshots after another request. You are certainly not obliged in any way to post one but it would certainly help to prove or disprove this behavior and probably to get to the reason why that is. This would actually be nice when tanks could shoot somekind of blind directed fire into a certain location. For example when a tank is clearly visible but just so happens to vanish in a dust/smoke cloud they could fire 1-2 rounds in the last known location. It clearly was done in reality. Problem is just how to program this so that this may not occur to much or in the wrong situations... However if there is any chance of it it probably will be in CMx3 rather than with an update to the actual games.

Well it was the first and the last hit on these tanks as they usually dont survive one penetration. The penetration itself dont surprise me as much because that is often the area where a tank is not as well armored. But I find it suspicious that they were all hit on the lower hull the first time. I will keep an eye on that.

Hard to tell by the pictures alone but I guess those hedges might be a problem. The first line might be ignored by the vehicle, just like when you drive close to hedgerows. Though the second line might pose a problem with the LOS and LOF. In my experience they are not as clear cut as it shows you in game...much like with treebranches. And while I know that the optics of these tankdestroyers are mounted on the roof it can still cause problems, be it to a blocked gun or by the game engine...it´s just my experience. Yes, you have been shot by the other tank but I guess thats because he is taller/has a turret. That sometimes gives you an advantage in spotting and shooting...not always. So it can be that while you could not spot over the hedge (or just bad) due to the low profile the turreted tank got a small glimpse of yours over the hedge. Not saying that what I say is 100% fact just ideas and personal experience. And a save file would be still appreciated to get a better view on the situation. Only got very rare encounters with those and those times that I personally fielded them were even rarer. However in one PvP match their spotting was very bad, even though they were defending. It was a CMRT scenario from which I forgotten the name: My handful of Panzer 70 had to delay a T34/85 push. The weather was not the best due to snowfall but you could see and shoot at least 600m out. In at least 3 cases my Jagdpanzers were spotted before they even got solid spots on moving T34. Though I must say that they were just regulars, while some of the T´s were veteran and my opponent rolled them very slowly through the field, while using hull or partial hull down positions where he could. On my part there was mostly only flat ground, so they often were standing in the bare open. On a side note it was a bit suspicious that almost all of my Panzers got taken out through the lower hull, except for one that got his gun damaged and later was taken out from the side/back as he retreated.

Maybe you mistake it for the M113 ? Sure the Bradley was very thinnly armored in comparison to today but one might expect that an infantry FIGHTING vehicle would at least take hits from the most common "small" arms placed on enemy vehicles. This would be 12,7mm MG and the 14,5mm MG on BTR, BRDM and AA MG on tanks. Later the Bradleys armor was upgraded to even withstand up to 30mm canon rounds, most likely because of the appearence of the BMP2 and wider usage of autocanons instead of heavy mg. That was the point where the Brad also lost his amphibious ability.

Being a general purpose machine gun I give the MG42 an edge over the Bren. Including to this is the belt feeding system. While in squads the germans usually would feed shorter belts, they at least had the possibility to feed longer ones or link shorter ones together, according to the situation they were in (Attack/defence). Assisted reloading might be a bit longer maybe but not that it would matter that much I would say. However you can say that you would need to change out barrels much more frequently which leads to longer down times. On the other hand you can say if you can put out bullets faster on target and pin or destroy it quicker (in theory) then that is a mission accomplished. Both have their pros and cons in the end.