hcrof
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Posts posted by hcrof
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Right, the following is from Wikipedia but it gives an idea as to the relative protection of a T-62 vs a T-72. Note that the figures are for Soviet model tanks, not the Monkey models sold to Syria which were typically 1 generation behind what the Soviets were using at the time.
T-62 - Cast turret, 242 mm turret front armour. (Cast turrets typically have lower armour values than RHA due to worse quality grain structure in the metal)
T-72 - 500 mm composite armour
Add ERA to both of them and suddenly a 30mm cannon starts to look a little insufficient to start taking on the front of even an old MBT, let alone a modernised T-72. As far as I know, if an attack is to succeed in producing a catastrophic kill, it has to be done to the sides or rear of the vehicle.
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Not that I want to suggest that this isn't a problem but isn't firing ATGM's over your own men discouraged in the real world for exactly that reason?
I might be wrong but AFAIK, movement and fire is normally organised to avoid firing over peoples heads with heavy weapons. (Tanks especially because the falling sabot can injure your own men)
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+1 to both of those, freindly RPG's hitting the house as you enter it is not nice but sometimes you need a full fire order.
As for the first point, that should have been in the game from the start
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Wow, that looks amazing! It seems that people are pushing the editor to its limits and creating some really special and imaginative stuff
Well done snake eye!
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I hear you there, I had a cobra hose down the same taxi 6 times! Even after it was burning!
There must be some way to make them realise that a vehicle has been destroyed when a big column of smoke is rising from it
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Simpson22 - I hope we don't disagree on ther fact that a Jackal needs far less maintainence than a Warrior. If you watch the documentry, the jackals go well off the beaten path in order to establish a presence in 'untouched' villages and to avoid IED's. Two of them break down on the mission and have to be towed back to base.
Imagine that you are the platoon commander - Because the terrain is so rough, Jackals cannot complete the mission properly. What would make Warriors fare even better? If a Warrior broke down there would have to be a huge mission to recover it including at least a company of infantry with air and engineering support! That is not worth the effort considering that the patrol was not expected to get engaged decisively anyway.
In the end consider this. According to the book and TV series 'generation kill', the American spearhed into Iraq was... Humvees, lightly armoured Humvees.
The worlds richest and greatest army still fielded the same kind of vehicle in that mission.
Much of what you read in the news about the military is horribly uninformed and that just makes me very skeptical when they report about things that I don't know about. Honestly, I think that if the officers on the ground want more Warriors they would get them. Its just that a counter insurgency operation is not about force but more about civilian support.
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Adam
We don't track ballistics for soldiers like we do vehicles. When it comes to cover there is some "generosity" shown depending on the cover and the stance the soldier is in. For example, a soldier behind a vehicle might have his buttocks sticking a few pixels out from behind some form of cover. If there happens to be an intersection with his buttocks the system might not consider him hit (depends). This is because the amount of computational and TacAI stuff necessary to get down to that low level of detail isn't worth the cost.
What this means is the ballistics matter in the sense that where the round goes the round does in fact go. So if a round lands in the middle of a foxhole then it's in the foxhole. If it hits the edge then it isn't. If a soldier is prone within the foxhole, and the round hits the edge, then there is a low chance of getting hit. If the soldier is kneeling and shooting, then of course there is only partial cover available for the soldier.
It might be that the foxholes aren't deep enough. We've heard complaints before about this, but honestly we haven't looked into it ourselves and I don't think anybody has, as of yet, produced a "scientific" example to indicate if there is a problem or not.
One thing we do know is a problem is that angle matters to the system, but angle isn't necessarily something players think of. In other words, players sometimes think "I'm in a foxhole, therefore I am invincible" instead of thinking that if there is a shooter a few meters higher up then the foxhole isn't worth a damned. In CMx1 we didn't track angle like that so it is what people are used to.
Basically, although there is a bit of fudging, you can't have abstracted cover in CMx2 so as far as I know, there is no way to go back to the old system. What needs to be done is work within the limitations of the new engine rather than try to go back to the old. I personally thing that the CMSF foxholes would be fine if they were deeper. If they were not given a graphic, they would be still very hard to see and yet provide significant protection.
Now if you wanted a fighting position then it would be harder to do but I have suggested putting a low 'wall' around the foxhole to grant additional protection. This would conform to spotting rules and Steve has said thet he will be doing this for heavy weapons anyway.
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It has to be said though that if the shell scrapes are the same as the ones as in CMSF, the attacker will never see them - They are always there but are so shallow that you have to know exactly where they are in order to have a chance of spotting them.
I have hope yet
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Just a suggestion which might be obviously wrong but I thought I would give it a shot
Seeing as 'foxholes' in CMSF are practically invisible (I have a hard time seeing them with a unit in them, on open ground), why not have the texture/graphic as a spottable unit? So the foxhole is easy to see for the defender but is still almost invisible to the attacker. As well as this, you could have a 'sandbag' object to provide additional cover or fortify houses which is spottable. Along that theme, the edges of a foxhole could have a 'rim' of raised earth and camoflage that works like the sandbags. Are placable objects that dont break the terrain mesh but provide cover possible?
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c3k - Yep, high quality troops from better formations (i.e. not reserves) will get the 105mm rounds.
Sergei - I was going to post something about more RPG's but your post made me check. You are right, a platoon should only have 1 RPG per squad. The russians use an RPO and an RPG-22/26 as well though, I take it the Syrians don't have them because I would love to have an RPO in my squads!
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To be fair I would be getting pretty p***ed off after 6 months of tracked vehicles driving down my high street. Also, to most people, if it has tracks its a tank and in Afghanistan, tanks carry a huge amount of negative feeling because the Soviets destroyed villages with them.
Besides, how are you going to collect HUMINT from inside a Warrior? Freindly locals warning of enemy movements save a lot of lives so it is worth talking to people as you drive though a town. Warriors have their place in very high risk environments but I think the commanders on the ground would use them more if they thought they needed them.
No argument on the hardware we have though - at the low level (Brigade?) we are the equal of the US forces, its just that as far as I know we have fewer high level assets available because we are not planning on defending West Germany any time soon
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Don't forget the 105mm T-HEAT. That one will make a mess of anything it hits (except perhaps the front arc of an Abrams). Although the size difference between 93mm and 105mm might not seem that great, it has a massive difference in penetration which makes is truly dangerous. The only drawback is its shorter range, I wouldn't try to hit anything at over 150m with it. The RPG-29 uses a similar warhead but has more propellent behind it, making it more accurate at range.
As stoex said, thermobaric rounds for both types of RPG are very useful for killing people in buildings. The pressure wave ignores body armour and will kill ~90% of the people in the room, making it is as effective as a SMAW. It is not so effective outside an enclosed area though.
The BMP-1's gun fires a special 73mm HEAT warhead, the same one as in the SPG 9 recoilless rifle which has about the same penetration as the 85mm warhead from the RPG 7 (but much greater range). Hope that helps
As for the same warheads being in all types of BMP I agree. BMP-2/3 should have a selection of RPG rounds available - Including HE and the more powerful HEAT ones.
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Why don't they setup better ambushes? Point blank if need be.
I had to think about that for a while but I think the answer is that your average Taliban footsoldier (for all the stereotypes) is not that interested in dieing. They fight partially because they always have and partially because they cannot take any foreign occupation/influence. This is no Jihad (In most cases)
Now I'm sure someone who has been to Afghanistan can do a much better analysis than that (And I'd be interested to hear it!) but that is not the point.
An ambush would only kill part of a platoon as the terrain, weapons and numbers of fighters cannot achieve more than this. They would then have to escape before the rest of the platoon unleashes a whole world of hurt on them. At point blank, it is much more difficult to escape and the remaining troops would fix them with fire before taking action to wipe them out (reinforcements, air, arty etc). In Afghanistan and Iraq, anyone who decided to fight it out rather than hit and run got killed fairly early on so most of whats left will not risk such a bold attack.
I hope I am not wrong because anyone who is a) good enough to lay a decent ambush and
crazy enough to do it point blank will cause a lot of casualties - like you said.I am not a military man so don't take all of that as gospel but that is how I see it.
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It also has to be said that the British forces were making quite an effort not to be hit. AFAIK, infantry never walk in the open if they can help it, which reduces their profile. The Taliban shooters probably just has to rely on flashes of movement in between pieces of vegitation to shoot at.
Of course, once the bullets start flying, then given the terrain, the British soldiers (or Taliban for that matter) would effectively disappear as they dive into the nearest cover. Ross Kemp was making himself a pretty small target in those ditches!
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with "sendthisfile", just open up multiple tabs, each sending a file simultaneously. No subscription charges for me
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I'm pretty sure that engines give a kind of armour bonus. From my experience, a BMP that is knocked out from the front (with a light weapon like an RPG) will take far fewer casualties than from the side. In my opinion, the engine is either acting as armour or is acting as stand off to the troop compartment.
Having said that, I have learned from hard experience not to keep troops in them at ranges below 500m so it hasn't happened to me for a while!
And troops riding on armoured vehicles would be cool!
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Has anyone seen the announcement? I was so excited I had to sit down for a while
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"Anti-Armor Tactics: The enemy did not attempt to penetrate the crew compartment of the vehicles they engaged. They fired volleys of RPGs to the front end of the HMMWVs in order to disable them and start a vehicle fire. Once the crew evacuated, they would engage them with crew served weapons. This demonstrates a very detailed understanding of the limitations of their weapon systems and a thorough knowledge of our armor vulnerabilities."
I dont understand this, why would the Taliban not attempt to penetrate the crew compartment of a HMMWV? The RPG-7 has a penetration value of 330mm RHA (Basic 85mm wahead) so its not as if it's possible to put that much armour on a HMMWV. The crew compartment is a bigger target and once hit, the surviving crew would probably bail out anyway.
Is this just deliberate misinformation by the US government to protect their troops?
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I have a game running right now where my A10's strafed up a 3 or 4 T-72 TURMS-T tanks. They all took multiple hits and drove off. I don't know about subsystems but they where not destroyed!
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I like these ideas - I would just throw in different types of question mark for soft/armoured vehicle and infantry.
Also, I think there shouldn't be hit text in iron difficulty, personally I like that moment of doubt when an enemy tank is hit and you dont know how much damage you did!
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I had my first real experience on the wrong end of a minfield the other day and I can't say I enjoyed it! There has been a bit of discussion of landmines in the past but nothing very specific so I would like to set out how I feel mines could be improved sometime in the future.
Right now, if a fireteam runs into a minefield, you will lose most, if not all of your team. I tried crawling into possible minefields and it just got worse as they bunched up even more. This is made worse by the fact that currently there is no way to detect mines, even if you suspect a minefield. Here are a couple of suggestions to improve this aspect of the game:
1. Reduce the power of the AP mines explosion: I have been lucky enough to hang around a de-mining organisation for a week in the field, in Angola. From this experience, I can say the vast majority of mines will only actually kill children or old people, soldiers will just be injured with a broken or missing leg. Those nearby can suffer minor injuries or be blinded by debris. When one person in the fireteam gets hit by a mine, the team should immediately cancel all move orders and drop to the ground. Even in WeGo, the maximum one minute delay before new orders could be seen as everyone going "sh!t, Jonnys hit, we're in a minefield!" and working out what to do.
2. Allow anyone to spot any type of landmine if moving with a SLOW command: Recently laid mines are always spottable if you look hard enough. A lot of mines, especially AP mines are just tossed on the ground. Vegitation such as long grass or forest cover hide the mines until someone enters the field. The mines should then be covered by direct or indirect fires which do the most damage. Even if the mines are dug in, the disturbed ground usually will give an indication of a minefield.
When searching for the minefield, there should be a chance that someone blows themselves up, higher for concripts and very low for veterin engineers. Once the mines are spotted, the information should go around the chain of command as with all spotting information unless engineers MARK the minefield. Bear in mind that digging around, trying to find the edges of the minefield is a VERY slow process but I think it would be already modelled by the slowness of the SLOW command and the fact that your troops would get exhausted quickly (Definately realistic!)
3. IEDs should also be spottable: I have heard of a lot of stories of people spotting IEDs and blowing them up at a safe distance. I think that they should be easiest to spot when the population density is set to HIGH. This would reflect a combination of Human Intelligence as well as the fact that the spotting troops would have been patrolling the area before and know what to look for. (I doubt the population of a recently invaded city is ever that high). On the other hand, an IED ambush in the middle of nowhere would be harder to spot (But less likely).
Once spotted, it should be possible to attempt to destroy the IED with direct fire.
I am a defensively minded player and would love to see more engineering work but right now I just feel sorry for my opponent when I place a minefield as there is nothing he can do about it. By expanding minefields in this way, they can be used more often and new mission types can become available (find a path through the minefield?). I could go on for ages about different types of mines and nasty 'combo' effects you can use, but my suggestions above would be enough to cover ~90% of the real world situations
Just my $0.02 but I would be interested to hear what people think
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Well I thought I would try this one out as the syrians. As Steve said, I am pretty sure that the Americans wouldn't notice the difference due to their information sharing abilities being much better. Essentially, question marks DO provide a spotting bonus for your troops. If a unit has a question mark over an enemy, when the unit moves into LoS it will spot the enemy much faster.
My test showed some interesting stuff. There were two ridges 1200m from each other and hull down static tanks as the enemy.
If a T-72M moved into a hull down position on the ridge, the static tank always fired first. The firing signature would then reveal its position and the T-72M would fire back.
If the T-72M approached on a road, with no dust cloud, the two tanks would fire at each other almost simultainiously but with longer wait before firing as neither tank would spot each other very fast.
If the T-72M crew missed, backed down the ridge and appeared somewhere else, it would then get its shot off a lot quicker the next time due to the question mark.
The effect was the same if the crew was dismounted, took a peek over the ridge before returning to the tank and moving to hull down.
I am not claiming that this test was comprehensive or even very controlled (It was during a battle). However, it does seem to show that question marks are important for spotting and also that it is not a good idea to stay in one place for too long! I could set up a proper test if people want me to but I hoped that little bit of info helped!
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I read a really good account a while back of a British engineering recce group in WMIK's who advanced past some American armour who had stalled after losing a few Bradleys.
Although it was at night, they drove through 6 ambushes, each one worse than the last due to communication between the ambushing troops.
After a while it was clear that they were not going to get to their destination and they were being hunted down by some Iraqi technicals so they thought about it and..
Drove right back through the 6 ambushes!
Some medals were won after that but it proves that speed and firepower can keep you alive - some of the enemy were less than 100m away!
I think the book was called 'In foreign fields', It is a collection of personal stories from British medal winners in Iraq and Afghanistan - a really good read.
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Sometimes when I recieve a PBEM turn and try to open it my password doesn't work. I tried entering my opponants password and that doesn't work either. The only way to resolve the issue is to ask my opponent to replay the turn and replace it with a new one.
This issue has happened to me twice now and I have a save game to prove it. Possible bug?
crazy enough to do it point blank will cause a lot of casualties - like you said.
Questions about WWII infantry for CMx2
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
Hate to say this Adam but I enjoy playing as red in multiplayer. Why? because its a challenge! (and I love defending)
More often than not I win due to deception, surprise and a mobile defence. I think you are trying to take the Americans head on, which is always a mistake