Rokko

It also seems it strongly depends on the angle, I tested 90° angles exclusively. I assume in your case the bazookas were fired from 45° angles or so, is that right?

Been testing a little out of pure boredom how effective the American bazooka is against German tanks from the flanks. It seems after a few runs (10 maybe per tank, only tested the M1A1) that the armor skirts on the Pz IV have absolutely no effect while the ones on the Panther work as one would expect. If a bazooka round hits a Panther's armor skirts (visually) it says "Hit: Armor skirt" and no Penetration usually. On a PzIV though, of which the flank is almost totally protected by armor skirts (sometimes it is absent, but thats not common), it rarely says "Hit: Armor skirt", it almost always seems to hit the armor behind it (and often penetrates it). To me that seems wrong. Unless someone tells me the PzIV skirts were somehow much thinner than the Panther skirts (I thought both are about 5mm thick) and could be penetrated by a Bazooka rocket without setting it off I might concede, but I used to think that armor skirts were actually pretty effective in defeating HEAT weapons like the Bazooka... Edit: Also, often the tank's behaviour was very suicidal, i.e. when they survived the first hit they often exposed their rear and tried speeding off, which usually didn't work.

Has anything been done about this issue for 1.10? I mean it's not a lets say technique done often by mappers (for obvious reasons, though the effect looks rather nice), but for instance "Pleasantly Shaded Woodland" has trees on roads. Yet I'd say this problems might reveal a more fundamental with foliage and the way LOS is calculated in the CMx2 engine that would need someone looking into.

Yeah you're right. That particular M1 incident just made me want to hit someone because it was a lone guy in a trench who's buddies had been wiped out taking pot shots at my guys in a building and they didn't wanna shot back despite having him spotted because of some LOF oddieties or sumfink. Of course the guy who got hit was a squad leader I think in that mission I only lost MG gunners and squad leaders. Another time I wanted to test AP capabilities of US 3in ATGs against Panthers at very close range (40m I think) in dense fog. So after a few seconds the ATG crew spots the Panther, the leader goes like "Enemy armor spotted", raises his pistol and fires a bullet straight into the tank COs head. Again made want to hit someone although I wasn't playing anyone really

But the starter mentioned an incident where his guys were Panzergrenadiers, with 2xMG42, an MP40 and maybe even an STG44. I know that mission, too, and it's a pretty frustrating one. Not because it's hard, but because you constantly lose men to pot shots from M1 Carbines and pistols. Even from much farther than 30m. I've seen pistol kills at up to 100m.

uhhh, I know that scenario. Dismounted Priest crews in trenches and foxholes, and you can't even really reach them with your Panthers most of the time. The Priest has a crew of 7, that means 7 guys with pistols of doom, not much fun I can tell you.

Considering the numerous spotting oddities to me this counts like nothing don't wanna underestimate the problems and difficulties in really making a change to the better though. And yes, the patch will be an integral part of the module, still, its gonna be released to everybody else, too.

Don't you get this? Game, engine improvements, bugfixes are not part of a module. They're part of the patch that was simultaniously and will be released simultaniously. What these improvements will is yet totally unknown to us mortals. I remember though, that someone of the staff has mentioned nothing was done on spotting issues, which is kinda sad imho.

Must be your monitor settigs, I can see everything perfectly clear. BTW the time is 0600 with light fog (no heavy fog unfortunately). Personally I'm no big fan of night battles either, but I do prefer making "historical" scenarios. And historically the attack on St-Bart happened on August 7 at 0600 in heavy fog. But the core of the problem is IMHO that BF didn't include more sophisticated settings for graphics (and sounds!) with the game, something I hope they will do in the future.

Thanks for your opinion. Its been a while since I finished it, but IIRC there is at least one hole in every hedge, so breach teams would increase freedom of movement even more, which I reckon would make things to easy. A scout team might be an option though. I agree on your comment on the time limit though, I really don't like having to hurry in a mission myself. Interestingly the real action only took 10 minutes wasn't a real battle though, Panthers knock out ATG(s), GIs retreat, thats how it really was. Here some pictures of the Saint-Barthélemy map nearing completion. Still needs Leibstandarte Panthers and Grenadiers, though

Glad you liked it. I'm planning for 10 scenarios (linear), mostly smaller likes, some like this one. The climax will be the (hopefully) epic battalion-sized battle for Saint-Barthelemy.

Wow, thanks a lot, what an awesome source! I was considering buying that book, but unfortunately its a little hard to come by where I live. Might do it later though

Please feel to tell me what you think about it after playing It's really just a short little battle.

On a more generall note, is there a contemplative source on equipment of units during the Normandy timeframe (and maybe above)? For instance, I'm often having a hard time finding out what equipment was actually there, despite TOE-regulations. For instance, IIRC, all US regimental Cannon Companies were supposed to have M7 self propelled artillery guns, but in fact most still had the towed M3 105mm's. So how do you find out which did and which didn't? Or German Panzergrenadiers. By TOE there was one mechanized batallion per Panzer-Division, but how do you which one? For instance, Panzer-Lehr was completely mechanized, this is rather well known, but 12th SS mechanized PG Bn was III./26th Reg. There seems to be no general rule and its really a pain in the butt finding these things out. Just recently I was looking for the composition of the PzJgAbt. 38, but no chance - after a few hours a found a note in model building forum that the 1st and 2nd companies were equipped with JPz IV, but that was the utmost information I could find. Really frustrating....

Bushes, brushes, trees, elevation, Flavour objects (tree stumps etc.)... lots of possibilities.

It's possible, but that would mean to neglect a great variety of camo non-camo clothing worn by SS troopers. Now of course its not possible to recreate every single piece even of the rarer equipment like the Kriegsmarine leather jackets and trousers for tankers, but some of the more common stuff should be in. So far we haven't seen the LW-Field troops, but they too used camo smocks to great extend. I think wearing Field blue garnment would be a very rare thing for front line troops.

I couldn't tell either. But since they still have the wrong zeltbahns (Wehrmacht camo), I suppose they are still WIP. Also if BF intends to implement LW Field divisions as well, they can't really allow themselves not to implement a 3D smock model.

Is the pin-point mortar attack taking out a Marder in like 5 shots meant to be a kick in the nuts of everyone who participated in the 81mm Mortar dispersion thread?

Play A Bloody Ride. Usually you have an understrength PzGren company plus pioneers plus a bunch of Panthers fighting through dense bocage country riddled with ATGs and mortars. Can be a bit frustrating at times due to the mortars generally beeing way overpowered, but has great maps and overall high standards. You could also try Die Letzte Hoffnung, which I personally didn't like a lot due to the lack of realism, but is also pretty good in terms of playability and fun.

I see. I never use the modern imagery though. Only for guessing how villages might have looked backed then, since the quality of 1947 pictures is often not good enough to tell.

wait... Now I'm thorougly confused. Are you talking about those dark spots that have a striking resemblance with trees seen from above, or are you talking about those small almost white dots you can also see on the picture I posted on top of this page? That the former ones form orchards is obvious, and you'll find those mainly near settlements! What I am actually wondering about are those said white dots, whether they are haystacks or remnants of orchards that were chopped down in favor of crops or cattle.

You sure? I reckoned that apple orchards were usually sited only adjacent to settlements. If light dots in regular pattern mean "former orchard", than there would be many of them in the middle of nowhere. Also, can we know when the orchards disappeared? I mean, does it mean they still existed in 1944? I initially thought, these light spots were haystacks, but that seems a little bit implausible now.

You mean those light dots indicate where apple trees used to be?

Google Street view doesn't help one bit. The landscape has totally changed there. Also, many of the pictures were taken in autumn or winter. Really, the only thing are roads and sometimes settlements. In rare instances you can guess or see were the bocage was in the past. Here's the same spot today.

There's another question I have in regards to mapping: This is an aerial photography from the area around mortain (Le Mesnil-Tôve to be exact), but I have this problem with other areas of Normandy as well. What we can see here are predominantely rather thin lines, separating the fields. Now obviously thats bocage, some with trees in them (the broader ones), some without. Now my question is, would you say that those thin ones are high or low bocage (in game terms). Somehow I have the feeling they look to thin to be the "real" ones. But on the other hand they're all over the place and I thought that low bocage was somewhat rare in comparison to the really high hedges.