Pelican Pal

To be clear its better for any vehicle to start hull down as there is a very significant concealment bonus and that concealment bonus can be turned into a kill (more efficiently with bigger guns). What you want to watch out for is (with certain vehicles) engaging in an honest to god fire fight where you are trading shots with the enemy. Since so much the hull down bonus is in concealment you are losing a lot of advantage once that happens. For sake of argument you have a Panther with 2 hull down positions and then finally a position that is hull up. It is being attacked by a large armor force. You would want to start the fight from the first position and then maneuver to the second position before being spotted. However, once you have been spotted at the second position you would not want to continue fighting from it but move to the hull up position.

Yes, that is my point? I gathered you have some issue with my conclusion but I can't figure out what it is. Possibly just a misunderstanding over text

To focus this a bit the common sense position would be that hull down tanks are much harder to hit. AKA "its better for incoming rounds to hit dirt than your face". But whats panning out in the above test is that incoming rounds aren't hitting dirt that much more often. The real benefit in CM is that there just won't be incoming rounds at all. The benefit isn't that you are significantly harder to hit but that you are significantly harder to spot in the first place. So if your tank has a weak chin then engaging in an honest to god shoot out (where the enemy has spotted you and is firing back) isn't going to be great for it. In fact your are much more likely to take damage. So you either want to avoid the shoot out (new battle position and so on before they spot you) or take the shoot out from a hull up position.

Yea. It why I bolded the below portion: The decisions being made are going to vary heavily based on your vehicles and your opponents vehicles. For example, if you have a Panzer IV against an M36 then hull down is more beneficial since the M36 has over kill against so you want the concealment and chance to hit protection. I don't follow but obviously hull down is a beneficial position to start any fight in since you gain such a large concealment bonus. The HD tank is spotting 95% of the time which is H U G E . The complexity for the hull down tank occurs once it has been spotted (and then only if its turret armor is particularly weak). In those situations you want to essentially ambush from hull down and then move to another battle position. Where the hull down tank starts to run into problems (sometimes) is if you get into a true fire fight with both tanks trading fire. Part of the problem is that you aren't always going to have another good battle position to move to and may be forced to engage in a firefight.

I've run some tests on hull down performance and they've shown some interesting info regarding hull down in Combat Mission. The tests were done using two Panthers engaging each other one hull down and the other hull up. The range was 700 meters and the hull up tank drove into view of the hull down tank. Both crews turned in. Results of 62 tests Victories: Hull down: 37 hull up: 24 Draw: 1 The hull down tank won 60% of the engagements. - Being hull down represents a good chance to win a given engagement. Spotting hull down spotted the hull up tank 59 times hull up tank spotted the hull down tank 31 times The hull down tank spotted the hull up tank 95% of the time while the hull up tank only spotted the hull down tank 50% of the time. - Being hull down gives significant protection from being spotted/advantage in spotting. Victories in instances where the hull up tank spotted the hull down tank (31) Hull down: 7 hull up: 24 The hull up tank won 77% of the engagements where it was able to spot the hull down tank. - Having a fire fight from a hull down position can be very risky for certain vehicles. Avg shots before the tank hits its opponent Hull Up: 1.4 Hull Down: .57 Avg shots before the tank kills its opponent Hull Up: 1.4 Hull Down: 3.08 Summary: The primary benefit of hull down in CM is a buff to the vehicles concealment. There is a secondary benefit in that the hull down vehicle is harder to hit. However, this is counterbalanced by a much higher number of shots needed to ensure a kill. Although this will vary based off of the armor of the two tanks engaging. My thoughts: - When engaging hull down enemies try to gain spotting bonuses to reduce the concealment bonus. Its a large portion of the hull down advantage. - If your tank's turret armor is relatively weak be wary of engaging in a shoot out from hull down. Ideally you are engaging and moving before being spotted. If you are expecting to have to engage in a shoot out it may be beneficial to exit hull down after the concealment bonus is lost or there may be nearby locations (keyhole for example) that could be more beneficial than the hull down position.

What patch was this?

True. I've said this before but I'm primarily basing my optimism off of the PBEM++ system for other games which don't seem to have CM's problems. So i'm hoping its just an extensive teething process for the CM games and that we'll get a good system in a years time or so. All that being said there is some short term stuff that would be nice like announcements when the server goes down (which could be automated). As it is I'm not playing PBEM with the PBEM++ system but I hope to in the future.

Steve mentions that February will have an Update for Cold War with the tournament system and later in the 1st quarter SF2 and BS will get the system. Because the tourney is in Feb Cold War would be the only option. CW is also the obvious game since its (arguably) the most balanced of the 3 currently on Steam. For my money I'd argue that Black Sea can get fairly close but ymmv on that.

There will also be some official tournaments run on the discord by, presumably, Slithirine. Not sure how they are going to be run but that might be of interest to folks. But for that to really take off we'll need to see the PBEM++ system improved quite a bit. I've tried it once and while it worked alright it wasn't so much better than just manually transferring files that it was worth the risk of losing the game to a random bug with the system. Problems like that being worked out are going to be critical to getting a PBEM++ tournament running well.

For CM its particularly nice since you can discuss a tactical problem with someone in real time and even see someone work it out in front of you. So I'd say it has a lot of utility that a forum does but with a faster response time and a better focus on micro issues. E.G. You can ask how someone would handle a scenario while you actively play it. Whereas forums tend to be more asynchronous As a more real example I was talking to someone who was having trouble with the controls and rather than painstakingly describing the series of buttons he needed to press I was able to launch the game and stream the action to him. He was able to immediately see exactly what he needed to do and see the results in action.

Yea its similar to Microsoft Teams for those of use of working age. You can chat in various channels, share your screen, join voice channels. Its a pretty nice service.

So I think it was introduced with CM:BN since that game also introduced AAA. However, maps back then were way smaller so the odds of an on map impact are likely less.

Planes crashing on map has been a thing for quite a long time. As far as I can remember at least since Red Thunder's release 8 years ago(?!) but I'd venture it was able to occur as soon as AAA was added.

IIRC the Germans retrofitted captured T-34s with cupolas and radios. I think there were sorta significant numbers of them around 1942/43

So the fragmentation bug has been logged but I was wondering if information about this had also been logged as a bug or linked to the fragmentation ticket? It seems related to the fragmentation bug as the impact on armor (track only damage) is also occurring here. However in this case it is triggered by a direct impact on the vehicles ERA. Issue When artillery shells impact an ERA block it shows the same effect as an air burst or near miss. Damage will only be done to the tracks and no other tank systems are effected. In the attached images/file you can see an Oplot take a hit to the ERA directly adjacent to the main gun and suffer only track damage. Test Game: Black Sea Artillery: 203mm 2S7M Target: Oplot images and saved game https://we.tl/t-J0iGUhNcgn https://imgur.com/a/ynY0LkL

I was running into this and found that having my display.txt set was causing some of the crashing issue. 2560 1440 144 were my settings and I set them to 0 0 0 and the crashing mostly stopped. Still happens too regularly for my tastes but I can now load into large maps over 50% of the time. AMD rx5700xt

Before we get more into a discussion about tank armor vis-a-vis artillery shells can one of y'all check out this: It would explain why tanks sometimes seem overly resistant to artillery shelling. For example, you could drop two 203mm rounds onto a tank and if both rounds hit ERA that tank is still fighting fit. Edit: So the in thread link seems weird and instead i'll just copy paste Issue When artillery shells impact an ERA block it shows the same effect as an air burst or near miss. Damage will only be done to the tracks and no other tank systems are effected. In the attached images/file you can see an Oplot take a hit to the ERA directly adjacent to the main gun and suffer only track damage. Test Game: Black Sea Artillery: 203mm 2S7M Target: Oplot images and saved game https://we.tl/t-J0iGUhNcgn https://imgur.com/a/ynY0LkL

Actually while eyes are on this thread. I may have stumbled upon another issue while testing direct fire. Issue When artillery shells impact an ERA block it shows the same effect as an air burst or near miss. Damage will only be done to the tracks and no other tank systems are effected. In the attached images/file you can see an Oplot take a hit to the ERA directly adjacent to the main gun and suffer only track damage. Test Game: Black Sea Artillery: 203mm 2S7M Target: Oplot images and saved game https://we.tl/t-J0iGUhNcgn https://imgur.com/a/ynY0LkL

There is an interesting discussion about how much fragmentation damage should be happening to vehicles. I've tried hunting down information regarding that and its generally hard to find. The closest thing to "useful" I've been able to dig up are some STANAG PDFs. But even if you know the chance of an artillery shell pushing out a fragment large enough to cause damage to a sight, ERA block, smoke launcher, etc.... you need to contend with the chance of that fragment actually hitting. https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Ballistics/Term/STANAG_A231.pdf https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Ballistics/Term/STANAG_4569_Ed2.pdf The oft-cited "Dumb Artillery" article's key use is providing proof that artillery fragments can do damage to armor and then showing that fragmentation in CM is not. But using it as a tool for deciding where the correct rate of damage lies isn't in its wheelhouse. Although people have been trying to use it as such. There is an older thread by @HerrTom That might be of interest to anyone following along

1: air burst will only do damage to tank tracks no other subsystems 2: ground bursts will only do damage to tank tracks no other subsystems 3: direct hits will cause subsystem damage

Yea the key seems to be anything with a discretely modeled projectile works fine but artillery uses some other method of damage calculation and as a result bugs out. If you check there a ton of very close hits and no subsystem damage (1 burning tank is from the direct hit). Here is a save of that CW test i took images from: https://we.tl/t-aFqsdfzBTJ

Critically did you track to see whether these 2 other M60s took a direct hit? Direct hits will cause damage to other subsystems. In all of my testing (Black Sea and Shock Force 2) I've never seen a near hit cause subsystem damage. This matches with the results from airburst since airburst is purely fragmentation. Check out all these near hits (some very close) and you can see that tracks are the only item damaged. Now lets look at a direct hit and you can suddenly see that there is subsystem damage. This matches my testing and displays the bug fairly accurately. The game seems to be calculating artillery differently based off of whether it hits the vehicle or not. Fragmentation is unable to subsystem damage^1 wow a direct hit is calculated differently and then allowed to do subsystem damage. Text below isn't really related to the problem just my musings. > 6 KO'd M113s light vehicles seem to operate more or less okay. There is some deficiency due to the game not modeling larger fragments. A large artillery shell will occasionally shoot out a .50 cal esque chunk of metal at high speed and that metal will puncture APC armor at times. So what you would see in-game is a BTR or M113 or what have you driving along during artillery shelling and a guy inside being wounded or killed. In all my playtime I can't ever recall that happening. This is likely because the game doesn't model specific fragments and is instead just using some dice rolling abstraction which is fine. The games are like 15 years old at this point. But I think its important to know regardless.

literally none.^1 I've been able to drop hundreds of artillery shells and the subsystems are left undamaged. ^1 again except for tracks.

A full year after the initial issue was found its still like pulling teeth to convince people. Save file: https://we.tl/t-GjygFelLiQ Hot seat there are no passwords set. As you can see the tanks are proof to this weight of fire. Again I've also done this test using general and the results are the same. subsystems^1 will not be damage by artillery unless there is a direct hit. On a direct hit there will be damaged done most of the time but occasionally it looks like an ERA plate eats the artillery shell. Which doesn't seem right to me but its the least of the problems.

You've got to be kidding me... 50+ 130 mm guns do not damage a single subsystem other than tracks to yellow. This weight of artillery falls onto these 3 tanks and yet every AA MG on the three tanks remains intact. I just ran a quick test in Black Sea and showed the same issue unless I'm expected to believe that 12.7mm machine guns are made of Unobtainium. ------------------ What seems to be happening is that fragmentation effect will not do any damage to tank subsystems^1 . I've tested that by dropping a stupid amount of artillery onto tanks in airburst mode. After hundreds of rounds the tank can just drive off as if nothing as occurred. I've also ran tests using general and again tanks will not take subsystem damage^1 when a round lands nearby. A shell landing onto a tank will sometimes cause subsystem damage but its not 100% (might be due to ERA?) but that also seems sorta incorrect. ^1 The only subsystem that will show any damage is tracks. No other subsystem will.