Pelican Pal

Political officers seem like more an act of desperation or necessity than a "bonus" so to speak. Nazi Germany didn't feel the need to start creating NSFOs until the war turned against them and they need to create more indoctrinated, politically reliable soldiers.

They could be describing one of John LeCarre's xnt books.  While Clancy's Hunt for Red October book and (especially) the movie was xnt, the rest of Clancy's and Bond's were rather poorly written imo.  More like technical research manuals.   In terms of dramatic writing of real life war incidents, Cornelius Ryan was much better.

You might find the below interesting.  It was copied from the below linked topic which contains more information on the subject.
 
 
In CM Battle for Normandy v3.11 Engine 3 I had the following teams request fire support from the same 105mm howitzer battery both in and out of the command track.  All teams had the same soft factors, Experience: veteran / Motivation: normal / Leadership 0 / Fitness: fit.  The following are the results.
                                   Back Pack Radio                     SPW 251/3
German Bn. HQ           14 minutes                             14 minutes
German Co. HQ           14 minutes                             14 minutes
German Plt. HQ           14 minutes                             14 minutes
German FO                    9 minutes                               9 minutes
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In CM Black Sea v1.00 Engine 3 I had the following teams request fire support from the same 105mm howitzer battery both in and out of the command track.  All teams had the same soft factors, Experience: veteran / Motivation: normal / Leadership 0 / Fitness: fit.  The following are the results.
                                    Radio /PDA                     Stryker Cmd. Veh.
US BN. HQ                 10 minutes                             9 minutes
US Co. HQ                  10 minutes                             9 minutes
US Plt. HQ                  10 minutes                             9 minutes
US FO                           6 minutes                             5 minutes
It would appear there is no advantage to using command vehicles in CMBN.  However there is a small advantage to using them in CMBS.  Different level HQ units in both games appear to have the same call times however Forward Observers are quicker.  Not the way I thought it worked but unless I am missing something that appears to be the way it is. 
 
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Following up:  In CM Battle for Normandy v3.11 Engine 3 I had US Platoon HQ teams request fire support from the same 105mm howitzer battery.  All teams had the same soft factors with the exception of experience.  Motivation: normal / Leadership 0 / Fitness: fit.  The following are the results.
Elite          13 minutes
Crack        13 minutes
Veteran     13 minutes
Regular     13 minutes
Green        15 minutes
Conscript  18 minutes

I think the only lesson learnt here is that if you attack without logistics and a proper plan, and with extremely poor morale, you're not going far.

Perhaps, or possibly the superior info-management of the Ukrainians would have just meant more and more geolocated juicy targets got deleted, sooner than otherwise would have been the case.
I remain astonished, however, that RUS didn't have official reporters along, generating all the "favourable press" they could for worldwide consumption. I mean, they expected a total walkover, so they should've been expecting to need to promulgate TB of pictures of welcoming Ukrainian crowds and abjectly defeated UA personnel and captured equipment... Perhaps the very absence of this phenomenon suggests that RUS successes haven't been widely achieved.
I, for one, appreciate Haiduk's reportage of OSINT regarding UKR losses almost as much as the collation of UKR successes.

I'm assuming your talking about the FM?

To be honest I haven't looked at those in years and years but they generally exist to teach the basics/bare minimum. So applying them 1:1 to CM can be very hard because its super rare that a CM scenario will treat you to the basics. In addition I find that they seem to geared towards a sorta WW2/Cold War setup and that makes them even less applicable to something like Black Sea.

TL;DR: the FMs teach people how to crawl and CM is all about walking.

This is more or less the core of it.
1. Recon the enemy position and identify as much of it as you can without revealing yourself/taking losses

2. Identify the weakest link position. Any set of mutually supporting positions will have  one that is the easiest for you to kill.

3. Setup the situation needed to kill the weakest link.1

4. Kill it.

repeat.

1  There are a multitude of ways to do this and its going to be largely up to you to identify the best way given the tools at hand. Some quick examples though:

- keyhole position that is only exposed to the weakest link
- use smoke to isolate the weakest link
- use artillery or direct fire to suppress other positions while you kill the weakest link
- use artillery to kill the weakest link
- etc...

Against a human player you can use maneuver to threaten their mutually supporting positions and hopefully force them to react to you. Dom's example is a decent one showing that in action. But against the AI you aren't going to get them to maneuver against you in that fashion so its more puzzle like.

Artillery is bugged against armor and you won't get a realistic result. The problem is especially prevalent in the modern games so I'd just steer clear of wasting artillery on armor until they (if they) fix that.

Edit: see both of these threads for further info
 
and
 
 

Tl;dr: Artillery shells hitting ERA blocks don't count as hitting the tank so you can have direct hits not causing direct hit type damage.

So there are two bugs that create most of the armor - artillery problems that people bring up.

1. Artillery will not cause damage without a direct hit1
2. Artillery hitting ERA does not count as a direct hit in the game's logic2

Artillery doesn't always kill armor with direct hits but a direct hit will at minimum cause some pretty nasty systems damage, and as you've stated can kill tanks. Two direct hits (if I am reading his comment correctly) should pretty reliably mess up a tank. Either killing it outright or causing some pretty significant systems damage depending on the caliber of the shells being fired. However, if one or both of those shells hit the ERA block the tank would be far less damaged than it realistically should be besides driving slower.

The prevalence of ERA on certain vehicles in Black Sea likely explains why you occasionally here of weird results where a Bradley or some tank takes multiple direct hits and is still fighting capable. The ERA downgrade a direct hit to a near miss and near misses don't do damage to certain vehicle types. There is some cut off in the games logic where near misses can cause kills but I've not narrowed down where that is at.

1 Nearby hits will only cause damage to the tracks so you can get an immobilization with enough fire or large enough shell but you will never degrade/destroy any other system regardless of the number of near misses that occur. Outright kills by blast can happen to IFVs but I've not seen it occur to a tank. Tanks seem to require direct hits for a outright kill to occur.

2 If an artillery shell directly hits an ERA block the game treats it as if its a near miss strike and not a direct hit. So you could have a direct hit literally next to the gun and the only system that would be damaged would be tracks.

 

Artillery is bugged against armor and you won't get a realistic result. The problem is especially prevalent in the modern games so I'd just steer clear of wasting artillery on armor until they (if they) fix that.

Edit: see both of these threads for further info
 
and
 
 

US seems to agree with you there. Ultimately thats probably the correct assessment, though timeline could be sooner or later (4 weeks, maybe 2, maybe 10) depending on battlefield breaks. But all Russia has to do is mobilize more of its military districts and it will double the attacking force. Russia is a bear. It wont kill you with tricky poisons, or a special attack, or some quick and surgical bite. If the first bite doenst get you, it will crush you under paw and squeeze the life out of you. 
I've said it up thread (a while upthread at this point) but it bears repeating. The short victory phase is over. Were in phase 2, the siege. Ukraine will lose this phase of the war if Russia is allowed to complete it. It will be long, it will be bloody on both sides, and it will be messy. Putin will not come out of this looking like the judo master. He has probably broken Russia's great power status. But none of that matters if your sheltering in Kyiv. The only hope is that NATO and the US can somehow fundamentally change the dynamic of this conflict to force a withdraw OR someone from inside the palace changes it for us. Phase 3, if it comes, will be the insurgency phase and will be a constant and unending nightmare for Russia. Probably an insurgency on the scale of the Second World War. The difference is I 100% believe the west will flood Ukraine with arms, maintaining a very high intensity and lethality of conflict. 
Personally I dont think that assassination should be the tool in the arsenal of a democracy. Democracies shouldn't target individuals. But if there was a time for the west to pull out a targeted operation, now would be one. Then again a solution like that would open up the very real risk of a civil war in a nuclear armed state. Also not a positive outcome. 
Regarding CMBS, if Russia pushes this to phase 3 I think the tune will be very different. The Russian army is going to come out looking a lot better if it wins, because failures can be blamed on the 'soft' side of the military. Personnel, doctrine, operational concept, soft factors like radio management, leadership. CM is fundamentally based on tactical sized units, fighting based on a rigid interpretation of TOEs, with a perfect understanding of doctrine and a high quality of execution. All thats to say, is the problem that the T-72B3 is a bad tank or it was used improperly? Is it that it was driven poorly or that it couldn't hold up at all? CMBS already reflects this lethality and TBH if you employed your battalions like the Russians seem to be, I bet you could reproduce a lot of these actions. Technical data will surely (hopefully) change some values though and give us a much better and more accurate simulation, but I suspect we wont see a huge revision in how Russian equipment is judged. After all its been the assumption since the 1940s that the basic Russian soldier was poorly trained, led, motivated, and fed.  

There are always going to be whackos in any country.  that particular conference is run by a rabid white nationalist and the participation there by two republicans has drawn a response form the republican leadership in congress so I wouldn't put too much on that.  As Mitt Romney said in response to that event. "we have morons on our team".

With a game like CM it is possible. Its just a lot more work than most people are willing to give for little feedback and little real activity on anything they make.

The CM2 victory point options give the designer enough options to allow a 1 platoon vs Battalion (to create an absurd example) scenario to be balanced at the end game screen. However, there aren't enough testers and not any sort of data collection to allow designers to move to that goal. FGM is maybe the closest thing the CM community has that would allow that.

Yes - I don't know about tank gun ballistics, I just know that a Pz IV shooting at another, fully exposed Pz IV at 600 meters misses about 68% of its first shots in CM. If the target being hull down changed that to, say, 80%, we would see it in the results - the hull down tank would retain its advantage even when spotting is taken out of the equation. We would see that even if the 3rd and subsequent shots are sure hits. But we don't see that.
However, it is not a direct proof that the hull down tank is not less likely to hit. It is just implied by two series of tests that measured something different. I would have to measure the probability of hitting a hull down target directly.

Just for the benefit of some readers, "point blank range" means "range with a flat trajectory". That is, the maximum range at which the projectile roughly flies along a straight line towards the target before the forces of gravity and friction with the atmosphere overcome linear acceleration and the trajectory becomes curved. Or in other words, the maximum range at which the gunner can set the gun elevation to zero degrees and be quite certain the shot won't be short. The shot can still miss for other reasons, obviously.
 
As an ESL person who wasn't educated in the terminology I need to remind myself of this all the time when I read these discussions.

In CM, this is actually not true - a shot fired at 600 m is not a sure hit. Below is a printout of my gun accuracy tests for the Pz IV, with Regular crew, no modifiers, target Pz IVH fully exposed on flat ground. The probability of hitting with the first shot is around 32% (highlighted). Therefore, there is room for the hull down position to make a difference in the chance of hitting. But that's apparently not happening.
MAIN GUN DATA
PzKpfw.IV Panzer IVG (late) - 75mm L/43 KwK40 [CMBN v4.03] Range (m) 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Time to first shot (s) 3.3 4.7 5.9 6.4 6.6 7.0 7.1 Time to second shot (s) 8.6 10.4 11.3 12.0 12.2 12.9 13.1 First shot hit chance   77.8% 29.9% 15.0% 8.6% 5.8% 4.3% Second shot hit chance     75.8% 52.1% 36.8% 27.1% 21.4% Panzer IVH (late) - 75mm L/48 KwK40 [CMBN v4.03] Range (m) 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 Time to first shot (s) 3.4 5.1 6.0 6.8 7.1 7.3 7.2 Time to second shot (s) 8.9 10.5 11.2 11.5 12.3 12.5 13.1 First shot hit chance   81.3% 31.7% 16.0% 9.6% 6.1% 4.1% Second shot hit chance     78.4% 53.6% 39.3% 28.6% 21.7%                 Panzer IVG (late) - 75mm L/43 KwK40 [CMBN v4.03]         First shot trials   10000 13000 11000 11000 11000 11000 First shot hits   7779 3892 1646 951 642 475 First shot hit chance   77.8% 29.9% 15.0% 8.6% 5.8% 4.3% Second shot trials     10797 10144 10560 10709 10831 Second shot hits     7649 4877 3603 2685 2184 Second shots not taken     2203 856 440 291 169 Second shot hit chance     75.8% 52.1% 36.8% 27.1% 21.4% Accuracy rating             96 Panzer IVH (late) - 75mm L/48 KwK40 [CMBN v4.03]         First shot trials   10000 13000 11000 11000 11000 11000 First shot hits   8128 4120 1760 1054 674 454 First shot hit chance   81.3% 31.7% 16.0% 9.6% 6.1% 4.1% Second shot trials     10497 10016 10469 10703 10819 Second shot hits     7684 4916 3793 2853 2211 Second shots not taken     2503 984 531 297 181 Second shot hit chance     78.4% 53.6% 39.3% 28.6% 21.7% Accuracy rating             100  
I agree that it would be interesting, but I decided not to dedicate computer time to this. With fewer hits I would probably need to test for much longer to get good statistics. But at some point I might test the probability of the first shot hitting a hull down tank at different ranges and compare.

Ok so what you're saying is basically that hull down doesn't make the tank more difficult to hit, despite the turret being a much smaller target... That sounds off.

I ran my usual 1000 trials with one Pz IV in partial hull down position vs one Pz IV in full hull down position. Regular, no modifiers, 600 m, crew hatches open.
In the first round, neither side had a contact, so both spotting and shooting accuracy would determine who wins. The result was 39:57 - the hull down tank had a significant advantage.
In the second round, I used target arcs to prevent both tanks from shooting until both had full contact on each other. Therefore, they would start shooting almost simultaneously and only the shooting accuracy (and protection) would determine who wins. The result was 56:47. I repeated this run with another 1000 trials, the second result was 54:50. The average of all 2000 trials was then 55:49. The hull down tank has a slight disadvantage. It might be due to the poorer protection offered to the hull down Pz IV by the turret armor vs upper hull. I see no indication that a hull down tank is harder to hit at this range than a more exposed vehicle.
I think it is in agreement with @Pelican Pal's findings.

Hopefully someone can net it out with my question.
Is the hulldown tank a smaller target than a fully exposed tank?  Wouldn't that make a significant difference in the hit rate on the hulldown tank?

We're not in disagreement about the tank tactics you're showing, but I think the whole discussion is based on the misunderstanding that we are talking about real life, whereas we are just talking about how things work in the game.
Nobody is saying real panthers didn't use hulldown, or that they would stay in hulldown and slug it out. Lots of things were going on that we can't really use in CM, because of the 60-second turn structure - at least not in WeGo mode.
The concept of leaving a Panther up on a hilltop is basically just a gamey thing that's possible in CM because it's a game.
 

Except you cant do a proper berm drill because your tank wont see the target so you have to pop up and down hoping the tank will spot and shoot in time.

Yea, I will have to re edit the map back to the hull down variant though.
So I think there is important actionable information here and that is that in Combat Mission the largest protective benefit of hull down is a concealment buff. It doesn't make you that much harder to hit while it does make you much harder to see.

To clarify a bit I think it gives useful information on how your armor should take a fight. Often people will blithely talk about "if you are taking a hit you are already failing" but an avid Combat Mission player will eventually be forced into fights that aren't in their favor. Knowing the mechanics of the game can turn one of those fights in your favor.

Obviously there are a lot of other factors but I think the test showing clarity of where the bonus is at can be helpful to players.

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.

Artillery has a couple of bugs around it that historically were being discounted by people. Combined I think they explain a lot of the inadequacy of artillery against armor and they just needed to be tracked down. The fragmentation bug has been logged but I'm unsure if there is a log of this ERA bug. The impact on armor is the same (only track damage) but in this case it involves ERA blocking the effect of artillery rather than fragmentation not being modeled.

When you consider that Black Sea has a lot of ERA equipped vehicles you can start to piece together how some tanks could take an absolute beating from arty and still be in a fighting state. A single direct hit doesn't reliably kill a tank so if say... 3 rounds directly impacted a tank but 2 of those hit ERA the result would be a tank that is still going to wreck your **** even if it can't move very fast or at all.