Pelican Pal

Thank you for clarifying.
Also thanks to @The_Capt for asking the right questions and for other testers to confirm that this was logged recently as a problem. So, it turns out this *is* on the list to be looked at.

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.





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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.

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.





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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.

I think the game would be way better with accurate artillery damage. The maps are big enough to handle manuevering around it. Especially in CMCW

Yes this is why I believe the issue is more pertinent as you move into the modern titles. The modern titles have more bits and bobs attached to the tank and therefore more bits and bobs that could be smashed by fragments.

Laser warning receivers in Black Sea rely heavily on the smoke launchers having ammo to defend against an incoming ATGM but if the smoke launcher was rendered inoperable by artillery shelling earlier in the battle the window for the ATGM to guide into the tank is now bigger than before. These sort of small cascading effects are missing in CM currently but get regularly ignored during the discussion and instead tests are made against "car parks" of armor to claim that there isn't an issue.

And again another obvious issue is that while infantry on the ground gain cover saves to abstract their ability to find micro terrain tank crewmen do not and are reliant on their animation positioning them. If you find any video of men sticking their heads out of a vehicle in combat its simple to see that they make attempts to reduce their exposure whenever possible which is something that CM crewmen do not do.

Yea, sorry I wasn't clear.


If a round lands very close to a tank some amount of track damage will be done but that is the only subsystem that will take any damage and even then it has to be nearly on top of the vehicle. You won't get a shell landing 30 meters away to do any damage.

In a more abstract game that would be fine but CM is 1:1 so that sort of 1:1 damage modeling is important. Having a FLIR sight closed up for 30 seconds during the peak of the artillery fire or to have the top mounted machine gun become inoperable can have a butterfly effect on the outcome of a scenario.

I take it you mean by this that the tank's subsystems don't appear to take damage from fragments?

There was an interesting topic here on why avtive protection systems on tanks don't contain more than 4 rounds. 
The answer: because the debris from destroyed RPG\ATGM and defensive projectile would damage APS system quicker than it can use more than 4 shots.
Now imagine what artillery can do.
 

I already had all of them except 'Kieme's Highway 2' & 'Junction 2'.....I can vouch that all of them will run in 3d Preview (at maximum settings) on my fairly powerful rig.
Not sure I'd vouch for them running so well with a regiment's worth of LOS to calculate though.....That's what it would take to fill some of them, eh @sburke? 
PS - Here's an odd thing that might be of interest to those that deal with big maps on a regular basis, purely based on my own experiences.  If I open a humongous map and click straight on 3d Preview, the chances of a crash/failure to load/whatever seems maybe 30-50% higher than if I open the 2d Map Editor and scale the map so that I can see all or most of it on screen as tiles, before I view it in 3d Preview.  I have no idea if this is a real thing, or just my imagination, but it seems to work for me, so that's what I do.

Follow the link to an in-progress map pack for Black Sea. All of these maps are blank and exist for use of scenario designers to make scenarios with without the onerous map creation portion of the experience.

https://github.com/combat-mission/Black-Sea/tree/main/maps

Please let me know if any of these maps do not work in Black Sea. My testing has shown that they do but I haven't tried to load them all in the 3d mode. Additionally if anyone here would like to help and has CMFI/CMRT please PM me.

Notes:

Most of these are maps were packed with the games but a few are from map designers. Be sure to click the "..." to show attributions.

I plan on doing this for other games in the series.

As this is list is refined they'll be added to the scenario depot for better accessibility. This current location is a soft launch location.
 

Follow the link to an in-progress map pack for Black Sea. All of these maps are blank and exist for use of scenario designers to make scenarios with without the onerous map creation portion of the experience.

https://github.com/combat-mission/Black-Sea/tree/main/maps

Please let me know if any of these maps do not work in Black Sea. My testing has shown that they do but I haven't tried to load them all in the 3d mode. Additionally if anyone here would like to help and has CMFI/CMRT please PM me.

Notes:

Most of these are maps were packed with the games but a few are from map designers. Be sure to click the "..." to show attributions.

I plan on doing this for other games in the series.

As this is list is refined they'll be added to the scenario depot for better accessibility. This current location is a soft launch location.
 

Yea, there is some sort of modeling issue with vehicle crew. I suspect its a combination both of what @domfluff mentioned, and a lack of cover saves.

Troops on terrain get a cover save based on the terrain they are in. Representing micro-terrain, soldiers making themselves smaller targets than the animation system can do, etc... Anyone poking their head out of a vehicle does not seem to gain the benefit of these cover saves so any hit is going to be more lethal, unless they have an armor save. Its reasonable to argue that vehicle crew should receive some cover save to represent them placing themselves in less exposed positions (and acting more dynamically) than the animation system allows them to.


 

Please, please look at the Red C2 and give the Uncons some more Specialist Teams (esp. Breach Teams) & Individual Vehicles.....Giving the US access to Predator Drones would really be cool too (the timing is so close and it's a fictional war after all). 
There's still a huge amount of life in CM:SF2. 

The general problem with shooting at exposed crew is that spotting vehicle = spotting crew.  Vehicles are generally easy for infantry to spot, and if the state of the vehicle is unbuttoned, then the instant the vehicle is spotted, every capable weapon will target the exposed crew.  Beyond that, there is no ability for crew to take temporary cover the way infantry similarly exposed behind a low wall can.  They are either unbuttoned or buttoned (and for the AI player the latter is permanent), so buttoning at even a hint of possible small arms fire in the area would likely excessively reduce AI situational awareness.

it does not matter , I have duplicated the arc issue with Regular Shermans 

The bar for what folks consider toxic is practically nonexistent. I wouldn't even call his comment "harmful to the title's reputation".  Find me someone who is perusing the forum and deciding their opinion of CM on Erwin's comment in a 5 page thread?

There are things that damage the game's reputation and I can guarantee you that none of them involve Erwin.

The bar for what folks consider toxic is practically nonexistent. I wouldn't even call his comment "harmful to the title's reputation".  Find me someone who is perusing the forum and deciding their opinion of CM on Erwin's comment in a 5 page thread?

There are things that damage the game's reputation and I can guarantee you that none of them involve Erwin.

A toxic person is someone who constantly demands chemical warfare be modeled, in-game. Maybe biological too. Actually full-on NBC, 'cause there were cases of polonium poisoning, as well. Ie. Marie Currie or Dr Thrax.
Alternatively, it can also refer to USMC personnel that have not been issued with newer non-toxic MREs and/or writing utensils.

I feel like that standard for calling someone "toxic" needs to a bit higher than them saying something that is "harmful to the title's reputation". I don't think anything should be immune from criticism. Although I am curious as to what bugs he's referring to. There are ongoing arguments about which stuff is modeled correctly, but those aren't the same thing as actual bugs (and I'm of the opinion that those things are already modeled about right). There were a handful of actual bugs early on, but those have been ironed out (the floating track on the bmp comes to mind). Perhaps he meant "big update"? 'i' and 'u' are right next to each other on the keyboard so it would be an easy typo to make, and "waiting for the big update" makes more sense than "waiting for the bug update". Or perhaps he's referring to the promised performance improvements with Engine 5 (although that isn't specific to CMCW)? In any case, it's best to ask for clarification before being too harsh on someone.

I chuckled.

The interactions shown here not only show the bug in question but also make me question exactly how fragments are being modeled. If you notice the BMPs that are knocked out have no system damage and are just destroyed. That makes me think that the game isn't model any sort of fragments as projectiles but instead use some sort of blast radius calculation. Since a fragment hitting the vehicle would cause some sort of system damage or possible crew casualties.

My guess is that modeling fragments explicitly in 2008 was seen as prohibitive so they are abstracted out.


@The_Capt

Yes, tracking down info on this is generally difficult and I don't really think vehicle destruction is that far off from what I've been able to find.

This is from the Dupuy Institute which puts armor losses during WW2 around 12% although I'm not sure how trustworthy they are as a source. One of the obvious questions (in relation to CM) is how concentrated are these losses are. 12% across a multi-day battle isn't huge but its possible that they could be concentrated in several CM scale engagements in which case they might be significant for our purposes.
Anyway... I generally think that too much focus gets put on kills in this discussion when I'm more interested in the effect of artillery during and immediately after a barrage. What sort of non-fatal damage might be caused^1, what sort of suppression might be caused^2, how does artillery impact target engagement^2.

^1  I think this is question is far more important in Shock Force and Black Sea but not without merit in Cold War. 40 artillery shells might not be concentrated enough to kill a tank within the barrage area, however, it might knock out the thermal sight which is not unimportant. Obviously in BS and SF you have modern tanks within even more equipment on them that could be knocked out. And CM is the sort of game where the destruction of a smoke launcher could be critical later.

^2 Suppression not only in the sense of the crew themselves being knocked around by blast effect and being worried by the shells falling/fragments clattering off the vehicle reducing their capabilities, but the crew making the decision to lower armored shutters over thermal sights and so on.

CM is often a game of minute details mattering which is why I don't think this is unimportant.

Artillery in CM has two key weaknesses that make it suspect within the context of a mech heavy environment. The first being (as I've been told) that CM does not model vehicles closing up vision ports when under artillery fire. The second that the game does not model fragmentation damage to vehicles.^1 Combined this is causing artillery to under perform against armor. I'm not sure by how much it is under performing but my suspicion is that its not a meaningless loss.
Part of my reasoning is that, as you have said, the Soviet forces are often at a 2:1 to 3:1 advantage. Within this context you might have a M60 TTS platoon against a 2-3 platoons of Soviet armor and the reduction of even a single TTS's capability to effectively engage results in a significant drop in combat power for NATO.

Now this can be worked around but it requires that you use artillery in a way that I suspect most players don't readily take to. For example, you have located a TTS platoon astride the advance of your FSE. A player might drop a large number of shells over 8-10 minutes only to find that no damage has been done at all to the opposing armor. Not only that but during the barrage their spotting ability is not being reduced. The player has therefore expended a large amount of firepower and a significant amount of time for no impact on the enemy. I think this fairly leads to frustration on the players part.

^1 Documented bug but I also have a suspicion that how CM would model fragmentation might be doing a bit of a disservice to them.


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Overall though I actually disagree that the Soviets don't work. But I do think that the peculiarities of both the Soviets and CM work against players having initial success with them.

The interactions shown here not only show the bug in question but also make me question exactly how fragments are being modeled. If you notice the BMPs that are knocked out have no system damage and are just destroyed. That makes me think that the game isn't model any sort of fragments as projectiles but instead use some sort of blast radius calculation. Since a fragment hitting the vehicle would cause some sort of system damage or possible crew casualties.

My guess is that modeling fragments explicitly in 2008 was seen as prohibitive so they are abstracted out.


@The_Capt

Yes, tracking down info on this is generally difficult and I don't really think vehicle destruction is that far off from what I've been able to find.

This is from the Dupuy Institute which puts armor losses during WW2 around 12% although I'm not sure how trustworthy they are as a source. One of the obvious questions (in relation to CM) is how concentrated are these losses are. 12% across a multi-day battle isn't huge but its possible that they could be concentrated in several CM scale engagements in which case they might be significant for our purposes.
Anyway... I generally think that too much focus gets put on kills in this discussion when I'm more interested in the effect of artillery during and immediately after a barrage. What sort of non-fatal damage might be caused^1, what sort of suppression might be caused^2, how does artillery impact target engagement^2.

^1  I think this is question is far more important in Shock Force and Black Sea but not without merit in Cold War. 40 artillery shells might not be concentrated enough to kill a tank within the barrage area, however, it might knock out the thermal sight which is not unimportant. Obviously in BS and SF you have modern tanks within even more equipment on them that could be knocked out. And CM is the sort of game where the destruction of a smoke launcher could be critical later.

^2 Suppression not only in the sense of the crew themselves being knocked around by blast effect and being worried by the shells falling/fragments clattering off the vehicle reducing their capabilities, but the crew making the decision to lower armored shutters over thermal sights and so on.

CM is often a game of minute details mattering which is why I don't think this is unimportant.

Artillery in CM has two key weaknesses that make it suspect within the context of a mech heavy environment. The first being (as I've been told) that CM does not model vehicles closing up vision ports when under artillery fire. The second that the game does not model fragmentation damage to vehicles.^1 Combined this is causing artillery to under perform against armor. I'm not sure by how much it is under performing but my suspicion is that its not a meaningless loss.
Part of my reasoning is that, as you have said, the Soviet forces are often at a 2:1 to 3:1 advantage. Within this context you might have a M60 TTS platoon against a 2-3 platoons of Soviet armor and the reduction of even a single TTS's capability to effectively engage results in a significant drop in combat power for NATO.

Now this can be worked around but it requires that you use artillery in a way that I suspect most players don't readily take to. For example, you have located a TTS platoon astride the advance of your FSE. A player might drop a large number of shells over 8-10 minutes only to find that no damage has been done at all to the opposing armor. Not only that but during the barrage their spotting ability is not being reduced. The player has therefore expended a large amount of firepower and a significant amount of time for no impact on the enemy. I think this fairly leads to frustration on the players part.

^1 Documented bug but I also have a suspicion that how CM would model fragmentation might be doing a bit of a disservice to them.


~~~

Overall though I actually disagree that the Soviets don't work. But I do think that the peculiarities of both the Soviets and CM work against players having initial success with them.