Rinaldi

I (quickly) skimmed over again trying to find an Order of Battle; did you provide one? What's your fire support like? Insofar as pushing down the center a la c3k you could always try to cover the shoulders of such an advance with smoke if you have good weather and the means to provide it. I mean the shock factor of that alone might give you an edge...or end in a bloody rout, these things are always 50/50.....80/20.

The KwK 75's inability to penetrate reliably past 1.1km is precisely why everyone needs to practice fire discipline -- savaged an opponent not too long ago when his PaK-front opened fire prematurely. Felt very satisfying knocking out a series of helpless PAK guns; now a Panther on the other hand...

Rather fortunate for me. Luckily I had redundant AT guns, but I suspect the battle will go up in difficulty for my Scots shortly. After this abortive effort, he pulled back all along the front and covered himself with arty. If a fierce local action evolves I may film an AAR of that.

Will be following this one closely.

So I normally don't post 'joke' videos but with my opponent lending his uh....lyrical abilities, I couldn't resist. He's not having a good start to his attack as the Germans in "Breaking the Panzers!" - needless to say as his opponent, I'm having the time of my life

Yeah, I knew it was only a matter of time until this thread devolved into "why can't my ubermensch cut the Soviets down in droves effortlessly?" Womble and LukeFf are wholly in the right, not sure why people are swearing by a seriously outdated engine and series of games when CMx2 is so clearly better modeled. As for all the farting on about " if SMGs were so effective how come they're no longer in use?" has it occured to you that modern service weapons attempt to combine the best of an SMG with the best of a battle rifle? Edit: body-count trope reared its head! Everyone take a shot!

I mean the offset is that they're quite useless past 50-125m. Unless you're fighting in highly urban terrain or in a forest (in which case, you're playing to Soviet historical strengths, grit your teeth), you should ostensibly be able to establish fire superiority before closing in.

Well, at the risk of bunglin' OPSEC for the PBEM I'll just have to satisfy your curiosity: My opponent has been going cross country trying to reach a natural bottleneck formed by two lakes. I've got better cover but the terrain favors the Panzer IV's ability to get firing solutions faster. Engaging Panzer IVs at 2km is not recommended: Luckily I woke up and started to use that cover to my advantage, I've reached the bottleneck before him as well by using masked routes of advance I lovingly call this 'The corner'. We're both about 4 tanks down, but he's also lost quite a bit of extraneous vehicles. Something tells me niether of our infantry will come into play for a while yet, and hopefully only to mop up shattered Panzergrenadiers clinging to treelines - but its still anyone's game.

Just used this tonight with a modicum of success in a H2H; pushed two Stuarts up guns blazing then pulled them back. The reacting StuG exposed its side armor to a 3rd Stuart when it turned to meet the noisy threat. I definitely recommend this for close-quarters engagements, or any situation where you have a local superiority in tanks.

Ships at Sea - from a PBEM of "The Passage"

There was one battle of note; an action at Montliemar, which essentially drove the German forces into the Vosges. There's little in the way of documentaries, but there is at least one H2H scenario made; eponymously named 'H2H Montliemar.' Forces in the Dragoon sector were a hodge-podge of Axis infantry units (including cannibalized Luftwaffe formations) and the 11.Panzer Division. Any histories that focus on the 36th US Infantry Division will detail Dragoon in depth, as the Texans were instrumental in cutting the Axis line of retreat at Montliemar. They essentially prevented the Dragoon defense forces from pushing north to link up with the main German body that was in retreat at that time.

Yes, presuming HEAT is modeled correctly (and they've never led us astray yet in this matter), range shouldn't matter. However it may be the angle, as you suggest. At the end of the day a concrete bunker will be a tough nut to crack; IIRC every US Paratrooper squad has two demo charges as well. If you're able to push up an assault team,try using a 'blast' command on the action spot to the rear of the bunker if you continue to have no luck with the Bazooka. Worst case scenario you sit there and plug away with rifle fire, you might be able to depopulate the pillbox by sheer force of fire, just be sure to try and get to the edges of its fire arc to do so. Good luck!

Where are you hitting the bunker with the bazooka? It may be a 57mm HEAT but I've seen the concerte bunkers in game survive HE and AP repeatedly from 75L/40s and both american 76s. A rear shot may be necessary.

Awesome read, thanks for taking the time to do this as always.

Post 8

Alright, sorry for the delay. The screenshots in chronological order from post #6 onwards. Would highly reccomend hereafter you use an imagehost akin to postimage; will help the AAR flow more than dropbox links could. Enjoying the AAR regardless. Given how differently SLIM deployed compared to the AI in this scenario, I find it interesting that your movements are similar to mine own when I AAR'd this. Post 6

Loved it Odin, I subscribed. Hope you take this AAR style and run with it.

Sigh. This has clearly gotten lost in the thread, let me quote myself: I never said bounced, nor did Shift say anything that I said - in fact that's the entire crux of this argument. Everyone should probably take the frequency of posts down a notch and read more carefully what one another are saying. FWIW the 'partial penetrations' that resulted in the Tiger having an immediate secondary struck in the following area: My point should've immediate obvious to both of you. That, as far as the game is concerned, partial pens can be debilitating and destructive, even immediately so. It was just a little (barely relevant) tidbit from me that said I was more than satisfied with how the penetration system was acting after strenuous testing. EDIT: In short Vanir I fully agreed with you that partial pens should be counted as hits - largely because they were capable of producing impressive results on one-off hits. Nevermind the fact they often degrade the combat capabilities of the enemy tank.

Now there's something I haven't seen in a while. A time ago, yes.

Would you like me to embed your screenshots for you? Have played this scenario as the Americans before, you're in for an interesting battle. Edit: We can get the screens to appear like so if you'd think that would flow better.

I'm not sure what to say at this point. I understand your goal-lines but its starkly different from everyone else - who are using a far more practical baseline of what degrades the tank's combat performance. Its all well and good to say you are only counting 'clean penetrations' but when everyone is observing that 'settling for less' in the form of a partial-penetration still yields the desired results (in at least 30 percent of my tests of a 400 sample size - catastrophic kills), then arguing that the "76 is less effective than it should be" is based on a shaky premise at best. If it can knock out enemy armor within a handful of shots at excessive ranges despite the lack of clean penetrations then its sufficient to conclude that the 76 is good enough. I also think its counter intuitive to be barking on about your sources when others have pointed out notable issues with your interpretation of said sources and have even given their own sources to back up their criticisms. Really now. I enjoy the entire premise of the thread and the conversation you've generated but you've been responding to everyone with empty exasperation and snark for simple suggestions about your methodology. In short, of all the flavors, you chose to cook with salt.

Vanir was able to recreate your results. Partial pens should be counted, 3 out of every 10 partial pen on front hull (at 100, 300, 500 and 1000m) gave me catastrophic kills. I'm significantly less worried now Edit: by the by, shots that bounced off the front hull had a habit of bouncing into the drivers housing. Im actually impressed at the 76s ability to get debilitating hits at ranges in excess of 800 m.

I'll have free time this evening, I could set up a test. It's obvious there's quite a bit of issues with the original methodology. So, should we brainstorm more effective test conditions? Sample size? I'll obviously count anything that degrades the performance of vehicle and crew as a hit. But how many hits should we record and at what distances?

Well you learn something new every day, thanks Vanir.

Anecdotal evidence here: I've actually had more trouble penetrating the mantlet on a Panther and the turret of the Tiger I at 300m with the 17 pdr than I have with the US 76mm. I know its poppycock, but that was just a bit of rough luck on my part. I've consistently been able to get partial, spalls and full penetrations on the Panther's turret with the US 76 so I need to agree with shift8 that something's up with Tigers. They should have functionally less armor as a result of the easier angles, but in my personal experience tend to be a bit tougher. No real complaints though because most of my opponents would rather have a company of StuGs than a platoon of Tigers, so they remain rare beasts.