holoween

Now the Next interesting topic is how you chose to validate your results namely with the one exception among major armies that doesnt use IFVs Israel. "The only army to have much experience of APC operations in regular war did not adopt IFVs." p.122 Historically its actually exactly the opposite. The army with the most experience using APCs being the wehrmacht with the SdKfz 251 literally starting ww2 with an APC. And as soon as the Bundeswehr formed they went for getting an IFV with the HS 30 8 years ahead of the BMP1. Out of all major militaries Israel is actually the exception in not having an IFV. So lets examine what could have lead to this and what they are using instead. The area Israel has to fight in has generally quite rough terrain and a fairly high number of highly build up areas. This generally puts a higher emphasis on the dismounts. It also decreases the value of the added speed of advance IFVs can give formations. Israel also had a fairly long history of Insurgency fighting where IFVs also tend to not excel (compare Iraq occupation) though htats straying away from the regular war narative. Interestingly as much as the Arab Israeli wars were studied by Soviets and Nato alike neither abandoned their IFVs. The biggest influence being the development of BMP2. Curiously with 1 fewer dismounts compared to BMP1 so lack of dismounted infantry wasnt the takeaway. What seems to be far more influential is that Israel maintains an army of a size it can only afford due to extensive military aid and during the cold war the same was true of its oponents. Its main aid contributor was the US which for the time of Israels major wars simply didnt own IFVs and so couldnt sell them but istead sold APCs. At that point Israel also had very limited AFV production capability so the combination of essentially free APCs and production of IFVs eating into the tank numbers its obviously the better choice to not produce IFVs. To feed into this the heavy APCs build were primarily captured or outdaatet tank chassis repurposed and only with the Namer did they produce them from the ground up resulting in far lower numbers than they would like. These heavy APCs also face primarily Insurgents not a regular army so are in purpose closer to the modern US MRAP. IFVs have also been used in several regular wars (2nd and 3rd gulf war, 2008 Georgian war and 2014 in Ukraine). So far they all seem to have accounted quite well for themselves seeing as no unser advocated to stop using them.

Jim Storr ive gotten the book a few weeks ago and have read through it a few times now. Generally i found it easy to read though somewhat heavy on opinions rather than analysis. You might have found a quite critical audience here as i as several before me take issue with a certain aspect of the book. In my case ill focus on the chapter Infantry and Antitank Forces specifically your discussion of IFVs. I think wargaming is a valuable source if information but always needs to be cross referenced with rl data. However the IFV section is entirely at odds with the vast majority of modern armies and from reading it seemed inherently at odds with what was being said. It is also at odds with my personal experience so i was trying to wrap my head around it until i started collecting quotes from it to make a rebuttal ten i realized where the issue comes from. "Ground-mounted cannon, such as the French and German 20mm, would have beenhighly effectivea gainst enemy APCs." p.116 "Cannon and ATGMs could be very effective [...] Once dismounted in cover, they could be very difficult to locate" p.123 So the Weapons the IFVs carried were effective so why not the IFV itself? Lets see the defense: "IFVs located in a defensive position [...] tended to be knocked out by artillery fire, or neutralized and then easy prey to the attackers, be it tanks or shoulder-fired antitank weapons." p.124 "If IFVs were sited outside defensive positions [...] being quite large vehicles, they attrackted fire from the attackers Tanks and ATGMs." p.124 This implies that either a dismounted 20mm cannon is more resistant to artillery bombardement or its position wont be spotted and so not bombarded. That is strange in two ways. The IFV should be more resistant to artillery and given its mobility should be sitting outside of view only to move into its firing position when targets are called my the infantry and so actually harder to spot. Or dug in and just have its turret exposed in which case it should be equally difficult to spot but still be more resistant to artillery fire. Now looking at the offense "vehicle-mounted cannon and MGs did not help. [...] difficulty in locating the defenders, who were invariably concealed and often dug in." p.123 "Conversely they made the [...] IFVs obvious and high-priority targets for the defender´s fire." p.123 This is strange in two ways. First for supressing defenders and assisting the own infantry exact locations of the defenders need not be known. Simply supressing areas that could be dangerous to the own infantry if occupied by enemy infantry will do the majority of work since 20mm cannons firing he at 1000rpm cyclic into the defenders general area is going to keep their heads down. Even more if there is a full platoon doing this. Second is that in the game even with their aparently ineffective fire they were still the priority target and not the supporting tanks (and if there werent any why?) But what about using their ATGMs? "Where IFVs used [...] ATGMs [...] they were highly vulnerable to enemy ATGM fire, from either dismounted launchers or specialist antitank vehicles. In both cases the enemy were much harder to locate" p.123 This is again somewhat strange. An IFVs turret is certainly larger than an atgm launcher alone but for the ATGM vehicle that is only the case if it can go hulldown in which case an IFVs turret still wouldnt be much bigger and far more importantly the main way an ATGM will get located is dust and smoke kicked up from the weapons launch which will be the same in either case. These contradictions between observed results and expected results indicate to me that: 1. There is a spotting mechanic in the ruleset used and IFVs are at a higher disadvantedge as a result 2. Improper defensive doctrine at least for western vehicles who should have several fighting positions and frequently switch. Possibly combined with the ruleset not giving the bonus for a defensive position when employing such a strategy 3. Strange targeting priorities or improper support. A defending unit should prioritize supporting tanks when employing anti tank weapons as they are the biggest threat to the individual unit. In wargaming its easy to always target the unit that will result in the greatest chance of overall success but for the actual troops individual survival is key. A tank will given the choice between an IFV or a tank first shoot the tank because that is the bigger threat. If Tanks simply werent involved the quewstion becomes why not? IFVs are combined arms weapons and suffer when left alone just like any other weapon.

If we strip away WW2 credit id say this is what you end up with making the difference (if there actually is any). Just because the doctrine is the same in theory doesnt mean its the same in practice. Because if you give 3 people the same doctrine to solve a problem you end up with 4 different ways to fight. So if you wanted to find an apreciable difference youd have to look at how they each ended up working in exercises. Another difference could come from different training standards for the units.

You could smoke the hedge and then move up to it. You can easily place 2 squads on that hedge and they should easily overwhelm anything inside the buildings once the smoke clears.

For scenarios pints practically dont matter only in qb. So arguing with scenarios isnt relevant to the discussion.

Yes and the point were making is that whatever way theyre currently doing it leads to the stug being too expensive. That isnt exclusive to the sherman. Every tank works best when given spotting information be it from the platoon or supporting units and afvs always work best when massed. If i have to be better than the oponent to have equal chances my kit is worse and should therefore cost less. I havent been able to observe an accuracy difference between pz4 and stug.

None of this is stug specific but simple afv tactics. So basing pricing on the german side simply always outplaying the oponents is strange. So There youre admitting to a stugs disadvvantedge over other (turreted) afvs. Until it got the long 75mm. Yes afvs combined with inf works better nothing in favour of the stug specifically. Do you have anything to back that up? Anything that gets a slight modification to fit inside a tank gets the designatiok kwk even if the actual gun barrel and the rounds fired are identical. How is any of that relevant to the discussion? This petition comes from members of a forum playing hvh with capable commanders on both sides. So basic tricks are usually used by everyone. What has come out of it is that noone ever picks stugs if they want to win. They are far more expensive than their combat performance warrants.

In german army service which is currently the only ore relevant to cm there is only one bolt weight and spring with a cyclic rate of fire of 1150+-50rpm. Note that only applied when the gunner has a break to change the barrel. The barrel can absorb quite a few more rounds through it but that is starting to degrate its lifetime. Also after 1000 rounds youre supposed to swap bolt but that is never actually adhered to. Its usually simply switch bolt at the end of the day or when stoppages occur that could be atributed to the bolt. How long a burst you fire depends entirely on the situation. If youre trying to keep the oponents heads down youll fire multiple 3-5 round bursts shifting aim point between each. If you have a squad in the open multiple 20-30 round bursts are called for. And for final protective fires cyclic until the gunner until the gunner runs out of ammo or has to readjust aim.

That is simply wrong. Mg3 has 1200RPM.

su 76 is better compared to the wespe.

So you dont want to accept a simple duel between them which is reasonable. But you also dont want to accept looking at the vehicles individual stats that they derive their cost from to compare them Can you please lay out how you would want a comparison because to me it looks like you just dont want to compare because the conclusion is too obvious. Ive yet to see you put forward a coherent argument why the price should be at the point where it is. The player experience im referring to coms from players consistently playing HvH QBs and Turnaments. I have yet to hear anyone consider the Stug to be deserving of the price it has no matter how you try to compare.

From this picture guess which costs 190 and which 299.

When their formula spits out prices that are at odds with all player experience then it might be worth finding out what is causing that discrepancy. Sure Only in pure penetration. HE is at best equal, it has far less ammo and is limited by not having a turret. Until the sherman goes hulldown and then the sherman is smaller. Sure but even then the only time the stug comes out on top is if you compare short, long range tank duels. Its not exactly loaded when all you could come up with to countere have been the points you mentioned above. Those even if taken at face value dont make the stug 50% more valuable.

But quick battles are supposed to give a roughly fair fight.

Id argue that that in itself is quite a significant failing though probably not easy to fix( if its even possible).

A weapons ability to supress is directly corelated to its ability to inflict casualties. basically a function of how many rounds per unit of time youre able to get on target with the target being small for a casualty and somewhat larger for supression. Or differently put: how much a weapon supresses depends on how much the supressed thinks hes going to die when sticking up his head. In regards to mg42s accuracy id say its quite underestimated. To give a point of reference with an mg3 firing single rounds im getting a group size about 2-3 times that of a g36. For bursts up to 3 rounds the group size again doubles for the mg3. And since its something that will come up i personally found the slow rate of the mg5 to be far less pleasant to shoot and couldnt get better groups with it even tough these were new weapons compared to 40year old mg3s which saw heavy usage. Note that this obviously reflects my own skills with those weapons and others might differ but the general trend for accuracy holds true.

Once you notice it it becomes very obvious and in the modern titles id say it matter more. Just ran a test with a german tank btl and information about a hostile tank was at the btls hq before it was at the platoonmates tank which is simply impossible irl given how the radios are set up. It still got there in a minute but it should have only taken a few seconds.

It doesnt model properly who sits on what radio. The information simply flows up the command chain and back down. It doesnt model things like an entire platoon being on the same net so as soon as information gets transmitted over the platoon net it should reach everyone but ingame it only reaches the platoon leader. So while low level recon assets do help quite a bit of information sharing is simply not correct.

Agreed: But then you realize all militaries have different doctrine on how exactly to deal with this which also changes with time and CM doesnt(as far as i can tell) model any of that. Its just a generic system.

I think youre misjudging the risks and chances. No modder in their right mind is going to redo work you already did. More likely them masing their mods on games with all modules and packs forcing anyone wanting to use them to actually buy all of them. They are also far more likely to cover timeframes and areas youre simply not going to be able to make games on due to time/cost constrains. So anyone with a special interest in those would buy a CM game without being interested in the game itself. Id personally get it if it just allows any combination of units and maps from any previously purchased game just so i can play SF2 units on good maps. But i might be an exception there.

The backup sight from Leo2 is comparable to the main sight of T72. Seems reasonable to me. It is a backup sight so no point massively overbuilding it. Plot the results on a graph and youll see a pattern. So far with with 60 tests under 3 different conditions i can certainle see a trend emerging. It isnt broken. For the most part it works great. Run 4 tanks without command links and see if they have worse results. The time between no contact to any contact at all should be exactly the same between 4 tanks in and out of C2. Only if there is a noticable differece is there a chance platoons working together is modeled.

Id say thats just a fallacy that has been proven invalid quite often. Just because there is free stuff doesnt mean it competes with you. They still need to buy your games to play the mods and having more content makes it far more attractive to actually purchase the game at all. And while some might not buy as many games and modules that is offset by others buying it at all. I have personally bought several games specifically because of mods and know several others who did the same. Ive also bought CM basegames and expansions to take part in campaigns and turnaments so extra content does certainly generate sales. But obviously its not my risk so easy to say you should allow it.

delete pls

Not bad spotting doesnt push the soviet player to play soviet doctrine. Lanchesters square law does that plenty. Look at any tank attack and youll see that they all look practically the same. Currently the Americans do Soviet style attacks better than the soviets because they actually see their targets. It may very well be that soviets tanks were worse at spotting but im not convinced that was inherent to their vehicles rather than the training level. You could also blame it on doctrine and have a modifier for it for each nationality but that would be difficult to find out, model and leads to strange results like M1A1 being more comparable to a loe1 than a leo2 https://mcoepublic.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/library/ebooks/Canadian Army Trophy Book_2018.pdf see page 240

With a controlled test environment you can remove any influence apart from spotting ability. Youre getting low confidence with the results from the few tests and the variance means the average spotting time isnt immediately relevant ingame but as a comparison it certainly works. That is easy to do: make a scenario to test it and simply run the scenario as often as you want to get as much data as you want.