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M4A1 Sherman (late) v Panzer IV H (late) at 1000m test.


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While waiting for the CW module i thought i'd test the M4A1 Sherman versus PzIV H in a mexican stand off situation.

The weather was clear, cool, 12:00pm no wind on a map 1500 x 250m with the tanks on a road lined with high bocage running North /South facing each other 1000m apart with no cover arcs, Regular crews with Normal morale, individual vehicles in CC with an FO unit.

The number underlined represents the tank that came out of the duel at an advantage, this means that the loser at the very least reversed with smoke after suffering damage and a morale drop, the crew bailed out or the tank was completely destroyed.

In the case of the Sherman losing it mainly reversed with vehicle damage and a crew morale drop resulting in a bailing crew, complete destruction was rare.

In the case of the Panzer IV losing it usually meant destruction of the tank.

The Panzer was more accurate hitting on average with it's second shot, the Sherman generally needed three shots to hit.

Out of the 52 tests the PzIV won 29 the Sherman 23, the Pz IV spotted the Sherman first 29 times the Sherman 23 times so whoever spots first wins the duel.

In conclusion, based on this small sample, the PzIV has a slight advantage with spotting and accuracy but that is negated some what by the Sherman's better armor protection.

I will perform the same test at 750m, 500m and 250m with the same tanks and again with M4A3 Sherman v PzIV G

(all numbers represent mins / secs)

ShermanM4A1vPanzerIVH.jpg

ShermanM4A1vPanzerIVH2-1.jpg

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IIRC the break even point is around 800m, give or take a hundred. Inside 500m the Sherman will win most of the time.

Sounds about right, and given that most tank to tank LOS ranges are less than 800 metres in most CM games the Sherman is the dominant weapon if no Panthers, Tigers or Stugs are present, i would be looking at a 2:1 ratio to take them on or make sure the PZ IV is the first to spot from a position of rest.

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What I find disturbing is the variation in spotting/non-spotting time. It is disturbing on two counts:

A if I design a scenario with a few tanks each side player skill may be negated by big variation in spotting

B they are on the same road with not much else to look at

c in one case athe Sherman must be firing for over a minute without the German tank noticing . WHAT the **??!! hell was going on.

My impression is that the spotting model is possibly not realistic and certaainly not helpful in play.

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Some forty German tanks were now clearly visible, and they were indeed busily engaged in destroying these guns. There would be nothing to stop them driving down to Tobruk harbour, only 3 miles away. We swung right into battle line.

I handed Milligan his cigarette, and told him to start shooting. There was no need for me to indicate the target to him. ‘Loaded,’ yelled Adams, and away went another solid shot, tearing at the thick enemy armour. The fumes of burning cordite made us cough, and our eyes water, and soon the turret was so thick with smoke that I could only just make out the figure of Adams as he loaded shell after shell into the breach. We were firing faster than ever before, and so were my other four cruiser tanks.

It must have been a minute before the Germans spotted us, and by then their tanks had received many hits from our shells. They appeared to panic, because they started to turn in all directions, many of them turned about and started moving back the way they had come.

I don't see anything inherently unrealistic about highly variable spotting times, particularly at long ranges.

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What I find disturbing is the variation in spotting/non-spotting time

Take the Sherman for example, when it does not spot the PzIV at all is when it has been destroyed, the crew have bailed or it has reversed under smoke cover, but when it does spot the PzIV it does so 37 out of 52 times, the total time it takes to spot the PzIV is 1115 seconds, so divide that by 37 and you have an average spotting time of 30 seconds, also there are only three times out of 37 it takes the tank longer than 60 seconds to spot the enemy tank, i don't see a problem with that with the range being 1000 metres.

The PzIV spots the Sherman 43 out of 52 times with an average spotting time of 28 seconds (1244 divided by 43).

The CM setting was Elite and the leadership level was 0.

The tank crews were both regular, but you can imagine the potential of the PzIV with a veteran crew which would increase the slight advantage over the Sherman as regards spotting.

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Some forty German tanks were now clearly visible, and they were indeed busily engaged in destroying these guns. There would be nothing to stop them driving down to Tobruk harbour, only 3 miles away. We swung right into battle line.

Perhaps you should have considered your quotation VAB. This shows heavily engaged tanks being bounced compared to two tanks facing each other down a road. Cannot get much simpler than that.

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Thank you for confirming something for me Noob. The average is bearable give or take a few seconds.

Looking at the figures 16 of the sightings for the Sherman are under 20 seconds and 6 over 40 seconds. I suspect that would be higher apart from the Shermans are dead more after 40 seconds.. SO with 20 not spotting and 16 earlier than 20 seconds, and 6 after 40 seconds that means a minority are near the average.

SO a tournament where people play the same scenario is going to be pretty variable if there are not many tanks anywya. And of course Lady Luck knows no sides and is just as likely to give the same side the quick spot as not.

*However we appear to have one missing line of figures for the Sherman and also I have 20 occureences where the Sherman is not shown as sighting the MkIV which does not accord with your last post

Can you send me your spreadsheet? You have my e-mail address : )

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*However we appear to have one missing line of figures for the Sherman and also I have 20 occureences where the Sherman is not shown as sighting the MkIV which does not accord with your last post

Can you send me your spreadsheet? You have my e-mail address : )

There are only 16 instances where the Sherman does not spot the PzIV at all (i missed one in my last calculation), and i didn't use a spreadsheet, i used a google webpage, thats why the columns aren't very straight, what you see is all i have.

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Perhaps you should have considered your quotation VAB. This shows heavily engaged tanks being bounced compared to two tanks facing each other down a road. Cannot get much simpler than that.

Perhaps you should consider that noob's test is in an artificial environment not representative of reality. In WW2 tanks did not typically face off against each other on perfectly flat featureless terrain with no other units existing other than themselves, nor do they do so in non-test scenarios, particularly in NW Europe. In fact, it's interesting to note that in my quotation the tanks were in a desert, where spotting would be much easier than in terrain you expect to see in a realistic CMBN scenario.

If you are looking for a wargame with a highly deterministic modeling of human actions and reaction then CM is probably not for you. Try Chess.

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Perhaps you should consider that noob's test is in an artificial environment not representative of reality. In WW2 tanks did not typically face off against each other on perfectly flat featureless terrain with no other units existing other than themselves, nor do they do so in non-test scenarios, particularly in NW Europe. In fact, it's interesting to note that in my quotation the tanks were in a desert, where spotting would be much easier than in terrain you expect to see in a realistic CMBN scenario.

If you are looking for a wargame with a highly deterministic modeling of human actions and reaction then CM is probably not for you. Try Chess.

You mean its a set-up. Blimey that passed me by.

Of course I know what tank battles were like in WW2 both in Northern Europe , Russia, and North Africa. I have had the pleasure of being in Tunisia and most countries of Europe so have some familiarity with terrain, vegetation, and light.

I have recorded hundreds of games of CMx1 against humans over the last 11 years. However one of the great pleasures in playing scenarios, or tournaments where you can compare results and feel that they should play reasonably the same

When spotting 1000 metres down a road bound by bocage can take anything between 1 second and over 2 minutes most people might feel that the difference makes games a huge lottery.

I am happy to admit that the CMx1 series did have lottery moments in terms of hits but generally speaking the overall effect made the games worth playing. I am afraid CMBN is majorly flawed in respect of the armour as evidenced in V1.0 where the sighting and targetting and firing on the move appeared to be from CMSF. I can only assume in correcting that slightly for V1.01 things have gone out of whack.

However if BF feel this randomness is highly realistic then we may aswell forget about scenarios and tournaments as meaningful comparison of results will not happen.

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http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA162208

Pages 78 on are the simplest to understand. It may be possible to extract mean times to spot but you probably need a statistics degree, The player who gave me the link says he recalls 20 seconds as being a par time from other sources. I assume he meant from trials where it is reasonable daylight etc. This is the quote:

"i think it's very unrealistic. there's nothing in the scenario that prevents the tanks from spotting each other on second 1. some spotting lagging till around second 10 could be tolerable, but not being able to spot in the whole minute is ridiculous.

there are numerous field trials about this very subject and none of them show anything like this. buttoned tanks (without using thermals or similar), do routinely spot enemy tanks in 20 seconds in complex real world terrain and at considerable ranges.

undead reindeer cavalry

Vab - A huge Lottery as "A good description of real combat, which CM's spotting model is presumably based on rather than gunnery range testing conditions. I don't see the problem."

I can well appreciate that you don't see a problem judging by your replies. : )

In combat there are reasons why it is a huge lottery however staring down a single road with nothing but bocage either side would seem a simple test of whether BF's system for spotting is mainly accurate. You have a driver, a gunner and a TC who one suspects are all looking that way. The gunner and the driver having little choice.

So we have spotting at 1,2,3 seconds etc and the slowest 2.17 when it has been fired on by the enemy tank for 80+ seconds without seeing it - down a road, at 1000 metres, at midday, in the summer.

However if you can provide details of any study to back up this huge difference in spotting times I would be very pleased to see it.

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I'm going to guess that CM does not consider how much other stuff there is to look at other than the enemy when doing spotting calculations. I would be surprised if any wargame ever made did. Rather, it probably assumes typical combat conditions. If you run a test in atypical conditions then you will likely get results that are unrealistic for those conditions.

The minute+ spotting times you are making a big deal out of are statistical outliers at the extreme end of the bell curve, NOT typical results. In fact, according to noob the average spotting time for the Sherman is 28 seconds, which is pretty close to the 20 seconds you quote above. The Pz IV's times would be even closer.

As to any notion that minute+ spotting times are impossible in real world combat situations, I have already proven that to be untrue.

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A slight rectification of the figures, the average spotting time for the Sherman to spot anything is 1104 divided by 36 = 30.66 seconds.

For the PzIV it's 1388 divided by 43 = 32.27 seconds.

The Pz IV wins the duel 29 times and the Sherman 23 times.

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A slight rectification of the figures, the average spotting time for the Sherman to spot anything is 1104 divided by 36 = 30.66 seconds.

For the PzIV it's 1388 divided by 43 = 32.27 seconds.

Now if I were going to look for something wrong this is where I would concentrate. There is no reason why the Sherman should be spotting faster. It should in fact be the other way around. The Pz IV's superior optics should give it a significant spotting advantage at that range.

There was always a lot of talk about the effectiveness of the German tank guns against us. It is true that they had to stop to fire, but they started firing from 1,200 to 1,500 yards (1,096 to 1,371 meters). Their first shot was always a hit. We, on the other hand, had to get within 500 to 600 yards (457 to 548 meters) to be within effective firing distance, and even our best gunners needed at least two shots before they could score a hit.

Our CO (commanding officer), Captain Jimmy Leach, sent the platoon sergeant down to my tank during one of the lulls between German artillery barrages, and he hollered up, 'Hey Sator, you speak German?' 'Yeah, why?' I answered. 'The radio in that abandoned German tank (Pz.Kpfw.IV) back there is alive. Captain wants you to listen and see what they are talking about'. So, I went with him. Sure enough, when we got there, you could hear the radio squawking. I climbed in and put the gunner's earphones on. It was difficult to hear, and because the guy was talking in a strange dialect, I could understand only a few words here and there. Then I saw the gun-sight and I figured I might as well look through it while I was there, and as soon as I did, almost immediately, the realization came to me why the German tank gunners were so accurate. 'Shyte, I wanna go home' is the only thing I could think of at the moment. Their sights were so far superior to ours that we didn't stand a chance."

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Now if I were going to look for something wrong this is where I would concentrate.

I am also concerned about this, so i will be conducting more tests.

When i conduct the new tests i will also get accurate data about the amount of shots needed to hit the enemy tank irrespective of damage.

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Sherman M70 F telescopic sight:

* 1.8 magnification

* 12° FOV

Pz IV TZF 5f telescopic sight:

* 2.5 magnification

* 25° FOV

I won't even get into the Argon coating the Germans did on their lenses to make them less blurry at the same magnification compared to allied lenses.

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