Success with the Tiger?

[Erwin]

This reminds me a bit about the immobilization issue we had with the original version. It seemed like tanks immobilized too much and it certainly hurt the fun aspect of playing when 20% of one's tanks would be immobilized in a scenario, and it was sometime disastrous in a campaign when they were not repaired.

Am finding the same problem with gun damage. It's not only a question of whether the number of gun damage incidents is realistic or not, but the devastating effect it has when you may only have one or two Tigers or KT's and they get gun damaged so easily - turning them into mobile MG bunkers for the rest of the campaign - which may make the campaign unwinnable.

[Vanir Ausf B]

How much gun damage is realistic? I don't know.

It's not only a question of whether the number of gun damage incidents is realistic or not, but the devastating effect it has when you may only have one or two Tigers or KT's and they get gun damaged so easily - turning them into mobile MG bunkers for the rest of the campaign - which may make the campaign unwinnable.

If the success or failure of a whole campaign rests on one or two units then that sounds like a design problem.

[sburke]

How much gun damage is realistic? I don't know.

If the success or failure of a whole campaign rests on one or two units then that sounds like a design problem.

The downside of the uber kitty. All your eggs in one basket with a barn size bullseye painted on it.

I have found I really love the StuG when I am defending in hedgerow country.

[Amizaur]

My testing under 1.00 showed that about 12% -- 1/8.3 -- of hits on the Panther turret knocked out the gun.

I wonder if it works the same now in 1.1, as in 1.0. Currently the ratio of gun-damaging turret hits is VERY dependant on geometry - how the barrel of target-tank is situated (rotated to the side, or elevated up, like for KTs in "default" configuration) and where is the aim-point and center of the hit-patter located in regard to the gun. Hull down position sometimes means 100x higher probability for gun damage.

I run again the initial test of KT gun damage. I put them on hull-down at 300m, rotated them precisely in a way that their guns would point at Shermans - the guns were a little elevated, unfortunately, but there was nothing I could do about it. If KT actually aimed at Shermans, the end of the gun would be lower, more in path of the incoming Sherman shells.

I positioned the Shermans in groups one behind the other, so they were firing in line (one straight trough another, grr).

Now the results - for about 150 shots made by Shermans during one turn, 95 hit KTs. There were 11 hull hits, and 84 turret hits. From turret hits, 32 landed on weapon mount (no damage), and 24 hit the weapon. One weapon hit didn't damage the gun. The rest 28 hit various parts of turret armor.

Now from 84 turret hits, there were 24 weapon hits. Resulting in probably 23 gun damages.

That is 28.5% chance for weapon damage during turret hit for a hull down KT at 300m. Percentage would be higher, if the KTs lowered their guns while aiming.

This shows how to different test setups can give diametrally different results. The difference was basically the hull-down position. The chance for gun damage raised from about 1:700 (0.2%) to almost 30% !!!

And what happened to my KT during the scenario play I described, now I understand it was NOT a bad luck. My KT was about 200m from a Sherman, it aimed at the Sherman (was reloading), and there was a hedge just ahead of my KT - which maked it a more hull-down like target, probably the Sherman didn't aim the center of mass but higher, center of visible part of my KT. It was much closer to test situation described above, so the chance for gun damage was MUCH closer to 30% than to 0.2%. So no wonder, that it happened. And will happen to me again. And again.

The accidental/anegdotical occurence turned out to be NOT that accidental, after carefully recreating the very situation that happened and all (well, mostof ) the factors.

Quite often "there IS something" not right, that causes some of this "anegdotical" anomalies, but unfortunately it's not obvious and it has to be be tracked and hunted down.

Which is quite hard task for ordinary players, or even betatesters, without help of some debugging/testing tools... without knowing what is hapening under the hood, but just by observing the outcomes of the game... I hope the official betatesters have some such tools.

Make sure the target tanks have fanatic crews.

I made sure . All 10 of them obeyed the fire arc because none of them targeted the Shermans, but only 7 of 10 rotated their turrets to the center of the arc.

Also, try to use Allied tanks without the forward facing .50 to avoid all the extra hit text

Thanks, the .50s were very annoying

Keep in mind that in WEGO mode the location of the hit explosion animation is not very accurate.

They are not very accurate at all, in the first place . I hate CMx2 "fancy" shell/tracer/hit graphics . I heard about the inaccuracy of the replay, but for me it seemed ok - the displayed trajectory of the shell and the place that was hit was - as far as I could locate it and tell - always consistent with the displayed text.

[dieseltaylor]

Good stuff Amizaur.

Whether by game design or accident it is very hard to get consistent testing. I have restarted a battle three times to see the variability in spotting from the identical tank and positions. Curiously the crew were re-named each trial but the most bizarre points were:

A. Sherman hit on front hull upper three times in successsion and the commander stayed unbuttoned whilst they ricochetted past him. Regardless of this he failed to see the enemy tank for a full 90 seconds under fire. He also did not seek to move the tank.

B. One pair of tanks did not see each other for two trials so that was 4 minutes of spotting. The third reloaded battle the Sherman saw the enemy after a few seconds. I am wondering if this is because of how the game places them in the 8*8 each loading of the battle.

C. Not relevant particularly to what I was trying to find out: In one trial 50% of the MkIVs [3] died within two minutes at 1800metres. The 75mm was a good gun but I believe its ability to accurately fire at range was compromised by poor sights. The two minute of action on the other two occasions lead to a dead Sherman.

The reason for playing around like this was that in club tournaments are fun and having the same battle fought by many players means everyone can relate to it in the AARs. I was wondering if spotting changing by significant amounts from ostensibly the same tank and same crew and same position could adversely affect the gaming experience.

[ShiftZ]

A tribute to the Tiger.