No WAY! One shot, two kills!

[ww2steel]

Okay, so the 'puter gened enemies are a Canadian light tank troop, etc. I have three Tigers, etc. going around the right flank. The AI counterattacks and a flurry of wee panzers sprint down a road. POW. I instantly pause with the escape button out of confusion. Only one tank fired (I checked each one) and TWO Stuarts (a III and a V) were out of action. I watched both drive into view, BAM, initial hits on the side of the hull as pictured, one was burning, both out of action. Not only realistic... but AWESOME. (I play as US 99% of the time so also... SCARY.) A few minutes later another Tiger lit up another Stuart and sure enough, 50 yd behind it in the grass there was a puff of smoke. Two thumbs up Battlefront! The game has its problems, and issues I have griped about repeatedly, but right now I am thoroughly impressed!

[BFCElvis]

Okay, so the 'puter gened enemies are a Canadian light tank troop, etc. I have three Tigers, etc. going around the right flank. The AI counterattacks and a flurry of wee panzers sprint down a road. POW. I instantly pause with the escape button out of confusion. Only one tank fired (I checked each one) and TWO Stuarts (a III and a V) were out of action. I watched both drive into view, BAM, initial hits on the side of the hull as pictured, one was burning, both out of action. Not only realistic... but AWESOME. (I play as US 99% of the time so also... SCARY.) A few minutes later another Tiger lit up another Stuart and sure enough, 50 yd behind it in the grass there was a puff of smoke. Two thumbs up Battlefront! The game has its problems, and issues I have griped about repeatedly, but right now I am thoroughly impressed!

I once had a round go through a halftrack, k.ocking it out, and killing 2 men in the squad behind it.

[ExurbanKevin]

One shot, two kills are fairly common with soft-skinned vehicles and ATG's: There's a thread around here somewheres where somebody lined up a bunch of AFV's in a row and then shot 'em with a big gun. Hilarity (and multiple explosions) ensued.

I had one where the two halftracks were at least a couple o' dozen yards apart.

The ATG is in the upper right hand corner. We'll leave the discussion on exterior ballistics for another day, but dang, it sure came in handy in stopping that attack.

[argie]

Amateurs

[Childress]

The first thing that came to mind when I linked to your screen shots was: get a new graphics card, man!

[phil stanbridge]

hehe I had three Shermans knocked out by a single AP round from a Panther. That was devastating as the Americans.

[ww2steel]

@ Childres:

I cropped them and saved them as .gifs to save bandwidth. Is there something else I am missing?

[Childress]

I meant the SS in Argie's link. The grass was blurry and undefined. Very low rez. Also, the gridded terrain didn't extend out from the selected unit. It reminds me of the quality drop off going from my desktop to the laptop when a large map is loaded.

But it could indeed be the size of the file.

[dieseltaylor]

Childress. The game file for Argie was available so for the keen it was worth getting ..albeit V1.00. So my captures are the same incident but viewed differently.

[argie]

I meant the SS in Argie's link. The grass was blurry and undefined. Very low rez. Also, the gridded terrain didn't extend out from the selected unit. It reminds me of the quality drop off going from my desktop to the laptop when a large map is loaded.

But it could indeed be the size of the file.

I play on my old early 2008 Mac laptop.

I've never cared for graphics on all CM iterations.

[Peregrine]

My record is 3 too.

[GreenAsJade]

Is it realistic?

It's a lot of fun, that's for sure, but realistic? What's the evidence for that?

GaJ

[womble]

Is it realistic?

It's a lot of fun, that's for sure, but realistic? What's the evidence for that?

GaJ

Nope. It's not realistic, it's an artefact of an approach to dealing with overpenetration that really needs some attention.

[Amizaur]

It's realistic in some way. AP shells could easily came completely trough thin-armored vehicles like halftracks, armored cars or light tanks, and the shell could hit something on the other side.

Don't know of any evidence of multiple kills, but shells passing completly trough (especially side hits) are mentioned often, so one can suppose they COULD still damage something if they hit.

I can imagine easily an AP shell fired from a powerfull AT gun could came completly trough 3 Halftracks if it didn't hit the engine or transmission on the way.

Shells occasionaly came completly trough side armor of tanks, coming in one side and coming out another. Some could retain enough energy to still penetrate something on the other side. The factors that com into play is the HE burster, shell tumbling and car/tank engines and hard parts.

After first layer of >=20mm armor is penetrated, any APCBC-HE shell should detonate. If it does, it's rear part would be fragmented to pieces, but it's front half would remain intact and could continue on it's path, penetrate the other side and maybe something yet.

When a projectile, even a solid shot, penetrates the armor, especially sloped armor, it usually losts it's stability and becomes to tumble. It may hit the other side of the tank with it's side and that would severally reduce it's remaining penetration potential. It would probably still penetrate a very thin armor if it has enough energy. Thinner and more vertical the penetrated armor is, less chance for the shell to become tubling rapidly. While penetrating a halftruck it may keep it's stability for several meters, but probably it would still become tumbling on it's way after leaving the first penetrated vehicle. But two Stuarts positioned side by side 10 meters away - I think it would be possible in RL to shot one trough and penetrate the other one . Maybe even two Shermans with 88L71 gun. Of course the second penetration would be only by half of the shell and maybe flying backwards, but still it could penetrate, just do less damage.

Third factor is that the CMBN seem to simulate tanks as pure armor boxes, empty inside, with no massive internal parts. A shell can penetrate them trough at any point and any angle, even frontally to the rear, trough the engine. One can kill (in CMBN, and sometimes probably also in RL) with 88L71 two Stuarts and accidentally even two Shermans shooting them frontally if they are one behind the other on the road. Maybe (no idea, just maybe) it's possible for 88L71 to accidentally shot a Stuart completly trough, even trough the engine blok, but the shell would rather lost most of it's energy.

[womble]

It's realistic in some way. AP shells could easily came completely trough thin-armored vehicles like halftracks, armored cars or light tanks, and the shell could hit something on the other side.

Don't know of any evidence of multiple kills, but shells passing completly trough (especially side hits) are mentioned often, so one can suppose they COULD still damage something if they hit.

I'd like some evidence. Evidence backs up everything else in the game, so why is this excluded from that test? I'm sure an overpenetrating shell could "damage" something. Something like a truck or even an AFV. But we aren't seeing that. We're seeing glacis plate hits on medium tanks penetrate the tank behind them. I've coincidentally just seen my first example of this kind of behaviour in my current scenario: a 75mm/L70 hit on the white star on the front of a Stuart light tank penetrated the glacis of the following M5 light tank. To do this it had to go through the drive train of the lead tank without tumbling and exit the stricken vehicle without any deviation and with enough energy remaining to achieve its frontal penetration. It wasn't a kill on the second vehicle, but still.

I can imagine easily an AP shell fired from a powerfull AT gun could came completly trough 3 Halftracks if it didn't hit the engine or transmission on the way.

Yes, that's entirely reasonable. Coding the game to allow that sort of behaviour at the cost of allowing daftness like Stuart-Stuart-Sherman kills is a mistake, though.

Third factor is that the CMBN seem to simulate tanks as pure armor boxes, empty inside, with no massive internal parts.

It's worse than that. The effect of the round on its initial target is abstracted and as soon as the targetted armour's effects are calculated, if the vehicle is destroyed, it ceases to be considered by future calculations. The armour on the exit face doesn't appear to affect the shell at all.

A shell can penetrate them trough at any point and any angle, even frontally to the rear, trough the engine. One can kill (in CMBN, and sometimes probably also in RL) with 88L71 two Stuarts and accidentally even two Shermans shooting them frontally if they are one behind the other on the road. Maybe (no idea, just maybe) it's possible for 88L71 to accidentally shot a Stuart completly trough, even trough the engine blok, but the shell would rather lost most of it's energy.

Quite. Without any evidence of through-and-through multikills, I think BFC need to have a look at this behaviour for future iterations of the engine.

[MG TOW]

Distinctly recall reading about one of Rommels paks vs British M13/40 tank. Broadside through the driver, and out the other side. The tank was still operational, but with an entrance and exit hole. Driver was mush. If there was a tank next to the first one it would have been hit as well. But there wasn't. Point is its possible at hollow crew compartment locations, where ammo is not stacked. I would think that rare or just lucky.

[slysniper]

Nope. It's not realistic, it's an artefact of an approach to dealing with overpenetration that really needs some attention.

No, maybe not realistic.

But I am glad it is there, it has stopped that gamey play that was going on in cmX1 where guys would line up 4 or 5 tanks and have them come around a corner at the same time. (Because they could fire through each other).

Now you better learn to form your units in correct patterns so that they are not in the same line of fire from enemy locations. In the real world you might get hit from a shot meant for another guy, here, you both just might get shot with the same round. It sure makes you not want to do bad unit placement again, that is for sure.

Infantry is the same way, problem is, we have no way of stoping them from running in columns at times. Had one recently where the same bullit might have killed 6 men.

[womble]

...it has stopped that gamey play that was going on in cmX1 where guys would line up 4 or 5 tanks and have them come around a corner at the same time. (Because they could fire through each other).

I would have thought the impossibility of having vehicles maneuver that close to one another ("After you! No! After you, I insist") would have made that rare to impossible in CMx2.

[Childress]

It seems the vehicular cluster-**** phenomenon, though not entirely eliminated, has much abated since the days of CM1.

[Amizaur]

I agree something should be done to further reduce the penetration potential of shells after first penetration.

The penetration "afterwards" should not be just function of all the remaining shell energy, but should be also randomised (like, say, from 90% to 30%) of the remaining energy, it would be most simple and efficient (we can't see what is happening with the projectile so an abstraction here is ok and should give good results) way to take account for things like the loss of mass (a detonating burster would take away probably at least 1/3rd of the AP part of shell mass), shell tumbling (a shell hitting broadside would have severly reduced penetration, only able to penetrate thin armor) and hitting various internal parts.

Better yet would be to add a space inside tank models that would emulate an angine block and the transmission block.

That should prevent tank-tank multiple kills, they would still happen but would be very rare, while halftruck-halftruck would be still possible - just not 7 pieces at once (I managed to do this with a 88L71 pak).

There would be more "came trough and hit the other tank" instead of "came trough and penetrated the other tank".

Currenly this "trough" performance is much too consistent.

I didn't know a destroyed tank is "disappearing" from the game before the shell is able to leave it... An obvious oversight.

I feel very much of internal CMBN algorithms are very basic, and that there is a BIG room for improvements - of tank behaviour (too fast reaction, spotting, target aquision, too little randomness in reaction times, strange barrel movements, tank target selection alghoritms (big thumb down), tank damage, shell post-penetration behaviour ect.

Didn't even mention infantry (which is a bone of this game) alghoritms, they seem (for me, not focusing on them) - with some exeptions like two-man teams - not that bad, but still fine tuning them is probably 10x as much work, as fixing all the tank behaviour...

I hope all this work is meant to be done at some point... In this game or next one (but would be nice to have all the alghoritm improvements also in CMBN as a path, after all I might be wanting to play this game with my friends for years, I would like it to be improved over years, and not just replaced).