slysniper Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Recently there has been comments about how some of us think one or the other has an unfair advantage in the game. I personnally did not feel this way and just felt the fortunes of war was showing itself when I had unusual results. So tonight I just ran a few battles to see what type of results I would get in this set up. A company of M4 & M4a1 Shermans against a reduced company of Pz IV G & H tanks, 17 on each side. First distance was 1400 meters apart Reg. crews buttoned up. 2 minutes of battle. results reflect lost tanks or unmanned tank 1st test 1 PzIV/ 13 Sherman's 2nd test 5 PzIV/ 7 Sherman's It is easy to see in the battle the germans get the first shots off which leads to getting the advantage. the other thing to note: within 2 minutes, the Shermans will normally be well shrouded in smoke This was not a test, just something to see if it was going to act as I predicted. So I was seing a advantage for the german tank at this distance. Both in sighting and rounds penetrating So I now adjusted the battle to a range of half the distance to 700 meters and ran it twice again. Figuring this might even up the results. 1st test 14 PzIV/ 7 Sherman's 1st test 5 PzIV/ 15 Sherman's It was easy again to see that the two advantages have almost been removed. The German tanks still did get off the first shots both battles but the shermans were replying in just a few seconds, whereas in the long range battle there is a distinct difference. Second, now when hits were adcheived, full penetration was most likely whereas I saw plenty of partial penetrations from the Shermans at long range. So even though the battles can have one sided results still. I am pretty confident that given enough runs, they would be pretty even, maybe giving a slight advantage to the Germans still. But nothing was happening to give me the impression that the sherman has any unexpected advantages that would be unrealistic to historical accounts. Now to just find a battle where I can engage the Shermans at 1400 meters, I never hardly play a battle that gives me that. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 slysniper, They're not burning? I refer you to the estimable analysis performed over a decade ago by Bullethead. "You've discovered a little-known WW2 tank-grog thing here that BTS, in its search for the ultimate in realism, has modeled in CM. I've been waiting to see if anybody else noticed this. Most people assume that the M in US vehicle designations means "Model". Thus, the Medium Tank M4 Sherman would be the "Model #4" Medium tank. This is incorrect. The M actually stands for "Mortality" and the number represents the life expectancy of the vehicle in minutes. Thus, Shermans were rated officially at 4 minutes of survival in a combat situation, which is reflected accurately in CM by having them die on turn 4. After the Sherman had been in production for some time and combat experience had been gained, it was noticed in many cases, particularly for the earlier production runs of Shermans, that the official Mortality rating was a bit optimistic. Thus, the designation was changed to reflect the new data. This involved appending the letter A and another number to the M4 designation, the A standing for "Actually" and the new number being the revised Mortality rating. For example, the M4A2 had a combat-proven life expectancy of "Actually 2" minutes. Later on, the designation system got even more accurate by appending a number in parentheses and the letter W. Despite the widely held conviction that the parenthetical number was the caliber of the gun, what these symbols really meant was that the tank had a 75% or 76% chance of going WHOOSH in a big fireball when penetrated. However, some models of Sherman were so inflammable that calcualtions showed they had a 105% chance of brewing up, so they just left it at that and didn't bother with the W, because they were going to WHOOSH regardless. Towards the end of the war, some Shermans gained an E and another number in their designations. The E meant "Extra Cost" and the number was a designator for the manufacturer, to ensure that company got extra money for making the tank. CM accurately reflects this by making these types of Shermans cost more to buy in DYO. Thus, the M4A3E8(76)W designation meant a tank with an official Mortality of 4 minutes, Actually 3 minutes, cost Extra, and had a 76% chance of going WHOOSH." Regards, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darknight (DC) Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Now run your test using Shermans and Tigers at 1 km distance. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slysniper Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 Now run your test using Shermans and Tigers at 1 km distance. Not neccesary I did run a short quick one when the Brits came out with the king Tiger vs the Firefly just to see if I could kill the thing from the front, Which it did a little better than I expected. That shows up in another Thread here. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjkerner Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Which side were you playing? Does the player side get an advantage/disadvantage just because it's human vs AI? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akd Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Does the player side get an advantage/disadvantage just because it's human vs AI? No, they do not, unless the player is intervening to control behavior on one side. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George MC Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Now to just find a battle where I can engage the Shermans at 1400 meters, I never hardly play a battle that gives me that. Fire Brigade has lots of tank on tank action at 1800m + huge map on open terrain. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slysniper Posted October 13, 2012 Author Share Posted October 13, 2012 Which side were you playing? Does the player side get an advantage/disadvantage just because it's human vs AI? When I run any type of test scenario I always run the game in Hotseat mode and then I also switch which side I start with every battle, even though it should not matter. The other benefit that can happen when doing a test this way. i can step in and give orders to any unit that might start doing some stupid actions, like rotating and exposing its flank to the enemy. generally not a problem but once in a while the AI does some junk. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted October 13, 2012 Share Posted October 13, 2012 Another advantage of hot seating it is that you can do things like set cover arcs so when you're testing for effect on, say a King Tiger, the things you're testing the effect of survive for long enough to generate meaningful results. Or allow control of movement etc. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darknight (DC) Posted October 14, 2012 Share Posted October 14, 2012 Not neccesary I did run a short quick one when the Brits came out with the king Tiger vs the Firefly just to see if I could kill the thing from the front, Which it did a little better than I expected. That shows up in another Thread here. I didn't figure it was, because I'm pretty sure I know the answer. It was actually a private joke. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenAsJade Posted October 14, 2012 Share Posted October 14, 2012 Bravo John Kettler. Loved it 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted October 14, 2012 Share Posted October 14, 2012 GreenAsJade, Glad you enjoyed it! Sometimes, it's necessary to return to the classics. Regards, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sublime Posted October 14, 2012 Share Posted October 14, 2012 That definitely is becoming one of the most repeated quotes on this board. A brilliant piece of writing. The other thing we should be saving for posterity (no not the peng thread) is a lot of JasonC's and some others posts. I seem to specifically recall around 2003 JasonC wrote some brilliant page after page posts of the nature of combat on the Ost Front, T34s, etc. He definitely has a knack, even if it seems any time he directly addresses me it's in a vague put down sort of way.. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanonier Reichmann Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 Don't take it personally, he does it to everybody! Regards KR 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sublime Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 ah I know. I try not to. It's hard to dislike the guy, I mean if you look in websters under 'grog' theres a hyperlink to his posts Plus its the nature of the beast (historical discussion) If someone is wrong or flawed it's almost an obligation to point out how they're wrong and why. This stops silly myths or wrong info from being perpetuated. However that being said (and this is true of me sometimes..) sometimes people's delivery suck. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 GreenAsJade, In looking for info on the commonness of the Sherman 105mm, I found this in the Sherman Wiki. Very good OR I'd never seen before! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Sherman Research conducted by the British No. 2 Operational Research Section, after the Normandy campaign, concluded a Sherman would be set alight 82% of the time following an average of 1.89 penetrations of the tank’s armor; in comparison they also concluded the Panzer IV would catch fire 80% of the time following an average of 1.5 penetrations, the Panther would light 63% of the time following 3.24 penetrations, and the Tiger would catch fire 80% of the time following 3.25 penetrations.[64] John Buckley, using a case study of the 8th and 29th Armoured Brigades found that of the 166 Shermans knocked out in combat during the Normandy campaign, only 94 were burnt out; 56.6%. Buckley also notes that an American survey carried out concluded that 65% of tanks burnt out after being penetrated.[65] United States Army research proved that the major reason for this was the stowage of main gun ammunition in the sponsons above the tracks. A U.S. Army study in 1945 concluded that only 10–15 percent of wet-stowage Shermans burned when penetrated, compared to 60–80 percent of the older dry-stowage Shermans[66] At first a partial remedy to ammunition fires in the M4 was found by welding 1-inch-thick (25 mm) appliqué armor plates to the sponson sides over the ammunition stowage bins. Later models moved ammunition stowage to the hull floor, with additional water jackets surrounding the main gun ammunition stowage. The practice, known as "wet stowage", reduced the chance of fire after a hit by a factor of four.[citation needed] The Sherman gained grim nicknames like "Tommycooker" (by the Germans, who referred to British soldiers as "Tommies"; a tommy cooker was a World War I era trench stove). The British took to calling it the "Ronson", the cigarette lighter which had the slogan "Lights up the first time, every time!" Polish tankers referred to it as "The Burning Grave".[citation needed] Many think that the fires for which the Sherman is infamous were a result of its gasoline engine[citation needed]. Actually, most of the tanks of the time used gasoline engines. Fuel fires occasionally occurred, but such fires were far less common and less deadly than ammunition fires.[66] In many cases the fuel tank of the Sherman was found intact after a fire. Tankers describe "fierce, blinding jets of flame," which is inconsistent with gasoline-related fires but fits cordite flash.[65] Elsewhere, it also talks about the inability of the Sherman to pivot turn, and goes on to explain this limited its utility in city fighting against such tanks as the Panther, which could. The Sherman did have a faster traverse rate, though. Regards, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=515448&postcount=24 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjkerner Posted October 15, 2012 Share Posted October 15, 2012 However that being said (and this is true of me sometimes..) sometimes people's delivery suck. Bowie (Jason Patric) to Travis (Patrick Wilson): Sometimes...it's just the way you say things, Travis. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted October 16, 2012 Share Posted October 16, 2012 Its important to remember that JasonC is not always right and you need to exercise some critical faculties. The thread on the Brixia mortar is a slight case in point. JC In that whole mix, light mortars, like hand grenades or rifle grenades, were an afterthought residual. There is no evidence whatsoever from contemporary tactics or battle reports to suggest the calibers under 81mm had anything remotely like the effectiveness seen for them in CMx2. And even among that marginal class of weapons, the Brixia was an outlier for its ineffectiveness, weighing much more than a British 2 inch yet firing a much smaller bomb. And the Brits already found theirs so small that illumination and smoke were regarded as its most useful rounds. Whilst agreeing with Jason on the BF problem I was amused to see that in fact light mortars are in vogue now, and that production of 22 was actually 50-50 HE and smoke in WW2. Facts brought up by other contributors. There is no doubt that a vast amount is good and he is particularly strong on banging away that war is always a matter of material. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vossiewulf1212 Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 However that being said (and this is true of me sometimes..) sometimes people's delivery suck. Your delivery sucks, and it's pissing me off! Grognards exist in many fields, not just military history, and they're all pedantic as hell because the entire point of their existence is to get every nuanced detail of every fact exactly right. It's how, as you said, the knowledge is refined and disseminated. When I was watching that recent military channel series WWI in color (which was quite good, I thought the colorizing they did was appropriately not overdone), they had that classic film of Richthofen climbing into a Fokker triplane, and the plane was colorized red. I shouted at the screen YOU IDIOTS the only all red triplane he flew was 425/17, and this is CLEARLY one of the three Dr.I prototypes, as you can see on the side it has the F.1 designation of the prototypes while all the production versions were marked Dr.I! And then laughed at myself for being such a geek. While we're at it though, we should remember those three prototypes went to Richthofen, Von Tutschek, and Voss, and Voss died in his in the famous dogfight with McCudden and Rhys-Davids and the rest of No.56 squadron, and those prototypes didn't have the wingtip skids of production Dr.Is and had a different, curved tailplane profile... /we should start a Pedantics Anonymous group 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanonier Reichmann Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Fokking grog! Regards KR 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dieseltaylor Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 Grog huh! Its von Richtofen : ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_von_Richthofen just for those "grogs" who did not know : ) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Ritter_von_Tutschek 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Offshoot Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 ...the entire point of their existence is to get every nuanced detail of every fact exactly right. ...the three Dr.I prototypes, ... the F.1 designation of the prototypes...the production versions were marked Dr.I! Now I don't know which designation either has 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eltorrente Posted October 17, 2012 Share Posted October 17, 2012 ...and Voss died in his in the famous dogfight with McCudden and Rhys-Davids and the rest of No.56 squadron.. One of my favorite dogfights of all time. Voss was the MAN. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vossiewulf1212 Posted October 18, 2012 Share Posted October 18, 2012 Ok since I've taken us off topic might as well have fun with it... Here's something that hasn't been seen in about 95 years- an absolutely production accurate Fokker Dr.I triplane being flown to its limits. By a clearly insane Swedish airline pilot. At 0:45 he enters his first half barrel roll into a split S too slow, it departs at the top and enters an incipient inverted spin at oh... 200 FEET ABOVE THE GROUND. Totally awesome recovery required to not end up looking like Luke's aunt and uncle after the stormtroopers paid them a visit. I love the guy to death for doing this, but I have to think that death is not terribly far off. http://youtu.be/yMBZgmiYIiY Note how the Dr.I could do a 360 degree turn in a space not much bigger than a two car garage and could climb, as Richthofen said, "like a monkey". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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