Vehicle Encycloepdia

[agusto]

In another Battlefront game, Theatre of War, players could access an ingame ecyclopedia that would list all important vehicle specifications, like armor thickness and gun penetration at 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000m at a 90 degree anngle, maximum speed, ammo capacity, rate of fire and such. I d love such a feature in CMBN and afaik CMx1 games had a similar thing, where you could right-click on the vehicle and it would show all the important specs. Especially a gun penetration chart where you could look up if you re already within effective range would be very useful, i find, also because that data is quite hard to find if you try to look it up yourself on the internet. Of course we already have what is in the manual and the armor panel in the UI, but thats still very inaccurate info.

[womble]

In another Battlefront game, Theatre of War, players could access an ingame ecyclopedia that would list all important vehicle specifications, like armor thickness and gun penetration at 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000m at a 90 degree anngle, maximum speed, ammo capacity, rate of fire and such. I d love such a feature in CMBN and afaik CMx1 games had a similar thing, where you could right-click on the vehicle and it would show all the important specs. Especially a gun penetration chart where you could look up if you re already within effective range would be very useful, i find, also because that data is quite hard to find if you try to look it up yourself on the internet. Of course we already have what is in the manual and the armor panel in the UI, but thats still very inaccurate info.

This gets asked for periodically. And periodically, there's a chorus of "It's not that simple!" The penetration model in x2 is significantly more complex than x1, for a start. The interaction of angles of incidence is sufficiently important that "effective range" becomes such a moveable feast (since no shot is ever at normal incidence) as to make tables of it mostly useless, or unusably complicated.

[Vanir Ausf B]

It's not high on my own priority list, but it could be done. The difference in the complexity of the ballistic modeling between CMx1 and CMx2 is not orders of magnitude. The only major difference in ballistic modeling is an an increase in the number of areas on the vehicles that have armor values specifically modeled. So in CMx1 a tank would have 3 zones: lower hull, upper hull and turret. In CMBN they have 5: lower hull, upper hull, superstructure upper hull, front turret, mantlet (counting gun hits it would be 4 and 6 respectively). Adding 2 more lines would not be prohibitively difficult.

All of the other issues regarding different ammo types vs. various armor types and whatnot are valid points, but that was the case in CMx1 as well, yet people seemed to appreciate it nevertheless.

[YankeeDog]

It's not high on my own priority list, but it could be done. The difference in the complexity of the ballistic modeling between CMx1 and CMx2 is not orders of magnitude. The only major difference in ballistic modeling is an an increase in the number of areas on the vehicles that have armor values specifically modeled. So in CMx1 a tank would have 3 zones: lower hull, upper hull and turret. In CMBN they have 5: lower hull, upper hull, superstructure upper hull, front turret, mantlet (counting gun hits it would be 4 and 6 respectively). Adding 2 more lines would not be prohibitively difficult.

All of the other issues regarding different ammo types vs. various armor types and whatnot are valid points, but that was the case in CMx1 as well, yet people seemed to appreciate it nevertheless.

That's not how CMx2's armor & penetration model works. CMx2 uses a totally different system than CMx1. CMx1 bascially used a "hit matrix" table very similar what pen-and-paper wargames use, which could be easily spit out as a table that players could read. As far as the game engine was concerned, vehicles in CMx1 were simply point entities on the 3D grid that had a certain set of data associated with them.

Not so with CMx2; CMx2 uses a 3D model of the vehicle's armor plates and components to calculate hit & penetration effects. The vehicle occupies an actual physical space on the 3D grid. And there is no e.g., "front superstructure armor = XXmm at YY deg" entry in the game dataset, but rather 3D mapping data describing the size, orientation, and thickness of the plates. Looking at some vehicles (such as the StuG), the "front superstructure", might actually be composed of several different plates, of varying thickness and/or angle.

So it's a lot more complicated than simply accessing the data that's already in the game and formatting it into a table that the player can read. Impossible? No. But a feature that would take considerable time to execute and that would take away from adding other features? Most definitely yes.

[Vanir Ausf B]

That's not how CMx2's armor & penetration model works. CMx2 uses a totally different system than CMx1. CMx1 bascially used a "hit matrix" table very similar what pen-and-paper wargames use, which could be easily spit out as a table that players could read. As far as the game engine was concerned, vehicles in CMx1 were simply point entities on the 3D grid that had a certain set of data associated with them.

.

That is not true. CMx1 did not use any sort of "hit matrix" or penetration tables. Every shot was calculated by formula, same as CMx2.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Combat Mission does not use "penetration tables" or charts to determine armor penetration. Instead it uses the mathematical equations described in "Penetration of Armour Plate" originally by (British) Ordnance Board Subcommittee of the Armour Piercing Projectile Committee (reproduced by U.S. Dept. of Commerce National Technical Information Service #PB91127506).

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=109644&postcount=16

[altipueri]

Penetration tables and algorithms are not anything to do with it in my view.

It gave a quick view of the rough strength and threat of vehicles, weapons etc, it was a great period information part of CMx1 - just click on a vehicle/tank hit RETURN (I think) and you instantly got what CMx2 now makes you go and dig up in pages 154 to about 195 of the manual (has it been updated for CW or CMFI, I don't know).

Not an improvement in user experience.

[YankeeDog]

That is not true. CMx1 did not use any sort of "hit matrix" or penetration tables. Every shot was calculated by formula, same as CMx2.

Perhaps I misspoke. It is true that CMx1 did track exact angle of impact, etc., which is a more complex than any "hit matrix" in a pen-and-paper game ever did. But it's still a hit matrix, just one that involves more complex trigonometry and ballistics calculation than would be practical in a pen-and-paper game.

CMx1 never really tracked exact location of the hit on the vehicle. It couldn't, since the game engine didn't really have any way of taking into account the actual 3D space the vehicle occupies.

For any given set of conditions, there was a certain % chance of a hit, and then, in the case of a hit, a virtual "die" was rolled to determine which general surface of the vehicle the vehicle hit -- e.g., in the case of a frontal hit, lower hull, upper hull, turret. Said surfaces were considered to be homogenous averages in terms of armor thickness and slope, with a few modifiers (ex: weak points, curved surfaces). In my book, that's still a "hit matrix", just a very complex one.

This is nothing like CMx2, where the actual projectile path is calculated, and if the projectile path intersects with the vehicle 3D model, the exact location of the hit is noted and the penetration/damage effects are calculated from there. Completely different way of doing things.

Regardless of semantics and what is and is not a "hit matrix", the fact remains that, unlike in CMx1, there is no specific number in the game data for, e.g., "Front Lower Hull Armor == XXmm @ YY deg.," but rather a bunch of 3D plot data defining a certain plate of armor of a certain size, thickness, and shape in a certain position on the vehicle. The CMx2 data could potentially be converted into some sort of "vehicle encyclopedia" feature, but it would take a fair amount of distilling.

[Vanir Ausf B]

This is nothing like CMx2, where the actual projectile path is calculated, and if the projectile path intersects with the vehicle 3D model, the exact location of the hit is noted and the penetration/damage effects are calculated from there. Completely different way of doing things.

From the perspective of the end user the result is largely the same. The vast majority of plates on armed vehicles are of a uniform thickness and angle. The exceptions to that are primarily machine gun ports and hatches, which in CMx1 were abstracted as "weak points" that were represented by every hit having a small (approx 1%) chance of penetrating regardless of other factors. In CMx2 these are presumably modeled explicitly, but the difference is largely academic from the end user perspective (in fact, my testing suggests weak point penetrations are much more rare in CMBN than CMx1, to the point they can almost be ignored as a significant factor).

In the case of armored plates that do vary in thickness and/or angle across their surface -- and these are almost always mantlets -- they can be noted the same way they were noted in CMx1: by listing their average values with a note stating "rounded" or whatever to convey the fact that it is an approximation.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Missed your edit:

Regardless of semantics and what is and is not a "hit matrix", the fact remains that, unlike in CMx1, there is no specific number in the game data for, e.g., "Front Lower Hull Armor == XXmm @ YY deg.," but rather a bunch of 3D plot data defining a certain plate of armor of a certain size, thickness, and shape in a certain position on the vehicle. The CMx2 data could potentially be converted into some sort of "vehicle encyclopedia" feature, but it would take a fair amount of distilling.

As I said, because the vast majority of armored plates are of a uniform thickness and angle this is not a problem.

[YankeeDog]

@ Vanir:

You're completely missing the point. It's not a question of whether "the vast majority of armored plates are of a uniform thickness", or whether "From the perspective of the end user the result is largely the same," but rather whether the data is present in the game in an easily mineable form, that can be easily inserted into a table and spit out to the player with only a modest amount of coding effort.

There is no "Front Lower Hull Armor Thickness and Angle" for any given armor surface in the CMx2 game engine data. There is, instead, 3D modeling data describing the physical location and attributes of an armor plate that happens to occupy what we, in our human, subjective evaluation, would probably consider to be the "Front Lower Hull Plate," the "Side Lower Hull Plate," etc.

Again, with enough coding and debug time, this data could certainly be mined to create the kind of informational tables that CMx1 had, but the work involved would not be trivial. While it's true that a high proportion of armored vehicles follow a more or less similar planform that makes it relatively easy to select which armor plates are the "primary" armor plates for the purposes of a a player "vehicle catalog" information system. It's the remaining exceptions that would be a royal bitch to code and debug.

Consider, for example, which plate should signify the "front upper hull" armor thickness on a StuG. Multiple plates, varying armor thickness, varying angles. And how does the code that generates the "vehicle catalog" mine the data for things like the curved armor on the turret of a Sherman? Again, certainly doable, but not at all "trivial".

[MikeyD]

A 19 year old Sherman tank gunner wouldn't have detailed penetration tables at his elbow to consult when a Panther G came into view. Veteran tankers in the literature often described *watching in horror* as their AP round bounces a Panther glacis from 500m. It wasn't until July, I believe, that 'helpful hints' were circulated like try for a (difficult) lower bow shot or a (lucky) bounce off the curved gun mantlet into the hulltop. Not knowing the result until you've fired your gun is part of fog-of-war.

I joked in the past that it seems the folks who want armor penetration tables most need them least. Because they're already arguing over Sherman 75mm AP performance against Tiger I hullsides at 400m.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Again, with enough coding and debug time, this data could certainly be mined to create the kind of informational tables that CMx1 had, but the work involved would not be trivial.

The data does not have to be mined to create the information tables because it has already been mined to create the 3D models and vehicle data already used in the game. They could not have made the game without it.

Consider, for example, which plate should signify the "front upper hull" armor thickness on a StuG. Multiple plates, varying armor thickness, varying angles.

Presumabley whichever plate the game already refers to as the "front upper hull" in the hit text when struck.

And how does the code that generates the "vehicle catalog" mine the data for things like the curved armor on the turret of a Sherman? Again, certainly doable, but not at all "trivial".

The vehicle catalog data need not be an exact match for the data the game uses in every single instance. It wasn't in CMx1 either. Don't make perfect the enemy of the good.

And I don't know why you are putting "trivial" in quotes as if someone had claimed it would be. I said it "would not be prohibitively difficult".

[Amizaur]

I read many arguments, why a table - possible to display in "unit data" screen - can't fully show and describe the complicated CMx2 ballistic engine and all possible results of calculated hits.

But I believe that's not what everyone is asking for. Many people would be quite happy if the "unit data" screen showed just.... UNIT DATA.

Where he could find some basic data for armor thickness, plate angles, performance/penetration of AP ammo for that vehicle. Showed in simplified way - but not too simplified, not some "armor strength bars".

It could consist of table with thickness and angles of all major armor plates - like we, wargamers, are used to. For sake of tradition .

As a thing like "front upper hull" may consist of several plates, set on different anges, and also having multiple weak-spots and shot-traps, then for thickness and angles both the highest and lowest number could be given - for example: front upper hull - thickness 60-100mm, angle 0-45deg. Also some basic info about what quality of that armor could be expected - high, standard, substandard, poor.

The gun performance could be given as an usual range-penetration table, calculated by game engine against some standarised armor plate of "normal" quality. It could also consist of two numbers, like min-max or "initial penetration" and "sure penetration" - so every player would understand that it's not 0-1 system, and there is some random factor involved.

Yes, most of us knows that real tank's armor is more complicated than some plates at some angles. But this is a type of data we, wargame players are used too (thicknes and angles). We understand that's not all, but we still like to know those basics, representing "most of hits would hit those plates". Less data would be disapoitment for most players, more data would be too complicated). Such set of data could be quite easily composed.

It would not show every possible outcome of gun vs armor in CMx2. But that's not what we are asking for. Not for complete CMx2 ballistic guide and "penetration simulator", not for complete maps of vehicle armor. Just for some - more or less basic - unit data. Same, or a bit better than in CMx1. And IT IS possible. It would just be more loosely connected to in-game outcomes. One could not predict the results of 650m X vs Y duel just looking at unit data and tables. But one could get idea what is possible, what is probable, what is not likely to happen. While being aware that it's only basic data, and the actual ballistic system is much more complicated and using lots of factors not presented on "unit data" screen, so - just like in real life - strange things can happen.

But even in real life - a tank commander usually got some tables about actual and/or guessed own/enemy tank armor and performance of own/enemy guns. And he didn't expect this to be exact and 100% sure, and if he did - he learned the hard way that real life allistics are more complicated. Players should have similar data available, and a chance to learn that data is not everything .

( of course there is a difference - no sane person would complain about realism of real-life outcomes or about the life having bugs . Players can and will do that . )

I know that most of hardcore players know all the needed data in more detail that could be presented in "unit data" screen. Personally I would also not need practically any data about easter front tanks. I know them all. But there is lot of players that would be glad if they had absolutely BASIC "unit data" screen with BASIC armor, weight, speed, and penetration numbers. Because in the other case they have to start browsing the web or looking in books. And there they would find many differences in various sources. A standarised data - data that is used in the game (armor) or calculated by the game ballistic engine (standarised penetration) would help to compare the in-game tank models.

Of course, at the same moment the "source" armor data and standarised penetration results are published in game - in "unit data", lot's of people would start to complain and argue that this value is wrong and that is unrealistic. And this is I believe one of main reasons we don't have "unit data" screen yet. But there is a qite simple solution to that - it could be just ignored and not commented. Just like all present requests and arguments about introducing "unit data" screen in the game .

The other reason that we don't have "unit data" in the game is - I think - that somebody would have to spend quite some time actually coding the "encyclopedia" into the game and composing all the data. And of course there are more important things to do. Well, personally I think that having ANY type of in game vehicle "encyclopedia" or "unit data screen" is one of most important things that the game lacks now, and is preventing many younger or inexperienced players from getting deeper into the game and loving it.

I'm not sure if I loved CMx1 as much and at all if I had to dig out from books every little piece of data I wanted to know about all the tanks I played with. I got easily available basic data in game - and could use them to better plan my actions and to efectively use less common vehicles. I'm sure many new players miss exactly the same thing in CMx2.

[Vanir Ausf B]

A 19 year old Sherman tank gunner wouldn't have detailed penetration tables at his elbow to consult when a Panther G came into view. Veteran tankers in the literature often described *watching in horror* as their AP round bounces a Panther glacis from 500m. It wasn't until July, I believe, that 'helpful hints' were circulated like try for a (difficult) lower bow shot or a (lucky) bounce off the curved gun mantlet into the hulltop. Not knowing the result until you've fired your gun is part of fog-of-war.

Judging by the AARs of real 19 year old Sherman tank gunners many of them couldn't tell the difference between a Tiger and a Pz IV. Does that mean CM should just use generic tank models that don't tell you the type of tank? Part of the fog-of-war...

I joked in the past that it seems the folks who want armor penetration tables most need them least. Because they're already arguing over Sherman 75mm AP performance against Tiger I hullsides at 400m.

I don't need one. The OP seems to think he does and I have not noticed him weighing in on ballistics debates.

For me the in-game encyclopedia would be a convenience to check on what data the game is using that otherwise can only be discovered through laborious testing.

[agusto]

For me the in-game encyclopedia would be a convenience to check on what data the game is using that otherwise can only be discovered through laborious testing.

That s exactly the point. I d prefer spening time on actually playing the game instead of spending time on the virtual shooting range.

Currently i use the penetration charts of Theatre of War when i really need to look something up (wich fortunately is rarely the case, since i know most statistics well enough by now). I know, what might be true in one game is propably not in another, but since ToW also attempts to simulate realistic armor penetration, the data provided there is usually suffiecient to judge wether a shot would go through in CMBN or not.

After all both games ballistic models are based on real life statistics and real life tests that were conducted on the shooting range back in ww2 and immideatly after, i guess. Now obviously Battlefront has to have those real life statistics all collected, so why not release them to their customers if they already did the work of researching them? I have not been asking for some data beeing compleactly extracted out of the game engine in real time or something like that, just to access Battlefronts knowledgebase on ww2 weaponary.

I d even willingly pay them another 10 bucks if they d inculde that in the next upgrade and i am pretty sure many new players would appreciate such a feature too.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Now obviously Battlefront has to have those real life statistics all collected, so why not release them to their customers if they already did the work of researching them?

I have a theory. It could easily be totally off base, but I''ve long suspected that their real motivation for not providing the raw data a la CMx1 is to make it harder for people to nitpick it.

[agusto]

I have a theory. It could easily be totally off base, but I''ve long suspected that their real motivation for not providing the raw data a la CMx1 is to make it harder for people to nitpick it.

Wow, what a long thread. :eek: Havent had the time by now to read all of this, but while i was skimming through the pages, i found an intresting statement of someone who had appearently been a Battlefront official back on 2000:

"

[...]

Combat Mission does not use tabular test results for armor penetration.

[...]

Charles"

Is that true for CMx2 too? If yes, how else is determind if the ballistics model the CMx2 engine uses is correct? After all, a mathematical physical model can always only be an approximation of the real thing and one would be only able to judge if the model does approximate the real thing with satisfying accuracy if one conducts real life tests and compares the results. So i cannot believe that Battlefront has not used any reallife statistics at all when creating the CMx2 engine. If my assumption is wrong, please educate me.

I think i d still pay them 10 bucks for releasing all those statistics they must have collected piecemeal, even if they might be slightly inaccurate and only represent the ingame results to some certain degree. Just for curiosity.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Wow, what a long thread. :eek:

That's only the first thread. That was back in the days when every thread got locked at 300 posts, so the discussion continued for hundreds of posts after that.

Charles was so traumatized he hasn't been back to the forum since.

Combat Mission does not use tabular test results for armor penetration.

I quoted that same bit on the first page

Is that true for CMx2 too? If yes, how else is determind if the ballistics model the CMx2 engine uses is correct? After all, a mathematical physical model can always only be an approximation of the real thing and one would be only able to judge if the model does approximate the real thing with satisfying accuracy if one conducts real life tests and compares the results. So i cannot believe that Battlefront has not used any reallife statistics at all when creating the CMx2 engine. If my assumption is wrong, please educate me.

Over the years mathematical formula have been developed to predict ballistic performance. The calculations these formulas produce have been compared to real test data.

I think i d still pay them 10 bucks for releasing all those statistics they must have collected piecemeal, even if they might be slightly inaccurate and only represent the ingame results to some certain degree. Just for curiosity.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&safe=off&tbo=d&sclient=psy-ab&q=world+war+ii+ballistics+armor+and+gunnery&oq=world+war+2+ballistics+and+&gs_l=hp.3.0.0i22.1229.6811.0.9031.33.30.3.0.0.0.197.3281.13j17.30.0.les%3Bcqn%2Ccconf%3D1-2%2Cmin_length%3D2%2Crate_low%3D0-035%2Crate_high%3D0-035%2Csecond_pass%3Dfalse%2Cnum_suggestions%3D2%2Cignore_bad_origquery%3Dtrue%2Conetoken%3Dfalse..0.0...1c.1.9S4TosqB9D0&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.b2I&fp=57b747fe93862d6b&bpcl=40096503&biw=1120&bih=592

[Battlefront.com]

Wow, what a long thread. :eek: Havent had the time by now to read all of this, but while i was skimming through the pages, i found an intresting statement of someone who had appearently been a Battlefront official back on 2000:

Nah, he was the guy who programmed the game And still is.

Is that true for CMx2 too? If yes, how else is determind if the ballistics model the CMx2 engine uses is correct? After all, a mathematical physical model can always only be an approximation of the real thing and one would be only able to judge if the model does approximate the real thing with satisfying accuracy if one conducts real life tests and compares the results. So i cannot believe that Battlefront has not used any reallife statistics at all when creating the CMx2 engine. If my assumption is wrong, please educate me.

Your assumption of how valid those test results are is where the problem lies. They are also woefully incomplete, which means we still have to create a system which is not based on tabular results. Tabular results are only useful as a qualified (i.e. imperfect) double check of the mathematical modeling.

We've had countless debates about this in the past and so I'm not going to bother recovering well beaten ground. There's a couple thousand posts already out there in the archives which methodically illustrate why a mathematical model, based on extremely good science, is the only way to go.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I have a theory. It could easily be totally off base, but I''ve long suspected that their real motivation for not providing the raw data a la CMx1 is to make it harder for people to nitpick it.

While I can definitely say we do not miss multi hundred post nit-pick threads where we wind up exactly where we started, that's not why there isn't a CMx1 display system in CMx2. It's because Yankeedog is more correct about his understanding of the difficulties than you are.

The data is in the game, of course, but it is in a form that "as is" couldn't be of use to anybody. Whether you believe that or not isn't material because we don't believe it is. So there's no point putting in significant effort (and it would be) to put together something that nobody will find useful in any practical sort of way.

Now, this isn't to say we don't want some sort of encyclopedia feature. Actually, we do. In fact, I have some designs on my harddrive that date back to 2005 or so, and another set from only a few years ago, detailing a really kick-butt encyclopedia feature. But this sort of thing, even in it's most simplistic form, that takes a LOT of time to do. And since we've been working non-stop, flat out (and even increased our staff) on CMx2 since 2004... it's not like there's some magical month of development time waiting for a useful purpose.

When we make decisions about what to tackle next we do not think "will someone pay $10 for it". Instead we think "how many people will pay $10 for it and what will it cost to make it". Player visible ballistics details are very, very, very low on list of priorities for most players compared to other things. Which is why it's not been a priority for us until now or even in the near future.

To give you an idea of what might eventually be in CM, but not any time soon, is something like this...

A player can click on any unit, vehicle or otherwise, and get a display that presents simplified, relevant info about it's capabilities and vulnerabilities. He can then click on another unit, vehicle or otherwise, belonging to the opposite force. It too shows capabilities and vulnerabilities, but it also shows how they are applicable to the other should they come into contact with each other. Some controls would be available to "case out" certain scenarios, such as range and facing, so as to give you a better understanding of what is the best course of action.

There are no plans to show listings of armored surfaces, angles, characteristics of particular rounds against them, etc. This is not something we feel adds value to the game proportional to the expense of providing and maintaining it. Having more generalized information, on the other hand, definitely has value and is worth pursuing at some time.

Steve

[Vanir Ausf B]

The data is in the game, of course, but it is in a form that "as is" couldn't be of use to anybody. Whether you believe that or not isn't material because we don't believe it is. So there's no point putting in significant effort (and it would be) to put together something that nobody will find useful in any practical sort of way.

I did not say or mean to imply that the data in-game could be cut and pasted "as is" into an encyclopedia. I only said that information such as armor slope and thickness must surely have already been researched in order to create whatever data the game uses in whatever form it uses it.

A player can click on any unit, vehicle or otherwise, and get a display that presents simplified, relevant info about it's capabilities and vulnerabilities. He can then click on another unit, vehicle or otherwise, belonging to the opposite force. It too shows capabilities and vulnerabilities, but it also shows how they are applicable to the other should they come into contact with each other. Some controls would be available to "case out" certain scenarios, such as range and facing, so as to give you a better understanding of what is the best course of action.

+1

This sounds like an improved version of the old CMx1 targeting tooltip that would tell you if the chance of a kill was "good", "poor" or whatever. This is probably more useful to neophytes than an encyclopedia.

[Fizou]

Even bringing back the old info from cmx1 would be great in my opinion. It gives a rough idea of the capabilities of any given unit. I remember learning a lot from this in cmx1. Loved that.

[agusto]

To give you an idea of what might eventually be in CM, but not any time soon, is something like this...

A player can click on any unit, vehicle or otherwise, and get a display that presents simplified, relevant info about it's capabilities and vulnerabilities. He can then click on another unit, vehicle or otherwise, belonging to the opposite force. It too shows capabilities and vulnerabilities, but it also shows how they are applicable to the other should they come into contact with each other. Some controls would be available to "case out" certain scenarios, such as range and facing, so as to give you a better understanding of what is the best course of action.

Steve

+1, sounds good

[Sgt Schultz]

Kudos to Steve for the nice big bone he threw us for the future.

Just to jump in for second on the thread though...

It seems to me that some enterprising soul could look up the actual specs for each vehicle and get the armor thickness and slope/gun velocity/etc data off the intraweb. Then arrange it on a spreadsheet and upload it to the repository.

War is hell, and CM has wayyyy too many variables happening in real-time/during turn calculations to have a prayer of getting "actual" data. At least "for now" according to Steve. you da man.

However, an historically accurate cheat sheet may give some help to those without the "mental muscle memory" that grogs use to just "know" what to do. Those vehicle specs were burned into my brain when I was in my teens, and I am 51 now. I trust Charles to be as true to the specs as possible, and it serves me well.

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Make a list of every vehicle in CM and start a-Googlin'.

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