Panther Shot Trap Still Not Trapping

[Thomm]

By the way, has anybody ever seen a vehicle being taken out by a ricochet in CM?

We know overpenetrating shells can knock out other tanks, but what about ricochets?

When I played around with Vanir Ausf B's test scenario, the ricochets did not appear to carry a lot of kinetic energy to me.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Kanonier Reichmann]

To me it comes down to the 'reasonableness' test. Is it reasonable to assume that the Germans were prepared to redesign the mantlet of the Panther and retool their production lines to include the chin mantlet if the Panther rounded mantlet was not a cause for concern through losses? The delay in production to incorprate the redesign alone was no doubt of concern yet they still went ahead with incorporating the design.

Is it reasonable that the Germans would go through all this rigamorole if the shot trap was as vanishingly rare as indicated in the CMx2 tests Vanir has run? Common sense tells me a resounding no! End of story.

Regards

KR.

[PhilM]

*sigh*

Fine. What's another 5 hours of my life for a "relatively minor issue"? I'll test US 76mm at 800 meters.

You know you want to, really ...

[poesel]

By the way, has anybody ever seen a vehicle being taken out by a ricochet in CM?

I've seen ricochets taking out infantry so the damage effect is modelled. Since small arms can take out soft skinned vehicles as well as infantry it would be logical to assume that if ricochets can take out infantry they can take soft skins, too.

But seen - no. That would be quite a seldom event. Maybe we could ask Vanir to park a lot of Kübels next to the Panther?

[Vanir Ausf B]

LOL That would be interesting.

The ricochets that I have seen hit other vehicles have always been of the slowly loop into the air then gently fall to the ground type. They've never done any damage to other tanks, but as poesel noted they can cause casualties to infantry or bailed tank crews.

[Apocal]

I make it 17 TD (SP) bns and 27 Tk Bns in Normandy by the end of the campaign. That alone makes the 75mm Sherman "most" armor crews, however you define "armor crews,"

most

"nearly all"

[ZPB II]

By the way, has anybody ever seen a vehicle being taken out by a ricochet in CM?

Best regards,

Thomm

In CMSF, Red vs. Red, T-55s/T-62s duking it out, ricochet took out another tank by penetrating the turret side maybe 20-50 meters away from the original target.

Perhaps slightly unlikely to have a penetrator rod not bend or break and carry enough energy to go through but hey it wasn't my tank so I'm not complaining.

[JonS]

To me it comes down to the 'reasonableness' test. Is it reasonable that the Germans would go through all this rigamorole if the shot trap was as vanishingly rare as indicated in the CMx2 tests Vanir has run? Common sense tells me a resounding no!

Ordinarily yeah, sure. But you have to remember that this is the Germans being talked about, and what's more it's specifically the Nazi Germans. They will happily over-engineer anything that comes their way, and common sense had bugger all to do with any decision made between 1936 and 1945.

Your "reasonableness" test in those circumstances gets perverted into something like 'can I make more money by producing a dozen different camouflage patterns, even though the two we already have work fine?' or 'can I enrich myself by selling these rations - intended for these slaves working on this key weapon system - on the black market?' Or 'welp, the Western Allies have never fielded a magnetic mine, but lets keep applying this zimmerit anyway!' Or 'my airforce is disintegrating around me, but I believe my time would be better spent running this train all around Europe seizing art.' Or 'clearly we're losing the strategic air war, so how about we take six months to turn this superlative air-superiority fighter into a mediocre ground attack aircraft?'

[Battlefront.com]

To me it comes down to the 'reasonableness' test. Is it reasonable to assume that the Germans were prepared to redesign the mantlet of the Panther and retool their production lines to include the chin mantlet if the Panther rounded mantlet was not a cause for concern through losses? The delay in production to incorprate the redesign alone was no doubt of concern yet they still went ahead with incorporating the design.

Is it reasonable that the Germans would go through all this rigamorole if the shot trap was as vanishingly rare as indicated in the CMx2 tests Vanir has run? Common sense tells me a resounding no! End of story.

Regards

KR.

You apparently haven't read much of this thread. If you had you probably wouldn't have restated a position that's been legitimately debated since it was first posited.

If you have even a wee bit of understanding about how test samples can paint a distorted picture, you'd understand that doing one test under one condition that is controversial does not close a case. At best it might indicate a problem, but on its own it is just one piece of information to mix in with others.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

*sigh*

Fine. What's another 5 hours of my life for a "relatively minor issue"? I'll test US 76mm at 800 meters.

My point is you've probably spent more time arguing about this "relatively minor issue" than it would take to run another test. You're the one that seems to care so much about it, so who better to do another test? Since I'm obviously not satisfied with your first test as a basis for suggesting that Charles change something, you (collectively, not just you personally) have two choices:

1. introduce additional evidence to support your initial test

2. stop talking about it and just "agree to disagree"

I'm fine with either one.

As for the second test, it doesn't have to be recorded to the utmost detail for thousands of iterations. Change the vehicles doing the shooting and run it a few times. See if there are any behavioral differences. If there are not, then it's probably good enough to just say that. If you do see behavioral differences, then post that info and see where it goes from there. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes to do that.

I'd do it myself, but I've got a dozen other things far more important than that. I actually shouldn't even waste my time posting this!

Steve

[JonS]

most

"nearly all"

Well, on a straight count of battalions it's 3:2. That's most to me.

If we count hulls (just 75mm Shermans vs the TDs) it's roughly 1431:612 or about 5:2. That's definitely most to me.

[Battlefront.com]

Yup. The "reasonableness" standard is not always safely applied to German wartime decision making. Like "we have a vastly overextended front, can't make up for our losses, are running out of food and resources, but we think we can win the war by having a couple of tanks the size of battleships". Was it REASONABLE for the Germans to make the Maus in the closing days of the war? No. I think it was pretty damned well bloody insane.

Steve

Ordinarily yeah, sure. But you have to remember that this is the Germans being talked about, and what's more it's specifically the Nazi Germans. They will happily over-engineer anything that comes their way, and common sense had bugger all to do with any decision made between 1936 and 1945.

Your "reasonableness" test in those circumstances gets perverted into something like 'can I make more money by producing a dozen different camouflage patterns, even though the two we already have work fine?' or 'can I enrich myself by selling these rations - intended for these slaves working on this key weapon system - on the black market?' Or 'welp, the Western Allies have never fielded a magnetic mine, but lets keep applying this zimmerit anyway!' Or 'my airforce is disintegrating around me, but I believe my time would be better spent running this train all around Europe seizing art.' Or 'clearly we're losing the strategic air war, so how about we take six months to turn this superlative air-superiority fighter into a mediocre ground attack aircraft?'

[sfhand]

...

Is it reasonable that the Germans would go through all this rigamorole if the shot trap was as vanishingly rare as indicated in the CMx2 tests Vanir has run? Common sense tells me a resounding no! End of story.

Regards

KR.

This would be a more "reasonable" argument if the Germans stopped equipping panthers with the chin-less mantlet; apparently they did not.

[Vanir Ausf B]

My point is you've probably spent more time arguing about this "relatively minor issue" than it would take to run another test. You're the one that seems to care so much about it, so who better to do another test? Since I'm obviously not satisfied with your first test as a basis for suggesting that Charles change something, you (collectively, not just you personally) have two choices:

1. introduce additional evidence to support your initial test

2. stop talking about it and just "agree to disagree"

I'm fine with either one.

As for the second test, it doesn't have to be recorded to the utmost detail for thousands of iterations. Change the vehicles doing the shooting and run it a few times. See if there are any behavioral differences. If there are not, then it's probably good enough to just say that. If you do see behavioral differences, then post that info and see where it goes from there. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes to do that.

I'd do it myself, but I've got a dozen other things far more important than that. I actually shouldn't even waste my time posting this!

Steve

Must... bite.... tongue...

If you are happy with a much smaller sample size I won't complain. I can tell you there were no ricochet hits in the first 117 non-penetrating mantlet hits. I'll get a couple hundred more then post up the results. After all, it only takes a few minutes...

[sburke]

Must... bite.... tongue...

If you are happy with a much smaller sample size I won't complain. I can tell you there were no ricochet hits in the first 117 non-penetrating mantlet hits. I'll get a couple hundred more then post up the results. After all, it only takes a few minutes...

LOL I gotta compliment your perseverance and humor Vanir. For your sanity's sake I actually hope you do find something that results in a correction.

[Fizou]

Keep it up Vanir. Im sure many of us are happy that you do this and show true passion for the game and expect excellence from it.

[JasonC]

27 tank B is 162 Sherman 105s. The first 120 US 76mm M4A1s went to 2nd and 3rd US ADs in time for Cobra. The Brits had 342 Fireflies before D-Day, and converted another 400 by the end of August. Even leaving off a third of the last, that is 880 additional upgunned AFVs besides the TD fleet. TDs were only half the upgunned portion of the Allied force, in other words, with Fireflies the main other item. All told there are about 1500 upgunned Allied AFVs in the Normandy campaign. The Germans fielded roughly 700 Tigers and Panthers in the campaign.

[Battlefront.com]

Must... bite.... tongue...

I know what it takes to do a test of the size you did before, hence why I said it's not necessary at this point.

The larger sample established a pattern for one specific situation. The problem with that was... is that specific situation fairly representational? Or put another way, is it a broad enough data set to base conclusions on? The answer, in this case, is no as argued by myself and others. One tank at one range with no variation in circumstances is not sufficient to do more than indicate there might be a problem with that one particular circumstance. You could repeat that test 10,000 times more and it wouldn't likely tell us anything we don't already know.

With that in mind I suggested a method for broadening the scope of the test by changing one of the key variables. As such it's sufficient to initially do a relatively small test, without tabulation even, because the sort of behavior expected can be easily seen or found absent. For example, if you saw 10 ricochet top hull hits in the first round of testing you'd know there was something different at work and more testing is needed. Conversely, seeing no ricochets in the first round probably indicates things won't be different in subsequent rounds. A small test without tabulation has the advantage of being extremely quick and easy to do, but with the obvious disadvantage of not contributing to a scientific sample from which to base conclusions on.

Here's an analogy. Let's say you flip a US quarter Dollar coin 2000 times and record how many heads and tails showed up. You then wonder if flipping a different coin will come up with different results. So you flip 100 times and casually note how many times it comes up heads. If it's roughly proportional to the quarter Dollar, there's really no need to go through another 1900 tries. Instead, you'd be better off trying 100 times with yet another coin. If it came up roughly proportional then that's probably good enough to move onto something else.

Where a second course of 2000 tries might be necessary is if you flipped a particular coin 100 times and it a heads 80% of the time. Because at that point you now have reason to suspect there's something different at work. Whether the minting of the coin left one side more heavily weighted than the other or what not is still not yet known. It could also be that the 100 repetitions wasn't a sufficiently large enough sample. You don't know yet, but you do know you should look at it further.

This is pretty simple, logical testing procedure.

If you are happy with a much smaller sample size I won't complain. I can tell you there were no ricochet hits in the first 117 non-penetrating mantlet hits. I'll get a couple hundred more then post up the results. After all, it only takes a few minutes...

I think what you did is sufficient. It's at least shown that something (17pdr or 76mm??) else exhibits the same characteristics as the 75mm. That's providing a broader base for a possible conclusion that something's "off" within the game.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

I don't know why people are bothering to argue about proportions of this or that gun in theater. It's really not relevant. What's more relevant is seeing what the game does.

Steve

[John Kettler]

Vanir Ausf B,

Correction. the tests Ike was so unhappy about found that the 76mm couldn't penetrate the Panther glacis at 200 yards but would penetrate the mantlet. Pretty depressing performance for the supposed hot gun.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Amizaur]

Steve, maybe you could ask some official betatesters to test this issue more throughly ? Vanir already did much. I would love to play with some testing but I simply don't have time. I guess others too. If we talk only, instead of do more testing, then probably this is as much time as we can spend on this...

I have to say that the whole issue for me is not very important - it would be nice to have it modelled as accurately as it could be (as always), but I can live with current state. There are other issues regarding armor&penetration that are bothering me much more than that.

But I enjoy this discussion about "how it should be" - even if we don't generate enough test data to convince you to do any changes, it's still interesting to talk about it and discuss it.

[Battlefront.com]

The testers have heaps on their plates right now (and yes, you can speculate about that ). Everything they are doing at the moment is probably 100 times more important to this one minor issue. And it is a very minor issue, though that doesn't mean it's unimportant.

Steve

[Alchenar]

I don't know why people are bothering to argue about proportions of this or that gun in theater. It's really not relevant. What's more relevant is seeing what the game does.

Steve

I believe there's a massively fragmented argument going on as to how likely it was that a shell would hit the Panther's Shot Trap and how likely it was that said shell came from a particular gun.

Obviously the easiest way to work out if something is off is to compare large-scale historical results to large-scale testing in game. Except the large-scale historical results don't really exist hence the fragmentation of the argument into how many of what gun was in what theatre with how many Panthers.

[Battlefront.com]

Oh, I know that. I just don't know why anybody thinks it's helpful It would only matter if we found that a particular gun (in the game) behaved one way and a different gun the other. Which is why I've been saying that testing one gun in one situation isn't going to get us answers. Not at 2000 iterations, not at 2000000. Gotta broaden the base.

Steve

[JasonC]

Who said it was trying to be helpful? News flash, it is not always about you.

I am just trying to correct the unhistorical conventional wisdom others are posting into the thread, so that people don't walk away thinking it must be true since a grog said it and it went unchallenged. The truth has to put its boots on to catch misinformation, wherever it is posted.