Erwin Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 Currently playing thru the Nijmegen campaign and for some reason the relative poor performance of HE keeps making itself experienced. Eg: An enemy 20mm AA gun in foxhole survived over 20x105mm HE plus three tanks shooting 75mm at it for at least two WEGO minutes (so maybe 30x75mm HE). Most of the crew were KO'd. But, within a minute of stopping the HE, the lone WIA crew started it up again and the AA seriously damaged a couple of tanks. (I CF'd at that point to take a look at this AA gun to find out its condition.) I have encountered this sort of extreme survivability quite often, so it's not a "once in a blue moon" occurrence. Doesn't seem "right". But, what do I know... Anybody else experiencing this? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 I believe I've mentioned the ATG that survived half a dozen 150mm arty hits in adjacent ASs, enough to completely remove 2 trees, trunks and all. They were laterally adjacent, so the gun shield wouldn't have been much, if any, protection. 2 crew were left, one yellow. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 1, 2014 Author Share Posted March 1, 2014 I suppose it's just possible to have a miracle survivor. (Altho' this phenomenon occurs more frequently than a "miracle" should.) But, in addition... when he's able to function combat effective less than a minute later... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted March 1, 2014 Share Posted March 1, 2014 Last summer I hit a three story building with at least three or four direct hits and an equal number of near misses, all from an 8" howitzer. The sum total of damage was a hole or two in the roof. In real life, I would have expected one direct hit to have destroyed about 25% of the building and a near miss as close as I was seeing to destroy maybe 10%. In other words, my expectation was that all the hits I was seeing should have damn well flattened the building. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 1, 2014 Author Share Posted March 1, 2014 Well, then let's hope that BF gets around to this weirdness one day. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hister Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 And I hope they get around to bunker toughness to. They are a tough nut to crack (pun intended). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 If you don't have tanks or charges, bunkers seem to succumb to concentrated small arms fire (or at least the crew bails). The challenge there is to find suitable protective terrain so that one pile it on without first getting massacred by the bunker MG. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akd Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 Well, then let's hope that BF gets around to this weirdness one day. Why? You all are again throwing around a handful of anecdotes and declaring consensus. IMO, based on controlled testing, the lethal effects of HE on dug-in units are greatly exaggerated in the game. However, the suppressive effects may be too light and too fleeting, which in turn may increase the lethal effects in some cases (esp. v. AI). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 2, 2014 Author Share Posted March 2, 2014 "the suppressive effects may be too light and too fleeting..." Well. that is something we can all agree on then. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 And I hope they get around to bunker toughness to. They are a tough nut to crack (pun intended). As Erwin says, they go down to small arms. This is, it seems to me, the opposite of "tough". I wouldn't expect small arms to have any ablative destructive effect on a concrete bunker, but they evidently do. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted March 2, 2014 Share Posted March 2, 2014 As Erwin says, they go down to small arms. This is, it seems to me, the opposite of "tough". I wouldn't expect small arms to have any ablative destructive effect on a concrete bunker, but they evidently do. I suppose one might assume that enough bullets are finding their way in via the firing slot and ricocheting around inside to wound or at least discourage the occupants. This doesn't seem to have happened much in real life though. It was usually necessary to either blast or flame a bunker to permanently silence it. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vanir Ausf B Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 We know that the effect of HE has been deliberately nerfed down to some extent to compensate for the "bunching" of men required by the action spot system, and it's entirely possible that it's been dialed down too far in certain situations, such as against men standing/kneeling or riding. But I agree with akd that it is if anything too effective against men who are taking deliberate action to find cover from it. I have tested US 60mm mortar lethality against published US Army expected results and found that against soldiers lying prone in open fields 60s in CMBN produce casualty rates several times higher than expected. This is not necessarily a sign of overpowered HE, but could be a sign of too low micro terrain bonuses. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 3, 2014 Author Share Posted March 3, 2014 That's the strange thing... I also find mortars/arty are very effective vs inf hiding behind hedgerows or in fields . However it can't be realistic when you use heavy arty and /or 75mm+ tanks to bombard a foxhole position for several minutes, and the enemy pops up within a minute of cessation of bombardment and is suddenly very combat effective. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 I suppose one might assume that enough bullets are finding their way in via the firing slot and ricocheting around inside to wound or at least discourage the occupants. This doesn't seem to have happened much in real life though. It was usually necessary to either blast or flame a bunker to permanently silence it. Michael Such psychological effects should be represented in the morale mechanic, and should not make the bunker uninhabitable once the displaced original occupants have departed. Especially if the ones driven out don't leave too many grisly corpses behind to discourage any other teams seeking shelter there... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akd Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 That's the strange thing... I also find mortars/arty are very effective vs inf hiding behind hedgerows or in fields . However it can't be realistic when you use heavy arty and /or 75mm+ tanks to bombard a foxhole position for several minutes, and the enemy pops up within a minute of cessation of bombardment and is suddenly very combat effective. It can be realistic if it is an outlier, because sometimes that is how human behavior works. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 3, 2014 Author Share Posted March 3, 2014 "sometimes" yes, miracles happen... I see it happen quite regularly hence my (and others') posts about it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 Is what we find remarkable perhaps the simple variability of blast effect? We see a single 34g bursting charge kill 3 guys and injure another, one time, and then we see over a hundred kilos of amatol detonate within metres of a gun crew and leave survivors. Both are outliers, perhaps. Are they too outlying to be credible? Personally, I think bursting charges are significantly overmodelled when they detonate outside the armour they're supposed to be wreaking havoc inside. I've seen that same 34g bursting charge detonate in a tree and kill an unsuspecting pTruppe 30m or more away at ground level. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akd Posted March 3, 2014 Share Posted March 3, 2014 "sometimes" yes, miracles happen... I see it happen quite regularly hence my (and others') posts about it. Then you should be able to produce a test showing it is not an outlier event. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erwin Posted March 4, 2014 Author Share Posted March 4, 2014 I dunno what kind of test one could do other than repeating the same turn maybe a hundred times and seeing if one gets the same result? I think when a lot of people report the same issue, that's a test of a sort On the other extreme, I find it most "efficacious" to bombard enemy armor with 105mm and up. In several recent Brit. Nijmegan missions I killed several JPzIV's very easily (less than a minute of bombardment) which seemed TOO easy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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