womble Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 I've got a gun line of SdKfz 251/1 loaded with their Sturmgrenadier squads and an HQ. There's the butt end of an enemy squad in LOS of all 4 of them and the pair of Drillings they've got helping out. The /1s have area target on the AS where the enemy team is. All the infantry squads have spots on the enemy, as do both the Drillings. None of the /1 crews do, even the three that still have their gunner, operating the MG. It strikes me as odd that the huddled squad in the back of the Hanomags can see anything at all, when the guys who've spent the last 120s glaring out over their gunsights at the open ground where the enemy are can't see the target. Maybe they're blinded by their muzzle flash... I suspect they're getting the penalties for armour crews seeing out through vision blocks, which perhaps they shouldn't really. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baneman Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Ok, you got me - what is a "Drilling" ?? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonS Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 SfKfz 251/17? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agusto Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 'Drilling' is german for 'triplet'. The plural is Drillinge. Sometimes shotguns with 3 barrels are referred to as Drilling in german. EDIT: Ahh, wait. Maybe womble was talking about a weapon on a tripod or a weapon mount on wich three seperate weapons are mounted, like that: Both are referred to as 'Drilling' as well. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 10, 2014 Author Share Posted March 10, 2014 'Drilling' is german for 'triplet'. The plural is Drillinge. [sNIP] EDIT: Ahh, wait. Maybe womble was talking about a weapon on a tripod or a weapon mount on wich three seperate weapons are mounted, like that: Exactly like that, except not all dinged up (yet)... Indeed, but your information as to the correct plural is probably what I should have used, since I have two of those 251/17s: "zwei Drillinge"... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScoutPL Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 I know that military folks (and medical folks, and cops, and lawyers, and just about anyone else with a professional "language") can be pretty confusing when trying to talk to the unitintiated. I think Womble has brought CMing to a whole new level when he can ask a question that even the folks in the community forum cant follow half of what he is saying. Drilling? AS? Hanomags? "last 120s"? What he's really saying is he cant believe he's about to lose those precious (not to mention rare and expensive) "drillings" to a mere rifle squad. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 10, 2014 Author Share Posted March 10, 2014 I think Womble has brought CMing to a whole new level when he can ask a question that even the folks in the community forum cant follow half of what he is saying. Drilling? AS? Hanomags? "last 120s"? I'm pretty sure that there are at least some people who understand all four of those terms. What he's really saying is he cant believe he's about to lose those precious (not to mention rare and expensive) "drillings" to a mere rifle squad. Ah, nope. They seem pretty immune to rifle fire. The AI only fires at them when the loader is reloading; everyone's "buttoned up" the rest of the time. I'm much more likely to lose the gunners from the other Hanomags that are carrying my (assault) rifle squads. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doodlebug Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Woohoo. I must be learning. I understood all four terms. What do I win? And, for the bonus question, I understood (I think) the original query. I think there are a couple of topics being raised. Are HT gunners encompassed by the latest changes to AFV spotting? If so is it appropriate? And secondly if the passengers in a HT spot a target that the gunner hasn't, should they be able to kick him in the ribs, shout and point and aid him spotting better. In other words is in-vehicle comms between crew and separate passenger elements working properly? Right Womble? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 Woohoo. I must be learning. I understood all four terms. What do I win? And, for the bonus question, I understood (I think) the original query. I think there are a couple of topics being raised. Are HT gunners encompassed by the latest changes to AFV spotting? If so is it appropriate? And secondly if the passengers in a HT spot a target that the gunner hasn't, should they be able to kick him in the ribs, shout and point and aid him spotting better. In other words is in-vehicle comms between crew and separate passenger elements working properly? Right Womble? Bang on. Have a virtual cookie. Or grab one out the jar if you feel like it The second point could also ask the converse: "Should the buttoned passengers not also be affected by any 'myopia modifier' and therefore have as much or even more difficulty spotting out of the vehicle as the gunner does." There is a third, subtextual, point: "Is the myopia overdone?" It seems a bit odd that units firing at a spot where there are targets don't see that target after several turns of observation. The gun tracks spotted it almost immediately. Which raises the question as to whether it's applied consistently to the units to which it should be applied. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skwabie Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 myopia... ehehe good terminology. I really hope the horrible tank spotting capabilities in the ww2 titles aren't carried over to the modern game. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 myopia... ehehe good terminology. I really hope the horrible tank spotting capabilities in the ww2 titles aren't carried over to the modern game. Define "horrible". Some people think they spot too easy. Others think they're too short sighted... Where do you sit? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skwabie Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Define "horrible". Some people think they spot too easy. Others think they're too short sighted... Where do you sit? Right. For my own game play purposes I dislike the nerfed tank spotting. IMO it is torture of my patience, especially in a armor vs. armor fight. However I have no real historical knowledge of how well they rather should spot. So I did not post any arguments in the thread that instigated the spotting nerf. (Then again, I wonder how such an issue can be substantiated/quantified, it is not like you can find such and such a value in a tank manual, but rather BFC's needs to satisfy the majority customer base.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agusto Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 Then again, I wonder how such an issue can be substantiated/quantified, it is not like you can find such and such a value in a tank manual, but rather BFC's needs to satisfy the majority customer base.) If you had a couple of WW2 tanks, a couple of infantry reenactors, a 'playground', such as an army MOUT training site, you could reenact different tactical situations and then statistically quantify the real tank crews spotting capabilities. For example: if in 10 out of 100 instances of a specific tactical situation the reenacting tank crew spots the personell hidden in the bushes 30 meters away at their 9 o clock within a specified amount of time, this result could be translated to a 10 percent spotting probability for close by infantry hidden in an action spot with foliage on it during each cycle of the spotting loop it in CMx2. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
womble Posted March 11, 2014 Author Share Posted March 11, 2014 Right. For my own game play purposes I dislike the nerfed tank spotting. IMO it is torture of my patience, especially in a armor vs. armor fight. I suspect that the modern title will be less of a stressor; tanks in the early C21st have much better senses than the tanks of the mid-C20th. It might even be that the pre-"nerf" values for spotting were hangovers from CMSF, and CM: Black Sea will reverse the change and add even more vision capability, at least for first-line vehicles. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ScoutPL Posted March 11, 2014 Share Posted March 11, 2014 OK, Womble. Next time I will be more liberal with the smileys. So serious.... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 myopia... ehehe good terminology. I really hope the horrible tank spotting capabilities in the ww2 titles aren't carried over to the modern game. Two things. First, we already have a modern game to check out Though admittedly it's a bit long in the tooth by CM standards. Second, the tank spotting in CM for WW2 vehicles is much better than it should be. Tankers keep telling us that. Not just our tester who crewed a Sherman on a professional basis (Canadians let go of them much later than most know) but also guys who have crewed things like Abrams and Bradleys in real life. At least when talking about standard optics and not fancy thermals. Spotting from inside a buttoned AFV isn't either fast or easy. CM has a tough task. It has to simulate real life as realistically as possible, it has to balance uncontrollable unrealistic elements (i.e. the player, limited TacAI intelligence, etc.), and it has to do it on a consumer level PC. It's a tough job and we are apparently the only ones dumb enough to try it. Fine line between dumb and crazy, so I may be mischaracterizing ourselves What this means is that we have to make sure that the game plays in such a way that in the end the results are in balance with each other. Otherwise the game falls apart. Spotting times are one of those elements that both hammers the hardware and at the same time causes major player frustration. The latter because players want their units to do what they instruct and to carry out those instructions nearly perfectly according to game results and not realism results. A player can claim all the day long that he wants realism first, but when his tank goes BOOM it's all about how the game isn't working right. Regardless of if it is right or not. So we could make spotting much worse than it is right now and the game would be more realistic. But it would unbalance things internally and alienate players from wanting to play. That doesn't work out well for anybody. Making spotting better might make people less frustrated, but it would harm the integrity of the game's realism mission, unbalance things internally, and potentially cause serious choking of the hardware. Which is why we're not likely to do much more than tweak a little here and there, nothing more than that. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skwabie Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Steve, While it can be argued that tanks still see too much infantry, which is all the arguments till now all about, it is my opinion that their ability to spot enemy tanks is toned down too much. I've been doing edits on scenarios and had to do some tests in scenario author test mode. It is astonishing to see how long it takes a tank, unbuttoned even, to spot an opfor tank right in front of him. The one most memorable for me was, in a BN scenario for almost a minute both tanks just sat there, 100 meters away, on flat ground, with no obstacle in between them whatsoever. I'd say both TCs are day dreaming up in their cupolas instead of keeping an all around look out. Few days later I replayed the scenario and same thing happened again. It does strike me as very odd, for if the TCs didn't see each other, the driver or radioman would've for the other guy's right in front of their vision slits. I dunno about how the spotting system actually works, but I think it is reduced too much to cater for tank vs infantry here and tank vs tank got hit too much... Oh and of course Steve, it is a game for fun, for if it's a job you get paid. My previous gaming experience was being a "realism fanboy" and doing it like a second job. Not any more of that, at least for now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Battlefront.com Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Something like two unbuttoned tanks sitting 100m across from each other without obstructions isn't anything I've seen. It certainly shouldn't happen that way and it doesn't seem to come up when we've done controlled tests for other things (we recently did a controlled test with 20 tanks at 1500m and they spotted each other quickly). If you have a save of it that I'd be interested in having a tester take a look at it. The spotting cycles are, for the most part, somewhere under 7 seconds. Which means that there's roughly 10 checks for every minute of gameplay. At 100m the spotting cycle is probably even shorter. For those who aren't aware, spotting cycles are how frequently a unit checks for what it can/can't see. Ideally they would happen every second or partial second, but none of us have the super computers needed to process that many spotting checks. Even for WeGo. So it's a compromise between ideal and practical. Over the years we have managed to shorten the clock times and introduced some clever prioritization routines that shorten clock cycles in particular circumstances. Steve 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SlowMotion Posted March 12, 2014 Share Posted March 12, 2014 Just being curious, is spotting speed affected by unit's condition? Things like whether a unit is fit or unfit, ready or tired/worse? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skwabie Posted March 13, 2014 Share Posted March 13, 2014 Steve, I dont usually save 'em, but will do when it happens again. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.