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Kingtiger Mantlet and Coax MG problem, and an attempted 3D model Fix


Skwabie

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No, what is sad is the fact that he might have shown that the modeling is incorrect as to how it is working and there could be a needed fix. Which might affect more than just this game or unit. But the time to show and verify that and get BFC interested is instead spent on a poor substituted fix that does not really address the problem or truly fix anything. Just a way to skew the results which can be used by anyone for good or bad.

 

The second he mentioned that there is no way to damage the gun mantlet and create a gun jam. I would say you are making a adjustment that does not fix a thing and creates a more unrealistic unit.

 

Since I know for a fact I have lost way more heavy tanks to a jammed gun that to a frontal penetration that he is so worried about. So justify it all you want, but its not a good approach. Just a approach to adjust something that he does not like in its present form. But in no form of the concept is he improving the game or creating anything that should become a common practice with the users.

As is pointed out, this game is hardcoded and the only way to get meaningful change is to convince BFC to spend the effort to do it.

 

Sure I wish BFC would be much more open, as far as I am concerned. Just as adjusting units skins is possible.

I wish the players could adjust unit purchase points values. armor factors and weapon strengths. Why cannot all this be open to the player and let him adjust the game to what he thinks is correct as to how he sees it.

There should be a reset feature that sets all these to bfc released settings. (which would be a simple way to enforce a consistent format for those playing in tournaments and such.)

 

So why not push for that and spend your time there. Sure would be nice to have the freedom to adjust the turret armor to what you think is correct and to have it work as intended instead of this type of stupid approach.

 

 

 

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BfC letting players actually adjust armor setting.

I should say I was dreaming, because I personally know better than to think they would ever allow that much flexibility given to the player.

But in my dream world . all them type of settings should be adjustable by me, the player.

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Interesting discussion.  I don't have a strong position personally, but don't understand how someone could not appreciate that the issue described by JonS--the ability to freely mod a game and use it in H2H without the other player's consent or even knowledge--is indeed a major potential issue for any (multiplayer) game?

Somehow the ability of the second player to "counter-hack" his opponent's units does not seem like a very productive approach.

 

 

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Well, HvH was never on my radar. For a singleplayer/modding mindset, if you discover something and not share it, you're considered selfish. So I guess there's a culture gap there. Had lotta MP in the past with other games which have free modding, but the MP were co-ops and not competitive, so it was never a forefront issue.

My problem is with the nature of public forum. Ppl go to it for drama, negativity and ego. It's just how it is i suppose. Maybe it is interesting for some... And none of your imagined "hacking" is doable, you fear what you don't know and I imagine how the mod works isn't easy to understand. What it can do though, is turning a unit 'unspottable' by the game engine, I've accidentally found. So if you're using it in a HvH game, your oppo will never know you had such a unit ninja killing everything. That's gotta be interesting.

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Actually I was speaking about JonS' comments about the Tiller games, where the hacking is trivial--just by editing text files.  

And I'm missing some of the drama, negativity, and ego in this thread, do we need to kick it up a notch?

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Skwabie - H2H is were this game really shines. You haven't played CM if you haven't played against a human. With all due respect but the AI sucks in comparison with a human opponent. Nothing beats that red text on an enemy tank and knowing the face your opponent will make when he gets the turn. :D

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Actually I was speaking about JonS' comments about the Tiller games, where the hacking is trivial--just by editing text files.  

The early age of computer gaming. It was the wild west.

Now the latest I've read, there's this evil/disgusting concept of "internet sovereignty". Puters and webs are gradually coming to the main stage. And more and more regulated too.

And your previous post did not refer to what game you were talking about. And even if I somehow did allude to the understanding that you were talking about another game, I understand it's mostly dead so there's not much point unless... theme of the day is nostalgia.

And I'm missing some of the drama, negativity, and ego in this thread, do we need to kick it up a notch?

Well you did jump in on the 4th page... Last time I was here was something like 9 months ago, so I kinda forgot how it was. Couple of pages later I remembered, so fine by me~ Although atm it seems the CMFB subforum is where it's at!

Edited by Skwabie
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I spoke with Charles about the issue of the KT's mantlet strength.

- The assumption that mantlets are laid over the turret front, thus resulting in an armor thickness of "mantlet+turret" is, in many cases, mistaken. Instead (in this case for the KT at least, I won't pretend to speak for all vehicles everywhere) there is a cutout in the turret front where the mantlet is. In the King Tiger case this is born out by another review of our data. HOWEVER, there is a small area where the edge of the turret cutout edge and mantlet edge overlap, and if a shell hit that border area, it COULD have to penetrate both mantlet and turret.

- Reviewing our data of the King Tiger's Henschel turret mantlet, we found the following:

  • Our current arrange of how the front turret armor and mantlet overlap is correct, as described in the front paragraph.
  • However, upon review we now believe that some of the data we used (from Jentz) to determine the King Tiger's mantlet thickness and slope is probably not entirely accurate.
  • The mantlet appears to vary more in thickness and curvature than our modelling currently depicts, which is probably understating the real-world strength of the King Tiger mantlet. And this is the effect being noticed by people.
  • Charles is going to re-calculate his measurements from the King Tiger blueprints and strengthen the mantlet accordingly.
Edited by ChrisND
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I spoke with Charles about the issue of the KT's mantlet strength.

- The assumption that mantlets are laid over the turret front, thus resulting in an armor thickness of "mantlet+turret" is, in many cases, mistaken. Instead (in this case for the KT at least, I won't pretend to speak for all vehicles everywhere) there is a cutout in the turret front where the mantlet is. In the King Tiger case this is born out by another review of our data. HOWEVER, there is a small area where the edge of the turret cutout edge and mantlet edge overlap, and if a shell hit that border area, it COULD have to penetrate both mantlet and turret.

- Reviewing our data of the King Tiger's Henschel turret mantlet, we found the following:

  • Our current arrange of how the front turret armor and mantlet overlap is correct, as described in the front paragraph.
  • However, upon review we now believe that some of the data we used (from Jentz) to determine the King Tiger's mantlet thickness and slope is probably not entirely accurate.
  • The mantlet appears to vary more in thickness and curvature than our modelling currently depicts, which is probably understating the real-world strength of the King Tiger mantlet. And this is the effect being noticed by people.
  • Charles is going to re-calculate his measurements from the King Tiger blueprints and strengthen the mantlet accordingly.

The mantlet thickness is indeed problematic, an 85mm shell can go through the "dish" portion (wasn't APCR, checked in scen author mode). But more importantly the dish portion is where the turret and mantlet overlap, and no WW2 era shell should be able to go through it. And the real problem here should not be data -- even if the "dish" thickness is only mistakenly set at 10mm, penetrations by 85mm shouldn't have happened. But rather it should be damage engine, does the engine take into account both layers of armor into account.

I have ran a few tests with sherman 76s where mantlet and turret front also overlap. The result doesn't look correct. Every 75L/48 shell from PzIVs penetrated from 1000m. If you guys have the means, it would help by setting up a test tank, where a turret mantlet covers the entire front section of a tank, with the mantlet set very thin and turret/hull front set extremely thick, and see what happens when a shell hits. If the game engine is bugged, all hits would be penetrations, and vice versa.

Thanks for taking a look ChrisND.

 

And case in point, where exactly is the cutout? There is that "trunion"(?) that looks like ears on the 2D drawings, but is extremely small, and while not as thick, it is sloped. There's no at all other opening. Cutout?

th_Capture_418_zpsqddnlvly.jpg

th_Capture_419_zpsy2wqwful.jpg

Edited by Skwabie
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And your previous post did not refer to what game you were talking about. And even if I somehow did allude to the understanding that you were talking about another game, I understand it's mostly dead so there's not much point unless... theme of the day is nostalgia.

John's comments, which I was responding about, were clearly about the Panzer Campaigns games.  While these games are really old (15 years?) they are far from dead and so the issue is hardly only relevant for nostalgia. Moreover the issue is relevant for any wargame that can be changed without the other side agreeing or being aware of it.

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I think this thread is an excellent teaching moment about why we do not allow end users to change armor or other values on their own.  The simple reason is that it eliminates a "vetting process".  Someone can put their own interpretation of facts into a model and put it out there for people to use and not describe or defend methodology or reasoning for the changes made.  Some people make horrible mistakes and a lack of vetting means everybody has to suffer consequences for harmful decisions of a few people.  Worse, it's not unusual for people who believe they have a superior understanding of the facts to find all kinds of things "wrong" with many different models, so they change a bunch and package them together without specific comments about any one particular change.  Because this won't be limited to a single person doing this behavior, there will inevitably be lots and lots of versions floating around out there.  Worse still, once the mods are released they tend to get mixed and recombined without a strong tie to who did what on any one model or why.  Worse and worse still, often the people making these recombined packages of mods make their own tweaks to the tweaks and either don't document them or don't explain/defend them.

For a game that is specifically aimed at accountability to the facts, what I just described is pretty much the worst thing that could ever happen to Combat Mission.  Let me repeat... opening up modification to any random end user's whim is the most irresponsible and self destructive decision we could ever make for Combat Mission as a long lived and respected game system. 

Which is why Combat Mission will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER happen.  And for those of you who don't understand why, please entertain the thought that is the problem right there in a nutshell :D

The better, MUCH better, way to go about it is seen in this and many other threads.  Someone finds what he believes to be a problem, he makes a case for it, others weigh in, a debate occurs, new facts/perspectives are introduced, the debate refines and until resolution.  At which point the developer (in this case us) implements a fix to address the actual problem so that all customers get the correct fix to the correct problem.  The one downside of this is the developer has to be willing and interested to make such fixes.  Since we have a long history of being both willing and interested in getting things right, this method works fine for Combat Mission.  Not so much for others :D

More and more frequently such debates have been resolved to show a major flaw in the original position and therefore no changes are needed.  That's because the game system and the data within has had a chance to be pounded on by thousands of people over many years.  Obvious problems have been long since discovered.  But occasionally something does happen which causes us to implement a change or at least reexamine what we're doing.  This is an example of that.

Having said that, this case also shows something that is fairly frequent.  The Skwabie did apparently find something that needs attention, but the diagnosis was mostly flawed.  Meaning, he made some good observations that appear to have merit, however his original position was based on some flawed understandings of both the real life tank and how Combat Mission works.  Which is OK because we understand how the game works and therefore if someone can show us an end result that doesn't make sense we have the knowledge necessary to trace where the problem comes from.  There's no need for end user forensics to be accurate.

Steve

 

Edited by Battlefront.com
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I have ran a few tests with sherman 76s where mantlet and turret front also overlap. The result doesn't look correct. Every 75L/48 shell from PzIVs penetrated from 1000m.

Probably correct.

In reality, the Sherman mantlet (75mm gun) was curved, and consisted of two thicknesses, with an 51mm cast outer rotor shield spaced over an 89mm cast inner gun shield. While it looks like 140mm total on paper, the combo is spaced, cast, quality deficient and has lots of holes and edge effects.

Some time ago we did a detailed analysis of the expected resistance from the Sherman mantlet for the 75mm gun and found that while the average resistance was about 89mm of good quality rolled armor, a wide range of results applied to individual hits depending upon where they landed and the impact angle (mantlet is curved):

8% hit 45mm effective

6% hit 65mm effective

22% hit 75mm

25% hit 85mm

18% hit 95mm

6% hit 105mm

4% hit 115mm

3% hit 125mm

4% hit 145mm

1% hit 155mm

3% hit 165mm

 

Above figures consider impact angle, cast deficiency to rolled armor, armor quality, edge effects, etc.

 

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I think this thread is an excellent teaching moment about why we do not allow end users to change armor or other values on their own.  The simple reason is that it eliminates a "vetting process".  Someone can put their own interpretation of facts into a model and put it out there for people to use and not describe or defend methodology or reasoning for the changes made.  Worse, it's not unusual for people who believe they have a superior understanding of the facts to find all kinds of things "wrong" with many different models, so they change a bunch and package them together without specific comments about any one particular change.  Because this won't be limited to a single person doing this behavior, there will inevitably be lots and lots of versions floating around out there.  Worse still, once the mods are released they tend to get mixed and recombined without a necessarily strong tie to where any one model came from or why.  Worse and worse still, often the people making these recombined packages of mods make their own tweaks to the tweaks and either don't document them or don't explain/defend them.

For a game that is specifically aimed at accountability to the facts, what I just described is pretty much the worst thing that could ever happen to Combat Mission.  Let me repeat... opening up modification to any random end user's whim is the most irresponsible and self destructive decision we could ever make for Combat Mission as a long lived and respected game system. 

Which is why Combat Mission will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER happen.  And for those of you who don't understand why, please entertain the thought that is the problem right there in a nutshell :D

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/91523-battlefront-the-game/?page=2#comment-1188202

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/98774-game-development-becomes-slower-each-lustrum/#comment-1294687

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/92283-i-wonder/#comment-1197909

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/72118-fan-made-points-system/?page=3#comment-1147257

And there're many more like that.

Do BF ever consider making the game database more transparent to end users? Where players wouldn't be able to change them, but just be able to see them? ...Never mind. I have read many like that as well!

 

The better, MUCH better, way to go about it is seen in this and many other threads.  Someone finds what he believes to be a problem, he makes a case for it, others weigh in, a debate occurs, new facts/perspectives are introduced, the debate refines and until resolution.  At which point the developer (in this case us) implements a fix to address the actual problem so that all customers get the correct fix to the correct problem.  The one downside of this is the developer has to be willing and interested to make such fixes.  Since we have a long history of being both willing and interested in getting things right, this method works fine for Combat Mission.  Not so much for others :D

More and more frequently such debates have been resolved to show a major flaw in the original position and therefore no changes are needed.  That's because the game system and the data within has had a chance to be pounded on by thousands of people over many years.  Obvious problems have been long since discovered.  But occasionally something does happen which causes us to implement a change or at least reexamine what we're doing.  This is an example of that.

Having said that, this case also shows something that is fairly frequent.  The Skwabie did apparently find something that needs attention, but the diagnosis was mostly flawed.  Meaning, he made some good observations that appear to have merit, however his original position was based on some flawed understandings of both the real life tank and how Combat Mission works.  Which is OK because we understand how the game works and therefore if someone can show us an end result that doesn't make sense we have the knowledge necessary to trace where the problem comes from.  There's no need for end user forensics to be accurate.

Steve

 


I have yet to be pointed out where my understanding is flawed. ChrisND has said CM's armor layout is partially correct, but I am disputing it by 1. the provisioned fix is not correct; 2. even the layout is correct, i.e. the data is correct, the engine still has issues. This is not an issue of whose opinion matters but simply facts, so if facts say otherwise, what I understand wouldn't matter.

The reason that you get the "flawed" understanding is that I modded the game, put up links for it and it upsets the HvH players. So the major part of the thread is spent on that.

The problem with CM bug fixing is relied on grass root / crowd sourcing. This isn't very effective. Players are not beta testers. The public forum is not a dedicated beta-testing forum. You can have bugs lurking and nobody's the wiser. And the next time someone opens up a "debate" it'll be some other non-related issues that the debate side tracks into. And usually multiplayer/HvH is the worst form for bug hunting. And so a bug can exist for years before someone finally notices it, or during when new features are added. If this armor thing is indeed a bug, I wager it has been since CMSF/CMBN, which is 4 or 8 years.

Edited by Skwabie
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I think this thread is an excellent teaching moment about why we do not allow end users to change armor or other values on their own. 

 

Not sure if you read the whole thread Steve, but the really big problem here is that an end user has shown he is able to change armor values in game, in an indirect and very messy way, but that nonetheless undermines user confidence in the data integrity of the game in MP.

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Not sure if you read the whole thread Steve, but the really big problem here is that an end user has shown he is able to change armor values in game, in an indirect and very messy way, but that nonetheless undermines user confidence in the data integrity of the game in MP.

Oh here we go again.

Edited by Skwabie
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I think it's a pity that this thread has gone from finding and reporting a potential bug in the game to discussing cheating in multiplayer games. I'm just playing single player, and if I ever go up against a human opponent I will find someone I can trust to not cheat. So please let us just discuss the issue Skwabie brought up with the armour. I still feel I haven't seen his arguments properly responded to. 

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OK, Ninja'd. You could have weighed in sooner, Vanir. Do you have a take/source on the Kingtiger mantlet scheme?

Sooner? My first post was on page 2 :blink: It's not as if I'm getting paid to post here.

As for my opinion on the KT mantlet, I think your take on it is generally correct and I have said so internally to Charles weeks ago (but my opinion carries little weight). Actual pictures of the KT turret with the mantlet removed are damn hard to find and in fact the only one I have seen is of the KT the Soviets shot to pieces at their Kubinka test grounds.

O7oiMT.jpg

Soviet diagram from that same test:

O3raNp.jpg

The "cutout" does not quite match up with the flattened portion of the mantlet because it is actually oval but I think that most of flat part of the mantlet is backed by armor. Chris's post says the game already models this to some degree (which was news to me).

 

W20I2t.jpg

Edited by Vanir Ausf B
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And there're many more like that. 

Yup!  We are, if nothing else, consistent :D  While it is true that we do change our minds over time, it is also true that we only do that if there's a reason to.  And that means something has to change, which isn't the case regarding the downsides of opening up the game.

 Do BF ever consider making the game database more transparent to end users? Where players wouldn't be able to change them, but just be able to see them? ...Never mind. I have read many like that as well!

Well, the truth is we do want there to be more data made available for those who want to look at it.  But that takes development effort and that comes at the expense of other things.  Very few customers are interested in the nitty gritty data to that degree.

I have yet to be pointed out where my understanding is flawed. ChrisND has said CM's armor layout is partially correct, but I am disputing it by 1. the provisioned fix is not correct; 2. even the layout is correct, i.e. the data is correct, the engine still has issues. This is not an issue of whose opinion matters but simply facts, so if facts say otherwise, what I understand wouldn't matter.

 The problem is that your original graphic and explanation did not take into consideration there is (effectively) a big hole behind the mantlet, which radically changes things.  There is a very small amount of overlap which CM doesn't simulate, however it is so small that statistically it isn't likely to make any difference even if it were explicitly simulated.

Now, where there is a problem is that Jenz' data was too uniform.  It appears it was an over simplified average so that it could fit neatly into charts/tables.  Now that Charles has looked at it he thinks that when taking surface area into consideration this average is too low.  Meaning, while Jenz' number might be mostly correct for some situations, for too many it is an underestimation.  And since the chances of a penetration have a lot to do with surface area (i.e. the % chance of hitting a particular spot goes up the larger the area is) this seems to be the root cause of the problem being discussed in this thread.

The reason that you get the "flawed" understanding is that I modded the game, put up links for it and it upsets the HvH players. So the major part of the thread is spent on that.

The problem with CM bug fixing is relied on grass root / crowd sourcing. This isn't very effective. Players are not beta testers. The public forum is not a dedicated beta-testing forum. You can have bugs lurking and nobody's the wiser. And the next time someone opens up a "debate" it'll be some other non-related issues that the debate side tracks into. And usually multiplayer/HvH is the worst form for bug hunting. And so a bug can exist for years before someone finally notices it, or during when new features are added. If this armor thing is indeed a bug, I wager it has been since CMSF/CMBN, which is 4 or 8 years.

Well, this is where you are off the mark.  There is no "bug" per se.  This is a data "error" specific to the King Tiger with the Henschel turret.  There might be similar "errors" made in other instances, but perhaps not.  Or at least not in any way that would make a practical difference.  For example, an armor error on an Italian AFV mantlet isn't likely going to matter much since doubling up toilette paper doesn't really change the equation much :)

It is also incorrect to say that we rely upon "crowd sourcing" to find bugs.  That would imply that we don't really take much care to fix anything prior to release.  Which is, to say the least, a rather laughable suggestion since our games would likely be unplayable if that were the case.  However, no system is perfect.  Some things really do require thousands of people spending tons of time with a game before patterns are noticed.  That's just the way it goes.  The only alternative is for us to either never release a game because we are never sure if it is bug free or we simply never fix anything that customers find wrong after release.  Personally, I don't think you guys would like these alternatives, so how about we stick to the way we've been doing this since the beginning?  I think it works pretty darned well.

Not sure if you read the whole thread Steve, but the really big problem here is that an end user has shown he is able to change armor values in game, in an indirect and very messy way, but that nonetheless undermines user confidence in the data integrity of the game in MP.

Yup, we were recently made aware of this (sometime this year). It just goes to show that given enough time someone will probably figure a way around strict controls.  We have discussed how to get rid of this issue, but have not done so.  Yet ;)

I think it's a pity that this thread has gone from finding and reporting a potential bug in the game to discussing cheating in multiplayer games. I'm just playing single player, and if I ever go up against a human opponent I will find someone I can trust to not cheat. So please let us just discuss the issue Skwabie brought up with the armour. I still feel I haven't seen his arguments properly responded to. 

It's nearly impossible to discuss this sort of thing without someone (or lots of someone) clamoring for the ability to edit data themselves.  And that leads to an inevitable counter argument.  As long as it doesn't submerge the specific case that started that semi-related discussion then there's no problem.  Certainly it hasn't harmed the King Tiger armor discussion.

Steve

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But Skwabie said he found a way to disable mantlet armour so only the turret armour would be a factor. Do I understand you right Steve if you're saying he was wrong about being able to remove that armour from the equation? Actually his test didn't work like he thought it did? Because it didn't seem from his test that there was a hole behind the mantlet. 

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Thanks, BF

And to those that made BF aware of this issue.

Once again I am impressed with Steve's replies and at least know exactly where they as a company stand and that in this instance. It sounds like a correction of some type will be made.

I also can see your point as to why not allow user end changes.

 

 

 

 

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Vanir,

I actually find that soviet picture adding to confusement. The trunion has what looks like a ring and that seemed taken off by the soviets. So it makes the opening seem larger than it is.

Battlefront:

So, you are basically saying Jenz is incorrect and Vanir is incorrect but CM's version is right?! What sources are Charles working off of? I just wonder and hope it's not TLAR. Ofc, it is your game and your "rules". But I happen to not like them. And because of the "never, ever, ever...", I will not be happy by playing your game.

I was happier however by using my makeshift mod. This is the reason I came up with it in the first place. I generally don't like your rules on ingame data so even if a fix was attempted, I expected this would happen. Although tbh I have moved back to flight sims a week ago, time and again I play a few CM rounds but it doesn't seem to stick. Will be around for more saliva spewing though.

Laterzzzzzz.

Edited by Skwabie
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