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AT gun firing back despite full suppression. Intended?


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In a PBEM game I noticed my AT gun being fully suppressed and "pinned", yet turning the gun around and firing accurately at the enemy AFV, taking it out. Is that the way it's supposed to be? Are AT guns supposed to be impossible to suppress?

Gun: US 57mm, in a light wood tile with a single pine tree.

Crew: regular, +0 soft factors (but -2 leadership). Rattled.

Distance: 431m

 

Edited by Bulletpoint
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As far as I know, AT guns are treated a bit special by the game. Currently it is not possible for a crew to "bail out" of their gun when under fire and then remount it at a later time. To counter this disadvantage, the crews are given a slight bonus to resisting suppression, keeping them active and fighting longer than you would normally think. 

In the case of your battle, had your AT crew suffered any casualties yet? Other than his Flakvierling, was anything else firing at your crew? If the answer to both those questions is no, then it seems perfectly reasonable to me that your crew would return fire and knock out the threat facing them.

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3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

In a PBEM game I noticed my AT gun being fully suppressed and "pinned", yet turning the gun around and firing accurately at the enemy AFV, taking it out. Is that the way it's supposed to be? Are AT guns supposed to be impossible to suppress?

Gun: US 57mm, in a light wood tile with a single pine tree.

Crew: regular, +0 soft factors (but -2 leadership). Rattled.

Distance: 431m

 

my bet is on the -2 leader. Regular crew experience yet lets them perform sufficiently well.

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3 hours ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

In the case of your battle, had your AT crew suffered any casualties yet? Other than his Flakvierling, was anything else firing at your crew? If the answer to both those questions is no, then it seems perfectly reasonable to me that your crew would return fire and knock out the threat facing them.

Yes, they had just taken casualties from a StuG. Then the Vierling took over and started blasting their position. The gun crew then 'woke up' from suppression, turned the gun around and fired.

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58 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Please note that it's a minus 2 leader. The real leader (+0) was killed about 15 seconds earlier.

Ok that´s new information. -2 means minus 2, or what do i´m getting wrong here? :huh: Anyway, a -2 leader is always bad, but can be compensated for with better experience unit stat oftentimes.

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6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

If I understood you right, you said that the minus 2 leader made the gun perform better - shoot back despite being fully suppressed?

ok. Actually the other way round. A -2 leader CAN influence a units performance in various BAD ways, but it likely doesn´t make a regular experience unit behaving like greens or lower in any way.  If a possible die roll from the -2 leader leads to delayed enemy spotting, target acquiring or some drop of morale maybe (this f...d up newbie leader does us no good!), the units experience rating still likely lets them perform sufficiently well. That´s what I meant. But off course this is just from watching and my own interpretations on leader stats. What @Heirloom_Tomato said further above also makes totally sense to me. So it might be a combo of both, or additional factors we don´t know about.

Edited by RockinHarry
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Based on the very limited details you have posted here is what I think happened in your battle; your AT gun spots an enemy StuG and they determine firing at the StuG is a bad idea. I am going to assume a frontal shot with a 57mm AT gun has a low chance of penetration, so better to stay still and make every effort to appear nonthreatening and keep out of harms way. Unfortunately for them, the StuG spots them and fires, killing the team leader and another crew man. Thankfully the StuG finds a new target to aim at and leaves the rest of your crew alone. You don't state the StuG moved away but only that it stopped firing on the AT gun, an important point to keep in mind. Now, a Flakvierling opens fire and begins to send rounds at the AT crew. Remember they are hard wired to stand their ground and stick to their guns because once they run away, there is no coming back. You state in your first post the crew is rattled and not pinned so their only hope for things to not get any worse is to take out the threat facing them. A regular leader would probably say the StuG is still right there, if we open fire, we are dead so keep your heads down boys. But -2 Stevie Screwup forgets all about the StuG, he knows his 57 mm can one hit KO a Flakvierling and if he knocks it out, the suppression he is facing currently goes away. Again, remembering he is hard wired to stick to his gun and not run away, he makes the only right choice in his mind which is to turn and fire at the Flakvierling, attempting to knock it out and making his suppression go away.  Stevie doesn't think ahead to the next turn and what will happen to him when the StuG opens fire again, nope his -2 means he can only think about the here and now and so he makes his decision. As a regular "skills" crew man he has been under fire before, if only briefly, and the adrenaline rush of coming under fire once again and the desire for revenge for his fallen teammates makes him forget all about getting hit himself and focus only on knocking out the threat. It might be the wrong choice in the long run but right here, right now, it is all -2 Stevie can focus on and it works out for him. In his mind it is the right decision because the suppressing fire has been eliminated and for now, he is safe.

That is my take on what happened. You seem to think the outcome should have been different. What do you think should have happened and what evidence do you have to support your reasoning?

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45 minutes ago, Heirloom_Tomato said:

Based on the very limited details you have posted here is what I think happened in your battle; your AT gun spots an enemy StuG and they determine firing at the StuG is a bad idea. I am going to assume a frontal shot with a 57mm AT gun has a low chance of penetration, so better to stay still and make every effort to appear nonthreatening and keep out of harms way. Unfortunately for them, the StuG spots them and fires, killing the team leader and another crew man. Thankfully the StuG finds a new target to aim at and leaves the rest of your crew alone. You don't state the StuG moved away but only that it stopped firing on the AT gun, an important point to keep in mind. Now, a Flakvierling opens fire and begins to send rounds at the AT crew. Remember they are hard wired to stand their ground and stick to their guns because once they run away, there is no coming back. You state in your first post the crew is rattled and not pinned so their only hope for things to not get any worse is to take out the threat facing them. A regular leader would probably say the StuG is still right there, if we open fire, we are dead so keep your heads down boys. But -2 Stevie Screwup forgets all about the StuG, he knows his 57 mm can one hit KO a Flakvierling and if he knocks it out, the suppression he is facing currently goes away. Again, remembering he is hard wired to stick to his gun and not run away, he makes the only right choice in his mind which is to turn and fire at the Flakvierling, attempting to knock it out and making his suppression go away.  Stevie doesn't think ahead to the next turn and what will happen to him when the StuG opens fire again, nope his -2 means he can only think about the here and now and so he makes his decision. As a regular "skills" crew man he has been under fire before, if only briefly, and the adrenaline rush of coming under fire once again and the desire for revenge for his fallen teammates makes him forget all about getting hit himself and focus only on knocking out the threat. It might be the wrong choice in the long run but right here, right now, it is all -2 Stevie can focus on and it works out for him. In his mind it is the right decision because the suppressing fire has been eliminated and for now, he is safe.

That is my take on what happened. You seem to think the outcome should have been different. What do you think should have happened and what evidence do you have to support your reasoning?

In short, I'm just asking: should a fully suppressed and pinned and rattled AT gun be able to spot and engage targets?

if yes, what's the point of suppression?

 

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Its one of those situations where, show me that it happens all the time before I get worked up about it. If you can show it happening at some type of unusual rate, then its something to worry about.

One time is , wow that was cool - move on.

I had a lone survivor on a heavy machine gun, pinned, suppressed and being fired on, manage to return fire and kill at least 30 assaulting troops on his location. The bad part of all that was I was the assaulting side of the situation.

Should it of happened per game mechanics. NO

but it did, it was one of those moments where the game did a unusual thing. (it was a medal of honor moment) it was pretty cool actually.

Has the game ever done it again in the years that have followed, nothing even close.

Move on and drop it unless this is a reoccurring problem.

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Just had a search through CM game manual PDFs for 'rattle' &  'rattled' for any official definition of what's going on but oddly ennough it isn't covered.

'Pinned' is a temporary status - so it can recover during a turn .  Also as mentioned with guns BF ties the crew to a gun and in prevents them along with the gun from moving away from the source of their woe  - but it seems not to prevent them operating the gun in do or die self defence. 

Seems you've had a Adam Wakenshaw VC moment -  give em a medal.

Edited by Wicky
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

There's a fair chunk of randomness in CM, so you can produce unexpected results.

I was testing the effects of C2 on suppression, with two identical Syrian squads a couple of hundred metres apart on ridge lines, one of which was in C2 to a platoon leader. The results were encouraging - both squads suppressed each other fairly symmetrically, but one recovered a lot faster, winning the overall firefight.

...except for one test, where the out-of C2 squad was mostly dead or cowering, except for one chap with delusions of grandeur. That soldier managed to kill pretty much the entire enemy squad by himself, and survived without a scratch.

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2 hours ago, domfluff said:

There's a fair chunk of randomness in CM, so you can produce unexpected results.

I was testing the effects of C2 on suppression, with two identical Syrian squads a couple of hundred metres apart on ridge lines, one of which was in C2 to a platoon leader. The results were encouraging - both squads suppressed each other fairly symmetrically, but one recovered a lot faster, winning the overall firefight.

...except for one test, where the out-of C2 squad was mostly dead or cowering, except for one chap with delusions of grandeur. That soldier managed to kill pretty much the entire enemy squad by himself, and survived without a scratch.

personally, that is what makes the game fun, for me anyway. There is just enough unpredictability that one cannot guarantee a move or a event. the game will throw in unplanned results as to what your hopes are for outcomes. It really does mimic life in a artificial way.

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Randomness is often expressed as something unwanted in strategy games, but I'm usually of the opinion that this is completely wrong - randomness done properly can add realism and depth, whether this is a die roll, card draw or RNG.

My usual example is this: a real-world platoon leader will receive their orders, and have trained with battle drills and so forth to carry out their mission. They can make long-term plans, with multiple objectives. Nevertheless, in practice they'll crest a hill and suddenly everything will go to hell - they'll frequently need to frantically *remake* those long-term plans in the face of the unexpected (hidden MGs, inaccurate maps, minefields, indirect fire, a horde of angry sheep)

So, I think randomness adds realism and difficulty to the whole thing, rather than being a negative. It can cause frustration ("why can that suppressed AT gun kill my Panther"), but that's no different from reality really.

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I bet there is a bigger chunk of randomness in real life than in any wargames.  Randomness is a must.  Almost every award for gallantry in combat would be considered game-breaking in a game at CM's level of detail.  Random not only adds flavor, but a significant amount of realism.

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  • 8 months later...
On 4/8/2019 at 6:07 PM, Heirloom_Tomato said:

Currently it is not possible for a crew to "bail out" of their gun when under fire and then remount it at a later time.

What exactly is the reason for this limitation to the AT-gun crews? It would have been good if AT-crew were able to leave their gun if getting shot at and then when the threat is gone, and if the gun still is intact, they could man the gun again.

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3 hours ago, BornGinger said:

What exactly is the reason for this limitation to the AT-gun crews?

Not so much a reason as a practical limitation of the game. There are two reasons for a crew to flee their gun. One is to take cover near by and return when the shelling stops and the other is if they have to withdraw and cannot take the gun. For the second case they would disable the gun. BFC implemented case 2 but not case 1 and instead you can place foxholes under the gun to give the crew some protection. It's not ideal but it was the prioritization decision that they made. I have no idea if they ever seriously considered revisiting this or not. There are some underlying engine things that make AT guns - shall we say - unique / challenging. My impression is that to do this is a fairly large amount of work - certainly more than we think - and they have decided to not do it.

 

3 hours ago, BornGinger said:

It would have been good if AT-crew were able to leave their gun if getting shot at and then when the threat is gone, and if the gun still is intact, they could man the gun again.

It is an often asked for feature and I agree. It would be nice.

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On 1/13/2020 at 6:14 PM, IanL said:

BFC implemented case 2 but not case 1 and instead you can place foxholes under the gun to give the crew some protection. It's not ideal but it was the prioritization decision that they made.

So we have to be so called "gamey" to protect the AT-gun crew? And does that method work in a good way?

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1 hour ago, BornGinger said:

So we have to be so called "gamey" to protect the AT-gun crew? And does that method work in a good way?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean is gamey. Yes, foxholes help protect the crew. Before someone else adds their 2c (who am I kidding they will anyway :-) yes there are people who don't like how foxholes protect soldiers. A debate has been ongoing about how effective foxholes are / should be. The bottom line though is soldiers in foxholes are better protected than those that are not. That goes for AT-gun crews as well.

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