81mm mortar penetration?

[Glubokii Boy]

Units in buildings will recieve some kind of bonus i'm sure...But like in  your example...Does the gameengine take into account that there is a building between the explotion and the troops...

or does only the ground-tile under the troops count when it comes to calculating what type of protection they will recieve from an explotion some distance away ?

Do the shrapnell actually hit the building inbetween and lose some 'value'...?

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Fragmentation modelling doesn't deal with blast effects, and blast can easily cause things like slates to fall off roofs, even on the far side of the building! 

[Bulletpoint]

10 minutes ago, RepsolCBR said:

Maybe the  question should be...How high an impact should random, dice rolls have ? could it be tweaked somewhat ? 

I personally prefer as little random chance as possible, but it's always a trade off between realism and the burden placed on the computer (and on the programmer). 90 pct of the time, the current HE model produces quite believable results, I find.

10 minutes ago, RepsolCBR said:

I wounder...does buildings block fragmentation at all ? is it a simple modifier that could be increased ? 

Buildings definitely provide good protection against artillery - on average. It's just that the effects of individual shells often seem wonky.

Edited July 7, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

Fragmentation modelling doesn't deal with blast effects, and blast can easily cause things like slates to fall off roofs, even on the far side of the building! 

And the Germans were known for sending old men to the front lines.. it cannot be ruled out that some of them spontaneously died from old age while under bombardment.

[Bulletpoint]

5 minutes ago, RepsolCBR said:

Units in buildings will recieve some kind of bonus i'm sure...But like in  your example...Does the gameengine take into account that there is a building between the explotion and the troops...

or does only the ground-tile under the troops count when it comes to calculating what type of protection they will recieve from an explotion some distance away ?

Do the shrapnell actually hit the building inbetween and lose some 'value'...?

 

In my example, I meant that the casualties were inside the building, but on the far side of the building compared to the impact site.

I think buildings always block explosion damage if the troops are in the open and there's a building located between them and the explosion. Just like LOS can never go through a building in this game, no matter if walls on both sides are blown out.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

IIRC @HerrTom did some calculations for accurate fragmentation modelling.....From my recollection of his comments, you would probably notice something of a performance hit were this to actually be implemented in the game. 

[Bulletpoint]

4 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

IIRC @HerrTom did some calculations for accurate fragmentation modelling.....From my recollection of his comments, you would probably notice something of a performance hit were this to actually be implemented in the game. 

Yep, that's what I meant by

11 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

I personally prefer as little random chance as possible, but it's always a trade off between realism and the burden placed on the computer (and on the programmer).

[RockinHarry]

Personally I don´t mind about having randomness in the game which in fact adds bits of "spice" to the battles. What disturbs me is that BFC again leaves its cutomers on multi pages long threads with just their guessworks. I´d really like to (and enjoy) playing the game again, instead of this. Yet I remain with 2" mortars and other roughly hand grenade size thingies shouldn´t do what I reported they do (way too oftenly). So the WTF keeps going on.....

Edited July 7, 2019 by RockinHarry

[A Canadian Cat]

I must admit to being confused. What do you guys want? What is really the problem? A large part of threads like this seem to be based around a story of something happening and the a long thread of speculation and complaints. The majority of the time no reliable evidence is shown that the event is common in any way. Heck half the time I'm not convinced it even did happen for the reasons people give.

Am I reading these posts correctly? Do you want BFC to officially comment on why a particular event happened? Do you want a detailed explanation of how the inner workings are calculating this stuff. Do you think there should be a fix to something? 

And more importantly how is our inability to grok the inner workings of the game in any way a road block to enjoying it?

We should go play the game - you guys and me. Or investigate actual reportable bugs - me

[A Canadian Cat]

Just now, IanL said:

Am I reading these posts correctly? Do you want BFC to officially comment on why a particular event happened?

I cannot find an actual post from Steve but I thought he has said in the past the he doesn't want everything from the inner workings to be public. We players should learn how to play the game like we do life by experience.

Just now, IanL said:

Do you want a detailed explanation of how the inner workings are calculating this stuff.

See above. I'll just add I'm not sure that would be a valuable thing for Steve to do. I'd rather he work on the design stuff he is currently doing.

Just now, IanL said:

Do you think there should be a fix to something? 

Everyone here knows how to get something fixed. Share saves. Reproduction odd happenings and conduce research to show what we see is incorrect. Many of us already do that officially and unofficially.

Just now, IanL said:

And more importantly how is our inability to grok the inner workings of the game in any way a road block to enjoying it?

This is the biggest mystery. It's mind boggling actually. I love playing this game and I don't need to know why evey little thing happens. In fact I think that would detract from some of the fun.

Go play.

[Bud Backer]

I end up in similar conversations with a close friend with whom I play all of these games. He wants to know exactly how to explain every result that he did not anticipate. It can become frustrating, because there seems to be an assumption made that if the result is not what is expected that it is a bug or flaw in the game.

By no means am I saying that the unexpected cannot be a bug. But it is not automatically one either. I like that nine times out of ten (for the sake of argument) the results are within the realm of what seems normal. What seems like a sure shot misses, but we accept ( well most of us do) that hitting one's target is not guaranteed. 

When things go weird, like a partial penetration that somehow wrecked my opponent’s tank, is not something I overanalyze. Is it happening a lot? Is it impossible within the laws of physics? Could human behaviour never result in what happens?

If the answer to that is all “no” then I may grumble that I was unlucky, but I move on. I don’t need a guide to justify everything that happens in the game. Nor do I expect a chess-like sureness of what is and isn’t possible. 

I will repeat, I am not dismissing bug reports. But just because something happens that one doesn’t have a user-manual explanation for is not a cause for a crisis of confidence that the game works by and large as intended. 

 

[Bulletpoint]

19 hours ago, Bud Backer said:

But just because something happens that one doesn’t have a user-manual explanation for is not a cause for a crisis of confidence that the game works by and large as intended. 

I think this is a bit of a strawman argument. Because it's not a case of either the game is perfect or it's useless.

While I don't know your friend, I haven't seen anybody on this forum claiming the game is not working by and large as intended. OK, maybe there was one guy saying the patch made the game "unplayable", which is obviously not true. But most people are quite reasonable, so let's give them some credit. A lot of the "bugs" that get reported are not bugs at all, but people are usually civil about finding out they were wrong, and there's no harm done in a bit of discussion.

However, while there are some people who will tend to complain, there are also people here who will go to great lengths to explain away pretty obvious shortcomings of the game engine by any means possible. As if pointing out that there are limits to what the game simulates is a kind of threat to their beloved game system.

I think neither group really contributes much to the development and improvement of the game engine.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Thewood1]

I would like to point out that while there is no direct threat to any game from bug reporting, there are people who spend more time looking for and reporting bugs than playing the game.  Those people tend to suck resources away from proper development by having devs and support chasing things around.  While I think it helps to report stuff that is obvious and impacts game play, there are people that go way too far and people that think their bug is the most important bug in the world and if its not fixed they will continue hounding on the forums.

This is true for a number of games, not just CM.  There are just people that can't play a game the normal way if they decide there is a bug.  Read some of Elvis's posts responses in the patch thread about obsessing over stuff that isn't repeatable except in very specific combination of events.  Do you really want Charles to have to set aside the work he is doing to try and fix something that is reproducible in only 1-2 scenarios at very specific times?  As annoying as the beta brigade can be at times, they serve a purpose of filtering out what the talent at BFC has to focus on.

Edited July 9, 2019 by Thewood1

[PIATpunk]

really?  The thread you're probably referring to now has a repeatable example of the bug, using Elvis's supplied scenario.

Edited July 9, 2019 by PIATpunk
added really?

[Bud Backer]

Bulletpoint, even if I said what you claim, that is not a strawman argument. Look it up.

However, I did not say that the game is perfect. You chose to make it binary, not me. If you’re going to practice creative interpretation of what I write, we cannot have a sensible discussion because our frames of reference are completely separate. 

What I did say, and the only thing I said, is that I don’t need to know every single detail of how the game works to enjoy it. That things can surprise me and solely on the basis of them being a surprise does not make the game “broken” or “buggy” as more than one person has attempted to posit. 

Please don’t put words in my mouth, it’s not going to go well. 

 

Edited July 9, 2019 by Bud Backer
Typos, egads!

[A Canadian Cat]

3 hours ago, PIATpunk said:

really?  The thread you're probably referring to now has a repeatable example of the bug, using Elvis's supplied scenario.

Working on refining and sorting out a bug is not what @Thewood1 is talking about. There are bugs in the game. Players report them and testers try to narrow things down to get them fixed. The case of the running the wrong way from fire in the bocage is a bug. At not time did anyone say different. They said we were having trouble nailing it down so it could get fixed - very different.

I believe that @Thewood1 is referring to players that report bugs that aren't bugs and cause a lot of churn. Or find actual bug or perceived bug and declare the game irretrievably broken. Or who demand a detailed explanation of how some aspect of the game works as if the lack of that information prevents enjoyment or proves there is a bug - or something I don't really get that desire.

I am sure that if I have that wrong @Thewood1 will correct me. He is not shy aobut that. Regardless that is how I am interpreting these discussions.

@PIATpunk, congratulations on your contribution. Yeah, I'm serious that is a very helpful contribution. Thank you.

[A Canadian Cat]

6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

However, while there are some people who will tend to complain,

Agreed

6 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

there are also people here who will go to great lengths to explain away pretty obvious shortcomings of the game engine by any means possible. As if pointing out that there are limits to what the game simulates is a kind of threat to their beloved game system.

Yeah, that's not it. Here's the thing, there are two broad categories of things that are "wrong" with the game:

1) actual bugs in the way the game is intended to run

2) design decisions that are limited by the nature of the limits of computing power

When a bug is found no one, that I know, on the testing team feels threatened or maligned as an attack on their beloved game system. Of course the grants that a bug is actually found. The discussion and the so call defensiveness that you perceive is likely in the process of ironing out of what is and is not a bug. When a player declares "this is a bug" that is often (usually) not good enough for one of two reasons: it is not clear what they mean or there is no way to verify or repeat the problem. When testers or other players start asking questions about what the reporting player is talking about or asking for game saves that is not because they feel slighted that their beloved game is under attack. That is them trying to figure out what is going on so if this is a bug it can get reported.

A further problem comes when others decide that they do not agree by declaring that this is not a bug. Some player don't like that since they seem to feel they know best. That could be my miss-perception but that is how it seems to me - and no I do not mean you singularly.

In the case of design decision there is not a lot of point in continuing the discussion. The fact that some people just refuse to let things go or declare that the design decision is so wrong that it needs to be changed is unfortunate. Steve is aware of the compromises he and Charles have to make. They have made them. We have to live with them. Continuing to complain about it is nothing but annoying and is not very helpful.

When someone like @sburke or @Bud Backer explain how they think of these things during game play (you know the usual inventive explanation for what happened) they are not trying to be defensive or dismissive they are genuinely trying to explain their way of moving on and playing the game.

[Bulletpoint]

47 minutes ago, IanL said:

When a bug is found no one, that I know, on the testing team feels threatened or maligned as an attack on their beloved game system. Of course the grants that a bug is actually found. The discussion and the so call defensiveness that you perceive is likely in the process of ironing out of what is and is not a bug. When a player declares "this is a bug" that is often (usually) not good enough for one of two reasons: it is not clear what they mean or there is no way to verify or repeat the problem. When testers or other players start asking questions about what the reporting player is talking about or asking for game saves that is not because they feel slighted that their beloved game is under attack. That is them trying to figure out what is going on so if this is a bug it can get reported.

Maybe I should have made clear that I was not taking a swing at the beta testers.

What I'm talking about is people politely reporting something they believe is a bug, and provide plenty of evidence, yet get dismissed with some fanciful explanation.

For example, some years ago it was reported that 81mm mortars went straight into concrete pillboxes as if the roof weren't there.

That is an obvious bug, but the first reply in the thread was from a (non-beta-tester) guy saying 81mm ammo could be delay fused and apparently this explains how it can bust through 3 feet of reinforced concrete.

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

5 hours ago, Bud Backer said:

Bulletpoint, even if I said what you claim, that is not a strawman argument. Look it up.

However, I did not say that the game is perfect. You chose to make it binary, not me. If you’re going to practice creative interpretation of what I write, we cannot have a sensible discussion because our frames of reference are completely separate. 

What I did say, and the only thing I said, is that I don’t need to know every single detail of how the game works to enjoy it. That things can surprise me and solely on the basis of them being a surprise does not make the game “broken” or “buggy” as more than one person has attempted to posit. 

Please don’t put words in my mouth, it’s not going to go well. 

 

I worded my post poorly, sorry for the confusion.

What I meant was: Obviously we both agree it's not the case that either the game is perfect or it's useless.

And what I saw as a strawman was that I don't think anyone here on this forum is really arguing that "when something happens that one doesn’t have a user-manual explanation for, it's a cause for a crisis of confidence that the game works by and large as intended". Maybe you were only talking about your friend, but I read it as somehow being symptomatic of these forums too.

Most people I see posting bug reports and questions about the behaviours of the game seem mature and reasonable. For example, I've seen many people ask why their artillery fire missions go astray. Sometimes, people are pretty frustrated with that. After getting the perfectly reasonable explanation that their spotter needs to actually see the fall of the spotting rounds, they say "oh, ok. Thanks".

But I often get the impression that this forum is somehow haunted by the spectre of an imaginary (?) childish and unreasonable customer who will stop at nothing to complain and make ultimate demands about how he wants the game to be like. Maybe there used to be people like that here, I don't know. I've only been having around for about 6 years, so maybe it's the collective memory of some obnoxious people who used to post here that still lingers  

Edited July 9, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[A Canadian Cat]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Maybe I should have made clear that I was not taking a swing at the beta testers.

What I'm talking about is people politely reporting something they believe is a bug, and provide plenty of evidence, yet get dismissed with some fanciful explanation.

For example, some years ago it was reported that 81mm mortars went straight into concrete pillboxes as if the roof weren't there.

Then I apologize for taking it that way

BTW that bug was logged and fixed. Just recently I found that there were still some issues surrounding pillbox walls and a new bug has been logged. Just in case anyone wonders...

[Thewood1]

I guess my question is this... If this bug from the bug thread is not confirmed, will people stop playing the game.  I don't see it as a big deal in the scheme of things.  But if, when you report the bug, give a save, and don't get a response you lie, what do you do?  That says a lot about clarifying what I am talking about.

I remember in the Command forums, a player stated that the game was broken because one aspect of A2A combat was not detailed out.  So he is going to throw away a game that models air and naval warfare from 1948 to 2030, with every countries detailed OOB, a global map, etc.  Because they wanted to see this one detail called out.  I have already seen a couple people use the words "broken" and "unplayable".  And frankly, those people and their histrionics do no good service to legit critical bugs.  And its threads like that patch thread that numb any dev to customer complaints.

So my question comes back to how much of yours and the dev's time you are going to expend on convincing them this bug exists and is important enough to drop everything they are doing?   Is the game unplayable.  I have to assume by the number of posts of a few players on this issue that it must be a game breaker.   Otherwise, I would imagine most people would drop it and assume the devs are aware and will eventually fix it.

[RockinHarry]

On 7/9/2019 at 6:20 PM, Bulletpoint said:

Maybe I should have made clear that I was not taking a swing at the beta testers.

What I'm talking about is people politely reporting something they believe is a bug, and provide plenty of evidence, yet get dismissed with some fanciful explanation.

For example, some years ago it was reported that 81mm mortars went straight into concrete pillboxes as if the roof weren't there.

That is an obvious bug, but the first reply in the thread was from a (non-beta-tester) guy saying 81mm ammo could be delay fused and apparently this explains how it can bust through 3 feet of reinforced concrete.

 

 

Yep, it´s all too common here that various folks find explanations for the unexplainable.  Likely another side effect of that great BFC responding to its customers I think. Just if people ask for "Comnpany secrets". Sorry, but after roughly 2 decades I start to slip off here. Time does not stand still. I experience lots of better examples dealing with developers and beta testers and getting it all back. 

[MikeyD]

Real world 81mm mortars have an effective blast radius of some 40mm (though fragments can go much further). We've talking roughly 7 pounds of steel being violently blown apart by 2 1/2 pounds of TNT. That's not insignificant.  In CM games, two commonly attempted tactical plans tend to not work out very well. "Maybe they won't spot me here" and "Maybe that falling HE won't hurt me here." An infantryman catching a piece of shrapnel 25m from an exploding mortar round is hardly a 'bug'

[sburke]

1 hour ago, MikeyD said:

 An infantryman catching a piece of shrapnel 25m from an exploding mortar round is hardly a 'bug'

That would be important if that was what the post was about.  What he is asking about though is penetration of a bunker.  If I am in a concrete bunker is it likely an 81mm mortar will penetrate?  I don’t know the answer to that and I am also not 100%  sure what the concrete bunker is supposed to represent.   It isn’t an Atlantic Wall 240mm gun emplacement.  It is also not the shabby cinder block retaining wall in my backyard. As Ian noted above there is a new ticket submitted for it that hopefully resolves this.

Edited July 11, 2019 by sburke

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Actually this one was about buildings rather than bunkers.....Not sure a 81mm mortar round should penetrate those, other than via the firing slit, but as you say, there are bunkers and then there are bunkers.