Some tank duel tests (CMBN)

[AlexUK]

That is a massive difference. Very surprised that old place marker is as effective.

[chuckdyke]

The Stug III on my picture was destroyed using a contact Icon too. Infantry must work with armor.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Fantastic work, @Drifter Man!

[Drifter Man]

Finishing up with @KGBoy's suggestion about hiding.

I wouldn't try to hide my tank - it does not seem to be helping at all when using a target arc - tested on Grass and Grass XT. Hiding without a target arc is a bad idea, the tank will hold fire until it gets shot at - which is usually too late.

Table 9. Effect of Hiding. Both AFVs are stationary and the crew hatches are open.

Attacker		Defender
Grass, not Hiding [R1]	48%	50%	[R1] Grass, not Hiding
Grass, not Hiding	74%	24%	Grass, Hiding
Grass, not Hiding	49%	49%	Grass, Hiding, Target Armor Arc
Grass, not Hiding [R6]	38%	60%	[R6] Grass XT, not Hiding
Grass, not Hiding	43%	56%	Grass XT, Hiding, Target Armor Arc

Hiding combined with Target Armor Arc does not improve the chances of the Defender. Hiding without any Target Arc makes the Defender likely to lose.

[chuckdyke]

Target arcs for tanks when you need to turn the turret say at 90⁰ when the tank is traveling on a road. The hide command if the tank is behind the crest of a hill. Does it leave a sound contact? There is no way to find this out.

[KGBoy]

Very nice DM. Thanks! 

[Bulletpoint]

Thanks @Drifter Man for testing all this out. Impressive work.

I'm especially happy to see the results of your contact marker test, because it shows that the contact marker info sharing bug I documented some time ago is only cosmetic - as long as your tank has been informed of the existence of an enemy tank, it retains an advantage, even if the game doesn't update the visual contact marker. That reclassifes the bug from pretty bad to just an annoyance.

Also, I was very interested in seeing that the advantage of having the contact marker is so big. I thought the contact would only remove the defender's advantage, but leave the odds around 50/50. But in fact it reverses the odds, from 4:6 to 6:4 in favour of the attacker. At least at 600m range. I suspect the effect becomes larger with the distance. At shorter ranges, the effect of moving into view probably starts to make the attacker spotted very fast.

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

On 1/30/2021 at 1:41 PM, Drifter Man said:

Table 8. Supplementary tests – contact markers. Attacker starts out of LOS and moves in towards the Defender using Hunt. He is optionally provided with a contact marker on the Defender by a spotting unit. The Defender is stationary and has no contact marker. Both AFVs are on Grass and the crew hatches are open.

This was done by moving the attacker up to hull down? Or moving the attacker up to full view of the defender to focus on the effect of the contact marker?

Edited January 31, 2021 by Bulletpoint

[A Canadian Cat]

On 1/30/2021 at 7:41 AM, Drifter Man said:

Table 8. Supplementary tests – contact markers. Attacker starts out of LOS and moves in towards the Defender using Hunt. He is optionally provided with a contact marker on the Defender by a spotting unit. The Defender is stationary and has no contact marker.

Nice. That is a pretty good result - from a use C2 and get the intel spread to the units point of view.

[Drifter Man]

11 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Thanks @Drifter Man for testing all this out. Impressive work.

I'm especially happy to see the results of your contact marker test, because it shows that the contact marker info sharing bug I documented some time ago is only cosmetic - as long as your tank has been informed of the existence of an enemy tank, it retains an advantage, even if the game doesn't update the visual contact marker. That reclassifes the bug from pretty bad to just an annoyance.

Also, I was very interested in seeing that the advantage of having the contact marker is so big. I thought the contact would only remove the defender's advantage, but leave the odds around 50/50. But in fact it reverses the odds, from 4:6 to 6:4 in favour of the attacker. At least at 600m range. I suspect the effect becomes larger with the distance. At shorter ranges, the effect of moving into view probably starts to make the attacker spotted very fast.

 

 

It looks like the location of the marker is only for the player's (in)convenience - as long as your unit has a contact marker of the enemy unit somewhere, it has a spotting advantage.

The Attacker had a Hunt command with the end waypoint in a partial hull down position 600 m from the Defender - a symmetrical position for the two tanks, in nearly full view of each other. If the Attacker spots the Defender on the way, he can stop earlier. The difference between a full hull down position with LOS to the Defender and the end waypoint is about 17 meters - two tiles.

[chuckdyke]

1 hour ago, Drifter Man said:

It looks like the location of the marker is only for the player's (in)convenience - as long as your unit has a contact marker of the enemy unit somewhere, it has a spotting advantage.

The Attacker had a Hunt command with the end waypoint in a partial hull down position 600 m from the Defender - a symmetrical position for the two tanks, in nearly full view of each other. If the Attacker spots the Defender on the way, he can stop earlier. The difference between a full hull down position with LOS to the Defender and the end waypoint is about 17 meters - two tiles.

It comes to spotting again. You did your tests unbuttoned? Nearby infantry will pass their information if they are located close to the fire position. It is great with Hellcats and Jacksons. 

[Bulletpoint]

2 hours ago, Drifter Man said:

The Attacker had a Hunt command with the end waypoint in a partial hull down position 600 m from the Defender - a symmetrical position for the two tanks

So the defender would also be partial hull down to the attacker?

[Drifter Man]

30 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

So the defender would also be partial hull down to the attacker?

Yes - they would be both partial hull down to each other.

@chuckdyke Yes, both were unbuttoned (crew hatches open). However, in this case the contact was shared with the tank by a HQ unit via radio.

[snarre]

but can we be sure that marker give you advance on hole map ? mayby it is buble around marker where it give advance to spotting if that unit/ tank stay inside of it ? 

[Drifter Man]

On 2/3/2021 at 5:12 AM, snarre said:

but can we be sure that marker give you advance on hole map ? mayby it is buble around marker where it give advance to spotting if that unit/ tank stay inside of it ? 

It could be the case, so I repeated the test with the contact marker 300 m off instead of 60 m. The result was the same as with 60 m.

If there is a bubble, it is big.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

On 1/31/2021 at 12:23 PM, chuckdyke said:

Target arcs for tanks when you need to turn the turret say at 90⁰ when the tank is traveling on a road.

There's a lot more uses for them than that.....If I know where an AFV target is and plan on a pop-up/out engagement I will always start with a 5-10 second pause and a target armour arc, to ensure that when my tank emerges from cover, the gun is already pointing straight at the contact marker.

I honestly don't know how much difference this makes (none at all when fighting against the Abrams it seems), but it does at least make me feel like I tried! 

[chuckdyke]

6 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

There's a lot more uses for them than that.....If I know where an AFV target is and plan on a pop-up/out engagement I will always start with a 5-10 second pause and a target armour arc, to ensure that when my tank emerges from cover, the gun is already pointing straight at the contact marker.

I honestly don't know how much difference this makes (none at all when fighting against the Abrams it seems), but it does at least make me feel like I tried! 

Abrams, Leopard, Challenger break cover full speed to next cover, and they acquire their targets and eliminate them. Something to test. I call them Tiga Tali Uang means three coins on the same string. It is Malay. Don't try it with WW 2 vehicles. Try it where you suspect ATGM's

[griffin33]

Drifter Man:  Thank you very much for running these tests.  Yes, I agree with common sense in most cases, but your effort here is very informative, and I really appreciate it.

 

[Drifter Man]

Thanks @griffin33!

[E5K]

One of the best studies I have seen. Excellent work.  Thank you sir

[JoMac]

On 2/4/2021 at 2:37 AM, Drifter Man said:

It could be the case, so I repeated the test with the contact marker 300 m off instead of 60 m. The result was the same as with 60 m.

If there is a bubble, it is big.

Hmm, you would have thought there would've been a closer range away from contact marker before loosing the effect..300 m is a pretty far spread, and doesn't give much room for enemy to use counter tactics (ex..enemy can't surprise you as well by getting on your flank, because you've already spotted him earlier in game).   

Also, does Moral effect also how many Enemy Contact Markers a Unit can remember before loosing that Contact Markers effect all together (from dark to transparent to disappear)...ex; a Green Unit will remember 10x Enemy Units for such and such time, but a Vet will remember even more, and at a longer time ?

Think I remember reading it somewhere that this is the case...

Edited March 14, 2021 by JoMac

[Drifter Man]

4 hours ago, JoMac said:

Hmm, you would have thought there would've been a closer range away from contact marker before loosing the effect..300 m is a pretty far spread, and doesn't give much room for enemy to use counter tactics (ex..enemy can't surprise you as well by getting on your flank, because you've already spotted him earlier in game).   

Also, does Moral effect also how many Enemy Contact Markers a Unit can remember before loosing that Contact Markers effect all together (from dark to transparent to disappear)...ex; a Green Unit will remember 10x Enemy Units for such and such time, but a Vet will remember even more, and at a longer time ?

Think I remember reading it somewhere that this is the case...

Valid questions, but rather difficult to test with my setup. This is my speculation of how things probably work:

• The unit's "capacity to remember" is infinite - what enemy icons you see when clicking on the unit is its picture of the battlefield
• What matters is that your unit is aware of the enemy unit's existence - either first hand or via C2. It does not matter if its location is not current
• The age/"transparency" of the contact may have an effect on how easily the enemy unit can be spotted.

Again, this is my guess. Only the second point is backed up by the tests. 300 m was the maximum I could achieve without rebuilding the setup. I think the real limit is infinity.

[Erwin]

It may have changed in an update, but generally, a unit will continue to fire at an enemy for a few seconds after it loses contact.  But, then the AI forgets everything and will happily advance into a dangerous situation.

[Bulletpoint]

Once you have spotted an enemy tank once, your guys will always know where that tank is, even if it moves away from the original location.

That means that if you make an ambush and use your tank to knock out an advancing enemy tank, but then you pop smoke and reverse unseen to a secondary firing position, you will not get any concealment bonus for that second position. Your tank has been spotted once and for all.

[Lethaface]

19 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Once you have spotted an enemy tank once, your guys will always know where that tank is, even if it moves away from the original location.

That means that if you make an ambush and use your tank to knock out an advancing enemy tank, but then you pop smoke and reverse unseen to a secondary firing position, you will not get any concealment bonus for that second position. Your tank has been spotted once and for all.

I'm not sure this is exactly how it works. I'm quite sure that the second position will still apply concealment bonus based on terrain if for example it is in the woods. 

However, indeed the troops/vehicle which spotted the vehicle now knows there is a tank somewhere around and if some of your troops have a contact on it (sound, whatever) than they will have indication of it's current position and will try to relay that through c2. 
If the troops who spotted the tank die before they have relayed the info through c2, than the contact info dies with them.

I don't think every guy will always know where that tank is. Although there is an issue with the contact icon markers not updating correctly (even though it has been spotted by troops), which seems to not have any effect ingame based on @Drifter Man findings.