Some tank duel tests (CMBN)

[Bulletpoint]

18 hours ago, akd said:

Why would there be?

Not saying there should be. Just curious about how the game works.

[Lethaface]

On 11/16/2021 at 12:43 PM, Bulletpoint said:

But is there any effect of infantry if both tanks already have contact markers for each other?

Outside the test: continue spotting and pass other/new/updated contact markers.

[KGBoy]

On 11/18/2021 at 10:29 AM, Lethaface said:

Outside the test: continue spotting and pass other/new/updated contact markers.

For me, getting INF and tank to spot the same thing is the difficulty. They don't seem to see the same things ever!

[Redwolf]

5 minutes ago, KGBoy said:

For me, getting INF and tank to spot the same thing is the difficulty. They don't seem to see the same things ever!

Are you maybe using the grass mod with the mushrooms?

[Lethaface]

31 minutes ago, KGBoy said:

For me, getting INF and tank to spot the same thing is the difficulty. They don't seem to see the same things ever!

Well they are different things ;-). 

Maintaining c2 links is perhaps one of the most important things in CM, imo. That can be done in various ways. If you have different formations it always helps to have the big bosses (for exmaple Tank Company HQ and Inf Battalion HQ) in close proximity so they can share the info's between formations. I usually don't have much issues with getting spots, although they aren't instantaneous and sometimes someone just won't see something. 

[chuckdyke]

2 hours ago, Redwolf said:

Are you maybe using the grass mod with the mushrooms?

Make sure the AFV can see the friendly infantry they don't share tentative contacts automatically. 

[KGBoy]

17 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

Make sure the AFV can see the friendly infantry they don't share tentative contacts automatically. 

Yes, I was being a bit disingenuous. I had the spotter and although they never showed me  that they saw the same thing nonetheless all 5 enemy tanks were killed versus 1 dismounted. The dismounted took out 2 and I brought my 2nd forward and seems the spotter had it all prepared as it took the other 3 and I don't think they ever saw it. Best results ever (for me)!

[chuckdyke]

8 hours ago, KGBoy said:

they never showed me  that they saw the same thing

That is what makes playing 'Iron' more easy. By selecting the AFV but not during the command phase you can see exactly which friendly units it observes. During the command phase mark your target with MG fire it makes the area fire of the AFV more realistic. 

[Drifter Man]

An update on the spotting tests. First, overall spotting rating (remember - it is a measure of spotting ability in the forward direction at 200-1400 meters, relative to the Pz IVH). It confirms the previous find that open topped vehicles spot far better than fully protected ones and are nearly unaffected by being buttoned up.

Second, I also plotted the spotting rating as a function of distance for selected fully protected vehicles (the trends tend to be the same for all) when opened up. At close range (200 m), there is little difference in the spotting ability among the different vehicles. As the range extends, some gain an increasing advantage of up to 15-20% over the reference Pz IV. If you have a vehicle that can spot well, it is advantageous to engage at a longer range. If you have one that doesn't, you may be able to reduce this handicap by getting closer.

I have included an outlier - the SU-85/SU-100/SU-122. It spots poorly at close ranges. I have only seen this behavior with this one and with the T-70. The heavy assault guns (ISU) do not have this problem.

The same plot including a representative of the open-top gang, for perspective.

The same plot with hatches closed. At 200 m the spotting improves and being buttoned up is less of a disadvantage than at 400 m. From 400 m up, the disadvantage of being buttoned up gradually decreases with range. Unless you have a SU-85/SU-100/SU-122, which again does its own thing.

[KGBoy]

Ever gleaning further ideas and tips DM. Thanks for the work! Wish it was summer here...

[lcm1947]

Thank you so much.  This had to require tons of time and effort but all that work was worth it to me.    I printed it all 

and will be using it lots and lots as I love tank encounters.  Much appreciated!

[Bulletpoint]

Very interesting. Lots here to digest.

How big is the margin of error - for example, is the tiny difference in spotting between the two KT variants real, or a statistical fluke?

[Bulletpoint]

-

Edited January 10, 2022 by Bulletpoint

[Bulletpoint]

I think the huge difference in spotting ability between the open-topped and fully enclosed vehicles might be partially a result of the way you compiled the data, since you combined spotting at both long and short range into a single number.

As the game seems to treat open-tops as if all crew are peeking over the edge of the armour, that would give the vehicle a very large spotting bonus at close ranges. But I think if you looked specifically at spotting at longer ranges, the relative difference would be less, compared to closed vehicles.

At long range, the spotting power of the crew would count for less in the final score, as they have no telescopic sights. And opening up the vehicle to let the commander scan with his binoculars would likely have a bigger impact.

Whoops, scratch that. If the above were true, then the M10 would start out by spotting much better than the tanks at close range, and then slowly the spotting ability would converge towards the closed vehicles, since at longer ranges, spotting power would mostly come from the commander's binoculars and the gunner's sight. But according to your graph, the open-topped vehicles also get better at spotting as range increases, compared to the Panzer IV. This puzzles me.

Maybe the game models it as each crew member of the M10 having his own binoculars?

Edited January 10, 2022 by Bulletpoint

[Drifter Man]

21 hours ago, lcm1947 said:

Thank you so much.  This had to require tons of time and effort but all that work was worth it to me.    I printed it all 

and will be using it lots and lots as I love tank encounters.  Much appreciated!

Just don't have it laminated yet or anything... it's still a work in progress!

[Drifter Man]

15 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Very interesting. Lots here to digest.

How big is the margin of error - for example, is the tiny difference in spotting between the two KT variants real, or a statistical fluke?

Borderline. From the spread of results I am getting when testing the same (or clearly equivalent) vehicle multiple times, a difference of 2 points between a pair of single tests, 10,000 trials in each, is credible. [I would not bet on 1 point]

You can see in the open topped cases that they consistently have a difference of 2-4 points between buttoned up and opened up situations, so that's something I have high confidence in.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Drifter Man

[Drifter Man]

14 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I think the huge difference in spotting ability between the open-topped and fully enclosed vehicles might be partially a result of the way you compiled the data, since you combined spotting at both long and short range into a single number.

As the game seems to treat open-tops as if all crew are peeking over the edge of the armour, that would give the vehicle a very large spotting bonus at close ranges. But I think if you looked specifically at spotting at longer ranges, the relative difference would be less, compared to closed vehicles.

At long range, the spotting power of the crew would count for less in the final score, as they have no telescopic sights. And opening up the vehicle to let the commander scan with his binoculars would likely have a bigger impact.

Whoops, scratch that. If the above were true, then the M10 would start out by spotting much better than the tanks at close range, and then slowly the spotting ability would converge towards the closed vehicles, since at longer ranges, spotting power would mostly come from the commander's binoculars and the gunner's sight. But according to your graph, the open-topped vehicles also get better at spotting as range increases, compared to the Panzer IV. This puzzles me.

Maybe the game models it as each crew member of the M10 having his own binoculars?

The single number "overall spotting rating" is basically the average of the spotting rating over all distances - e.g. of the curves that I am showing in the subsequent plots.

I can't tell if/how the game factors in binoculars, but what I can read from the last plot is that the commander being outside of the vehicle makes a smaller contribution to the overall spotting as the distance increases, with the exception of very close range (200 m). At 400 meters, about 80% of the spotting comes from him. At 1400 meters it may be 60-70%. He still matters a great deal, even at long ranges.

As a consequence of this, at close ranges there isn't much difference among the tanks when opened up because the tank commander does most of the successful spotting, and all tank commanders spot equally well (experience etc. being equal). As the range increases, the differences between the vehicles in the vision ports/optics available to the crew start affecting the spotting ability of the vehicle (I'm talking about the vehicles with all around protection here).

[Bulletpoint]

8 minutes ago, Drifter Man said:

what I can read from the last plot is that the commander being outside of the vehicle makes a smaller contribution to the overall spotting as the distance increases, with the exception of very close range (200 m). At 400 meters, about 80% of the spotting comes from him. At 1400 meters it may be 60-70%.

This is also puzzling me a bit. I would think that if you have a tank with two guys looking through vision slits, one guy looking through a gun scope, and a commander unbottoned using binoculars, then as the range increases, the spotting power of the commander and gunner should account for a larger part of the vehicle's total spotting power? What am I misunderstanding here?

[Drifter Man]

1 hour ago, Bulletpoint said:

This is also puzzling me a bit. I would think that if you have a tank with two guys looking through vision slits, one guy looking through a gun scope, and a commander unbottoned using binoculars, then as the range increases, the spotting power of the commander and gunner should account for a larger part of the vehicle's total spotting power? What am I misunderstanding here?

I don't see a misunderstanding and I would expect the same behavior as you describe. The data just shows a different behavior in the game from what we expect.

Another thing I noticed: there is an improvement in spotting from Pz VD to Pz VA even when opened up, where the improved cupola design should not play a role (and it doesn't play a role in other vehicles where the cupola is the only difference between the two versions). I believe this is due to the extra periscope for the loader.

[KGBoy]

On 1/11/2022 at 5:02 AM, Drifter Man said:

 

I can't tell if/how the game factors in binoculars, but what I can read from the last plot is that the commander being outside of the vehicle makes a smaller contribution to the overall spotting as the distance increases, with the exception of very close range (200 m). At 400 meters, about 80% of the spotting comes from him. At 1400 meters it may be 60-70%. He still matters a great deal, even at long ranges.

 

I wonder how a tank with infantry also spotting compares to an M10 et al? I would think they start matching up?

[Bulletpoint]

1 hour ago, KGBoy said:

I wonder how a tank with infantry also spotting compares to an M10 et al? I would think they start matching up?

If you mean infantry riding on the tank, I think their spotting is separate. But they can give their tank a contact marker which helps the tank spot on its own.

[KGBoy]

3 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

If you mean infantry riding on the tank, I think their spotting is separate. But they can give their tank a contact marker which helps the tank spot on its own.

I was thinking by the tank. There was a discussion on this somewhere about how much better the results were when a tank had that sort of backup. I've tried it and so far much better results but how would it compare to an open-top?

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, KGBoy said:

5 minutes ago, KGBoy said:

I was thinking by the tank. There was a discussion on this somewhere about how much better the results were when a tank had that sort of backup. I've tried it and so far much better results but how would it compare to an open-top?

 

Approximately 50 pct better according to the test of the effects of a contact marker. So a tank with spotting power 100 would have 150. But only after the tank riders spot the enemy and share the contact, which takes some time.

[KGBoy]

11 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Approximately 50 pct better according to the test of the effects of a contact marker. So a tank with spotting power 100 would have 150. But only after the tank riders spot the enemy and share the contact, which takes some time.

Marvellous! Of course, more Q's arise. Like, does it up an open-top by 50%?

[Bulletpoint]

3 hours ago, KGBoy said:

Marvellous! Of course, more Q's arise. Like, does it up an open-top by 50%?

It should...