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U.S. Thread - CM Cold War - BETA AAR - Battle of Dolbach Heights 1980


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6 hours ago, sawomi said:

As someone who lives in Germany I can say it's defenitely not "rare" to have a LOS over 1,5km.

Where (roughly) are you in Germany?  Fulda has relatively short LOS due to all the hills and forests.  Vth Corps took that into account.  The BAOR had a much different terrain with the North German Plains.

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1 hour ago, Megalon Jones said:

Where (roughly) are you in Germany? 

Thuringia. Right beyond Fulda Gab. Same landscape. It always depends if you are in the valley or on a hill. But there are many hills with just agricultural fields, not all have forests on top. And there you can have wide and far views.

The point is there IS open space for 3000m tank duels. Not everywhere, everytime, maybe even more often not - but certainly not just in "rare" cases.

rhoen.jpg

Edited by sawomi
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6 hours ago, sawomi said:

Thuringia. Right beyond Fulda Gab. Same landscape. It always depends if you are in the valley or on a hill. But there are many hills with just agricultural fields, not all have forests on top. And there you can have wide and far views.

The point is there IS open space for 3000m tank duels. Not everywhere, everytime, maybe even more often not - but certainly not just in "rare" cases.

rhoen.jpg

Thanks for the picture @sawomi, if not catering for "ideal" tank duels, those line of sights are pretty good for artillery spotting.

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Rather than postcard pictures try checking out LOS distances in Google Earth Street View. Its hard to do in Germany (they're VERY restrictive with its use) but other places you can drive down any road and look out across any landscape, measure the distances between terrain features. Here's an example, I randomly plopped down an a spot in the Czech republic some 230km west of Fulda and looked around. It turned out the copse of trees on the far side of the field in front of me is 500m away, the wooded ridgeline on the horizon is 2.5km away. That's actually pretty good, sometimes doing my game research I can't even spot the horizon due to intervening foliage and buildings.

ranges.jpg

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It has nothing to do with postcards or street view. It depends on the location. If you drive up these hill at 500m and 2.5km distance in your pic, how far could you see? Hard to tell. Depends on the landscape and the features in it in a particular direction, atmospheric conditions etc. It also has nothing to do if you are on a road or a field. Just drive some kilometers on a rural road in central Germany. The view distances change constantly in all direction. If it leads you up over hills or plateaus you can have far reaching panroamic views for some time and then it goes down in a valley again und you can see maybe 100m or 200m.

landstraße.jpg

viw3.jpg

fulda.jpg

Edited by sawomi
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And the most important thing of all. if you are a military force on the move.

How often are you going to drive out in the open where you can be seen from locations at distances like 2500m if you are not sure the enemy is located out there.

Yes long distance engagements can occur, but in general, events of the past have proven. most of the time engagements are closer than that due to many factors.

including the simple fact that you want to allow the enemy to get within a certain range where you can engage and bring as much firepower as possible that can  destroy them quickly if you think you have the advantage.

So 1500 meters is more logical to test than 2500m if you are only going to run one test.

Even playing the game against another person, how often does a long range duel happen, compared to shorter ranges.

And even if a long range duel happens and I have the advantage, how easy is it for the enemy to disengage from the situation.

Anyway, a real good test is more like 500,1000,1500,2000 and you can see if there is a preferred range that you should be engaging at.

And when the game is in your hands you can go for it.

I normally pick 1200m for a simple fact that I find that a common distance I have seen in many game engagements. Which has to do with map construction and nothing to do with real world aspects. Other than I will say, more and more maps are using real world locations to generate the maps I believe.

 

Edited by slysniper
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3 hours ago, slysniper said:

How often are you going to drive out in the open where you can be seen from locations at distances like 2500m if you are not sure the enemy is located out there.

It would still be worth testing engagements at this range to ensure the equipment works "as advertised".  For example: I recall in CM1 that the "dreaded" German 88mm was not accurate at the long (2Km-3Km+) ranges that it was supposed to excel.   It seemed that the CM1 engine was contrived to make weapons systems relatively accurate only up to maybe 500-1000 meters.

Similarly, CMSF2 tests have shown that a two man team with no binoculars and only one thermal optic mounted on one rifle seem better at spotting enemies at 2,500 meters+ than the more expensive and sophisticated equipment carried by FO's etc.  

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Excellent discussion.  My original purpose in asking about the 3000 meter range was to see if the US tank got the upper hand at a longer range.  And should that be the case is it worth it to try and stand off at those distances and duke it out with a better chance to prevail.  As mentioned, I would love to see results at 500 meter intervals out to the weapons theoretical range limit.  

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22 minutes ago, markus544 said:

Did the T-64 have ATGM capabilty...Did the T-62 have that ability too?

In reality, yes. In game, only the T-64B has a GLATGM. The T-62 variants that got GLATGMs are outside of the games timeline as of now. 

2 hours ago, wadepm said:

My original purpose in asking about the 3000 meter range was to see if the US tank got the upper hand at a longer range. 

Depends on the tank, but even an Abrams is going to struggle to kill Soviet MBTs at 3,000m. It will be able to hit, but at that distance, with the ammo it is slinging, and given the armor protection of T-64/72/80, it will be hard to score a kill. And then, as others have mentioned, there is the Soviet ATGM threat. Not so much of an issue for an Abrams due to its HEAT defeating composite armor, but pretty much any other US vehicle is at severe risk from ATGMs. 

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T72B (missile capable) showed up outside out timeframe (1985). Remember T72 was intended as a cheap knockoff version of T64. We've got T64B and T80B in the game. The Soviets were short on missile guidance systems so its about halfsies the B and B1 (not missile capable) models. T62M with missile launch capability showed up in 1983.

Edited by MikeyD
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9 hours ago, slysniper said:

Yes long distance engagements can occur, but in general, events of the past have proven. most of the time engagements are closer than that due to many factors.

including the simple fact that you want to allow the enemy to get within a certain range where you can engage and bring as much firepower as possible that can  destroy them quickly if you think you have the advantage.

So 1500 meters is more logical to test than 2500m if you are only going to run one test.

To me at least, the question isn't about what are typical ranges, that is well settled. Rather, I just have a valid curiosity about whether the games underlying simulation is as robust as it is on "average" engagement ranges. A wise thing is to test the extremes, as well as the "typical" baseline.

This matters gameplay-wise because specific tactics are enabled and weapons platforms become useful at very long ranges.

I am not personally expecting to be able obliterate tank and mech battalions from 2,000 metres+ with superior tech. What I am expecting is that engaging the enemy just outside their optimal fire envelope will allow to disrupt their maneuver with little losses. Nothing like the lead tank of a column blowing up all of a sudden to stall a move, delaying them long enough to call in murderous artillery on them. 

FWIW maps like the one for the scenario Bridgehead at Khalaryk (sp) in CMBS allow pretty much to fight it out from 2000 meters plus (with state of the art M1s). That, and the scenario by George MC where you run Tigers versus JS-2, can't remember the name right now, are my only in game experiences with engagements happening at extreme ranges. Bigger maps than the average 1000x1000 usually do not have the kind of elevation differences that enable such long range LOS. For instance, CMBN CW maps like Colossal Crack are very large, but buildings, walled orchards and subtle elevation changes preclude that. There is a majority of scenarios that cater for knife fights, but there is a substantial number of large scale maps that allow to explore the limits of the sim in interesting ways.

Edited by BletchleyGeek
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