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ODDITIES AND WEIRDNESS OF THE CM2 SYSTEM


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Note: Some of the items are only pertinent to modern titles and other items are relevant to all titles.

Re CMSF2 (so far): 1)  Spotting issues.  A two man scout team with no binoculars can spot enemy units at close to 3,000 meters much better than an FO (with super dooper optics tech) or an HQ with binocs.  Folks have opined that it's because one of the riflemen has a "Thermal Imager" attached to his rifle and that is why they spot so well.  However, if that is accurately simulated in CM2 then why don't all RL units have thermal imagers and scrap the expensive and heavy laser designators and other high-tech optics that seem so inferior in the game?

2)  Related to item 1) Once can have a scout team, an FO, an HQ, a Jav team etc all in the same location, literally lying on top of each other.  The scout team sees an enemy units - but even after many minutes the other teams cannot see it - they do not communicate.  There is something wrong with the C2 system.  Again... apologists say that in RL they often cannot see what their buddy can see.  However, since the Thermal Imager is so much more effective, wouldn't they simply borrow the rifle with the Thermal Imager so they could see for themselves and then line up their super dooper optical gear on the target so they could finally see it?

3)  The M1046 TOW Humvee crew can dismount and take the TOW launcher and missile with them.  According to the UI it takes something like 1.7 minutes to deploy the TOW and a lot longer to pack up.  But it never seems to deploy. 

4)  Related to item 2) It is very very hard to use any vehicle mounted ATGM in CM2 as "hull-down" doesn't mean that only the vehicle optics on the roof are exposed.  Instead the top of the vehicle is exposed and can be easily seen and fired at and destroyed.  Without being able to dismount the TOW in this example, it's usually suicidal to attempt to fire the TOW even from a hull-down position. (Not sure if this has been fixed in CMCW.)

5)  Same is true for the M707 Humvee and other "Arty Spotting vehicles" with Laser and other high hech on the roof.  All of these cannot be safely used in CM2 "hull-down" as they can be easily seen and destroyed.

6)  The M1114 AGL (Automatic Grenade Launcher) Humvee crew can dismount with the AGL.  However, it must be a spare from the trunk as an AGL remains mounted on the Humvee and can be crewed and operated by another crew or inf team.  Is it correct that the M1114 carries two AGL's?  (Note that the crew of the M1114 with the 50 cal can also dismount and operate it, but in this case the Humvee no longer has the 50 cal mounted.)

7)  UK HQ's in CMSF2 cannot spot for arty or air.

😎 Heavy arty falling on top of enemy troops often doesn't incapacitate them.  While it's true that shrapnel may miss, the shock wave of a large explosion alone is usually deadly as it can liquefy one's innards.

9)  Some vehicles carry ammo that seems to be available for resupply.  But, the crew cannot ACQUIRE any, and/or neither can any other unit mount the vehicle to ACQUIRE any.  Eg: The M1046 TOW Humvee) have quantities of regular ammo eg: 5.56mm etc.  But it seems impossible to acquire any of it.  The crew cannot acquire it, and if you dismount em and mount an inf team, they also cannot acquire any ammo.

10) LOS/LOF issues.  While CM2 is supposed to be WYSIWYG it often doesn't work that way.  One can get down to level one and eyeball a situation.  But, what one sees from a location often is not what a unit will see at that same location.  Eg: The AI can see pixel-wide gaps in what human examination considers completely blocked LOS.  A related issue is that one can eyeball a situation like a road in town and there is no obstruction down a street to target a building.  But one finds that when one places a unit in that location, it cannot see or shoot at the building.  

11) Another LOS/LOF issue.  Frequently we find that a crew served weapon can see and target an enemy only to discover that it's only the 3rd ammo loader who can see the enemy, not the main gun/gunner.  However, it is usually impossible to move the MG or gun a few inches to a position where it can see and fire the primary weapon at the enemy.  

12)  Finding Hulldown positions is often problematic.  Some folks seem to like the "Hulldown Assist routine" available in the game.  But, often it simply leave the vehicle with no LOS to the desired target and one has to waste another turn (in WEGO obviously) manually moving the waypoints to get a hull-down position.  So, one may as well do it manually from the start.  The additional problem is that it is common that vehicles go from having "No LOS' to "Partial Hull Down" with no "Hulldown" option being able to be located in between.  One can spend many minutes dicking around with moving waypoints the shortest possible distance in this, that or the other direction to find a hull-done position (relative to the desired target), but one can only find either "No LOS" or "Partial Hulldown" positions.  It's unclear if this is an issue with the map, (maybe the terrain is strange), or the LOS routine.

13) Some vehicles like Bradleys when targeted vs a building don't use the desired weapon - their cannon - but instead fire their missiles - which often makes no sense.  (Target Light makes em use their MG's.)  BMP's are similar vs buildings: Sometimes they use their ATGM's, sometimes their cannon, and sometimes their MG - even if one orders TARGET LIGHT.  There is no indication as to why the AI chooses a particular weapons system.

14) SMOKE and buildings...  Smoke acts as if there are no obstructions or walls and will drift through a building as it is made of wire.  This is actually very helpful when one is attempting to assault a multi-room building.  But, doesn't reflect RL.

15) When one orders a SMOKE artillery strike and run out of SMOKE, the battery obviously still has all its HE rounds.  However, if you first order HE, when all shells are gone the battery has no SMOKE rounds left - they seem to have been used up as HE.

16) Some SNIPER teams in CMSF2 carry 50 cal rounds, even though they possess no weapon that can use 50 cal rounds.  

17) Park your vehicle directly behind a small tree and any enemy fire that comes from that direction will hit the virtually indestructible tree and the vehicle may be 100% unaffected.  Unless the enemy gun/tank moves, it can exhaust all its ammo in this way.  AI controlled guns especially can be made useless by this trick.  It seems that trees are better armor and provide better protection vs AT rounds than steel. 

18) Attempting to resupply a squad one may split off a two-man team to mount a vehicle, get the ammo, then debark and run to where its squad is.  That takes two turns.  However, the teams may not recombine.  A turn later when one again moves both parts of the squad to the same spot, they may still not recombine.  To get the teams to recombine one has to split the larger squad team into two and then move all three teams to the same spot.  Only then will the teams recombine to the full squad and complete ammo resupply.  

19) Heavy HE barrage does not seem to damage vehicle/armor subsystems as much as expected.

20) Some vehicles like the WW2 era 8 wheeled German Rad recon vehicles are supposed to be able to move as fast in reverse as forwards, but in the game move in reverse much slower.  In the game, it may be that all reverse speeds are identical or % of the forward speed.

21) Crewing oddities.  BMP's usually benefit re spotting from an extra man or two in the vehicle in addition to the crew in addition to enabling the vehicle to "Open Up".  A BMP cannot "open up" if it only carries its 2-man crew.  If the BMP has lost a crewman, and there are no other inf being carried, it cannot TARGET - it becomes merely a transport vehicle.  However, sometimes, leaving an extra two-man team in the BMP will enable it to "open up" and TARGET and other times it won't.  Adding a two man crew from another vehicle to the BMP will still not enable this BMP to TARGET anything and the BMP still cannot "open up".  The extra crew are treated as mere passengers.  It's all irregular and unpredictable.  

22) Guns in CM2 aim for the center of mass.  So, even when at short range, the gun will aim for the hull even though it may have more chance of killing or damaging the target by aiming at a different part.  If the turret is less well armored than (say) the hull that can mean that a hull-down tank may be more vulnerable than out in the open, as the turret will be the target. 

23) Tanks can spot inf ridiculously quickly given what we know of tank's poor vision when buttoned up, or in poor visibility, like in smoke etc.

24) Inf is unable to detect a tank that is  a few meters away on the other side of a wall, or in poor visibility.

25) WW2 jeeps and trucks have bulletproof windshields. Often making the driver much harder to kill than he should be.

26) Some vehicles have onboard mortars that do not need to dismount to fire.  However, if one does dismount, deploy and fire, and then remount the mortars in order to move to another location, when one tries to access the mortars for firing, some if not all of the mortar HT's may say "Destroyed", while other mortar HT's are able to accept mortar fire orders normally.  Witnessed in a CMBN game.  Saved game file available.

27)  Special sniper ammo like "50cal" and "338 Lapua Magnum" etc. is not available for resupply.

 

Edited by Erwin
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On 8/16/2021 at 10:05 AM, Erwin said:

Guns in CM2 aim for the center of mass.  So, even when at short range, the gun will aim for the hull even though it may have more chance of killing or damaging the target by aiming at a different part.  If the turret is less well armored than (say) the hull that can mean that a hull-down tank may be more vulnerable than out in the open, as the turret will be the target. 

I think you touch on some legitimate issues, but then you include stuff like this, which is not an issue, so it ends up detracting from the actual legitimate issues you mention. 

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There were many lengthy threads about exactly this phenomena some years ago.  Someone did tests to demonstrate that a hull-down tank like a PzIV with less front turret armor than in its front hull, may be more likely to be KIA when hull-down - even tho' it may be less likely to be hit.  This was a long time ago.  But, IIRC it was concluded that this was a CM2 game phenomenon.  

I think this was the original thread:  

 

"The problem is that CM tanks always aim at the center of the visible part of the enemy tank, which is the upper hull for hull up tanks and near the turret ring for hull down tanks. They will never adapt and aim at specific plates (weaknesses) even after repeated bounces against the upper hull.

This is the correct way of maximizing the chance to hit, but does not necessarily maximize the chance of a penetrating hit.  This means that if the turret is the only vulnerable part of your tank, it's better not to be hull down. In every other situation, being hull down increases your chance of survival.

I'll omit the math here because this has been discussed before. Do a search if you're interested."

Has this issue was addressed and changed in an update or patch?  ...Anyone?

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Actually given how I feed my men into L-shaped ambushes like a mindless butcher I believe it's fair to say I am not invested in the game enough. Sadly I must defer to 15, 000 hours of testing :^)

Edited by Rinaldi
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Thanks Erwin for bringing up some of these issues. I don't know how hard they are to correct, I'm not a programmer.

I love CM, but I often seethe as things seem not to be realistic at all. You mention many spotting issues, which do really bug me. There's nothing like spending minutes micromanaging a sniper or ATGM team into the ideal position , to find they can't see anything.  It makes no sense. The lack of communication between teams sharing the same Action Sq is very annoying. 

I find 19 and 23 particularly annoying,

On 19 there is a very long thread somewhere which presents very good research that HE is damaging to armoured vehicles, and that near misses can cause a lot of damage. I've absolutely pounded vehicle areas with everything, inc. 122mm-155mm to negligible apparent effect, including direct hits.

23: even today, we get smartphone camera footage from Jihadis which looks like they were hiding (or possibly not!) within 100-200 m of tanks with thermal imagers and not detected. Obviously in WW2 tanks were blind. I've been in a couple in museums and looked through the commander's periscopes. The vision is very limited, and that's in a well-lighted area. Goodness knows what you would see when bumping around with smoke and dust everywhere.

I know no game can be perfect, and we have many disagreements, particularly where information is contested, like WW2, but I find it very frustrating when things that are so obviously wrong destroy the suspension of disbelief and reduce the enjoyment of the game. 

Erwin concentrates a lot on the LOS stuff.  I don't know how difficult it is to model but I was on one of my walks in southern Britain a while ago and I crested a rise with a town below. With my binoculars I could see everything for 1-2 km around. I imagined calling in artillery and air strikes on particular locations.  CM doesn't seem to model this correctly. Given the huge depth of expertise of the combined "membership" it is rather irritating to me that Steve and Charles don't seem to take much notice of this. I feel they could say: OK we can work on X but we can't fix Y, sorry. I think we would accept that approach.

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A gun doesn't always aim for the center of mass. Take a Churchill tank out for a spin and you'll find the enemy AI likes aiming for the internal gun mantlet opening. Take a Soviet tank out for a spin in CMCW ad you'll see the enemy AI trying very hard to hit the narrow lower hull front.

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@MikeyD I know you are close to the management, so I hope you can convey what I intended (and I think Erwin did too - though I can't speak for him) was that the game would be better if some of the anomalies could be attended too. If they can't because of technical issues, then I think we would understand if we were told, but to be ignored is frusrating, especially as CM has one of the most loyal and supportive player communities.

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In some games I've been struggling with acquiring weapons from vehicles. I wish there was some kind of way to share weapons between two infantry units, so it would be possible for example that a team with Javelin launcher but no missiles, could get missiles from another team that has missiles but no launcher. Or if some team has several anti tank weapons and another team has none, you could give those AT weapons to the other team  one by one.  Not sure how to share ammo though, if I remember correctly this currently happens automatically without user being able to decide how much and what kind of ammo/weapons are shared.

Edited by SlowMotion
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Yeah.  Units in close proximity (adjacent action squares?) to each other may share ammo, but only one round or magazine at a time.  However, there are arcane rules that in some/many cases, the units have to be from the same formation.  But, that may be for mortars...  

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Mountains of the Moon weather says 'mist' or does the author mean fog? Here the Soviets fight the Dutch SS the infantry spots a dug in PAK 75 mm from over a km away. I have the screenshot in my thread. AT guns are deemed to be camouflaged it is a tall order to spot something like that at a kilometer. The PAK 75 mm didn't engage armour possibly infantry which would be a tactical error in my book. 

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5 hours ago, Lethaface said:

There are now two of these threads on the main page, one started in june and one in august. Is this beneficial to anyone?

It's actually the 7th iteration of these threads over the past year.

https://community.battlefront.com/search/?q=ODDITIES&quick=1&search_in=titles

Chalk it up to the oddities and weirdness of Erwin.

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The UAV RQ-7B Shadow in Task Force Thunder still needs a direct LOS for the FO Operator. I would have thought that he would be able to plot artillery missions from his APC without exposing himself on the embankment. *Spoilers* he went unnoticed during the battle I am just wondering as I tried to keep him inside his vehicle. 

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On 8/27/2021 at 10:12 PM, MikeyD said:

A gun doesn't always aim for the center of mass. Take a Churchill tank out for a spin and you'll find the enemy AI likes aiming for the internal gun mantlet opening. Take a Soviet tank out for a spin in CMCW ad you'll see the enemy AI trying very hard to hit the narrow lower hull front.

To my best knowledge, this is not correct. Guns always aim for centre visible mass. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

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2 hours ago, Vanir Ausf B said:
8 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

To my best knowledge, this is not correct.

Unless Charles very recently made a major change and only told one other person about it, it is not correct.

This is interesting.  Is there a thread or documentation that confirms that center of mass is not the target?  Or are we agreeing that center of mass is what is being aimed at?

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6 minutes ago, Erwin said:

This is interesting.  Is there a thread or documentation that confirms that center of mass is not the target?  Or are we agreeing that center of mass is what is being aimed at?

I believe he meant that I was right: Guns always aim at centre mass. But the aim point is shifted upwards when a tank is partially or fully hull-down.

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Ok, thanks for the clarification.  Presumably the AI "sees what it sees" and the center of mass switches appropriately when the target is partially or fully hull down.  ie:  The AI cannot "see" the part of the tank that is behind an obstruction.  In RL, a gunner will attempt to aim for a weak point. 

This is the reason for the controversy over whether (in the game) it's better for a PzIV (which has weaker front turret armor than front hull armor) is actually worse off being hull-down as a front turret hit will more likely kill it than if the AI aims for the hull.  

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56 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Ok, thanks for the clarification.  Presumably the AI "sees what it sees" and the center of mass switches appropriately when the target is partially or fully hull down.  ie:  The AI cannot "see" the part of the tank that is behind an obstruction.  In RL, a gunner will attempt to aim for a weak point. 

This is the reason for the controversy over whether (in the game) it's better for a PzIV (which has weaker front turret armor than front hull armor) is actually worse off being hull-down as a front turret hit will more likely kill it than if the AI aims for the hull.  

And this is also the reason why smaller AT weapons are less useful than they could be.. an AT rifle aiming for vision blocks, a small AT gun aiming for the tracks, etc.

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