Bug Tracker Thread

[Artkin]

And since I can't double post quotes from 11-13 years ago:

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Posted May 8, 2009

BTW, earlier there was a point made about speed and the chances of bogging. It is true that in some circumstances it is better to be going fast because the momentum of the vehicle might carry you through the problem spot before other physics take control of the situation. However, these types of situations are usually self evident and are, IMHO, infrequent. More often than not going slow produces better results for the following reasons:

 

1. Unless you've personally done recon on the terrain you're hoping to speed onto, it's quite possible that the spot you're trying to get over is just a warning about even worse terrain to come. If you speed ahead you could pass easily through a moderate problem right into a serious one.

 

2. Generally speaking if you go slowly you can feel the vehicle starting to get stuck BEFORE it gets stuck. This gives you time to process the information and cease forward motion. At that point you have a range of options such as recon ahead, gunning the engine and going through the next patch faster, downshifting into a lower gear range, or best of all... backing up onto known solid ground.

 

3. Since speed x time = distance traveled, the faster you go the less time it takes to go a specific distance. If you go slowly and figure out the terrain is becoming worse you are more likely to be at the beginning of the trouble spot instead of in the middle of it. This means good terrain, which you already safely drove over once, is easy to get back to. Even if you get stuck at this point you have more options for recovery because you have less distance to get out of.

 

4. Velocity can do some very interesting things to a vehicle's mechanical integrity There's a big difference hitting a tree stump at crawling speed vs. 10 mph. vs. 20 mph. At crawling speed it's just a light bump which likely won't cause damage. At 10 mph you might break something. At 20 mph you might actually bounce up and over the obstacle (with or without causing damage), but then upon landing find yourself with compounding damage potential. Ever seen a picture of a tank with with a broken road wheel? With out knowing how it got to be broken I feel I can offer up a theory

 

5. Turning to avoid obstacles that come into view is super easy when going slow, very difficult to do when going fast. Anybody who drives a car on a road knows this already. A deer in your headlights at 65mph is almost a certain collision, but at 5mph it is almost certainly not.

 

6. Anybody who has hit a rock or a stump with a wheeled or tracked vehicle at anything over than a crawling speed can tell you how quickly and seriously your vector can change. Again, if you're going slow your vector will change less dramatically and quickly because of less momentum. You also will travel less distance off course when going slower than when going faster. Going off course in an open field might not matter much, but in other situations it matters a lot.

 

7. It's generally best to drive off road with the least traction option possible. That way when you start to feel the vehicle having problems you have options, such as shifting into 4 wheel drive, engaging a lower gear range, or doing combinations of things. The theory is that if you get yourself stuck with the best options you're screwed, but if you get stuck with the lowest options you have something left to play with. Personally I think it's a balance because if you go with a medium setting you're less likely to get stuck in the first place and yet still have at least a couple additional options. With my Pinzgauer (military 4x4) I would drive in 4x4 and still have the ability to lock front and/or rear differentials as well as shift into low range. Only got stuck once in deep mud just after I said to myself "maybe I should stop here"

 

Anyhoo... this is just more stuff to consider. I think people with off road driving experience have a very, very different concept of bogging/immobilization than people who don't.

 

Steve

Edited October 17, 2022 by Artkin

[Artkin]

But on dry grass it should carry you through a troubled spot. Unless we're simulating rocks in the grass which annihilates your wheels.

Edited October 17, 2022 by Artkin

[chuckdyke]

4 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Anyhoo... this is just more stuff to consider. I think people with off road driving experience have a very, very different concept of bogging/immobilization than people who don't.

Tyre pressure, with tanks I suppose the track tension. We have people died in Australia because people bogged their vehicle on dry roads. Don't think that dry conditions make the terrain bog proof. All these things are not modelled in the game. 

[Artkin]

5 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Tyre pressure, with tanks I suppose the track tension. We have people died in Australia because people bogged their vehicle on dry roads. Don't think that dry conditions make the terrain bog proof. All these things are not modelled in the game. 

Well Steve said his M17(?) became bogged because a branch got lodged inbetween his tracks. In the case I present it's an open field. 

Edited October 17, 2022 by Artkin

[chuckdyke]

Thousand and one reasons vehicles get bogged you don't need branches either. This is actually a track lucky the guys travel with two vehicles. 

[Artkin]

7 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

Thousand and one reasons vehicles get bogged you don't need branches either. This is actually a track lucky the guys travel with two vehicles. 

Do you understand my vehicles were driving on grass?

Here's another Steve quote:

"Bogging should be fairly common, generally speaking. Immobilization, however, should be fairly uncommon *if* the ground conditions and player choices are in synch. As I said, and as BlackMoria said, there are just some situations where immobilization is inevitable. An example of that from Iraq is An Nasiriyah:

...

Again, bogging should be fairly common... immobilizations should be fairly rare. An Nasiriyah was definitely not the norm, but 8 vehicles with presumably very experienced drivers got stuck. They didn't have the information they needed to avoid that situation, so the player shouldn't either."

AND The grass might not be hard, but the very dry ground underneath it should be.

"We could use a save of this sort of thing. Vehicles, under normal circumstances, should not be bogging on hard, dry surfaces. Especially not roads. There must be something specific that's triggering this for you guys because, obviously, we'd see thousands of posts complaining about this if it was a simple road + vehicle = bogging situation."

So if we are talking about things that aren't roads, what other terrain tile can vehicles run over that are just as safe? Dirt tiles? There's dirt underneath the grass, and this grass isn't "XT".

Edited October 17, 2022 by Artkin

[chuckdyke]

Put in a bug report, I never put one in yet so I don't have experience in it. Which scenario is your problem?

[Artkin]

And yet another quote... Perhaps the M3 and the PSW222/3 have abnormally low values compared to other vehicles with a similar tire size to weight ratio:

"I don't remember if the old CMx1 code had the ability to special case vehicles to tweak them towards being more/less prone to bogging than their stats alone indicate, but I know for sure it's possible with the current code."

[Artkin]

1 minute ago, chuckdyke said:

Put in a bug report, I never put one in yet so I don't have experience in it. Which scenario is your problem?

Everything is custom, since the troops are Conscript, with Extreme fanatism and +2 leadership.

[chuckdyke]

19 minutes ago, Artkin said:

Everything is custom, since the troops are Conscript,

This maybe the problem I look at some scenarios and in the set-up, phase bail out the drivers. Most are veterans. Tutorial Campaign Battle for Normandy. I use that scenario for all sorts of testing. No good taking a probationary driver four-wheel driving. 

Edited October 17, 2022 by chuckdyke

[dkchapuis]

2 hours ago, Artkin said:

 

I would be open to believing that this isn't a problem if the terrain was different.

my understanding of CM grass terrain is bumpy fields, not like a park.  Have you ever driven a vehicle off road -  through a cow pasture or such?  If you drive fast you will destroy a vehicle in no time.

[Artkin]

4 minutes ago, dkchapuis said:

my understanding of CM grass terrain is bumpy fields, not like a park.  Have you ever driven a vehicle off road -  through a cow pasture or such?  If you drive fast you will destroy a vehicle in no time.

I've driven DRW vehicles through grass, but not at speed so it doesn't really compare. 

Anyway there were much less roads back then, and considering this is a recon vehicle it was probably designed with offroad in mind to an extent. 

Again, I'd understand if the vehicles weren't breaking down within a few hundred meters of offroad on grass. If the vehicles are experiencing mechanical failures I would expect them to be immobilized and not bogged. There was a high rate of immobilization, sure. But there were also a lot of boggers who managed to free themselves. 

It really doesnt make sense to me how a veteran crew is less bog-prone on flat, very dry grass. 

I'm not discounting discrepencies in the terrain. But moving at "Fast" should have you flying over whatever micro terrain long before you get stuck. Especially on "very dry" grass. 

What are we modeling? Half a meter holes in the ground? Rocks? 

[chuckdyke]

10 minutes ago, Artkin said:

It really doesnt make sense to me how a veteran crew is less bog-prone on flat, very dry grass. 

You play a computer game with algorithms, and this may be computed in the game. In tested designed scenarios we don't have your problems. I just wondered why designers use veterans to crew vehicles. We don't have real grass either but terrain tiles. Some cause vehicles to bog or even impassable. I was frustrated because engineers made a path through the bocage, but the designer used heavy forest tiles on that spot.  Looking at my gap I wondered for ages why I couldn't drive a tank through it.

Edited October 17, 2022 by chuckdyke

[dkchapuis]

20 minutes ago, Artkin said:

It really doesnt make sense to me how a veteran crew is less bog-prone on flat, very dry grass. 

I'm not discounting discrepencies in the terrain. But moving at "Fast" should have you flying over whatever micro terrain long before you get stuck. Especially on "very dry" grass. 

What are we modeling? Half a meter holes in the ground? Rocks? 

I dont agree with you assessment of "flat very dry grass" being something a vehicle can safely fly over.  Flat unmanicured grass land is not fit for driving cards on.  Hell i've been on gravel roads that I had to drive less than 10 miles per hour on because I didnt want to destroy my vehicle.

[Artkin]

28 minutes ago, dkchapuis said:

I dont agree with you assessment of "flat very dry grass" being something a vehicle can safely fly over.  Flat unmanicured grass land is not fit for driving cards on.  Hell i've been on gravel roads that I had to drive less than 10 miles per hour on because I didnt want to destroy my vehicle.

Then how come the keubelwagon doesnt bog at nearly the same rate as the PSW?  (Edit, should actually test this first, but I have never noticed the keubel to be a bogger)

Surely it was not designed for offroad usage like the PSW was. You'd think the keubelwagon would break something first. 

Yes, the PSW has more mass, but it also has much larger wheels, and seemingly more suspension travel to accompany the mass.

You should take a look at the file I've submitted. There's no reason my vehicles should be bogging and immobilizing on turns 1 and 2. They dont even have time to get up to speed. 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Artkin

[Grey_Fox]

8 hours ago, Artkin said:

Okay, well I just found something important. Apparently speed does affect bogging

One test with a small number of vehicles doesn't prove anything, and Steve has been wrong about game mechanics before.

[Artkin]

46 minutes ago, Grey_Fox said:

One test with a small number of vehicles doesn't prove anything, and Steve has been wrong about game mechanics before.

I've had this test saved on my hard drive already for a reason. 

[chuckdyke]

51 minutes ago, Artkin said:

I've had this test saved on my hard drive already for a reason. 

One man's theory is not a theory but a hypothesis. You have a few problems if it were a scenario, we all have we could try it out ourselves. I suggest finding some scenarios with the same units and see if you still have the same problem. 

[Ultradave]

10 hours ago, Artkin said:

You should take a look at the file I've submitted. There's no reason my vehicles should be bogging and immobilizing on turns 1 and 2. They dont even have time to get up to speed. 

I disagree with this. Your vehicles didn't just beam in to the battlefield Star Trek style from a factory. They've been on the move, so there is some bogging probability function in effect on every turn/minute.

Now, from asking around, I've got this:

1. During Final Blitzkrieg development (and associated CM wide patches) Charles increased the probability of bogging on *all* terrain types, but not by the same amount. Greater increase in probability the worse the ground. This was to make FB mud more of a problem than it was, which was felt not to be enough to simulate really ugly terrain. Also stated was that previously there was almost zero chance of any vehicle bogging on clear dry terrain so the probability was upped very slightly.

2. Page 47 of the Engine 4 manual states that crew quality matters:

"All vehicles are rated for Offroad performance. To some degree better quality crews lessen the chance of bogging. However, if you order a non-tracked personnel carrier to move across a muddy field the best crew in the world won’t likely help you out much."

 

So, put those two together and there you have your results. I really don't consider 1-4 vehicles bogging out of the 3 companies of armored cars to be much of an issue with Conscript crews, dry grass or not. The dry grass isn't representing a football field but countryside terrain. Maybe you want your vehicle crews to be one level up from Conscript, since the description says a Consrcipt has almost no training and no experience. The driver at least must have had SOME training.

Dave

 

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Ultradave

[chuckdyke]

18 minutes ago, Ultradave said:

Final Blitzkrieg

If I remember it right in a Muddy Affair I lost 2 Shermans due to bogging. One wing traveled fast as they had no passengers, the right wing on hunt as they had passengers. 

[Bulletpoint]

17 hours ago, Ultradave said:

Also slowing down to "Move" rather than "Quick" the conscripts did much better. Only two bogs and they recovered in two minutes

This is probably just due to vehicles covering less ground during those two minutes. It's been tested before that vehicle speed has no impact on the bogging risk.

[Ultradave]

7 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

This is probably just due to vehicles covering less ground during those two minutes. It's been tested before that vehicle speed has no impact on the bogging risk.

There were fewer bogs overall. What I was trying to convey there was that when they did bog, they recovered more quickly and had less tendency to become immobilized after bogging. 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Ultradave

[Artkin]

@Ultradave 

I did not quote this, but I did find Steve saying that there was no historical information to base bogging on. So this was the "next best thing". 

I have to disagree. The M3 scout car is like a car. It's a 9000 pound car, but still should drive just like an automobile. It's my opinion that if you take a military aged male they should have SOME idea of how to use this equipment. The bogging on turns 1 and 2 and subsequent immobilization just showed how high the rate was. 

If anything I would gladly settle for my vehicles to have a slightly lower rate of immobilization on dry grass fields. 

We can already simulate 1m elevation changes in the editor right? So WTF are we simulating in dry open fields? 

 

Also since I cant quote efficiently at all on mobile, the bogging was MUCH more than 1-4. 

Edited October 18, 2022 by Artkin

[Grey_Fox]

12 minutes ago, Artkin said:

It's my opinion that if you take a military aged male they should have SOME idea of how to use this equipment.

Not in WW2 they wouldn't. Germany wasn't very motorized at all.

[Vanir Ausf B]

As someone with off-road driving experience in 4-wheel drive vehicles and motorcycles, IMO driving over any unmodified terrain involves an element of risk. Dry grass and dirt tiles should not be treated essentially the same as roads, which they were prior to the bogging changes mentioned above. Given the lack of real world data, reasonable people can disagree on how much difference, but the bottom line from my point of view is that roads are not there to be used only when it rains.