laundry list of bug reports and feature suggestions

[ts]

Let me preface with an apology for any redundancy. I have not been satisfied with previous discussions of some of these, and have not have time to search and go through all the topics:

1) in addition to the current 2 choices for targetting by tanks of with or w/o main gun, it might be nice to have the additional choice of main gun only. For example, you may wish to area fire on a building and landscape it a bit, while wishing to leave the MGs flexibility or just to save their ammo.

2) would like to see an additional unit order of "hold your fire". This would be different from ambush in that it should not have any target area, and more significantly different from hiding in that the unit may be asked to look and report on what it sees instead of just ducking for cover.

of course, it is understood, as always, that the unit may get other ideas into its head under certain conditions.

3) I find that when an area may likely call for off map artillery, but I'm not sure yet, I try to cut down on the response time by repeatedly asking the FO to target the area and then cancel the order before the ranging round would be sent out. It might be nice to be able to order the FO to call in coords and let the arty do as much prep as they can stopping short of the ranging round, and then wait for a further order to go on from there. Note that the new mechanism I'm suggesting does not cut down the total time required to target an area. It just let's you spend the total time in different phases with a couple of serialized decisions instead of just one decision.

4) the support columns of 2 story bridges do not seem to block either LOS or fire.

5) more important, dead or live vehicles do not seem to block anything in some important cases. The one I have veryfied so far is actually for friendlies. I noticed that one of my tanks fired its main gun right through a friendly tank in front of it (and I mean smack through the center of its main hull).

6) there are some cases where I get more info than I find tasteful. I'm not sure I should know which of my units an enemy is currently targeting. Let me figure it out from its posture and the tracer rounds. Sounds from a distant (especially unseen) enemy should not be audible to me. The estimated sound contacts are great, but scanning around the map and finding where the sound of a gun 1000 meters from my nearest unit is, is not right. Another example: I can tell if a sniper has shocked a tank by listening for the cries of the hit man. This should only be available if some friendly is within hearing range.

7) This and the next point have to do with too little visual info, on the other hand. Let me try to preempt some unproductive responses by saying that I'm aware of the myriad sighting effects: LOS tool vs. my estimation, smoke, facing, distance, hiding, buttoning, current activity, etc ... I'm reporting here items I have a comfortable amount of experience with (though I may still be in error).

I have found that the biggest giveaway for sighting is moving. I'm down with that, since movement is key to the visual systems of people and other critters. I would like to see a bit of tweaking to make large objects like bunkers and vehicles more visible though.

It seems a bit off to notice a 2 man team moving between the trees 1200 meters away, but not see a stationary tank in the open at 500 meters in the same weather. (Yes, to a place where an unhidden, unbuttoned, stationary, correctly facing unit has a bright blue LOS to, etc ... ad infinitum + 1).

8) I would also like to see a bit of history

applied to what is seen. Example: I was recently playing the "all or nothing" scenario. The first wooden MG bunker was spotted when it fired on me. I ordered my buttoned tank to fire on it and it already delivered a couple of rounds. But since the MG in the bunker stopped firing (for lack of a target) for several seconds, it became invisible (replaced by the german marker). I know that can be remedied by area fire, but it shouldn't come to that in certain cases.

So what I'm proposing is that prominent, immobile targets that have been spotted should not go away easily. After all, just because the tracers are not still coming out, does not mean the building moved. I will accept that the same building may be hard to spot even though one knows one saw it a few seconds ago, but maybe there should be some history. For example, if a unit is focused on the target because it's firing on it, and the LOS is not interrupted, the sighting should be maintained by at least that unit (even for a buttoned tank)?

9) I do not want to trigger a new round of quibbling over this. My quick 2 cents on crews is that way too many survive the demise of their vehicles. I would feel comfortable with 9 out of 10 tanks having no

survivors and 1 out of 10 having 1 or 2 at most. Just historical. Not to be macabre, but tanks, air craft, submarines, and even cargo ships were unfortunately their crews coffins.

Sorry, in retrospect I should have broken this up into well titled pieces. Next time.

[Cubbies Phan]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ts:

1) in addition to the current 2 choices for targetting by tanks of with or w/o main gun, it might be nice to have the additional choice of main gun only. For example, you may wish to area fire on a building and landscape it a bit, while wishing to leave the MGs flexibility or just to save their ammo.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK, this one along with others here fall under what we and BTS called "micro-management". In that BTS didn't want to make this game totally micro-managable. That's kind of what the Tac-AI is in charge of.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>2) would like to see an additional unit order of "hold your fire". This would be different from ambush in that it should not have any target area, and more significantly different from hiding in that the unit may be asked to look and report on what it sees instead of just ducking for cover. Of course, it is understood, as always, that the unit may get other ideas into its head under certain conditions.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

The "hold fire order" has been discussed before, I think. IIRC, this maybe something in the works for CMBB. Your recon idea probably falls under "micro-management" again.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>3) I find that when an area may likely call for off map artillery, but I'm not sure yet, I try to cut down on the response time by repeatedly asking the FO to target the area and then cancel the order before the ranging round would be sent out. It might be nice to be able to order the FO to call in coords and let the arty do as much prep as they can stopping short of the ranging round, and then wait for a further order to go on from there. Note that the new mechanism I'm suggesting does not cut down the total time required to target an area. It just let's you spend the total time in different phases with a couple of serialized decisions instead of just one decision.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

"Micro-management"

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>4) the support columns of 2 story bridges do not seem to block either LOS or fire.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK this one is explained by that the graphics in the game are abstracted. The actual "edges" of something on the screen may not be the actual edge of something within the engine. Which is why sometimes you may see a large building clipping a road.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>5) more important, dead or live vehicles do not seem to block anything in some important cases. The one I have veryfied so far is actually for friendlies. I noticed that one of my tanks fired its main gun right through a friendly tank in front of it (and I mean smack through the center of its main hull).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Vehicles in CM do not block LOS at all, UNLESS it is knocked out and smoking. With the emphasis on "smoking".

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>6) there are some cases where I get more info than I find tasteful. I'm not sure I should know which of my units an enemy is currently targeting. Let me figure it out from its posture and the tracer rounds. Sounds from a distant (especially unseen) enemy should not be audible to me. The estimated sound contacts are great, but scanning around the map and finding where the sound of a gun 1000 meters from my nearest unit is, is not right. Another example: I can tell if a sniper has shocked a tank by listening for the cries of the hit man. This should only be available if some friendly is within hearing range.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh boy, how can I be nice with the explanation with this one? Well first of all you not always get the information (yellow targeting line) of an enemy firing on you. You'll notice that your tank may suddenly get knocked out, but may not know where the shot came from. In fact you won't even see the projectile hitting your tank.

Sounds from distant enemies? Sure you will. You can't tell me that you wouldn't be able to hear a Panther's diesal engines rumbling through the woods across the battlefield once it gets close enough. That's why you get these sound contacts that will be locations other than where they actually are. Sometimes in terrain where the contact can't even be.

A sound contact from an AT-gun 1000 meters away. Well yeah, you're probably right. But you would probably at 500 meters away.

A shot from a sniper rifle? Sure you would.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>7) This and the next point have to do with too little visual info, on the other hand. Let me try to preempt some unproductive responses by saying that I'm aware of the myriad sighting effects: LOS tool vs. my estimation, smoke, facing, distance, hiding, buttoning, current activity, etc ... I'm reporting here items I have a comfortable amount of experience with (though I may still be in error).

I have found that the biggest giveaway for sighting is moving. I'm down with that, since movement is key to the visual systems of people and other critters. I would like to see a bit of tweaking to make large objects like bunkers and vehicles more visible though.

It seems a bit off to notice a 2 man team moving between the trees 1200 meters away, but not see a stationary tank in the open at 500 meters in the same weather. (Yes, to a place where an unhidden, unbuttoned, stationary, correctly facing unit has a bright blue LOS to, etc ... ad infinitum + 1).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Who's doing the spotting?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>8) I would also like to see a bit of history

applied to what is seen. Example: I was recently playing the "all or nothing" scenario. The first wooden MG bunker was spotted when it fired on me. I ordered my buttoned tank to fire on it and it already delivered a couple of rounds. But since the MG in the bunker stopped firing (for lack of a target) for several seconds, it became invisible (replaced by the german marker). I know that can be remedied by area fire, but it shouldn't come to that in certain cases.

So what I'm proposing is that prominent, immobile targets that have been spotted should not go away easily. After all, just because the tracers are not still coming out, does not mean the building moved. I will accept that the same building may be hard to spot even though one knows one saw it a few seconds ago, but maybe there should be some history. For example, if a unit is focused on the target because it's firing on it, and the LOS is not interrupted, the sighting should be maintained by at least that unit (even for a buttoned tank)?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well what did your unit do that originally spotted the bunker do? Did it move while buttoned or something? If so, then yeah, you'd probably lose site of the bunker if it had quite firing

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>9) I do not want to trigger a new round of quibbling over this. My quick 2 cents on crews is that way too many survive the demise of their vehicles. I would feel comfortable with 9 out of 10 tanks having no

survivors and 1 out of 10 having 1 or 2 at most. Just historical. Not to be macabre, but tanks, air craft, submarines, and even cargo ships were unfortunately their crews coffins.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, all penetration hits are different, just like spinal injuries. I was playing a game the other day when one of my tanks took 2 casualities before it was even knocked out. One was due to internal armor flaking and the other was due to a penetration hit that didn't knock out the vehicle outright. However due to the fact that the vehicle, probably with a total crew of 5, lost 2 men, they abandoned shortly thereafter as it could no longer operate effectively. The amount of casulties a crew takes is fairly accurate. Vehicles that explode catostrophically usually don't have any survivors. I just had a Sherman blow up like that due to a Panzerfaust and I don't think there were any surviving crew members.

Just remember that each hit is different. That is what makes this game great. The armor penetration model in CM is the best I've ever seen in a game.

[russellmz]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ts:

5) more important, dead or live vehicles do not seem to block anything in some important cases. The one I have veryfied so far is actually for friendlies. I noticed that one of my tanks fired its main gun right through a friendly tank in front of it (and I mean smack through the center of its main hull).

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

friendly tanks can shoot through other tanks. just too hard for the specs originally designed for cm to calculate every tank and every los and to see if the round hit or not.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ts:

6) there are some cases where I get more info than I find tasteful. I'm not sure I should know which of my units an enemy is currently targeting. Let me figure it out from its posture and the tracer rounds. Sounds from a distant (especially unseen) enemy should not be audible to me. The estimated sound contacts are great, but scanning around the map and finding where the sound of a gun 1000 meters from my nearest unit is, is not right. Another example: I can tell if a sniper has shocked a tank by listening for the cries of the hit man. This should only be available if some friendly is within hearing range.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

if you are allied and near a friendly unit and hear the german cry, then that should be ok. if you are near the german unit, don't go near german tanks when your sniper fires on them.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ts:

8) I would also like to see a bit of history

applied to what is seen. Example: I was recently playing the "all or nothing" scenario. The first wooden MG bunker was spotted when it fired on me. I ordered my buttoned tank to fire on it and it already delivered a couple of rounds. But since the MG in the bunker stopped firing (for lack of a target) for several seconds, it became invisible (replaced by the german marker). I know that can be remedied by area fire, but it shouldn't come to that in certain cases.

So what I'm proposing is that prominent, immobile targets that have been spotted should not go away easily. After all, just because the tracers are not still coming out, does not mean the building moved. I will accept that the same building may be hard to spot even though one knows one saw it a few seconds ago, but maybe there should be some history. For example, if a unit is focused on the target because it's firing on it, and the LOS is not interrupted, the sighting should be maintained by at least that unit (even for a buttoned tank)?

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

yeah, thats annoying when you spot a bunker but then it suddenly "disappears" from view

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ts:

9) I do not want to trigger a new round of quibbling over this. My quick 2 cents on crews is that way too many survive the demise of their vehicles. I would feel comfortable with 9 out of 10 tanks having no

survivors and 1 out of 10 having 1 or 2 at most. Just historical. Not to be macabre, but tanks, air craft, submarines, and even cargo ships were unfortunately their crews coffins.

Sorry, in retrospect I should have broken this up into well titled pieces. Next time.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

whats fun is when a 500 lb bomb goes off near 5 jeeps and not one of the two men crews are entirely wiped out, all 5 crews leave with at least one man still alive...

[Slapdragon]

As for the survival of crews, your proposal is not historical. Take Shermans in US service, which I have statistics from the US Army fact file on Medical Casualties and Evacuations and backed up by other works, 75% of all crew in destroyed tanks survived the destruction of their tanks without a scratch or only lightly injured, 15% were wounded severly, and 10% killed. In CM terms that means the average M4 of all types, including the M4s before wet storage, 3 or 4 out of 5 crew will get of a tank alive. More likely, some tanks brew and kill everyone, most have everyone get out alive, and some loose a crew or two killed.

This is just an example, but it illustrates that the machine is more vulnerable than the man.

[JonS]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ts:

...

9) I do not want to trigger a new round of quibbling over this. My quick 2 cents on crews is that way too many survive the demise of their vehicles. I would feel comfortable with 9 out of 10 tanks having no

survivors and 1 out of 10 having 1 or 2 at most. Just historical...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Maybe not so historical. During Op Goodwod the two-and-a-bit armoured divs the Brits committed lost a buttload of tanks, but had very few casualties given the nature of the operation (which was of course one of the reasons for using armour in the first place).

I don't have the figures handy, but if you divided casualties by AFV losses I very much doubt you would come close to the 4:1 / 5:1 you propose.

Regards

JonS

[Slapdragon]

Goodwood losses to the Commwealth were 413 tanks with 5,537 casualties, but only 1,520 casualties were tankers, and of those less than 300 were deaths. I should also add that many tankers lost their lives once dismounted, and that casualties among tanks in action even if not destroyed ran 4% per day of heavy action, so casualties in the tanks units were actually quite light.

[ 10-17-2001: Message edited by: Slapdragon ]

[JonS]

hmm. Higher than I thought. Thanks for that Slap.

[Slapdragon]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JonS:

hmm. Higher than I thought. Thanks for that Slap.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You are still correct in your thinking. Casualties among Goodwood tankers were incredibly light. In the average AFV hit there would be 1 death, and 1 or 2 people with some form of wound. That means 3 of 5 crew escape if we assume an average of 5 crew in each AFV in some sort of shape to be represented on the CM board. Of course then the crew must evade and move to the rear, where they accumlate quite a few casualties, so probably CM is pretty close on crew survival. Also realize that crew survival in Commonwealth tanks was actually getting better each year. In 1941 British survival rate from hits, according to these records, was not very good (worse than an infantryman), but that by 1945 your chances of surviving each day of action as a tanker was 10 times that of the average infantryman.. realizing that many British tanks crews would have several tanks shot out from under them in their careers, and that many casualties occured outside the tank by artillery.

[JonS]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slapdragon:

... crew survival in Commonwealth tanks was actually getting better each year...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In keeping with that, my votes for the two pieces of late-war, frontline, kit you really wanted to be a crewman of (ie, if you had to be at the pointy end, be in one of these):

a) Mosquito

Churchill

[Iron Chef Sakai]

in reality there would be no way to accuratly come up with a figure for this, i think that cmbo did the right programming in the game for this, showing the randomness and luck, and misfortune of the pixelated tanks and their crews

[Tuomas]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ts:

3) I find that when an area may likely call for off map artillery, but I'm not sure yet, I try to cut down on the response time by repeatedly asking the FO to target the area and then cancel the order before the ranging round would be sent out. It might be nice to be able to order the FO to call in coords and let the arty do as much prep as they can stopping short of the ranging round, and then wait for a further order to go on from there. Note that the new mechanism I'm suggesting does not cut down the total time required to target an area. It just let's you spend the total time in different phases with a couple of serialized decisions instead of just one decision.

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I must agree with this point as the artillery model in CM is quite bad. It has been stated many times on this forum that artillery units stored the firing data for every target they fired. On the other hand the firing delays are lower than they were in WWII. And also the firing is much too accurate.

One way around this might be to allow a TRP for every target fired and add the firing delay for artillery. Of course there would be problems for not being able to say how many times the battery would fire and the firing sheets and not being able acces the whole regiment... Any comments?

-TNT-

[tss]

Here's some further data on crew losses, this time for German-made vehicles. I went through my sources on Stug-IIIGs in Finnish use and their losses and compiled a list. As is the usual case for Finnish examples, the sample size is pretty small so if you want to do generalizations, do it at your own risk.

During Summer 1944 thirteen Finnish Stugs were hit a total of 17 times by enemy guns firing AP [including one unspecified hit but not including times when Soviets hit already KO vehicles]. Five of the targets were knocked out, one immobilized and had to be abandoned under fire, and the rest were only damaged.

The vehicles that were knocked out or immobilized lost a total of 3 KIA, 1 MIA, and 10 WIA either directly from the hits, during bailing out, or immediately afterwards. This would imply that a vehicle loss caused 2.3 casualties on average (out of crew of four). However, there are two things that make counting the average more difficult:

a) two of the WIA were only slightly wounded and wouldn't be counted as casualties in CM, dropping the average to 2.0.

The loss of artillery FO vehicle (531-21) caused 6 of the casualties (2 KIA, 4 WIA). Discounting the two extra men (that won't be present in CM) drops the average to 1.67.

Two vehicles lost (5, 21) their whole crews (but not all were KIA) and three vehicles (3, 17, 29) escaped without any severe crew losses at all. Note that the Finnish sources usually don't list Stugs 7 and 21 among lost vehicles since both of them were recovered. However, they didn't participate in further combats so I think they should be listed as losses.

The remaining damaging AP hits caused a total of 2 KIA and 5 WIA to the average of 0.64 CM casualties per hit.

A surprisingly large number of Stug crewmen were wounded or killed while outside their vehicles during combat. I haven't compiled a list of those casualties, but at least as many men were lost that way as were lost inside.

And here's a detailed list of combat damage to Finnish Stugs (The numbers given are numbers of the Stugs):

1: Immobilized by a HE near miss (14.6.) and destroyed by own sappers. Two of the crew were outside when the shell landed and were killed.

2: Immobilized by own AT mine (27.6.) and forced to abandon. No casualties.

3: a) Gun hit by a T-34-85 (14.6.). No casualties.

Knocked out by a T-34-85 (27.6.). No casualties.

4: Track hit by a T-34-85 (25.6.). No casualties.

5: a) Damaged by a T-34-85 (27.6.). 1 WIA. Knocked out either by an AT gun or a T-34-85 (11.7.). The KO hit caused 2 WIA, next hit killed one of the WIA and wounded one more man. One panicked and run to enemy. Total losses: 1 KIA, 1 MIA, 2 WIA.

6: a) Damaged by a T-34-85 (14.6.). 1 KIA, no wounded.

Damaged by a T-34-85 (27.6.). No casualties.

7: Knocked out by a T-34-85 (14.6.). Hit caused no casualties, but 2 were WIA while bailing out.

11: Damaged by an AT gun (14.6.). One man bailed out and was wounded outside.

16: Damaged by an unspecified hit (11.7.). No casualties.

17: Immobilized in an AT gun ambush (14.6.). The crew bailed out and ignited self-destruct charges. Two men were slightly wounded.

19: Optics damaged by infantry hand-grenades (26.6.). No casualties.

20: Damaged twice by an AT gun (both on 14.6.). No casualties.

21: Knocked out by a T-34-85 while acting as an artillery FO tank (25.6.). 2 KIA, 4 WIA.

23: Abandoned intact (14.6.). No casualties.

24: Damaged by an AT gun (14.6.), 1 WIA. Later immobilized on a pile of rocks and destroyed by a hand grenade. No further casualties.

25: Gun hit by an ATR (27.6.). No casualties.

27: a) Damaged by an AT gun (14.6.). 1 KIA, no wounded.

Track hit by an ATR (27.6.). No casualties.

29: Knocked out by direct fire (14.6.) (probably T-34-85). No casualties.

Sources: "Marskin rynnäkkötykit", "Rynnäkkötykit isänmaamme puolustajina".

- Tommi

[Slapdragon]

Tommi:

Your data gains extra validity because it falls in step with data for US and Commonwealth tanks (ie. .5 to 2 losses average per tank depending on model type) with an equal number of losses from artillery and other causes.