CM2 Suggestion,Yes another one Please Model the Dud rate

[aka_tom_w]

Hi

I have in my hands the Manual for Tobruk, it is IMHO a very well researched AH game of a similiar time period and scale as (single units and tanks) as CMBB.

I mention this because the Research alledgedly conducted by AH (and they do credit their sources) indicated that they had enough info in 1975 to model the dud rate of weapons.

now this may be build into CMBO and already taken into account.

But here is what the Stats in the Tobruk manual say:

Lets pick the German 81 mm Mortar

that is SURE to be in CMBB

Name ........ 8 cm Granatwerfer

Weight in Action ....... 125 pounds

Crew ....... 6 men

Ammo in use ....... HE and Smoke

CEP (indirect Fire)... 7-42 meters

ROF ....... 12 rpm

Ammo Dud rate ....... 15%

HE Round

Leathal Radius ...... 7.5 meters

Comments:

VERY effective weapon usually attached to infantry company in half platoon of three weapons. Longer range than British 3 inch"

Every weapon in the Desert in Tobruk is covered in this much detail.

Its a GREAT manual!

-tom w

[ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Jeff Heidman]

Yeah, I think it would be greast if BTS could expand their weapon and vehicle database a bit to include more information. Ideally the data screen would include a LOT more info, including a short "summary" ala ASL CHapter H. And it should be accessible outside the actual in-game screen, maybe a button of the main interface?

Probably not feasible considering their lack of resources though. Although if they set up the interface to support it, they would have no trouble finding dedicated people to outsource the grunt work of compiling information.

Jeff Heidman

[Michael Dorosh]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeff Heidman:

Yeah, I think it would be greast if BTS could expand their weapon and vehicle database a bit to include more information. Ideally the data screen would include a LOT more info, including a short "summary" ala ASL CHapter H. And it should be accessible outside the actual in-game screen, maybe a button of the main interface?

Probably not feasible considering their lack of resources though. Although if they set up the interface to support it, they would have no trouble finding dedicated people to outsource the grunt work of compiling information.

Jeff Heidman<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Or give the player the ability to type in his own notes with regards to each unit type, sort of an electronic notebook, where he could keep track of what works and what doesn't, or historical info he has tracked down himself.

[aka_tom_w]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

Or give the player the ability to type in his own notes with regards to each unit type, sort of an electronic notebook, where he could keep track of what works and what doesn't, or historical info he has tracked down himself.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's a GREAT idea

Make it like an open Data base

Not like hard coded into the ballistics engine or the game engine, all that data is already there in the game we just can't see it...

BUT Just like Graphics mods there could be a user definable data base that is left blank and filled in later by all of us users and players of CM2 with notes and stats, those stats and notes would be for the sake of interest an entertainment (and have no actual value in the game)

I know they will tell us we ALREADY have all that info avaialable when we click RETURN on a unit so I'm not sure how else to make the interface so it would be any better than it is now.

I was largely asking for DUDS to be modeled as now in CMBO EVERY single round never misfires, there are NO arty duds and every Mortar round and every HE round that is fired goes off, maybe some should be duds?

(But there is still plenty of opportunity to miss in this game so that is not a problem)

-tom w

[Juardis]

Duds? I like it. Especially for arty shells.

[David Aitken]

I found plenty of duds in my current game against Panzer Leader. He has a fortress with at least four 75mm pillboxes and several unarmoured guns. I lined up ten various Shermans, a Jumbo, a Pershing and a Jackson at close range and blasted away. I knocked out one pillbox, good. Then I proceeded to put numerous shells through the firing slits of the others, but the occupants didn't even notice and continued to plink away most of my tanks. How they can simply ignore high-explosive shells detonating a few metres behind them in a confined space is beyond me, so the shells must have been duds. The tally so far: two surviving Shermans and the Jackson, two pillboxes and two guns knocked out, at least two pillboxes and two guns remaining. Screw it, I'm calling in the 6in guns.

[Slapdragon]

While in principal modelling the dud rate is a good idea, you again run into two big factors. First -- that hard information is lacking. Second, urban legend said german artillery ammunition had a huge dud rate because it was made by slave labor and in rushed situation.

That urban legend is somewhat backed up by records of EOD unit records who removed huge numbers of German arty shells unexploded, but it never does discuss how many shells were fired versus how many swept up. Very difficult to come up with a rate with out that.

Also, and this should not matter to the game, reducing the effective power of German artillery would result in it being cheaper (buy more of it) and would be much more politically unpopular among the more vocal players than something that hurt the allies. Again, it should not matter, but if dud rates were modelled I would not release the data on exactly how they were modelled, just like real life gunners would never know they sent a dud on its way.

[Slapdragon]

Let me add that in principal, I think duds should be modeled, just that I think it is not as simple as putting numbers to rumors.

[Stacheldraht]

For that matter, how about modeling the (purported) non-firing rates among combatants, as summarized in Dave Grossman's controversial book, On Killing.

[Wilhammer]

Aaaah, Tobruk. Great game, unfortunately eclipsed by Squad Leader.

As for duds, I'd like to see something as well.

[David Aitken]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Stacheldraht wrote:

For that matter, how about modeling the (purported) non-firing rates among combatants, as summarized in Dave Grossman's controversial book, On Killing.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This has been discussed before, although I can't remember what the conclusion was. There are people, including (if I remember correctly) Michael Doubler, who refute the claim.

I might add, it is quite possible to have units on the map in CM who never fire. It depends whether you throw them into a firefight or not. The CM battlefield tends to be much more efficient than reality, so you rarely have any units sitting around doing nothing. I know that the claim refers to the men within individual squads, but this is just an example of how one can draw the wrong conclusions from a statistic.

[ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: David Aitken ]

[aka_tom_w]

just for the record here

EVERY weapon in Tobruk had a dud rate. I did not single out the German 81 mm mortatr because it was German, I mentioned it because I suspected it would be in CM2.

What about something as simple as a 10% dud rate across the board for all Mortars and Arty, Simple yes, historically accurate and backed up with reliable research and Data HARDLY! (I just took a guess.)

I highly doubt my 10% dud rate Wild Assed Guess will make it into the game. I know BTS does not work that way and that's why we all play CMBO!

The point is if Avalon Hill could, and did, model the Dud rate in Tobruk in 1975, there "should" be some info in the references they cite that could be useful and historicaly accurate,

OR

We could just as easily jump to the conclusion that ALL they did was GUESS as well?

-tom w

[David Aitken]

I'm guessing that they're guessing.

[Battlefront.com]

For the same reason we aren't going to slap on some sort of invented bonus for German optics, we aren't going to invent a dud rate for just the German shells. Notice how we consistantly apply the same logic, even when one feature would benefit the Germans and the other would whack them upside the head? Some people think we are unfairly favoring/penalizing the Germans, but we think we are just being rational and thoughtful

In all seriousness, there is much evidence to suggest that German shell quality declined over the years. This was not just because of sabotage (which IIRC even Speer commented on as being a problem), but general declines in worker skills/motivations, laxer quality control due to the pressures to produce more instead of better, affects of Allied bombings disrupting ideal working conditions, and the general decline in the quality/quantity of raw materials certainly can not be argued with. What affects they had, however, are not easy to determine.

We would need to know the degree of failure for each major shell type by month/year for EVERY NATION FIGHTING ON THE EASTERN FRONT. The Soviets certainly had their fair share of duds, especially due to the relocation of their heavy industry in 1941/42. But again, to what degree?

Until we can have a good comprehensive picture of duds... they will not be a part of Combat Mission. This is not Combat Urban Legand after all

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

For the same reason we aren't going to slap on some sort of invented bonus for German optics, we aren't going to invent a dud rate for just the German shells.

[snip]

Until we can have a good comprehensive picture of duds... they will not be a part of Combat Mission. This is not Combat Urban Legand after all

Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hi Steve

Thanks for your comments.

"This is not Combat Urban Legand after all "

Good to see you have not lost your sense of humour!

-tom w

[Juardis]

Steve, I understand your point. You want hard numbers. Fine. You probably won't get them. So why not just assume something low? Like 1-2% of all shells fired were duds. Even in the best of times, seems like there would be 1 or 2 duds per 100 shells. I mean, we all acknowledge that there were duds and by not including them, you're being even more inaccurate than including a small number of them (how's that for logic )

[Enoch]

Steve, any comment on the possibility of more information in the unit database?

Thanks!

[Yosoce]

seems to me that if we put a constant dud rate on all weapons for all nationalities, its just like making everyone miss a bit more.

itd make sense if different weapons and nationalities had different dud rates at different times, because then it could slant things one way or another realistically, but an across the board dud rate is more or less pointless

[Andrew H.]

I think that the 15% dud rate is interesting, but it's important to know whether the duds were randomly distributed among the ammuntion, or whether the 15% were located in "bad batches," all of which were duds. The difference being that if batch KHX1002-53 is mostly duds, the bad batch after firing a couple of shells. This would mean that the number of dud shells fired in the CM environment would be much less than 15% because most of the dud shells wouldn't be issued to the troops. (It would also mean that the troops would get 15% fewer shells, give or take, a production inefficiency that is way beyond CM's scope).

On the other hand, if 15% of shells fired in anger were duds, that would probably be worth modeling. If only 2-4% of shells fired were duds, I would imagine that this would not be statistically significant given the certain amount of randomness that is built into CM's combat resolution system.

I would like to know how the dud rate was determined, too -- in particular, how large the sample size was. If US troops captured an ammo dump, surely they didn't explode 25,000 mortar shells to determine the dud rate.

[Battlefront.com]

I agree, an across the board dud rate would be fair if it were in the right ballpark (which we don't know either ). But I also agree that if it were as low as 2%... what would the point be? Since most AFVs don't fire probably even 50% of their ammo, and miss probably 60-80% of the time, a 2% chance of failure would hardly come up at all. Sure, I guess it would be cool to see a dud every once and a while, so it is worth thinking about.

As for our "demand" for numbers killing off a potential modeling of duds... yup, that probably will be the end result. But on balance it is better to NOT introduce known fiction like this than to skip it.

We are not adding any additional coding to increase the Info screen's data. If you folks wish to remember what works and doesn't, might I suggest a notepad and pen? Seriously, we have a ton of features that the game can't live without and a mountain of features that would be good to get in if we could. So we must pick and choose carefully. Something like this is not a good pick when we look at the hundreds of other suggestions we don't have time to put in.

Steve

[aka_tom_w]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

I agree, an across the board dud rate would be fair if it were in the right ballpark (which we don't know either ). But I also agree that if it were as low as 2%... what would the point be? Since most AFVs don't fire probably even 50% of their ammo, and miss probably 60-80% of the time, a 2% chance of failure would hardly come up at all. Sure, I guess it would be cool to see a dud every once and a while, so it is worth thinking about.

Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I mentioned it because somehow there is enough hard data to model the frequency of MG jams

(which is a VERY cool feature). I don't think I have ever seen anyone post suggesting they jam too frequently or too infrequently.

MG jams introduce another "sort of" realistic "**** happens" factor to the battle and it really adds to the game.

I guess one of the problems with any possible or proposed dud rate is you would never actually know if the round was (a) not fired or ( simply missed.

Mostly I was suggesting like a dud rate that would effect mortar rounds and arty as it sort of just doesn't feel right that every round that drops from the sky explodes?

Sure I guess I do believe that about 1 in 100 rounds that drop should spare the lives of those it was about to kill, given a 10 percent dud rate, and that 9 out of 10 of the rounds that fell were going to miss anyway.I would propose that if a rate of "dud" was determined that such a frequency (say 1 in 10-15-20?) would show up on the battlefield as a NEW graphic which would result in a shell or round stuck half in the ground that did not cause a crater or explosion. OK the rounds did not really end up half in the ground half out but one simple graphic for all forms of arty and mortar round to replace the crater it would have made should suffice.

I think some form of dud rate added to the game would be "cool" in the same way MG jams are realistic.

But thats just my opinion

-tom w

[Battlefront.com]

Hi Tom,

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Sure I guess I do believe that about 1 in 100 rounds that drop should spare the lives of those it was about to kill, given a 10 percent dud rate, and that 9 out of 10 of the rounds that fell were going to miss anyway<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

But I guess that is just the thing. We don't know it was 10%, 5%, 20%, 1% or 0.08%. And this is totally ignoring the shell type, nationality, and year of production.

Not to take anything away from the AH guys, but as we can see here on this very BBS there are a lot of "learned individuals" that don't have a problem with taking a questionable figure/source at face value. ASL, which is held up as the highest of AH's historically researched games has some huge errors in it (funny enough, one of them is thinking shell size determins lethality) So it is good to treat game research, even ours, with some skepticism. Not that anybody is even remotely skeptical of our reasearch

So while you think these guys in 1975 might have felt they had enough evidence to figure out the dud rate, I'm not ready to buy it. Do they have the dud rates for all types of artillery/gun rounds (no point simulating one type and not another) for all nations for all periods of the war? And I mean some decent approximations. And believe me, I am not thinking there is some source out there that says "we studied 5 million rounds and found x to be duds of this type, y of that type, etc." I just expect a bit more than "well, in this one battle we found that x number of ENEMY's shells in this one area after this one barrage to have been duds".

Again, until we can see some sort of decent study about dud rates it will not go in. Not even a half-assed guess. There is just too much of a possible margin of error here to mess around with it blindly. If someone can dig up a source, we are all ears (or eyes in this case ).

Steve

[ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: Big Time Software ]

[aka_tom_w]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:

Hi Tom,

{snip}

Again, until we can see some sort of decent study about dud rates it will not go in. Not even a half-assed guess. There is just too much of a possible margin of error here to mess around with it blindly. If someone can dig up a source, we are all ears (or eyes in this case ).

Steve

[ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: Big Time Software ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

OK, it was just a friendly suggestion to add a little something new to CMBB.

-tom w

[ASL Veteran]

Sturmtiger + dud = :eek: