CMBB tank physics...

[Der Kuenstler]

I had a panther near some woods recently that needed to keep it's attention forward. THere was an enemy squad in the woods trying to close assault the panther from the side. The nearest thing I had to help was a Hetzer - I actually area fired right through the Panther into the woods to suppress the enemy. It didn't hurt the Panther at all. I have also had tanks lined up in single file firing forward. The rear tank's fire never seemed to harm the front tank. Is this everyone's experience?

[flamingknives]

Tanks are point entities, not the 3d representations you see on the screen. Well, actually, they're 2 point entities, so they can distinguish hull up and hull down. It's too computationally expensive to model the tank in 3d and check for things like blocking line of sight.

It's been discussed a few times in the past, usually asking "can I use my tanks as cover" or some such.

[Kingfish]

Something I just realized, and this after playing the CM series since '99, is that I've never seen a blue-on-blue tank engagement, or even momentary targetting, during a battle occuring at night, rain or in fog. Conversely, I've seen plenty of infantry blue-on-blue, even losing a few men every now and again to it.

[mrpwase]

Lack of armour friendly fire...I dunno, could it be distinctive shapes? I'd imagine a T-34 would look at least marginally different to a PIV.

[76mm]

Not that distinctive--friendly fire is always a problem for tankers, including during Gulf War I.

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by mrpwase:

Lack of armour friendly fire...I dunno, could it be distinctive shapes? I'd imagine a T-34 would look at least marginally different to a PIV.

There are plenty of stories, about tankers from all nations behind enemy lines driving past enemy columns without anyone the wiser.

Distictive shapes isn't the answer.

[Kingfish]

Just fired up a CMBB hotseat QB, with each side having 5 Conscript T34/76s bought individually so as to not have any HQ coordination. Meeting engagement at night with fog and rain. No infantry support at all, only the 5 tanks per side.

Gave both sides plot lines that brought the two sides together into a giant furball, with the two sides mixing and remixing in a series of snaking plot lines. My goal is to create the maximum amount of chaos and confusion, ripe conditions for terrified conscripts to start blasting away at whatever loomed out of the darkness.

At the end of T-18 all the Russian tanks were destroyed for 2 German losses. At no time did any one side target, let alone engage, a friendly tank.

I guess the blue-on-blue feature is not coded into vehicles.

[mrpwase]

I like to set up an infantry battle on a small map, give everyone minimum cover arcs and mix them up in the centre of the map, then remove all the cover arcs. But then again, I'm crazy.

[Corvidae]

we grasp the slightly incorrect physics of tanks in cm,

its the psychology that has me baffaled

has anyone ever tryed to psychoanalyse a cm tank crew ?

[Vixen]

IIRC I had a Sturmtiger fire it's big ass shell at some infantry, miss and land next to a friendly tank which damaged the gun on it. Maybe I just imagined it though or the gun got nailed from something i didn't see.

[GreenAsJade]

There are two separate issues here: what the shell will hit, and what it will damage with its blast.

It is definitely the case that a shell landing near any unit - AFV or Inf, friendly or not, will damage it if the blast is big.

Thi is what Vixen is reporting.

This is different to DerK's point, which is that in flight the shell will never hit anyhting other than the ground (or a building) except the thing it was targetted against. This is definitely the case. This is because it is only "ground" (including buildings) that occupies space in the CM calculations. It's done this way because ground (and buildings) don't move, so they can have a static "map" of where all the obstacles are, and do tricks to calculate collisions quickly. If they had to include moving objects in this "map" lots of tricks would not be possible.

Note that it is likely that whether the shell will hit is detemined _before_ calculating the trajectory . IE

0) Make sure target is still in LOS.

1) Decide (dice roll) if this is going to be a hit

2) Only if it's a miss, calculate trajectory to see what it's going to hit.

3) Calculate BANG radius and see who is damaged inside it.

Saves collision calculations wiith ground/buildings if you already know it's a hit.

This will explain why sometimes shells seem to go through the corners of buildings: the target was in LOS, so they didn't bother with a object collision calculation.

(The rationalisation is that the shell went through a wall or window... yeah right).

Just my guess.

GaJ.

[ March 17, 2006, 09:24 PM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]