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Shot-putting of anti-tank explosives?


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Last night, I was playing a scenario that took place in the summer of '42, with a Russian armor assault on some prepared German infantry positions. During the nighttime turns, a Russian tankette got into the German lines, so I ordered an anti-tank team to assault the tankette from a house about 60 meters away. The AT team advanced through a wheatfield onto the tankette's flank, and at a distance of 19 meters, stopped and started flinging AT explosives. I'm not sure exactly what they threw, but it stopped the tankette cold. It got me wondering though about the apparent superhuman abilities of AT team members. From what I can recall, the Haft Hohlandung weighed some 8 lbs and were actually designed to be attached to the hull, not thrown. The Panzerwerfer charges weighed more, if I'm not mistaken. Could an average soldier of the time actually throw an 8-lb-plus charge 19 meters, after running some 40 meters through mature wheat? He should be signed up with the Oakland Raiders as their new quarterback, or else become the star shotputter at the next Olympic Games ...

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You should keep in mind that the graphic display of the game is only a representation of what is going on in the game engine. The display only approximates what the engine is doing. So, while your little pixel soldiers are heaving heavy objects great distances the game engine is calculating the probability of a successful close assault. The graphic has nothing to do with the success of the attack.

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Originally posted by Neuer Art:

Do you mean that the distance displayed along the red LOS from attacker to target, is only a loose estimation of the actual distance, even when both attacker and target are stationary?

I am have heard that for certain events like this the graphics are an abstraction of events....the 19m is a guide distance to the Average location of the Squad......think of it like one man runs out from the squad and loops the AT explosive /molotov whatever....

Boris

London

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If an anti-tank team has two men by only one is displayed imagine the hijinks that other invisible soldier might be up to! Running around the battlefield naked, grabbing the pistol out of his comrade's hand and waving it about playing 'floating pistol'. After all, he's invisible!

Is invisible soldiers historically accurate for WWII? Apparently George Bush Jr. mastered the technique while in the National Guard ;):Dtongue.gif

[ January 31, 2003, 01:27 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

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I see what you folks are saying about an abstract representation. Does this mean that the image of an AT charge flying through the air between the AT team (yes, two men) and the targeted tank could possibly be a representation of one of the two men going up and affixing a magnetic mine to the hull of the tank, but we just don't see the actual act? I'd confirm whether it was a Hohlandung or a Panzerwerfer (magnetic vs. thrown), but the team was killed immediately after their attack, so I couldn't check their weapon loadout afterwards.

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Everything these people are saying is correct and what happened is perfectly fine. You can't judge the exact actions of your soldiers by what you see. I have had opponents complain that my furious barrages of TNT unrealistically kill soldiers from several different squads that are not real close to each other(what do they expect? Look at who they are dealing with! Grr!). That's because the picture of the squad isn't where ALL the soldiers are. They are within a certain radius of that graphic.

This explains my love for bitter TNT. :mad:

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Originally posted by Neuer Art:

I see what you folks are saying about an abstract representation. Does this mean that the image of an AT charge flying through the air between the AT team (yes, two men) and the targeted tank could possibly be a representation of one of the two men going up and affixing a magnetic mine to the hull of the tank, but we just don't see the actual act? I'd confirm whether it was a Hohlandung or a Panzerwerfer (magnetic vs. thrown), but the team was killed immediately after their attack, so I couldn't check their weapon loadout afterwards.

Yes, exactly.
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I think a really good context in which to think of the abstraction element is with the infantry's "advance" command. We're told that what the advance command represents is some squad members staying in place providing covering fire while the others charge ahead--then these lead soldiers going to ground and firing while the guys previously in the rear charge forward. What we actually see is three pixelated guys moving abreast, but that's an abstraction of what's in fact supposed to be happening (and which would be hard--and perhaps confusing--to represent with the current level of computing capability.)

So with you advance or assault with your tank hunters, some may really be much closer to the tank than, say 20m and they're the ones heaving or affixing the charges.

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Folks, thanks for the excellent answers to my question. It makes perfect sense now. Pity the game's engine can't display individual soldiers actually affixing magnetic AT mines to the tank's hull, or slapping a sticky bomb onto its running gear. Wouldn't it be cool if the game could display a scene similar to the one of the Rangers and 101st AB troopers swarming all over the Tiger in "Saving Private Ryan" ? Even with the poorly timed sticky bomb and flying body parts ...

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