Tank reaction under fire

[Philazarus]

Hi Guys,

I was wondering if I could tap your collective experience regarding a reaction of a group of tanks under fire in CMBB.

I am currently playing a scenario (Mobile Defence) against a friend who is trying to ‘Fast’ move 10 + Crack/Elite T-34s (In several platoons) between cover across open ground 2 turns drive away. Once in the open the T-34s came under fire from a King Tiger from the flank (range around 500m). In response ALL the T-34s stopped and started to reverse/ turn to face and generally dithered rather the speeding to the safety of their destination. He is naturally miffed at this suicidal response and it is threatening to ruin the game. Any idea why this is and how to avoid it?

As this is a live PBEM game my opponent is a little cagey about revealing his exact orders so I have run numerous tests to replicate the situation and every time regardless of morale/covered arc etc my test T-34s sped to their destination, generally losing 2 units per pass. The only thing I can think of that is different is that some sort of platoon failure of a morale check (Like ASL) causing this reaction only a percentage of the time that is not occurring in my tests. This however I consider unlikely as there are multiple platoons, although his tanks are very tightly packed.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks in advance.

Philazarus

[slysniper]

Who knows what command your friend has done in truth, but your test is showing pretty good results if the order was given to move fast, with that they should hopefully continue on weather fired on or not.

Russian armor in CMBB has a great love to try and retreat and hide when they think they are outclassed by the enemy armor, If a few units did this and the rest are in the same movement lanes it could be that they hit or had stop because of the units around them, once that happens, AI has taken over, given new movement orders. (which by the way is never "Fast". So now it sounds like every unit is converting to the AI's great love to try and reverse and hide.

Bad things happen if you have traffic jams and it sounds like he is in one out in the open against a killer.

Point out that test concept you did would have worked and was likely the only method to get the results he would have liked.

[Philazarus]

Thanks for your help slysniper

I think you are right. Upon more questioning there is now some uncertainty regarding if indeed 'fast' was used . My oppo is going to check but his machine is unavailable atm. It is interesting that other lead tanks reacted when they were not even targeted though. It suggests there must be some sort of range effect to nearby targets getting hit.

As for traffic jams, that certainly wont help.

Are there really different reactions depending on nationality in CMBB? That would make it even deeper than I thought!

[Tux]

There are, yes. It can be annoying if you get an IS-2 reversing out of contact with a flank-on Pz IV because it thinks it's a Tiger!

It sounds to me like your friend may have issued a Move To Contact order to a group of tanks that were too closely bunched together. on MtC all the tanks will stop dead in their tracks (no pun intended) as soon as they or a nearby unit comes under fire or spots the enemy. Against a KT that's suicidal enough in itself, but if he then had tanks, with no room to manoeuvre, ramming into each other/ trying to drive around one another to escape then the situation is very quickly going to turn into a bloodbath.

I think all he can realistically do is smoke the KT asap and plot himself some properly timed and spaced movement orders for those T-34s. At least the fact that they're Crack and Elite will mean they don't take long to move once they've been given orders.

[McIvan]

I suspect he was on hunt orders, that will give the same result.

Fast will usually get you where you want to go.

BTW the Russian "tank cower" will sometimes result in fast orders straight ahead being given rather than reverse...eg if you are on top of a hill, sometimes you will get orders to go full speed ahead.

[MeatEtr]

I'm pretty sure only the real soft vehicles will break a Fast command to retreat. (trucks and jeeps)

So how bad was his blunder, how many did you bag? This is afterall the best place to gloat about it, hehe.

[Philazarus]

Lol MeatEtr, Only time will tell what effect of any blunder (if indeed it is one) will be. Only one down so far and the killing KT is smoked. Other units on way to capitalise on the situation. Cannot say more as game is still very much anybodies (turn 1 of Battle 5 of 6 in Opp.).

Interestingly (and annoyingly) enough a Panther of mine survived a hit while Fast on route to cover,only 40m away, and it chose to reverse still in LOS of the firer rather than carry on. Artificial Intelligence: what an oxymoron!

[dieseltaylor]

Assuming your Panther crew knows where the shot came from ..... which it probably doesn't might make it leery of continuing into new territory.

Edit : Misspelling of leery

[Philazarus]

dieseltaylor :

The panther has just crested an hill where it was vunerable and was to dive into a small LOS free dip in the road 40m ahead. Now it is reversing up back up an exposed slope (grrr) and I am having to smoke it.

True of course if might not know where the firer is (which happened to be 500m straight along the road the panther is travelling) but with borg spotting makes it impossible to know if it knows.

Just an AI quirk i know. The irony being that if AI does become good enough so we don't complain how it plays, i doubt we will ever be able to beat it!