Where is the realism?

[RSColonel_131st]

I think aiming and hitting wouldn't be the actual problem...more likely SEEING the target, as descriped above.

In that respect, I think we suffer from an abstraction in CMBB. You can always see an enemy tank clearly, and thus you assume that your guys can too. But in reality, they might really have seen not much more than a dark spot in the dark landscape. So the question actually is - what where they aiming at?

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

Countrary to popular belief (it would seem) range does not increase due to bad weather.

Who said it did? On the contrary -- most here have been arguing (correctly) that the combination of night and falling snow would reduce visibility distances.

Steve

[Hortlund]

No, if they didnt see the target, the enemy tank would turn into a little red star. So clearly the game engine thinks/knows/whatever that the T-34 can see the StuG during the entire engagement.

[Brightblade]

I´m still waiting for the next file in which I can check the hue of blue of the LOS tool and the hit chance of the 5th shot (which may never be fired if the assault gun fires first).

However if my tank missed four times due to very bad visibility, this assault gun had to be very lucky to score with its first shot.

BTW, only twenty meters to the right of my T-34 stands a second T-34 which engaged a StuH 42 at 48m in the same turn. Two shots, two hits.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by MrSpkr:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

Countrary to popular belief (it would seem) range does not increase due to bad weather.

Who said it did? On the contrary -- most here have been arguing (correctly) that the combination of night and falling snow would reduce visibility distances.

Steve</font>

[MikeyD]

I think this debate has nothing at all to do with the night conditions.

I've noticed that if a tank has been given a 70% (rough estimate) chance of hitting another vehicle at 80m it'll have the same 70% chance of hitting the vehicle at just5m! The hit probably seems to stop going up after a certain minimum range. I've managed to get a M4A4 Sherman with regular crew to within 8m of a Tiger I's big fat butt in broad daylight and STILL my guy misses the first two shots! This is not a one-in-a-million encounter. This happen a lot at extremely close ranges.

[Seahawk-vfa201]

Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

Heck at 58 meters you can look through the barrel and aim the gun that way and hit.

At night? while it is snowing? What are you wearing 3rd millennium light enhancer optics from X-Wing Commander?

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Seahawk-vfa201:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

Heck at 58 meters you can look through the barrel and aim the gun that way and hit.

At night? while it is snowing? What are you wearing 3rd millennium light enhancer optics from X-Wing Commander?</font>

[Silvio Manuel]

Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

The fact that the target tank did not blink in and out of existance (turn into a star) tells me that according to the game engine, the T34 had the StuG in LOS during the entire turn.

The crew was veteran, and generally they should not miss at 58 meters if they want to keep that lable.

At least in CMBO, the issue of "it's not a generic icon so it IS in LOS" is not true. It seems that once a unit goes from just a sound contact to the lowest visual contact level, if it then goes out of LOS, but later returns to LOS, you'll see the (possibly lowest level) visual contact icon, even if you're only really getting a sound contact. I verified this in a recent game where enemy troops that had previously routed then returned, and they had "Infantry Squad?" markers, even though they were about 60m into woods... well out of LOS of any of m'boys.

As for rationalizing the crew's ineptitude, maybe the gunner had frostbitten hands? I don't have the manual in front of me, but don't Russian optics suffer a lot in extreme cold?

[Moon]

Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Seahawk-vfa201:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Leutnant Hortlund:

Heck at 58 meters you can look through the barrel and aim the gun that way and hit.

At night? while it is snowing? What are you wearing 3rd millennium light enhancer optics from X-Wing Commander?</font>

[Kwazydog]

Of interest might be the fact that Martin and myself have witnessed a 57mm AT crew (including a physics professor IIRC) miss a target in broad daylight and no wind at 100m, 3 times in a row. This was with taking about 5 minutes to aim each shot, too, and was only a couple of hours after they had hit it with the second round they had fired. These things do happen.

Leutnant Hortlund, note that there is varying levels at which you can see a target. A target that is at a distance at night in a snow storm is certainly harder to hit than one that is at the same distance in daylight and the weather conditions have a degrading effect on targetting. (Hehe, Martin beat me to it )

Dan

[ January 15, 2003, 05:20 PM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

[Pak_43]

I quote from "Tank Warfare in the 2nd World War - An oral history" page 75...

A first hand account of being knocked out..the rest of the description later as he bails out is "The warm sun, the bright clear air and the hard clean ground..." and would show the conditions as pretty good....

"The whoosh of the shell close to my head suprised me and I re-doubled my efforts to find a target. There should have been a trace of the gun after firing. Dust should have been kicked up and -WHOOSH, WHOOSH. Where the hell was the damned thing? I reported to Stump Gibbon, who commanded the squadron, that an invisible gun was disturbing my tranquility when the next effort of a singularly poor enemy gun-aimer was successful and from a range of 100 yards (90 metres) he succeeded in hitting me on the 4th attempt"

So we have an AT gun, not under fire at 90 metres missing a stationary tank 3 times in perfect conditions....

Hope you didn't put your house on your bet

[Ubertracker]

All I can offer to this argument is that it has snowed here the past three days. Hard. Squalls, gusts of wind 35-50 km/h. I look out my office window during mid-day and cannot see across the parking lot. That's about 65-75 feet (~25 m). Some moments I can't see 25 feet (8 m) away.

I live in an area where it snows a lot in winter (gotta love Canada). Visibility can be reduced to a few feet in the worst weather.

On a normal blustery day, with wind and snow both medium-to-hard, I can't see across the road to my neighbour's house. Door to door it is under 100 feet.

Don't forget that heavy snow means dense cloud cover: less sunlight. And, of course, fewer hours of sunlight in a day.

The only thing that really bothers me is that all this snow makes riding my motorcycle impossible.

[Andreas]

"Anything is possible in war"

Marshal I.S.Koniev

He should know...

[Brightblade]

Finally I got the next file. The hue of the LOS tool was quite dark, the hit chance for the next shot is 79%.

It´s only cool there, so according to the manual neither optic should be better or worse than normally.

Anyways, due to the dark LOS and the current hit chance I guess I have to accept that poor visibility reduces hit chances considerably, which is very realistic IMO.

I simply had a streak of bad luck (which might be the result of bad karma, as Michael emrys already assumed ) and I apologise for anything I said before for which someone thinks an apology is appropriate.

[ January 16, 2003, 04:52 AM: Message edited by: Brightblade ]

[Stalin's Organ]

I've had similar happen in broad daylight - I'm thinking of an encounter between short-50 armed P-3's and T34's at ranges of 1-200m in a town where it took 4-5 shots to hit (and ricochet 'from teh 50!! ).

[Bruno Weiss]

I wonder how the veterans of such battles would view this forum? Some snickering, maybe a raised eyebrow at times. Ma! Maaaaaa!, this new Normandy game is broken. Arrrggg, in real life them pillboxes at Normandy would have been easy to knock out. All those ships with large and accurate guns, all those aircraft with highly accurate bombsights and veteran pilots, why in real life they'd have knocked them things out long before any troops hit the beach. Would have been a snap at point blank range.

And the ole veteran sinks slowly back in his chair remembering how they thought the same thing on the way over. Before they'd seen the elephant...

[ciphrix]

Originally posted by Brightblade:

Anyways, due to the dark LOS and the current hit chance I guess I have to accept that poor visibility reduces hit chances considerably, which is very realistic IMO.

I simply had a streak of bad luck (which might be the result of bad karma, as Michael emrys already assumed )

Yeah, that and cut down on the vodka supply to the Platoon. That will teach them to miss, thats if they survive in the first place...

[Hortlund]

Guys, we are talking about a veteran crew here. From the sounds of it, the 57mm AT crew that Dan and Martin witnessed should probably be not be labled "veteran", but rather "green" or "conscript" (no offense intended).

As for the anecdote about how some AT gun crew missed 3 times at 90 meters...I dunno, that doesnt exactly sound like a veteran crew either.

Strange things does indeed happen in war, but that is not the same thing as saying that they should happen regularely, or that they should happen in the game.

Example1:

During a bomber mission over Germany in the winter of 43, a British Lancaster bomber was shot down. The tail gunner in the bomber fell out through a hole in the fuselage, without his parachute. Understanding that his odds of survival was pretty slim (to say the least), the gunner turned around in his free fall so that he came to fall with his back towards the ground. He wanted to look at the stars, and he really didnt want to see how close the ground was.

He survived the fall with a broken ankle.

No one can really explain how, but the theory is that the fall was slowed down by some pinetrees, and then he landed in a big snowdrift.

Now...did it happen? Sure did.

Should it be modelled if we were making/playing a ww2 flight simulator? Not really.

Example2:

During the Vietnam war, an american sergeant (I never know how to spell that *%¤@¤ word) was interrogating a number of suspected VC prisoners. The sgt was standing with his legs kinda far apart, and he was standing 2-3 meters from the prisoners. A NVA/VC mortar shell (50-60mm) came flying and landed right between the sgts legs, the explosion killed and/or severely wounded all the prisoners.

The sergeant escaped without a scratch.

Did it happen? Sure

Should it be modelled if we were making/playing a Vietnam war tactical wargame? Not really.

[Kwazydog]

Hortlund, to be fair I believe what we are discussing here is far different from the above examples

Im sure I can find many examples of shots missing at such ranges in WW2, and I think the chances of it happening are probably much more likely than the stories above . In fact looking quickly I have here a story about an SS 50mm pak crew whom missed 3 tanks passing by with a total of 6 shots under such conditions (night, but not snowing I believe, even though it was on the ground). I beleive the main factor your not consider here is point that is was indeed night, snowing, and just about at maximum visual range under such conditions, which does descrease the chance to hot quite considerably.

As for the guys we witnessed...Id suggest they would probably be green to regulars, as I believe he had owned the weapon for quite some time. More importantly the fact that they had 5-6 minutes to line up each shot and didnt have people out there trying to kill them probably ran in their favour considerably, too .

Dan

[ January 16, 2003, 06:26 AM: Message edited by: KwazyDog ]

[tools4fools]

Hhhmmm,

how about a little test?

Go to Finland or any other cold place where it snows this time of the year and look through a 200mm telephoto lens at night during heavy snowfall and tell me what you see.

If you spot that vehicle at 58m it will be a obscured shadow with you guessing rather where it is and where it is pointing than knowing it.

Most probably some snow will hit the front lens as well, making seeing anything more difficult.

If you then look down the gun barrel, well, then look down a 2 meter long water pipe of roughly 75mm during that same winternight and tell you what you see in 58m distance. I guess not much.

As it looked the other tank being at 48m range was hitting far better since it was not so close to the maximum spotting distance. Therefore avoid shooting at max LOS in such situations.

Marcus

****

PS: reminds me a bit about that situation of the German and American sniper in Saving Private Ryan. Quite heavy rain, dark and overcast, one guy sitting in the darkness of the room in the bell tower and not moving at all.

I wonder how the other guy could see him with those conditions, especially thinking that he had to aim upwards which increases the chances that the frontlens of his scope gets wet.

****

[Hortlund]

Well, believe it or not, I do live in Sweden where it also tends to snow alot this time of year.

And amazingly enough I do know what it looks like at night when it snows or how a blizzard looks at night etc etc.

When I was in the military I was stationed up north, and I have seen what a white painted tank looks like at night when it snows (sometimes you can walk right into it before you spot it).

Heck at snow/night conditions my bet is that you would not spot a guy wearing snow camo if he was 10 meters in front of you. White things become invisible at night (when there is snow on the gound that is), especially when we are talking about the combination of cloudy nights, snowcover and winter camo. I have had a guy walk 3 meters from me wearing a snow blouse but not the white snow pants, and I swear it looked like a pair of legs came walking past me.

But for the umpteenth time, the gunner in the T-34 can see the StuG all the time. According to the game engine the T-34 and the StuG see eachother. You then have a veteran gunner with line of sight to a tank (or tank sized shadow if you will) 58 meters away, the sighting conditions are less than good, but still a LOS exists.

[Brightblade]

When I started this topic I assumed that the bad weather conditions wouldn´t have much effect on the hit chances.

This assumption was wrong as I had to learn. The second T-34 even had to be very lucky to hit with both shots because now it has 48% hit chance on the destroyed StuH.

On the other hand, how would you try to avoid fighting very near to max LOS in such situations? 60m are enormously close for tank fights and to get even closer might be very difficult. As Russian you can´t rely on IAT, because they don´t have anything like the Panzerschreck, Panzerfaust or Bazooka and tank hunter teams and engineer squads have to get much closer and their hit chances usually are not very good.

BTW, why didn´t the Russians have Bazookas? The USA sent virtually anything to them, food, boots, telephone wire, HTs, tanks, aircrafts, why not Bazookas?

[ January 16, 2003, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: Brightblade ]

[Sardaukar]

Originally posted by Brightblade:

BTW, why didn´t the Russians have Bazookas? The USA sent virtually anything to them, food, boots, telephone wire, HTs, tanks, aircrafts, why not Bazookas?

IIRC, Russians didn't like bazooka very much and considered it lot inferior to even Pzfaust...thus it saw very little action. Russians made some use for captured Pzfausts, though. They could probably be modelled in game...who knows, they may be in next patch

Cheers,

M.S.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Brightblade:

BTW, why didn´t the Russians have Bazookas? The USA send virtually anything to them, food, boots, telephone wire, HTs, tanks, aircrafts, why not Bazookas?

They did have them, it is just a bit unclear on whether they used them. Bazookas (while at the same time totally sweet and completely awesome) have some advantages and disadvantages over ATRs in an environment where you rarely meet an enemy tank without having a bunch of ATGs and tanks or SP guns to back you up.