Effects of Damage?

[Canada Guy]

I apologize for this post but I cannot find specific info.

What are the effects of a gun/tank crew being reduced from its full complement of men?

If the full complement is 5 men and you now have a gun/tank with 4 men, how is this modeled? For each crewman lost, is this the same as reducing your experience level by 1 for each man lost, or does it just reduce firing/reaction times by x amount of seconds or what?

Jason Doell

[Kingfish]

No effect on unit experience, only on spotting, firing and reaction times.

[jwatts]

Hm, I had never noticed a degradation in performance from AT guns due to casualties, but I chalk that up primarily to lack of caring, and the fact that after my AT guns are targeted, the crews self destruct the weapon. That or I have horrible luck in letting my guns live. Maybe(and I DO understand this is JasonC baiting)i should just leave them all on hill crests?

[Kingfish]

You can run a quick test to confirm. Purchase 3 guns and make them all equal in calibur and experience level, but have one at full strength, another at 80% and the last at 60%. Give them area fire orders and watch as they all start off firing in unison, but over time the fulls strength unit starts to pull away.

[jwatts]

No, no, you're getting my poitn wrong. That's why I love the forums, because you can assume that what certain people say is true. I really don't get enough time on CM to spend it doing tests of things. Of course, if any old jackass says something I of course won't beleive it automatically, just the experts, which you defintiely qualify as. Is the difference significant, say 2-3 seconds slower per shot fired, or just slightly slower than a full complement of men? And is the difference more noticeable with a larger gun, say 75mm +? I would assume that for a gun such as, say, a 37mm, loss of crew would affect it much less that larger weapons.

[Kingfish]

Originally posted by jwatts:

Is the difference significant, say 2-3 seconds slower per shot fired, or just slightly slower than a full complement of men?

It is significant but takes a turn or two to develop. IOW, the delay accumulates over time. At the beginning of the turn they all fire in unison, but as the turn progresses the full strength gun begins to pull away, so by the time the turn ends he is a full shot ahead of the others.

And is the difference more noticeable with a larger gun, say 75mm +? I would assume that for a gun such as, say, a 37mm, loss of crew would affect it much less that larger weapons.

Correct, the effect is more pronounced with the larger weapons.

[civdiv]

Correct, the effect is more pronounced with the larger weapons.

Are you sure of that? I would assume losing 1 man from a 4 man crew (25% loss) would be more significant than losing 1 man from an 8 man crew (roughly 12%).

[Kingfish]

But the crew of the 8-man weapon are every bit as busy, if not more, as the 4-man weapon. Otherwise why would the army feel it necessary to crew these weapons with 8 men? Certainly not to ensure every man gets a 30-minute lunch break.

[jwatts]

Exactly what I was getting at, King. If a 2pdr has, say, 2 loaders, then losing one of them would not be as big of a deal, as I assume that one man can still load the gun, albiet slightly slower. However, for a 105mm crew, with maybe 4 loaders, losing one would make a much bigger difference, as the shells are extremely heavy (at least I think they are). Of course all of these crew and loader numbers are mere conjecture to prove a point, I'm no grog. I think that in discussions like these, math plays a much smaller role in discussions centering about tank losses, armor penetration, etc, with common sense taking a much higher priority.

[John Kettler]

jwatts,

There are several people on these Forums who do various kinds of tests, with the real die hard being JasonC and his ~1500 tests on Panzer IVs and hulldown effects on their combat survival. From what I've seen, though, there's no one one quite like Poor Old Spike on Fragment, a large British CM

community. He seems to live to run tests--until you discover that he is one of the most accomplished CM ladder players out there. The guy's an encyclopedia of the game and how it really works. A typical reaction from people encountering his screenshot based analyses for the first time is "I learned more from reading your tests than I have in my X years of playing CM."

He posts under General CM, Tips & Tricks, AARs, etc. here.

http://www.fewgoodmen.co.uk/forum/

Oh, and please don't let a few intemperate remarks by some drive you away from either the CM games themselves or a marvelous global gaming community.

Regards,

John Kettler

[jwatts]

Haha, wow I seriously need to turn down my sarcasm meter! Thanks for the concern, but the remarks are simply that, remarks. It would take far more than that to offend me, and an act of God to get me to stop playing CM. Am going right now to check out this Spike chap, or bloke, or however ya'll fogbreathers say it.

[flamingknives]

I say old bean, there's plenty of foreigners here. All sorts, from ex-colonial types to Jonny Finlander

[jwatts]

I know, that's why I find this forum so engaging! Since people's intrest, or at least expertise, seems to somewhat follow along with their nationality, having a very multi-national group of members allows for a huge dissemination of information. Kind of like my old high school, except for the sharing of information and lack of gang violence and police searches (my high school had over 93 languages spoken).

Quick Edit: I looked at that link for Poor Old Spike, took most of my afternoon looking only at the posts he began, the illustrated ones, and am nowhere near finished! Thanks so much for the idea.

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

From what I've seen, though, there's no one one quite like Poor Old Spike on Fragment ... He seems to live to run tests--until you discover that he is one of the most accomplished CM ladder players out there.

I dont know about being "one of the most accomplished CM ladder players out there".

But he is definitely an excellent tester. He has some good posts at fragment and at the SZO (now xtreme gamer) forums.

[jwatts]

For some reason his illustrated examples help me better. I actually learned a couple great tips from em! I never did cotton to no book learnin, I kin lern from pictures just fine, ya damnyankees!

[John Kettler]

David Chapuis,

Did you look at his record? In player picked force QBs at least, he's absolutely dominated several major ladders and has the awards to prove it. A search of Fragment will provide full particulars.

jwatts,

Glad you found the suggestion useful. If yo gwine ta speak Suthun, ah should tell y'all it's "larned." Bein' from Arkansaw mahsef, ah thot ah'd let ya'll know real kind like. Where y'all

hail from?

Regards,

John Kettler

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

David Chapuis,

Did you look at his record? In player picked force QBs at least, he's absolutely dominated several major ladders and has the awards to prove it. A search of Fragment will provide full particulars.

Which ladders are those? I saw him at the SZO ladder, and he didnt dominate that one. I have read plenty of his posts where he talks about his great ladder exploits, but I have also read (and seen the pictures to prove) he has one style of play. On unrestricted QBs - buy all the tanks he can and then some infantry to ride on top of them and some snipers. Rush the flags with his iron fist and blast away.

Now I am not trying to slander the guy - he seems like a nice enough fellow. And I am not saying he isnt a "good" player. (I have never played him - we started a game on a custom map he had made, but the side facings were backwards so we decided to scrap it). I just take issue naming him "one of the most accomplished ladder players". There are a few guys with 50 or 100 or more ladder games with 90%+ win %. I would reserve that accolade for people like that - because that is hard to do. And IMHO, POS isnt in that league.

[jwatts]

Hm John, I don't know about that. Instead of telling you where I hail from, hazard a guess based on my smugness towards people from arkansas. Yep, you guessed it, I'm from Texas. I'm sorry for anyone who isn't. Though I guess calling Texas The South is a mistake, Texas is just Texas, and that's the way we like it 'round here. My whole accent thing was my pitiful attempt at a backwoods East Texan, and I thought it was pretty good. For anyone NOT familiar with backwoods East Texas talk, imagine an entire region of a state with nothing but Boomhower from King of The Hill.

[John Kettler]

jwatts,

Hey, that's all right. The first three of us were born in Arkansas (am the firstborn), while Dad was in engineering school at U Ark, Fayetteville after the Korean War, and three more were born in Dallas, Texas when Dad had his first job as a degreed engineer with TI. Call the annual clash between the Razorbacks and U.T. Austin highly polarized while I was growing up. Interestingly, we had three of each when it came to handedness, too.

David Chapuis,

He definitely likes that style of fighting, to the point where I believe that I might, with the right weapons (read large), skill and considerable luck, be able to severely embarrass him, but that doesn't seem to be the only kind he plays by any means. Just before Christmas 2006 his game roster was as shown here, responding to a good-natured zing.

(FGM) BlitzCanuck wrote:

If i was as fussy as you about what types of games i played, i'd likely be near or at the top of a few ladders too.

Look mate, I'm currently playing-

Operation 'Mobile Defence' v Sturmpionier,

A snowbound scen 'Warm Place to Sleep' v Beyerlein,

'Early Wittman' scen mirror-pair v PzTwt,

'SS-Strike' scen mirror-pair v Geordie,

'Drive on Stalingrad' QB mirror-pair v Enigma,

'Aug42' QB mirror-pair v Leto..

Now either step up to the plate and challenge me yerself, or get back on them ice floes with yer baseball bat..

Here's his OpTempo for 2006

I played 110 ladder games in 2006 plus gawd knows how many off-ladder, mostly sized 2000 pts and I'm knackered, so shall switch to small zippy stuff for a while til I get my breath back; a major attraction of small battles is that you get to know each and every man under your command on a personal basis and hopefully get introduced to their sisters, whereas thats impossible with a zillion faceless units..

Here's the list of ladders he's triumphed in. They mean squat all to me, since my only ladder experience has been annihilation in the now ancient CMBO Invitational Tourney at the hands of Fionn, who'd played somewhere near 600? ladder games and won the last 150 in a row before walloping me. From a Fragment post, here's the list for Poor Old Spike.

My first ladder club was Rugged Defense in 2003, but I didn't like the scoring system because it gave bonuses to people who played most games.

So I suggested to the boss "change it please", but he wouldn't, so I resigned from the club even though I was currently number one, I was getting an unfair advantage because I was playing more games than anybody else.

Then I joined Appui-Feu which had a chess-type system, it was very good and I reached the top.

Then I joined Wargames-Player Club which also used a chess system and I reached the top there too.

I looked at Blitz but didn't like their system, so I never joined..

Personally, I don't find cherry picked X point QBs to be all that fun, which is why I came up with the Jarmo Method during the Invitational Tourney, which was a 1500 point QB format tourney. My idea was to have the players buy their forces blind, on a blind map, then have the ref randomly flip for force assignment. You either then fought with your handpicked force OR went to war with your foe's Uber/Mega/Ultra men knowing full well what you'd be facing. This leveled the playing field in an instant by driving force selections toward something rational and balanced. Thus, you no longer had to be a combination Min/Max expert and

ubergrog in order to pick your troops, in turn, heading off sometimes days of negotiations about what was and was not kosher.

Regards,

John Kettler

[ June 22, 2007, 03:49 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]