Yellow livered IS2's

[Redwolf]

In CMBB, AFVs which never moved since setup also enjoy a hit probablity benefit.

Obviously, that will be lost when retreating once.

[ November 24, 2002, 09:54 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Commander]

Maybe Charles likes playing as Germans and he programmed the Soviet tanks to backup like that so his precious kraut Panzers won't get killed!

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Just thought I would give this one final bump to see if anyone else has any comments to make about Soviet heavy tanks and how they behave.

Regards

Jim R.

[Bruceov]

Ive had Is2's and T34s rugular stand and fight tigers to the death; but the russian tanks don't like to be sirprised

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Commander:

Maybe Charles likes playing as Germans and he programmed the Soviet tanks to backup like that so his precious kraut Panzers won't get killed!

ROTFL

OK!

that was one of the funniest things I have read on the forum lately!

That just could be the Most Humourous Post of the Week!

Nice!

-tom w

[Redwolf]

We had enough reports of German tanks behaving this way to rule out that it is coded into the Soviets (contrary to what I said in the last thread about the subject).

Now, to improve from my performance in the auto-sneak-exhaustion thread (hold the applause, please), I tried to make an isolated test case right now. Needless so say, it failed, the exact same configuration of hulldown ISU-122 shooting up Pz IVs lang's in the open behaved correctly, the ISU stayed.

For now I can only bash BFC for the lack of a feature to save every autosave, since my real game this was in was a TCP. I might actually have a real savegame showing this, but I am unenthusiastic to dig through heaps of savegames. Hm...

[JunoReactor]

I may be wrong but global morale might have something to do with this.

Also, depending on the battle type (probe, assault, etc) crews might be more willing, depending on their SOPs, to fight rather then fly.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by JunoReactor:

I may be wrong but global morale might have something to do with this.

I was at 100% morale. I was shooting up enemy tanks first thing in the battle.

Also, depending on the battle type (probe, assault, etc) crews might be more willing, depending on their SOPs, to fight rather then fly.

I would be very surprised if such was coded into the game. So far I have no indication it is and I guess it wouldn't fit BFC style.

[Foobar]

Kanonier-

You need to change the title in this thread if you want to be accurate-

Please call the afvs in question Lily-Livered, or Yellow-Bellied

Calling them Yellow-Livered just makes us think that they have hepatitis

[Battlefront.com]

Hi all,

Unfortunately, I can't draw any conclusions from mere descriptions. This is a general case for behavior issues, but a hard and fast rule for armor engagements. There is just way too much going on that I need to see for myself in order to make any relevant comments to that particular matchup.

I don't know what I can add to this discussion except to clarify how the AI works (to the best of my knowledge)...

Tanks are, rightly, worried about survival. They will move back out of LOS or into better cover when they feel their chance of causing damage is low and the chances of being harmed are decent. If the chance of being harmed is really low, the tank will stay there even if it doesn't have a very good chance against the other tank.

Other factors at work...

Crew Experience - worse the crew, more likely they are to think they are in trouble.

Facing - if a tank with excellent frontal armor feels threatened from its weaker flanks, it will not be as happy.

Global Morale - all units are a bit more jumpy when GM is low.

Non lethal hits - a tank will likely back up if it is getting clocked over and over again by hits that aren't causing damage. Especially if they are penetrating. Even non penetrating hits can cause serious damage, such as immobilization or gun damge. So better safe than sorry in some cases. Crew Morale is the big indicator of this. NOTE - when testing this stuff, it is important to notice what the Crew Morale level is

Other variables - visibility, cover (friendly and target), range, hit chance %, etc. are also calculated to determine level of threat to self and chance of harming target.

Heavy tanks - there is special code in the game to give certain tanks a bit of a "macho" edge. This means that all of the above are reduced because the crews feel they are indestructable (in general). This is a DEFENSIVE thing only, meaning it only influences the outcome of the threat assesment part of the equation. No, I don't know which tanks do or do not have this

Dnager Close - this is a hyper active self defense mechanism that kicks in when the tank is under infantry type danger. Basically, this is a tanker's worst nightmare and therefore the tank tends to take massive evasive action.

THIS IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. Mileage will vary

Note that I didn't say anything about nationality. There is no nationality based coding. Therefore, if there is something you are seeing it is related to the above factors (and probably others) and not specifically what kind of tank or nationality.

Now, if someone wants to send me a save game of a matchup that seems odd (like an IS-2 retreating from a PzIII at 1000m for example), I'd be happy to take a look at it. We do not know of any problems with the modeling, but as with anything in the game... there could be something wrong.

Steve

[Nolloff]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

..Heavy tanks - there is special code in the game to give certain tanks a bit of a "macho" edge...

I demand immediate release of patch 1.02 with corrected unit designations

- StuGIIIF (wimp)

- StuGIIIF (late macho)

Nolloff

[Nolloff]

Well, I´ve got nothing better to do right now so I kept fiddling around ...

Same "shooting range", August 44, Soviets have to move on top of a ridge from height 7 up to 8 to face two Tigers, approx. 1250m away. Regular troops on both sides, 6-8 Russian tanks vs. two Tigers (Pz VIE, late).

T34/85s instantly retreat when spotting the Tigers. IS2 1944 (early macho) do not retreat at first but move fully onto the ridge to the end of their movement path. Start to shoot it out with the Tigers but individual tanks start to reverse when getting shot or aimed at by the Tigers. Non penetrating hits, close misses and sometimes a Tiger only aiming at a specific IS2 (establishing red line to it) leads to retreating of the targetted tank even before the Tiger fires. IS2s which are not getting shot at seem to keep their calm.

I´m not saying that this is proof of something nor that anything is wrong with the game. Quite the contrary. I find it quite interesting. Might be useful to finetune tactics and avoid mistakes.

Now if I only could get the macho list...

Nolloff

[ November 26, 2002, 07:03 AM: Message edited by: Nolloff ]

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Well, if you've got nothing better to do, how about posting me the return file ya bleedin' test monkey!

Regards

Jim R.

[Nolloff]

Hahaha, big brother is watching me. Honestly, I just zipped it and it´s on the way to that prison island of yours ...

Btw: aren´t you concerned when seeing the "results"? You´ll have to cancel some TACAI retreat orders soon.

Master_Goodale (light)

Edit: My ISPs email functionality seems to have retreated as well. I´ll send asap.

[ November 26, 2002, 06:38 AM: Message edited by: Nolloff ]

[Kanonier Reichmann]

Originally posted by *Captain Foobar*:

Kanonier-

You need to change the title in this thread if you want to be accurate-

Please call the afvs in question Lily-Livered, or Yellow-Bellied

Calling them Yellow-Livered just makes us think that they have hepatitis

O.K. So they're Soviet tankers who are gutless and share needles when they need to escape from the cold hard reality of war.

SHEEESH!

Regards

Jim R.

[Pack Kuma]

I recall that on the Western front the Tigger was held in such dread by Allied tankers that they were even under orders *not* to engage them? And that vanilla PzIV's were constantly being misidentified as such. I wonder if those Russian tankers are just 'fraid because of certain tank's rep, and then they misidentify everything as either Tiger or Jagdpanther, which is cause for...RUN AWAY!

[Nolloff]

Yup, that seems to be in the game. 5 x T34/85 misidentifying one of two IVs as Panther were retreating, the last T34 stayed after identifying both enemy tanks as the IVJs they were.

Nolloff

[ November 26, 2002, 09:22 AM: Message edited by: Nolloff ]

[Scatterbrain Kid]

"The weakest part of a tank is its crew" This phrase cropped up from time to time in U.S. military journals some 25 years ago.

[Andreas]

ISTR Kip mentioning that Soviet orders were not to engage Stugs after they were uparmoured to 80mm frontal armour and upgunned to 75L43.

[Commander]

Leta and I are playing a PBEM right now and we just went through what Steve said above.

I have a T34 trading shots with a 150mm assault monster and both tanks stood their ground while my T34 bounced several shots off of its frontal armor. After about three shots, I noticed that his assault tank started to reverse. Knowing Leta, I bet the TacAI made the decision to back up because its obvious my shots are doing nothing to his monster tank.

[hobbes]

I also noticed this and posted on the topic under Cowardly Russians? a few days ago. The point should also be made on the numbers of tanks visible to each side. 100 T34's should not retreat from 1 Tiger!

[Cpt.Kloss]

Originally posted by Nolloff:

I don´t think this is new or got introduced with 1.01. The JSIIs did that in Jaegermeister, the second CD scenario I touched. They were facing Tigers, so it´s understandable to a certain degree.

The only thing that helped was shoot and scoot. Looking at the carnage that resulted from the plain "move" orders during my first attempt I think those Russian tankers were quite clever.

There seems to be some "his chances to kill me are higher than mine" consideration going on on behalf of the TacAI. I had German StuGIII Fs retreating from Russian KV1s in a long-range engagement as well.

Higher experience levels should come to a more realistic assessment than "green" troops. Can anyone confirm this?

Nolloff

--------------------------------------

Is it a joke? IS2 was DESIGNED to fight Tigers!

I suppose any cowering crew (especially against weaker german armor)would be shot without any martial court sentence...

Sometimes I think that someone from Battlefront has a great love for german army to the extend of bending history (much has been discussed about 37mm "doorknockers", short-barelled L24

knocking T34's in 41,PAK 75 massacring IS2 platoons by front turret hits etc.)

A lot of people like to stress high russian armor loses forgeting that attacking side almost always loses more. During German offensive in 1945 (Hungary)german loses were 10 times higher.From almost 400 destroyed german tanks and spguns inspected after a battle (including 19 King Tigers, 6 Tigers, 57 Panthers) majority of them were destroyed by 76mm and 57mm fire. And the best which russians had at all was SU 100...

IN CMBB I think under ANY conditions this would be IMPOSSIBLE (CMBB SU76 would never think of engaging Panther even under very favourable condition).

What's the conclussion? CMBB german are UBER. Get use to it. I do not know whether fault lies in accuracy and shell quality/penetration data.

As far as I read on this forum a tremendous work was put on collecting this. Perhaps it is a time to verify? (and Battlefront do this - see patch readme). But there is more...

[MrNoobie]

so uh is this going to be patched?

[Cpt.Kloss]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Hi all,

Other factors at work...

Crew Experience - worse the crew, more likely they are to think they are in trouble.

Steve

No Steve, you are wrong. Inexperienced crews were often more reckless and daring.

The same situation was on Western Front, where (just before Overlord) american and british green tankers were told their tanks were actually equal!

[rune]

No Kloss, YOU are wrong.

1. It was designed to kill Tigers and Panthers? Well, the prototype kv-13 was out 9 months before the Tiger was even known about. Once the Tiger was known, it sped up production, but the tank was NOT designed to kill Tiger and Panthers. SO what was it designed to do?

2. From Valera's wonderful RUSSIAN site on their tanks, you can read this:

The JS-2 was a heavy breakthrough tank, ie, tank intended for breaking through the enemy lines of defense. In toher words, the main targets of this tank were infantry and artillery. Thus, a tank with a large gun with greath HE capability was needed. History shows that the JS-2 used about 70% of it HE rounds and only 30% of its AP rounds.

3. A comparison to the German tanks can be found here:

http://www.battlefield.ru/is2_3.html

4. Russian tactics as told by a VETERAN of the time, was NOT to engage tanks, unless no other choice. Tanks would withdraw and "sucker" them into AT Gun range. Of course, different fronts used different tactics at various times.

5. New crews were uber daring? More fiction. Death Traps by Belton Cooper talks about green crews quite a bit. In no way were they willing to rush out and take risks. Yes, they were told that, but NO, they did not believe it. He mentions several battles where the green crews withdrew without orders, leaving the infantry hanging to dry. Notice, GREEN CREWS.

Rune