Is AFV top armor modelled for ground attack purposes?

[Guest SnarkerII]

I've noticed that the 45mm guns in "Stare" sometimes get quick and fleeting kill assesments of 'fair' and 'good' as tanks dip down with the terrain. Is this because deck and turret top armor is represented, or am I just seeing an aspect change (from front to side) for a moment?

[MikeyD]

If the vehicle's dipping and weaving through the terrain perhaps you're seeing the vehicle go into and out of 'hull down'? That would certainly cut kill probabilities. If it's travelling up and down steep grades I believe CM also factors in vehicle cant as well as angle of deflection from the target. That could affect kill probabilites too. I have been able to get roof penetrations on vehicles travelling steep inclines in CMBO.

[Fangorn]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

If the vehicle's dipping and weaving through the terrain perhaps you're seeing the vehicle go into and out of 'hull down'? That would certainly cut kill probabilities. If it's travelling up and down steep grades I believe CM also factors in vehicle cant as well as angle of deflection from the target. That could affect kill probabilites too. I have been able to get roof penetrations on vehicles travelling steep inclines in CMBO.

Actually, you can't get roof hits with direct fire in CMBO, but I don't know if the engine has been improved to allow this (quite rare) probability in CMBB.

[Jarmo]

What you're seeing is the armour angle changing as the angle of the tank changes. If a tank with 60 degree hull is going down a 30 degree slope, the hull armour is effectively only 30 degrees.

CMBO didn't model top armour for other than arty&mortar hits, and since the engine is the same, I doubt CMBB does either.

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Fangorn:

Actually, you can't get roof hits with direct fire in CMBO, but I don't know if the engine has been improved to allow this (quite rare) probability in CMBB.

There are two exceptions to the "No DF top hit" rule in CMBO that I have experienced:

1. On-board mortar and Off-board Arty fire (already mentioned)

2. Air attack.

I have seen both DF on-board mortar and strafing attacks (by Jabos especially 20mm-armed Jabos hitting relatively lightly top-armored tanks) score top-armor penetrations in CMBO. Even with tanks going down relatively steep inclines and being fired upon by a gun with a considerable altitude advantage, I have never seen a top hit from an on-board gun in CMBO. I have seen the change in kill chance when a tanks goes down an incline and effectively loses some of it's armor slope relative to a targeting gun.

I think it's reasonable to assume that we'll see at least these methods of top penetration in CMBB. I'm not going to really miss the modeling of a top penetration with a gun if it's not in because this would be a rare occurence requiring very special circumstances. The one additional top hit I would like to see modeled would be for certain types of IAT weapons that were designed to be lofted in such a way as to land on the thinner top armor of the tank.

Modeling this would be especially cool for urban fighting where you have the chance of an infantry squad tossing something like a Panzerwurfmine out of a 2nd story window onto the deck of a tank below.

[MikeyD]

I recall an early CMBB Beta was getting an overabundance of "roof penetration" messages from direct fire, which they corrected. From that I assumed roof penetration was in (or maybe it was simply showing an incorrect message). Ferreting out game features from the game play is often as subtle as trying to read tea leaves.

[Guest SnarkerII]

All of the above explainations certainly come into play. One thing that makes me think top armor comes into play now is I can target one PzIII and then target to another very close by and go from a 'none' to a 'good'. Only perceptable difference in facing etc. is I can see the top of one and not the other...

Hull down is an interesting beast now also. IIRC I could sometimes get a better kill chance (but a smaller to hit %) for some hull down situations. All in all, it certainly seems BFC did some serious tweaking with this aspect of the game.

[Cameroon]

Originally posted by SnarkerII:

All of the above explainations certainly come into play. One thing that makes me think top armor comes into play now is I can target one PzIII and then target to another very close by and go from a 'none' to a 'good'. Only perceptable difference in facing etc. is I can see the top of one and not the other...

Hull down is an interesting beast now also. IIRC I could sometimes get a better kill chance (but a smaller to hit %) for some hull down situations. All in all, it certainly seems BFC did some serious tweaking with this aspect of the game.

Here here! Yeah, the amount of feedback -- if nothing else -- given to us about the relative use of a particular gun vs a target is a huge leap forward from CMBO. IMHO of course

I think it is absolutely stellar that I get feedback (% to hit, kill chance) that takes into account the horizontal and vertical angles between the gun & target. I know that CMBO probably took into account a lot of this information (though I'm sure it's been improved), but actually being able to SEE that is wonderful. You can definitely see that a lot of detail went into this particular aspect and it is appreciated