Bunker buster

[Swift]

While reading several threads with tactics on how to deal with bunkers I think I have one thing to add.

I learned the hard way that the 40mm Bofors AA gun is a bunkers worst nightmare.

I placed a 76mm bunker with a good over watch position fully visible on top a mountain to, in my mind, wreck havoc on my foe. He had placed 2 Bofors guns to destroy some buildings (another task they perform excellently) but they immediately opened fire on my bunker and destroyed it in 47s... I was steaming mad.

The next time we played I got my revenge. My opponent had done the same thing I had (using an 88 instead). I had learn my lesson and bought 2 40mm’s. The joy I felt when the bunker was destroyed after less then a minute erased all my previous grief (and made me overly bald and ended up in me loosing 3 of my tanks to well placed shreks :mad: )

So to sum up: Bunker + Bofors = Disaster (for the bunker)

[ 01-11-2002: Message edited by: Swift ]</p>

[Redwolf]

It's a shame that the CMBO Bunker's vulnerablity is so much based on hit probability, respectivly that the vulnerable area is so big that it is easily expoitable.

[Silvio Manuel]

To avoid this, you could get your opponent to agree to playing by Scipio's "generally excluded" rule, which bans 37mmAA, 40mmAA, and the German Sd Kfz 7/2 37mm AA FlaK vehicle. This eliminates their overmodeled-weapon influence, and IMHO, makes the game more realistic in that its unlikely that you'd see these valuable AA weapons risked on the battlefield as a DF support weapon.

If you ban aircraft, then the lack of AA isn't too significant.

Under those rules, the Allies have no AA. However, only in a big battle and in certain months can Axis buy aircraft.

Alternatively, you could include aircraft, but ban the use of AA at the front- only place them in the rear to actually guard against the CAS threat.

Scipio's purchase rules for armor, artillery, etc are at:

http://www.warfarehq.com/

Fionn's armor rules are also there.

Cheers,

Kevin

[Redwolf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Silvio Manuel:

To avoid this, you could get your opponent to agree to playing by Scipio's "generally excluded" rule, which bans 37mmAA, 40mmAA, and the German Sd Kfz 7/2 37mm AA FlaK vehicle. This eliminates their overmodeled-weapon influence, and IMHO, makes the game more realistic in that its unlikely that you'd see these valuable AA weapons risked on the battlefield as a DF support weapon.

<hr></blockquote>

Sorry, that doesn't solve the general problem. A concrete pillbox will still be easier to take out with a Greyhound than a larger gun tank. For all reservation about the multiple-round AA gun model of CMBO, the issue here is that small rounds in general do too much damage to pillboxes.

If you want to play with pillboxes, you need to ban any gun below 75mm, which is pretty annoying.

BTW, the real problem with the SdKfz 7/1 and 7/2 is that they are practically unkillable by tank fire when lead by a competent player.

[Gyrene]

Are pillbox users actually complaining that they are too easy to kill and that usually very weak vehicles like the Grayhound have to be limited so their PB's last longer?

Please, a 75mm or 88mm can dominate it's LOS and get far more kills on the average than tanks do AND they can't be buttoned up or phazed in the least by any hits that do not kill it.

I don't think pillboxes need any more help.

Gyrene

[Redwolf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gyrene:

Are pillbox users actually complaining that they are too easy to kill and that usually very weak vehicles like the Grayhound have to be limited so their PB's last longer?

<hr></blockquote>

No, the only thing that annoys me is that they are easier to kill with a Greyhound than with a decent tank.

[Silvio Manuel]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by redwolf:

No, the only thing that annoys me is that they are easier to kill with a Greyhound than with a decent tank.<hr></blockquote>

Redwolf and Gyrene...thanks for the good points.

Given: the 17pdr also has a velocity of about 880, and I am guessing that velocity=accuracy.

Do you feel that the Greyhound/Daimler problem is that their HE is only grenade-like in power, compared to the 17pdr's far more powerful 40 blast factor, yet the AC's get 1-shot kills on Pillboxes with such an inferior weapon?

[Redwolf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Silvio Manuel:

Do you feel that the Greyhound/Daimler problem is that their HE is only grenade-like in power, compared to the 17pdr's far more powerful 40 blast factor, yet the AC's get 1-shot kills on Pillboxes with such an inferior weapon?<hr></blockquote>

The Daimler has no HE at all, not even grenade. Anyway, the whole issue is not at all about HE blast at all. Pillboxes are killed by AP shots.

And the firing slit is modeled as very weak armor, penetrateable even by a 37mm round if it penetrates. It seems to be modeld rather big, it is very reasitic to hit it with one high-accuracy gun within one turn. And every hit is a complete hit, penetrating into the inner.

However, CMBO has a rather fixed and not universally agreed on scheme that every penetration, no matter how big or small the round or whether HE, AP or HC, has a very high chance of knockout.

In addition, the smaller the weapon the higher the ROF.

The Greyhound gets off the most rounds, so they have the highest chance to hit the slit. Once the slit is hit, it doesn't really (only slight, I think) matters that this is the 37mm sissy-round, having spent most of its energy in the pentration and not the badass 90mm AP with additional burster. So the unit with high ROF and high accuracy comes out best, disregarding real-world issues such a energy delivered to target.

[Silvio Manuel]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by redwolf:

The Daimler has no HE at all, not even grenade. Anyway, the whole issue is not at all about HE blast at all. Pillboxes are killed by AP shots.

And the firing slit is modeled as very weak armor, penetrateable even by a 37mm round if it penetrates. It seems to be modeld rather big, it is very reasitic to hit it with one high-accuracy gun within one turn. And every hit is a complete hit, penetrating into the inner.

However, CMBO has a rather fixed and not universally agreed on scheme that every penetration, no matter how big or small the round or whether HE, AP or HC, has a very high chance of knockout.

In addition, the smaller the weapon the higher the ROF.

The Greyhound gets off the most rounds, so they have the highest chance to hit the slit. Once the slit is hit, it doesn't really (only slight, I think) matters that this is the 37mm sissy-round, having spent most of its energy in the pentration and not the badass 90mm AP with additional burster. So the unit with high ROF and high accuracy comes out best, disregarding real-world issues such a energy delivered to target.<hr></blockquote>

My perception is that the firing slit is fairly big...large enough to traverse the cannon or to allow the MGs decent FOW/traverse.

I imagined that the light-caliber HE rounds would not penetrate, but rather enter the "window" where there is no concrete wall.

So I agree w/ your view on Daimlers (no HE), but perhaps not so with Greyhounds/Stuarts. It's a good point that the penetration/kill ratio is probably too high for pillboxes.

[Caesar]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>

BTW, the real problem with the SdKfz 7/1 and 7/2 is that they are practically unkillable by tank fire when lead by a competent player

<hr></blockquote>

Redwolf - What exactly do you mean by this? I am not questioning whether you are right or not - I just haven't noticed this.

BTW I agree that the Pill box is too vunerable to the light guns. I have come to the conclusion that if you are attacking then you should always buy a couple of light armed vehicles and space them fairly widely. I have knocked out numerous Pill boxes using this technique. Surely if the slit was that easily hit then it should be able to be knocked out easily with a 50 cal. A few hundred rounds of 50 Cal ammo pouring through the slot and ricocheting around would surely do more damage than a single small AP round

[ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: Caesar ]</p>

[Swift]

I looked on the net for pictures of pillboxes and found this

I would imagine that if a 40mm shell managed to hit the hole in the middle it would most likely hit the main gun and if so I assume that it would have enough power to destroy it but a .50 cal round might not. Here a AP round would give more effect than a HE.

Now the pillbox in CM is pictured with a broad firing slit so if this is how the pillbox is designed it would give the gun a larger hit chance.

A larger gun might not have the same precision as a 40mm and might not be able to hit the firing slit.

Redwolf - I’m also interested in how to make my SdKfz’s unkillable

[ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: Swift ]</p>

[Redwolf]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Caesar:

Redwolf - What exactly do you mean by this? I am not questioning whether you are right or not - I just haven't noticed this.

<hr></blockquote>

Uh, not again. Here we go:

When guns fire on an unarmored vehicle, direct hit is not modeld. Only near hit in the ground and then blast effect. In addition to that, a shot on an unarmored target never takes the movement into account, the tank or gun shoots at the present location of the target, which of course isn't valid anymore by the time the shell arrives.

In addition, the SdKfz 7/1 and 7/2 have a hit hit chance, andthey can fire to the side while moving. So, you just keep your SdKfz traversing back and forth between two patches of cover and good LOS in between and they will shoot up everything that is visible from their path. The opponent can only kill them by manually setting area target into the path, but you can counter that by plotting random sequences of "move" and "fast" (but not "hunt", obviously).

There is no problem with killing it from smallarms or indirect fire, but MGs are far too weak in CMBO (in reality a SdKFz 7 wouldn't survive 10 seconds within 1000m of a HMG) and indirect fire, while it works fine, is fairly costly to shoot at moving targets.

There are very extensive threads on the problem, please look them up.

[Edited for clarity:]

Set up a map devided in half by trees, place 2x 4 Shermans, 4x SdKfz 7/2 and 4x Ostwind. See how fast the Ostwinds die and how "fast" the Flakies die.

[ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: redwolf ]</p>

[Liebchen]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Caesar:

Surely if the slit was that easily hit then it should be able to be knocked out easily with a 50 cal. A few hundred rounds of 50 Cal ammo pouring through the slot and ricocheting around would surely do more damage than a single small AP round

[ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: Caesar ]<hr></blockquote>

Unlike AP shots, .50 cal bullets are often fired in an arch and thus tend to land at an oblique angle pouring a "rain of fire" upon the target. It would be difficult to get a few hundred rounds into the pillboxes firing slit for this reason, as the rounds would tend to deflect off of the outer concrete.

Obviously, this would not apply to closer range shots, which would be more level. But the problem then is getting the .50 cal unit that close without succumbing to the pillbox's fire.

[MeatEtr]

well, i think bunkers r just fine, especially the concrete ones, people here r complaining about how the small caliber rounds can knock them out(40mm and below) easily, yes thats true, but really if u think about it, these and higher caliber guns r the only things that can knock out a bunker, for the most part, just as long as u protect its flanks from infantry, keep them hidden as long as possible, since they will be a high priorty once your opponent knows about them, and remember bunkers r made of concrete and not armor, big difference with any AP round hitting it, and finally they can take one hell of shelling from even the heavy arty, even had a wooden bunker get shelled and mortared all to hell and he still kept fighting, just my 2 cents, later

[John D Salt]

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by redwolf:

The Daimler has no HE at all, not even grenade. <hr></blockquote>

Having checked this in the scenario designer, I have to ask why? 2-pounder tank guns may not have carried HE in the Western Desert, but 2-pdr HE was issued to armoured car units in NW Europe. The inability to fire HE with the Littlejohn adapter fitted to the 2-pdr was a fact that counted against it. I understand that the commanders of some cars left the Littlejohn adapter off and fired the APCNR rounds without it; it still gave improved penetration in this "improvised APCR" mode, although obviously not as good as with the adapter.

I believe there was also a version of the Littlejohn adapter for the US 37mm, but I don;t know how widely it was used by the US Army.

All the best,

John.

[Affentitten]

In the jungle war, the Brits specifically used Bofors guns a lot to knock out Japanese bunkers, especially when they had been outflanked. (I suppose it's much easier to that in the jungle than in a Rheinland meadow.

There was a standard joke that the Bofors boys had special 4 round magazines for the job, with the first 3 being rubber shells, and the last one HE. Firing the first three rounds at the door of the bunker would make the Japs think someone was knocking, and they'd open up just in time for the real shell.

2 pounder field pieces were also used specifically to collapse in the firing slits of Jap bunkers.

[MeatEtr]

hehe, thats great