Will "kicked" dust effect accuracy/visibility in CMBB?

[AnonymousOxide]

God that title sounds groggy.

But serious, I remember a bit from my Panzer Elite manual which stated that, for the gunner, undershooting enemy armor (and such) is better than overshooting it, because when you undershoot, the AP or HE round will hit the ground in front of the enemy armor, kicking dirt in it's face, which is obviously better than sending a round wizzing past it's hatch.

Now, dust kicked up in front of the gunners optics will obviously block his visability, I'm wondering if anything of this sort will be modeled in CMBB. I think I already know the answer, but I'm curious none-the-less.

Maybe a small little smoke style graphic colored brown could form after a round hits the ground, disappearing soon after, but varying in length and penelyzing visibility randomly, or according to shell size, type, and ground type. moving the LOS tool through this "puff" would yield a accuracy reduction, or chance-to-hit reduction, not quite sure.

I'm hoping this is realistic, I'm just basing it off of my PE manual, I don't know actual details, maybe it's occurance isn't as frequent as I think it is.

[JonS]

Originally posted by AnonymousOxide:

Maybe a small little smoke style graphic colored brown could form after a round hits the ground, disappearing soon after, but varying in length and penelyzing visibility randomly, or according to shell size, type, and ground type. moving the LOS tool through this "puff" would yield a accuracy reduction, or chance-to-hit reduction, not quite sure.

Yikes, the TacAI is already too eager to switch targets. Creating little puffs that block LOS - even if only for a short time - all over the field would just give it another reason to ignore serious threats so it can engage crews several hundred metres away instead.

Regards

JonS

[Lindan]

I thought that this kind of dust was already factored in in CMBO, if not graphically depicted.

not?

[CMplayer]

That is exactly the opposite advice of the one given when fighting with bows and arrows. There it's better to overshoot, since you might hit someone in the ranks farther back. But a short shot just harmlessly hits the dirt.

What might be reasonably put into a game like CM would be having guns firing HE at infantry targets tend to aim lower rather than higher, since way too many shells fly by when shooting at someone on a ridge. The 'dust kicked up' effect could just be considered part of the morale hit of having a blast take place nearby. The guys duck, and thus don't return fire for a few secs.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by AnonymousOxide:

[snips]

when you undershoot, the AP or HE round will hit the ground in front of the enemy armor, kicking dirt in it's face, which is obviously better than sending a round wizzing past it's hatch.

H'mm. I would have thought it would be that much more worrying for the target crew to hear the

crack of an AP shot passing overhead.

There are lots of places where modelling dust kicked up by fire or movement matters --

In dusty conditions, the peak rate of fire of the Sherman's 76mm was controlled down to about four rounds per minute because of the dust kicked up by the muzzle blast. Sensing rounds is obviously more difficult with lots of dust flying about.

Movement by vehicles kicks up a lot of dust in a Normandy summer, as you will know both by photographic evidence of the "Dust Brings Shells" and "Drive Slowly: We Live Here" signs troops used to put up, and I know, in practice, from the cries of "A la poussiere!" when trundling past a bunch of workmen on a Normandy road...

Falling artillery particularly kicks up lots of dust.

There is a lot more that could be done in CM on the modelling of obscurants -- as it stands, WP and chemical smoke are not distinguished, and the effects of wind on smoke drift and dispersion are not modelled at all. So, how much development time, product cost and computer power are people willing to see used to model obscurants in more detail? I suspect that the answer is "not much".

All the best,

John.

[Michael Emrys]

Something to put on the wish list for the engine rewrite. I would like to see a more thorough treatment of the effects of obscurants of all types. I think it would surprise many players. Talk about "fog of war"...

Michael

[AnonymousOxide]

Originally posted by Michael emrys:

Something to put on the wish list for the engine rewrite. I would like to see a more thorough treatment of the effects of obscurants of all types. I think it would surprise many players. Talk about "fog of war"...

Michael

From what John said, it's obvious that these sort of things are more complicated than I made them out to be. I'm not even certain we'll see them in CM2, but I think it should be on the wish list, becaust it's a big factor in dusty/dry conditions.

[AnonymousOxide]

Originally posted by CMplayer:

What might be reasonably put into a game like CM would be having guns firing HE at infantry targets tend to aim lower rather than higher, since way too many shells fly by when shooting at someone on a ridge. The 'dust kicked up' effect could just be considered part of the morale hit of having a blast take place nearby. The guys duck, and thus don't return fire for a few secs.

I second that. -Had 5 HE rounds wiz over enemy infantry once from a firing cromwell.

[Kurtz]

Originally posted by AnonymousOxide:

undershooting enemy armor (and such) is better than overshooting it, because when you undershoot, the AP or HE round will hit the ground in front of the enemy armor, kicking dirt in it's face, which is obviously better than sending a round wizzing past it's hatch.

If the round hits short of the target, the gunner (or rather the observer) can see where the impact is and the sight can be adjusted accordingly, which should improve the probability of an hit with the next round.

If the round overshoots, it probably will be hard to see where it finally impacts.

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by Kurtz:

If the round hits short of the target, the gunner (or rather the observer) can see where the impact is and the sight can be adjusted accordingly, which should improve the probability of an hit with the next round.

If the round overshoots, it probably will be hard to see where it finally impacts.

This, I think, is the real reason why it's best to have a round land short. Even under ideal situations (i.e., large AP shell with HE burster lands in exactly the right location), the obscuring effect will still be much smaller than the amount of dust thrown up by a tank's own muzzle blast.

[JonS]

Originally posted by Kurtz:

If the round overshoots, it probably will be hard to see where it finally impacts.[/QB]

If the gunner is using a half decent bracketing procedure, it doesn't matter that you can't see the overshoots impact.

[karch]

The bracketing in CM is handled internally, not what you see on screen. Steve has said numerous times that if a shot is calculated to be a hit, it hits, if it does not hit, the miss is somewhat randomly placed on the map around the target. What looks like misses all over the place are just random placements of missed shots. The bracketing of shots is handled internally by increasing a hit chance on the next shot, the only way you'd see the result of bracketing is a hit.

This ties back to the thread because the computer will never "aim low" and hope for a ground strike if it misses, it just calculates for a hit or not, then randomly places the miss if it doesn't hit.

[AnonymousOxide]

"The bracketing in CM is handled internally, not what you see on screen. Steve has said numerous times that if a shot is calculated to be a hit, it hits, if it does not hit, the miss is somewhat randomly placed on the map around the target"

Random ay? Hmmm, let me try to clearify then.

If a Sherman fires on a Sturmgetshutz 1 time and that 1 shot lands saaay... 1 meter away from the front right tread, the next shot [in CMBO] will NOThave a greater chance to hit it's target, regardless of the fact that in a real world situation, information such as this missed shot would give the gunner a greater chance to hit the next time. With every round that is fired through trial and error, the gunners chance of hitting it's target will increase.

That's the situation right?

[ May 15, 2002, 08:53 PM: Message edited by: AnonymousOxide ]

[JonS]

Originally posted by AnonymousOxide:

snip

That's the situation right?

No, IIRC CMBO does take bracketing, etc., into account making each subsequent shot more likely to hit, but, if the next shot still misses the graphic depicting where that missed shot lands is random.

So, the engine is using bracketing to determine hit percentages, but the graphics that should/could be depicting that process aren't.

Regards

JonS

Edit: sbelink

[ May 15, 2002, 10:15 PM: Message edited by: JonS ]

[karch]

Originally posted by JonS:

...No, IIRC CMBO does take braketting etc into account, making each subsequent shot more likely to hit, but, if the next shot still misses the graphic depicting where that missed shot lands is random.

So, the engine is using bracketting to determine hit percentages, but the graphics that should be depicting that process aren't.

Regards

JonS[/QB]

Exactly the way I recall it. You just 'splained it better. That was how I was trying to describe it. The key is that where misses land is random, but internally "bracketing" does happen by increasing the to hit chance on consecutive shots.

I also read someone say that if you REtarget the same vehicle manually, you lose any bracketing that was done and the computer starts over again in it's bracketing/to-hit calcs.

S

[AnonymousOxide]

Ow my head.

Okay, I get it, but I don't see the big deal in modeling bracketing visually. I mean I really find it odd that 3 88mm HE shells land a foot from the target and the 4th HE shell misses by 5 meters and lands on a moving .50 cal team.