Turret Speed in CMBB

[Gaylord Focker]

Is Turret speed on Armor going to be an over empahsised part of battles like it is in CMBO?

ANd will the AI turret be as easy ot confuse as it is in CMBO where the M8 is much better then it was in real life when used in confusion tactics?

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Is Turret speed on Armor going to be an over empahsised part of battles like it is in CMBO?

What exactly do you mean by over-emphasised? Using slow German turrets was a valid and practised tactic at least by British tankers.

Worked as follows:

1) Sherman platoon motors along

2) Big bad German jungle cat starts shooting at them

3) Shermans drop smoke, retreat into cover

4) Firefly positioned just in cover, Platoon CO tank revs up and gets ready to shoot out from cover into field of fire of bad bad German tank

5) Platoon CO in 75mm armed Sherman breaks from cover at high speed and attempts flanking of German heavy

6) German heavy slowly rotates turret towards Platoon CO tank but since turret rotation can not keep up with flank speed Sherman, does not manage to

7) Firefly breaks cover and whacks German heavy frontally

OR

6a) German tank CO knows there is a Firefly and stays cool as cucumber, waiting for Firefly to break cover to whack it.

7a) Platoon CO whacks German heavy with flank shot

OR

6c) German tank retreats from battlefield at very high speed because he knows that he is caught between the Divvil and the deep blue sea.

Please note that in versions a), and c) of this the German tank loses against good tactics that are based on higher turret speed.

This very interesting process was explained to me by a UK Sherman platoon commander in Bovington.

[Gaylord Focker]

Thats all good and fine when talking about a single tank. Not Always the case in a Western Frotn World War2 Battle to the dismay of the Allies.

Were'nt that stats of 5 Shermans to Kill 1 Tiger or something similar? It seems CMBO is modeled more ot the effect of 2 Shermans to kill 1 Tiger.

Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded.

[ July 16, 2002, 01:42 PM: Message edited by: Gaylord Focker ]

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Thats all good and fine when talking about a single tank. Not Always the case in a Western Frotn World War2 Battle to the dismay of the Allies.

Were'nt that stats of 5 Shermans to Kill 1 Tiger or something similar? It seems CMBO is modeled more ot the effect of 2 Shermans to kill 1 Tiger.

Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded.

"Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded"

Funny that!

The Russians did beat the Germans on the Eastern Front.

Will they be "favoured" ??

The historical accuracy commisioners at BFC will emphatically tell you that they never "favour" either side and they strive always for absolute historical accuracy where ever possible. Is it accurate to say the Russians beat the Germans at their own game? I'm not sure, but they did push them all the way back to Berlin.

Will they be "favoured" (?) I hope not, we all hope all data and information about facts and statistics will be as historically accurate as possible. I'm sure you will find most on this board want a VERY detailed VERY historically accurate combat simulator that focuses on the Eastern Front in WWII, I think that is what CMBB is supposed to be.

-tom w

[ July 16, 2002, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Thats all good and fine when talking about a single tank. Not Always the case in a Western Frotn World War2 Battle to the dismay of the Allies.

Were'nt that stats of 5 Shermans to Kill 1 Tiger or something similar? It seems CMBO is modeled more ot the effect of 2 Shermans to kill 1 Tiger.

Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded.

I really don't care much about worries on TH forums one way or the other, since last I checked someone was worrying that all we Beta testers are a bunch of Paul Carrell acolytes worshipping at the 'Shrine of Wehrmacht Superiority'™. *shrug*

You still have not explained how in CMBO the slow turrets are worse off. Shurely if you are a decent player, you will use tanks in overwatch yada yada to prevent this from happening.

That would be variant 'd)' (noting here that I screwed up my numbering) of the above:

6d) CO Sherman breaks cover and flanks German heavy; German tank in overwatch acquires it.

7d) German tanks wait for Firefly to break cover too and whack two for the price of one.

Any reason why this would not work in CMBO now?

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Were'nt that stats of 5 Shermans to Kill 1 Tiger or something similar? It seems CMBO is modeled more ot the effect of 2 Shermans to kill 1 Tiger.

This is a sort of common misconception. Allied tactics called on them to use 5 shermans to defeat big German cats. They did not lose five shermans to take out a German cat. German and Allied tank losses were approximately equal.

[Agua Perdido]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Were'nt that stats of 5 Shermans to Kill 1 Tiger or something similar? It seems CMBO is modeled more ot the effect of 2 Shermans to kill 1 Tiger.

This oft-misunderstood "rule of thumb" (as I understand it) refers to needing 5 Shermans to kill a German heavy with minimum risk (that is, loss of 0-1 Shermans in the process). It does not mean that the Allied player has to sacrifice 5 Shermans to kill the bad cat.

Agua Perdido

[Edited to add: "D'oh! I type too slowly..."]

[ July 16, 2002, 03:08 PM: Message edited by: Agua Perdido ]

[Schoerner]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

The Russians did beat the Germans on the Eastern Front.

Will they be "favoured" ??

I hope, the historical accuracy is the main target, again.

1st year (additional!) land-and-lease-act deliveries : 3.052 airplanes, 4.048 tanks, 520.000 vehicles of all kinds (comparison: Germany started Barbarossa with 1.830 airplanes, 3.580 tanks, 600.000 vehicles)

entire land-and-lease deliveries for the USSR:

14.700 airplanes, 50.000 Jeeps, 135.000 MGs, 13.000 armoured vehicles (incl. 7000 tanks), 1.045 locomotives, 7.164 boxcars, 427.284 trucks, 11.000.000 boots (main transport route: murman-track-line; only 1.500.000 million tons of the 16.500.000 million tons were sunken by the germans)

The USA and the lend-and-lease-act did win the war on the eastern-front - the USSR itself, was already beaten after the first months.

[Tarquelne]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Is Turret speed on Armor going to be an over empahsised part of battles like it is in CMBO?

and

Thats all good and fine when talking about a single tank. Not Always the case in a Western Frotn World War2 Battle to the dismay of the Allies.

You _can_ see turret speed "over emphasized" in CMBO if you play with a "single tank" as opposed to a whole platoon or company more often than called for by the historical record.

A Tiger with nobody to protect his flank is going to be really hurt by the turret speed problem. A Tiger with another Tiger on his flank won't be.

Here's a gamey tactic tip for Tigers or other slow turret (or "no turret") vehicles. Have the Tiger break cover near the end of the turn, exposing it's flanks. Beginning of next turn out come the light guned tanks to flank the Tiger. Early in that turn the mortar smoke arrives, protecting one of the Tiger's flanks.

I suggest trying this only when desperate, but it can let a lone Tiger (with some necessary help from a mortar platoon (or, for prefereance, a FO) take the iniatiative away from swarming light-gunned tanks.

And don't try it twice in a row!

[Joseph Porta]

The USA and the lend-and-lease-act did win the war on the eastern-front - the USSR itself, was already beaten after the first months.

Oh My...

[Terence]

Originally posted by Schoerner:

I respectfully suggest that sending someone a gun is pretty useless as a war winning strategy if the recipients of your generosity are not willing to kill the enemy or bleed and die trying.

The idea that the US won the war in the East by providing machines and materiel seems flawed to me, as it is missing the essential element: motivated troops and leadership. The Soviets provided those in large numbers, and lost 20 million or so lives fighting the Germans.

As I may have said, I got no LOOOOOVE for Stalin or the Communist Party, but eventually they made the Nazis pay for every inch of ground.

I think wouldn't have mattered how much stuff the US sent them if the average Soviet hadn't been highly motivated.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Schoerner:

The USA and the lend-and-lease-act did win the war on the eastern-front - the USSR itself, was already beaten after the first months.

I am sure all those Matildas and Valentines made all the difference at Yelnia, Rostov and Moscow... Going back to someone who knows what he is talking about (Steets 'Gebirgsjäger zwischen Dnjepr und Don'- he was the 1a of 1. Gebirgsjägerdivision then and published the book in the late 1950s working from the KTB, and other primary sources), the Red Army reinforcing divisions coming from Asia were very good quality, while at the same time the Gebirgsjäger divisions of XXXXIX. Armeekorps were on their last gasp, with supply problems, reduction in manpower especially in specialist units etc.pp. Consequently, they were thrown back by quite a distance. Hardly a winning army then.

AFAIK lend-lease did not kick off before October, by which time the Soviets were already beaten according to your schedule.

BTW - care to put the total production figures for Soviet equipment next to the lend-lease deliveries? E.g. for planes, according to the appendix in Kaberov's memoirs 'Swastika in the gunsight' the Soviet Union produced a total of 136,800 aircraft of all types during the war, of those 108,028 were combat aircraft. Lend-lease amounted to 17,834, i.e. ~16.5% of the total number of combat aircraft produced by the Soviets, or ~14% of the total number of planes in use. While not insignificant, I am sure the Red Army could have done without them, especially since their later models were apparently better than the lend lease they got anyway.

[edit]Just dug up production figures for Soviet tanks: somewhere about ~100,000, meaning that 7,000 lend-lease tanks are a nice addition, but certainly not crucial, especially since many of them were not particularly goo.[/edit]

The story is different when it comes to transport, and the massively successful operations in 1944/5 were only possible because of the presence of the US trucks. Without them, the Red Army would have taken longer to get to Berlin, but they would have gotten there eventually.

Bottomline is, the Wehrmacht did not beat the Soviets where it mattered, i.e. on the strategic level, in 1941. Lend-lease had nothing to do with that.

[ July 16, 2002, 04:52 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

[Scipio]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

"Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded"

Funny that!

The Russians did beat the Germans on the Eastern Front.

Will they be "favoured" ??

The historical accuracy commisioners at BFC will emphatically tell you that they never "favour" either side and they strive always for absolute historical accuracy where ever possible. Is it accurate to say the Russians beat the Germans at their own game? I'm not sure, but they did push them all the way back to Berlin.

Will they be "favoured" (?) I hope not, we all hope all data and information about facts and statistics will be as historically accurate as possible. I'm sure you will find most on this board want a VERY detailed VERY historically accurate combat simulator that focuses on the Eastern Front in WWII, I think that is what CMBB is supposed to be.

-tom w

A very narrow point of view. You completly ignore that Germnay didn't fought against USSR alone, there were also the Brits and the USA, first with supply support, later military forces. The Soviets made it to Berlin, true, but under what costs in man and material? They build more T-34 then the Germans in all battle tanks together, but the average live time was only one week. In CM:BO you have always an advantage with more tanks - what is somewhat logic. But how does it work in CM:BB? The Russians were often with several times so much tanks on the battlefield than the Germans, but they had no advantage from it - the bigger numbers equalized only the power. So the CM:BO calculation 'a Pz IV vs a Sherman 76 is relativ equalized' can't work in CM:BB. Otherwise we had a real great riddle to solve : why needed the Soviets with help of the Western Allies still more time to push the Wehrmacht back to Berlin than Germany had needed to conquer all the territory - and don't forget the German shortage in raw materials and later in war also in production beacause of the Allied bombarments?

But to come back to the topic, the German tankers usually take care of the slower turrets and manouvered the tanks in the appropriate way, when possible.

[Panzer Leader]

I hear ya, JP.

[YankeeDog]

This have kind of gotten off on a tangent on this thread, but there is one element of CMBO where I think fast turrets are kind of 'overmodeled'.

Sometimes, when an AFV is presented with multiple high-priority targets (like a mix of tanks and AT assets), the TacAI will have a panic attack and switch back and forth between targets. This happens especially if the targets are moving.

With a relatively slow ROF, slow turreted AFV like a tiger, sometime the result is that the Tank will spend the entire turn rotating it's turret back and forth between various targets, and never actually get a shot off. It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while I see it.

I suppose this is partially realistic ("Ach, Hans, eine neue panzer!! Links, mach schnell!! Mein Gott, mehr! Schnell, zuruck nach rechts!! usw) but having multiple targets to focus on seems to bit a bit too effective at sending Tiger crews into a tizzy, IMHO.

Otherwise, the modeling seems all right to me. As mentioned, the way that CM players use tanks is not exatly indicative of their historical deployments.

Cheers,

YD

[Redwolf]

The slow turrets hurt much more in CMBO than in reality. As you mention, the TacAIs weakness in changing minds is one obvious case.

But in CMBO we also have no control over the turret's facing when driving the tank into an area. This especially hurts when you have (as you should) a platoon of tanks going in, each turret covering each own assigned potential threat area. If you have seen a real tank platoon advance, you know hat I mean.

In addition, the plain targetting even when the turret is roughly right takes much longer for a slow-turret tank in CMBO.

I repeatently said that these reasons make the slow turret hurt more than in reality and I think it would be a realism gain to artificially flatten out turret speeds, which means give a turret which is 1/4 the speed of a Sherman turret in reality and in CMBO a speed that is 1/2 of what the Sherman has, similar a 1/2 speed tank gets 3/4 and so on. It means ignoring real data, but I think combat realism would gain. To prevent exploiting this for full turns (as opposed to advancing and TacAI screwups), you would make that artificial speed last no more than 90 degrees, thereafter it falls back to real speed.

P.S. the motor-driven Panther turret is an obvious example where BTS' choice is not incorrect but very conservative.

[Gaylord Focker]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Thats all good and fine when talking about a single tank. Not Always the case in a Western Frotn World War2 Battle to the dismay of the Allies.

Were'nt that stats of 5 Shermans to Kill 1 Tiger or something similar? It seems CMBO is modeled more ot the effect of 2 Shermans to kill 1 Tiger.

Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded.

"Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded"

Funny that!

The Russians did beat the Germans on the Eastern Front.

Is it accurate to say the Russians beat the Germans at their own game? I'm not sure, but they did push them all the way back to Berlin.

-tom w</font>

[JasonC]

#1 - in re lend lease etc - please don't feed the trolls.

#2 - in re slow turrets etc - well, in CMBB you will have "armor arc" and "covered arc", so you can discriminate between armor and infantry targets, preventing infantry team distraction tactics. And you can point the turret in one direction while moving in another, by using a covered arc, to be ready for an enemy expected to pop out at point A rather than point B. You can also ignore threats coming from a particular direction by not having your covered arc extend to that direction. And of course, up at the level of a platoon of tanks, you can use covered arcs to protect assigned areas or likely pop-up points, instead of every slow turreted tank trying to protect itself solo by spinning crazily as each new potential threat (or merely appetizing morsel) appears.

If you don't make decent use of the arc - fire discipline features, then slow turrets (or lack of turrets altogether, on SP guns etc) will still hurt you. If you use them intelligently, you may well be able to mask the weakness. Entirely realistically.

[Michael Emrys]

"No offense, just an observation," but it kind of seems to me that our friend Gaylord here might have just been reading books (lord knows there are a ton of them) that worship at the alter of the Überdeutschfolk. A lot of writers, and a lot of hobbyists who read those writers, have this vision of the Germans never missing a stroke, always being smarter and more capable than their opponents, but finally succumbing under an overwhelming tide of numbers.

If that is the case, Gaylord, there is some very good news for you! Read more books! Most importantly, read books by authors who are not intoxicated by the myth of German superiority.

Now carefully note that I am not trying to take anything away from the German soldier that he actually possessed. He was in most cases a skilled and determined fighter and it took a lot to beat him down. But that doesn't mean that the Allies were just a bunch of lunkheads who could only win through numbers.

Read more books! And not just action comics either...

Michael

[Kilgore]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

...a common mistake when referring to A country beating Germany is that it defeated Germany. The Soviets did not beat Germany, the Allies and their combined might defeated the Axis. The Soviets without aid from the UK and the US would have been in alot of trouble,and yes , obviously the Soviets did push the Germans back to Berlin, but at what cost? You make it sound like not only your opinion is biased with the " Well the Russians won so their military and leaders obviously were superior" statement

.

Huh? where did he say that?

The combined efforts of the Allies defeated Germany, but the bulk of Germany's military strength was diverted and subsequently defeated in the East; for example, in the summer of 1944 the Germans had 165 divisions in the East, and 59 divisions in the West, the Russian summer offensive in Byelorussia alone removed 28 divisions from the German OOB. (From Hastings "Overlord", and Adair "Hitler's Greatest Defeat".

As stated above the lend-lease agreement undoubtedly helped the Soviets, but to say it was instrumental in their success is overstating it's importance I think...

There was a bit of a debate over this a while back..

Could Germany have won the war with Russia?

[ July 16, 2002, 08:35 PM: Message edited by: Kilgore ]

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

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

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Gaylord Focker:

Thats all good and fine when talking about a single tank. Not Always the case in a Western Frotn World War2 Battle to the dismay of the Allies.

Were'nt that stats of 5 Shermans to Kill 1 Tiger or something similar? It seems CMBO is modeled more ot the effect of 2 Shermans to kill 1 Tiger.

Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded.

"Mabe i'm jumping the gun from alot of talk i heard circualting around the tournament house of how in CMBB the Soviets are going to be favored. Hopefuly my worries go un founded"

Funny that!

The Russians did beat the Germans on the Eastern Front.

Is it accurate to say the Russians beat the Germans at their own game? I'm not sure, but they did push them all the way back to Berlin.

-tom w</font>

[Gaylord Focker]

I did'nt mean to come off as biased, i don't beleive it was the random German follies, or only the lend-lease program that lost the war for the silly nazi's. Alot of factors come into play why they lossed, but that would be for another thread.

Also keep in mind i'm aware that the Tiger I was not the tank it was in say 1942/43. The allies caught up to the tiger in technology by 1944 for the most part. The Tiger did not even have sloped armor or anything. In my opinion if you want to talk best tank of the war, i'd choose the Panther, 2nd would be the T-34's design.

[RobVarak]

--------

In my opinion if you want to talk best tank of the war, i'd choose the Panther, 2nd would be the T-34's design.

[Gaylord Focker]

Thats enough out of you Focker! Hehe.

[Herr Oberst]

Originally posted by: Gaylord Focker

Is Turret speed on Armor going to be an over empahsised part of battles like it is in CMBO?

Over-emphasized?!?

What kind of half-baked-chicken, giving-you-salmonella statement is that!

Slow turrets are for real.

German training to rotate the hull and turret at the same time to add the rotational speeds were for real.

If you will please take the time to watch period movies, documentaries, read something like Panzertaktik, or even better the Tigerfibel (hope I spelled it correctly), you will see that the Germans were aware of the short comings of the tank, and what the obvious counter-measures to the deficincies (too late to spell properly) were.

Uno First, sending a lone Tiger out on a Sunday afternoon romp to beat up on the local T-34 platoon is quite insane. Always stay with your Zug.

Deux Advancing order: Lead points ahead at 12 o'clock, number two, left, points 9-10 o'clock, number three, right, points 2-3 o'clock, number four, center rear, keep your eyes open at the extreme flanks. Or somefink like that...

Song Maintain adequate spacing between tanks in an attempt to force a large turret or hull swing to acquire the next target.

etc... etc...

Be careful about skating about on the surface of an issue. The water is cold underneath. And it's deep too.