Blast effects are too strong?

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[YankeeDog]

Don't confuse blast radius with lethal radius. Lethal blast radius is indeed relatively small. But the danger area due to shrapnel and secondary fragments is much larger.

Note that the graph you post is a logarithmic scale. For a 1000-lb. TNT equivalent explosion, it's showing a "threshold injuries - open or buildings" out to a bit over 300 ft., or ~100m.

I'm not sure what the TNT-equivalent load of a 2000 lb. bomb is, but I'd guess it's well over 1000 lb; modern military explosives are considerably more powerful per unit weight than TNT.

A trench would certainly offer protection from fragments, but not complete protection. One of the aspects of large explosions is they they throw big chunks of stuff high up into the air. And what comes up, must come down. So you get a fair amount of heavy stuff falling back to earth, at a high enough angle of descent to be dangerous to a person in a trench or similar defilade. A 10 lb. hunk of masonry or stone dropping from 300 ft. will wound or kill as easily as a bullet.

And "first floor windowless" probably wouldn't offer perfect protection, either; the fragments thrown about by a large explosion such as a 2000 lb. bomb are quite large and have quite a lot of energy; they'll punch right through your basic cinderblock wall. You would also get secondary fragments from large chunks of stuff hitting and penetrating the building walls.

Overall, being within a few hundred meters of a 2,000lb. bomb detonation is just a really nasty thing. . .

Regards,

YD

[MikeyD]

Thats one confusing little chart you got there. It counts in the tens of feet (or lbs of TNT) until 100 then starts counting in the hundreds, then thousands of feet (or lbs of TNT). interesting to note a twenty thousand pound bomb with cause injuries and death in an 800 foot circle (the equivalent of ten football fields?). Google says the classic BLU-82 15,000 lb 'daisy cutter' bomb will destroy anything inside a 600 yard radius, significantly higher than your chart suggests. And that bomb uses lower-grade explosives, not much more sophisticated ingredients than a McVeigh fertilizer bomb.

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by MikeyD:

Thats one confusing little chart you got there. It counts in the tens of feet (or lbs of TNT) until 100 then starts counting in the hundreds, then thousands of feet (or lbs of TNT).

Ya, like I said, it's a logarithmic graph. Actually, techically, it's a double logarithmic graph. Every ten lines, the step goes up by a power of ten in both the x and y direction. And note that the lines are not evenly spaced; within each exponent, each line represents the same increase. So the lines in the "10"s section of the graph step 10, 20, 30. . . but these lines are not the same distance apart. Takes a bit of getting used to, but useful for displaying certain types of data.

[MikeyD]

Oh, I think I understand where I went atray with the Daisy cutter analogy. A 600 yard (1800 ft) blast 'radius' would be equivalent to a 900 ft standoff distance. So a 20,000 lb bomb, according to the chart would have a 1600 foot radius, or 800 foot standoff from the blast. Closer to 20 football fields? My math skills aren't all that good

[Battlefront.com]

Yeah, as others have pointed out there is a big difference between blast radius and lethal radius. The further out you go from the point of detonation the less the chance of being directly affected by the explosion (lethal radius) and indirect effects (blast radius). Suppression is possible within the blast radius even if there is no actual injuries caused. Outside of the blast radius significant suppression would not occur.

IIRC the Danger Close for a 2000# bomb is 500m. This takes into consideration accuracy too, of course, but even a unguided one has a CEP of 110m (guided is around 10m). If you subtract that out you're still talking about a possible danger radius of several hundred meters, whereas the example Adam linked to suggests a few dozen meters for the blast radius itself. Since Danger Close is designed to keep friendlies from being harmed it can be thought of, roughly, as the blast radius (with accuracy taken into account, of course).

Steve

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[Pandur]

i think its somewhat like CMx1 where HE blast ignores physical cover. the effects adam1 is seeing i guess, and i saw, is that you have a squad behind a house for example and a explosion on the other side of the house kills someone of the squad.

its not like the effects are too strong but they dont get weaker when traveling through houses or other type of cover for example.

i think that is what we see.

[Bigduke6]

Well then the lethal radius is still too big, IMO. A single main gun round should not kill off an entire infantry squad in cover. Heck, a single main gun round should not kill off an entire infantry squad running in the open.

It looks to me like squads are alot more tightly packed than they would be if there was a tank in the neighborhood, and the A/I "takes advantage" of that. Also, type of cover doesn't seem to matter much when it's a big shell. The analogy I make is, a CMSF large HE is de factor loaded with nerve gas, the effect is roughly similar.

RL, if there is a tank anywhere in the neighborhood most infantry are going to put cover inbetween them and the fragments, and not stand around in a group.

Can't recommend any good fixes.

[Battlefront.com]

I've asked Charles to look into this, but I have no ETA when he might be able to spend some time on it.

Bigduke6,

Soldier spacing is compensated for by "dumbing down" the effects of certain types of fire, in particular HE. I've covered this a couple of times already, so the short version is that the generally higher density of infantry per square meter in-game vs. real life (less so in Urban areas, more so in open terrain) is already compensated for.

Steve

[Secondbrooks]

In CMSF However tanks capability to wipe out infantry in trench (most lying down away from fragments) by hitting ground 4-10 meters infront of trench is something which i feel to be wrong. Atleast it seems to be pretty certain thing to happen with (atleast) 125mm HE that squad gets 80-100% wiped out. Anyone can confirm this to one direction or another? Do i just act like dramaqueen or am i after something? I could be thinking about things happened in older versions of CMSF. Above 1.05 anyways.

Getting stunned for even long time from that kind feat is okay, but getting dead and seriously wounded if lying in trench (or behind anykind hard cover) is something i find hard to digest.

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by Adam1:

Why should men lying at the bottom of a slit trench be taking KIA from 500 pounders dropped 100m away?

Go do a search on Youtube for "500 lb. Bomb" and watch some footage of all the pretty 'splosions. Once you get past the rather gingoistic commentary that generally accompanies such clips, take particular note of the amount of Big @ss Cr@p (that's a technical term) that gets thrown hundreds of feet into the air by a 500 lb. bomb explosion, and then comes down at a very high angle of descent, landing hundreds of feet away, and traveling at considerable velocity.

A 10 lb. hunk of masonry falling at an 80 degree angle from 300+ ft. in the air is going to cause a hell of a bump if it lands on some guy lying in the bottom of a slit trench.

To be sure, you're a heck of a lot better off in the slit trench than you are standing in the open, where you're in a direct line to have all the small whizzy stuff thrown out by the explosion punch holes on your body. But you're not immmune.

And you may well be correct that large HE is too powerful against infantry in good defilade (like a slit trench) in CMSF; I haven't really taken a close look at this in the game, so I can't say for sure. But a slit trench definitely shouldn't be absolute proof against injury from a 500lb. bomb @ 100m. It should substantially reduce casualties, but not eliminate them entirely.

Heavy structures that provide overhead cover should be much more effective, at least once you get far enough away from the explosion that the structure itself isn't converted into secondary projectiles. But even here, nothing is 100%. The explosive force of something like a 500-lb. bomb can throw a truck tire, hub and all, several hundred feet. Something like that will definitely ruin your day if it comes through the front door. (Or the wall next to the front door, as the case may be. . .) Stronger walls (like a concrete bunker) might stop it. But not your run-of-the mill residential construction.

Probably only thing in the game right now that I would expect to be near-absolute proof against casualties from a 500-lb. bomb at 100m would be a concrete bunker (assuming the firing slit was facing away from the explosion). Just about anything else, I would expect there to be at least some chance of casualty.

Again, we can debate about what the specific % should be. But I definitely think it's somewhere significantly above 0%.

Cheers,

YD

[Bigduke6]

Steve,

I am aware a compensation attempt had been made viz. effects against buildings, both the building itself and troopies in the building. The v8 patch is much better than out-of-the-box, no question.

Still, I can't figureis how a 125mm HE shell causes makes practically every member of a 10-man squad aware the tank is about to fire, and in moderate to good cover (trenches, trees, bumpy, foxholes), a casualty, pretty much all the time.

Frankly buildings don't seem to help as much as they should, although that judgement is more subjective. Still, for example, in a game I'm playing I'm seeing garden-variety 120mm mortar rounds cut up a US squad inside a building about 20 meters away.

From my perspective it looks to me like the anti-personnel effect of HE rounds is overmodeled, for US and Syrian both, direct and indrect both. The stronger the cover, as a rule of thumb, the more overmodeled the HE seems to me.

HE effects on buildings also seem overmodeled but not as badly. But again in the game I am playing 3 or 4 x 73mm SPG rockets knocked down a standard 1-story building. I could see 6 - 10 doing the job if the gunner knew what he was doing, but not half that amount.

So for the record I second what Secondbrooks said.

From a tactical POV it's like there is no HE, rather it's like there are poison flechettes laced with nerve agent.

FWIW. Don't worry, my life will continue just fine if you guys leave HE effects against infantry as is.

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[YankeeDog]

Ya, ideally there should be a substantial difference between the deadliness from secondaries between a bomb that lands, say, in the middle of a freshly plowed field, to one that lands on a tenpenny nail factory.

Really soft ground (or even other substances like water or deep snow) can actually substantially neuter an explosion by allowing the bomb to penetrate to considerable depth before detonation, and then absorbing most of the explosive force. Might be asking a bit much for the game to model in this much detail, tho.

Honestly, I have no idea exactly what the casualty % for infantry in a slit trench @ 100m away from a typical 500 lb. bomb detonation should be. Definitely noticably less than just lying prone in the open. . . I dunno. Maybe 5-10% serious casualties (Red in CMSF terms), another 10% or so less serious injuries (yellow in CMSF terms). Total SWAG on my part here.

Equipment, especially helmets and body armor (or lack thereof) should defintely make a noticable difference as well.

[Edited to add: I'm assuming lying prone, at the bottom of the slit trench here. If the infantry is attempting to maintain some situational awareness (i.e., at least a couple members of the squad peeking over the edge of the trench), then I would guess a bit higher casualty percentages, on average.]

Cheers,

YD

[ June 20, 2008, 02:04 PM: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

[Battlefront.com]

Bigduke6,

I am aware a compensation attempt had been made viz. effects against buildings, both the building itself and troopies in the building.

And in the open too. That's been in there for about 2.5 years now I posted the formula Charles uses somewhere on this Forum eons ago. Off the top of my head I don't remember what the specifics are, but basically there are 3 or 4 concentric circles from the blast point. Those soldiers who are physically in an outer circle's radius are less prone to being a casualty than those within the inner ones. Whether or not the effects of the explosion are over modeled or not is a different issue. I'm just saying that there is compensation for soldier density already in the game since the early days of testing.

Still, I can't figureis how a 125mm HE shell causes makes practically every member of a 10-man squad aware the tank is about to fire, and in moderate to good cover (trenches, trees, bumpy, foxholes), a casualty, pretty much all the time.

Well, you have to forget about the "aware the tank is about to fire" because that's just not a predictable variable. A squad 500m away from a tank, doing whatever it's doing, is generally not going to know squat about what the tank is, or isn't, doing. They might not even know it's there depending on circumstances. Sure, in an isolated "Hollywood" type engagement, like in Saving Private Ryan, I can see your point But it's definitely not something I feel is generally credible in the sort of fighting CM:SF portrays.

Now, what should the direct effects of the blast be? Well, that of course depends on all sorts of factors. I'm curios to see "clinical" tests about the results rather than anecdotal "one round always kills all the guys all the time every time in all situation" type comments. After nearly a decade of experience with you guys, I have to say that such comments generally prove to be more fiction than fact

Frankly buildings don't seem to help as much as they should, although that judgement is more subjective. Still, for example, in a game I'm playing I'm seeing garden-variety 120mm mortar rounds cut up a US squad inside a building about 20 meters away.

A 120mm round hitting 20m away should be cutting someone up, even within a building. How much is the question. Remember, we presume that these buildings aren't built to Western standards because, well, because they aren't We've had extremely lengthy, detailed discussions about this in the past, including some commentary from people with 1st hand experience.

From my perspective it looks to me like the anti-personnel effect of HE rounds is overmodeled, for US and Syrian both, direct and indrect both.

It could very well be, but without more "clinical" evidence it's hard to say what's what.

Steve

[Bigduke6]

Steve,

And in the open too. That's been in there for about 2.5 years now I posted the formula Charles uses somewhere on this Forum eons ago. Off the top of my head I don't remember what the specifics are, but basically there are 3 or 4 concentric circles from the blast point. Those soldiers who are physically in an outer circle's radius are less prone to being a casualty than those within the inner ones. Whether or not the effects of the explosion are over modeled or not is a different issue. I'm just saying that there is compensation for soldier density already in the game since the early days of testing.

Well there's your problem then. At "infantry ranges" - i.e., that distance at which the tank is going to spot the infantry - the shell is going to hit dead center of the squad. even a buttoned-up T-55 almost always hits at that range.

Well, you have to forget about the "aware the tank is about to fire" because that's just not a predictable variable. A squad 500m away from a tank, doing whatever it's doing, is generally not going to know squat about what the tank is, or isn't, doing. They might not even know it's there depending on circumstances. Sure, in an isolated "Hollywood" type engagement, like in Saving Private Ryan, I can see your point But it's definitely not something I feel is generally credible in the sort of fighting CM:SF portrays.

Disagree strongly. Tanks are incredibly noisy, they are big, and they are difficult to hide. Infantry on the other hand survives by hiding, and further for practical purposes must assume it cannot hurt the tank. Therefore, infantry uses its powerful collective brain to avoid drawing the tank's attention, and if that doesn't work, to do what it takes to stay out of the damn thing's way. This means find cover, and take advantage of a tank crew's limited ability to see.

Sure, I can see an M1 plunking rounds into a trench in the desert from 2500 meters, and there's nothing the Syrians could do about it.

But by far I think the most common infantry-tank engagement in CMSF is where the range is 200 meters or less, the infantry has some kind of cover and, reasonably, any man wanting to find better cover nearby could, if a tank was around and likely to shoot. Certainly, Hizb'Allah infantry did not open fire on the Merkavas in 2006 from 2000 meters, and by most accounts that was the smart thing to do. It would seem to me the Syrian Army, given its links to the Hizb'Allah, would be unlikely to ignore that experience - and to me that makes very unlikely your scenario where tanks in CMSF are engaging infantry at 500 meters or more with any regularity.

Also, as you are well aware, the real world has more cover in it than in a computer simulation, and real world humans in danger of their lives will find it. CMSF does not, as far as I can see, replicate this. (Maybe it's too hard, I dunno.)

If it were left up to me, I would give dismounts the ability to scurry to almost invulnerable cover within seconds - before or after, and the better-warned the infantry the more likely before - of a big HE shell. We disagree, obviously, if you deny such cover exists. But if it's impossible to program, well, there it is.

now, what should the direct effects of the blast be? Well, that of course depends on all sorts of factors. I'm curios to see "clinical" tests about the results rather than anecdotal "one round always kills all the guys all the time every time in all situation" type comments. After nearly a decade of experience with you guys, I have to say that such comments generally prove to be more fiction than fact

Well, you've got members of the community making the assertion that HE is too effective against infantry, and you must admit the chance exists we are not ill-informed cranks, but rather gamers using your product who have identified a problem.

It is of course up to you to judge how valid the comments are.

But since you made the game, and if you judge the hypothesis that maybe there are grounds to suspect HE is in fact overly effective against infantry, I suggest you run some tests of your own.

A 120mm round hitting 20m away should be cutting someone up, even within a building. How much is the question. Remember, we presume that these buildings aren't built to Western standards because, well, because they aren't We've had extremely lengthy, detailed discussions about this in the past, including some commentary from people with 1st hand experience.

Well here's some more 1st hand experience. More than once I have in my job followed around Ukrainian bomb disposal squads, who as you might expect are very busy people given the wars over the last century and all the munitions buried and fired off and so forth. The drill is find the munition, take it to a field, and blow it up.

I have stood - not been prone but stood - behind a brick-concrete building of nodescript 3rd World construction, and had everything from 81mm - 152mm blown up on the other side of the building, with the explosions 50 - 75 meters away.

Once I even had a (quite brave) cameraman in a hole even closer to the bang, his job was to snap a picture of the explosion.

Yes this was a gross violation of NATO safety standards (I think the rule is a half-kilometer official safe distance) but nonetheless every one of us lived, no one got a scratch, including the camera on the lip of the hole. Dmitry the cameraman in the hole got his pants dirty.

Had these been CMSF explosions, I think at least some of us would have been casualties.

In our explosions the shrapnel went everywhere but apparently mostly up. We checked out the front of the building and sure a few pieces of metal had hit it, but it was clear that unless you had been standing up in the window there was zero danger, and we were on the other side.

Obviously, had it been 20 meters not 50 meters, the danger we faced would have been greater. But it was pretty obvious to me, and more importantly the sappers who worry about explosions and blast effect for a living, that HE effect dissipates fast, it tries to dissipate in a sphere, the effectiveness of the blast and shrapnel deteriorates pretty much logarithmically as distance from the explosion increases, and a couple of brick walls or about a meter of dirt are what you need to keep you safe.

I think the basic problem the game is having is, that had those been CMSF explosions, the effect would have been the same in front of the building, or behind the building, provided one of those effectiveness circumfrence lines didn't happen to cut through the building.

A secondary problem that I see is, the game assumes prone people will not do whatever it takes to get a solid object between themselves and explosions.

So here is a partial fix I recommend: Make prone infantry far more resilient to HE than it is, especially in anything besides open terrain. As an example, brush terrain is not perfectly flat, the way nature makes desert brush is each bush sits on a moderate to substantial mound, and if humans were caught in there by HE they would find the biggest mound and place it between themselves and the HE.

I offer this I think constructive suggestion to anticipate your "just another player whine" reaction.

As to "shoddy 3rd world construction standards", well, as it happens I have more than a little experience with that too, including inspecting walls and buildings more or less recently blasted by HE, this during visits to FSU conflict zones. Peculiarly enough just last month I was on the border of Abkhazia where the Georgian Army among other things showed me the results of a BM-21 rocket strike (or maybe it was Hinds, they're not sure) on a very 3rd World building indeed.

My personal opinion, if you are saying a generic brick/concrete wall won't give excellent - i.e., keep you alive in most cases - cover from HE/shrapnel effect, then you are off base.

In my view, cement is cement, and the main difference between 1st world bricks and 3rd world bricks is, the 3rd world bricks are baked less and so crumble more. That in my opinion would mean little in terms of limiting HE effect, as the energy of the blast when it hits a 3rd World building is absorbed cracking the bricks a bit loose from the concrete, and on the edges crumbling the bricks. To dismiss buildings in a place like Syria as poor cover because they are "3rd World construction" is I think to ignore facts, and frankly to offer a cheap excuse.

Brick is brick, cement is cement, mortar is mortar. Further, construction materials are cheap, and the standard exterior wall is not one but as many as 3 or 4 rows of brick, this for insulation and exterior wall rigidity.

Walls built using that construction technique will stop, or better absorb energy pretty well, they are not sheetrock, not paper. What they will not do is remain straight over decades, but CMSF isn't worried about that.

[Secondbrooks]

This is what Steve wrote:

I'm curios to see "clinical" tests about the results rather than anecdotal "one round always kills all the guys all the time every time in all situation" type comments. After nearly a decade of experience with you guys, I have to say that such comments generally prove to be more fiction than fact

So i desided to shut my trap and started to produce test scenario. Scenario including just 2 T-72s and platoon of styker infantry (without vehicles).

Trenches:

Trenches were in optimal angle to T-72s which means sideways. Each trench was 2 tiles (=16 meters) long and there was empty space 2 tiles inbetween each "trenchesystem" (not very important). Each "trenchsystem" took one squad or two teams.

Situation:

Two T-72 engaging platoon of infantry from 200 meters which are hiding in trenches. Squads and teams were forming 16 meters long line in each "trenchsystem"

Result: Direct hit to trench was required to cause severe casulities. Basically crater touched trench clearly. Usually half squad was wiped out, which means that 8 meters long section of trench got cleared.

When crater nearly did touch the trench or touched just little, lighter casualities were produced (yellow circles in trench)

Even few meters away from trench and infantry survived. Closest not-wounding crater seemed to be about 4 meters away from trench.

Me:

Im going to corner of classroom wearing hat which tells me that i'm an ass. A complete one.

[Bigduke6]

I would call that result fairly clear evidence of overly effective HE, with the assumption the infantry is trying to survive, rather than (for instance) firing its weapons or unware the tank was about to shoot at it.

If infantry is down in the bottom of a trench, and the trench is properly dug, they should be close to immune to an HE shell fired by a tank main gun. A trench is two meters deep with a firing step. If you are prone at the bottom of those two meters, you might get buried or even hit, if the shell blows up right above your head.

Casualties along 8 metres of trench from a single tank main gun round, to me, is evidence either the infantry got caught standing up, an abnormally strike by the shell, or nerve gas having been loaded inside the round.

If the men are down at the bottom of the trench, and the trench is properly dug, I would expect every one in the squad would survive just fine.

Of course, one test is a tiny sample. Maybe the next time the test gets run, there will be 100 per cent survival from a hit on a trench. But I think it will be alot bloodier than that.

QUALIFICATION: If the tank was firing along the length of the trench, and able to fire down into the trench, including into the bottom of the trench then I think the casualties as described are pretty reasonable for the specific case. I would still be very interested to know how effective tank HE is, empirically, if the trench is perpendicular to the tank and the infantry is prone.

May we have similar tests against infantry in bush, forest, rough, and whatever else, please?

[Pandur]

what i gathered so far about trenches in the game is that this arent trenches by the definition the most will think, at least i though we have trenches too.

the trenches arent 2 meters deep for the engine, no i even mean they are as deep for the engine as they are drawen in the terrain mesh. 1:1 here.

so ouer trenches are "irrigation ditches" about 40 to 50cm deep, by the way they look.

i really got that to feel when the AI was driving up a bradley in front of a trench of mine in a scenario. it coaxed the whole squad cowering in the trench after the fist casualtie. and if a machine build to be able to look out XXXX meters, is able to look "down" a trench 2 meters in front of it, says to me the trench is not modeled deep in "any" way.

we all can see that a unit prone in it, is below the ground level, and in kneeling position they are already raised above the ground. so imagine this with yourself kneeling in a trench, if you can look out while kneeling it cant be anything like deep. also while runing along the CMSF trenches your are pretty exposed to fire, it effectively protects the lower part of the legs of the standing person.

so if a unit is not hiding or cowering in trenches they can take casualties as their face is in the blast so to say. the one cowering or hiding should be mostly save to everything beside a direct hit to the back wall of the trench or airbursts and the like.

whatever, point is just that we cant asume 1,5m to 3m deep trenches with dugouts, fireing "bays" and steps. we have to think "irrigation ditch" when imagineing a CMSF trench.

[Battlefront.com]

I confirmed with Charles that both the blast and shrapnel effects are simulated separately. He checked out Adam1's chart at the top of the thread and also found it fairly consistent with the data used within the game for the blast radius.

The most lethal is the blast area. The effects of the explosion with overpressure, shrapnel/debris, flame/heat, etc. being the most concentrated. The chance of causing casualties within this radius is extreme and cover is generally ineffective. Outside of this radius the effects from shrapnel/debris become the only source of casualties. The radius is quite large, but the chance of any individual becoming a casualty drops off dramatically by range. Cover becomes much more effective since it's a matter of defeating a projectiles that are not optimally suited for that purpose. And the further out one goes the more effective cover is.

The way the game works is that LOS is traced from the point of impact to the units within the radius. Within the blast radius cover is not very effective because the forces at work here are not adequately blocked by LOS. So it's more of a dampening effect rather than a yes/no blocking effect. For the shrapnel/debris radius LOS takes on much more importance and often fully neutralizes the chance of casualties. Likewise, soldier stance doesn't tend to matter much within the blast radius, but does tend to matter outside of it. CM does take stance into account.

Therefore, when one is evaluating the effectiveness of an explosion one must keep in mind the proximity to the source. That's critically important, as is the actual weapon that caused the explosion. A Mk.84 2000-pound bomb contains 945 pounds of explosive, a tank round maybe 20 pounds. Big difference.

Steve

[JasonC]

"we have to think "irrigation ditch" when imagineing a CMSF trench."

Nope, we don't.

If that is all CMSF provides in the way of field fortifications, then the game is wrong about field fortifications instead of explosives or machinegun bullets or spotting. But it doesn't matter where you localise it, for its existence as an error. The issue is purely functional, and above any detail the game chooses to implement or to ignore.

If an MG armed AFV can park 100 meters from infantry in the best field fortification the game provides, and kill them all just by holding the trigger down long enough, then it is flat wrong. Same if the distance is 20 meters, or 5 meters. That simply isn't the real relationship between armor plate and earth as forms of protection.

[Battlefront.com]

Secondbrooks,

Thanks for the test! That's pretty much what I would expect, so as far as I can tell there isn't anything wrong there.

Bigduke6,

Well there's your problem then. At "infantry ranges" - i.e., that distance at which the tank is going to spot the infantry - the shell is going to hit dead center of the squad. even a buttoned-up T-55 almost always hits at that range.

And it should therefore pretty much kill everybody, so I don't understand what the "problem" is. The large caliber HEAT rounds are more than capable of killing an entire squad if it scores a direct hit on it.

Disagree strongly. Tanks are incredibly noisy, they are big, and they are difficult to hide. Infantry on the other hand survives by hiding, and further for practical purposes must assume it cannot hurt the tank. Therefore, infantry uses its powerful collective brain to avoid drawing the tank's attention, and if that doesn't work, to do what it takes to stay out of the damn thing's way. This means find cover, and take advantage of a tank crew's limited ability to see.

This presumes a Hollywood type encounter where the heros are at liberty to do as they please without any worry about other things on the battlefield I never once said that infantry wouldn't notice a tank at 200m, rather I'm saying that they would notice it and probably have something else to worry about. Plus, infantry cowering everytime they see a tank means nobody using AT-4s/RPGs against said tanks, right?

But by far I think the most common infantry-tank engagement in CMSF is where the range is 200 meters or less, the infantry has some kind of cover and, reasonably, any man wanting to find better cover nearby could, if a tank was around and likely to shoot. Certainly, Hizb'Allah infantry did not open fire on the Merkavas in 2006 from 2000 meters, and by most accounts that was the smart thing to do. It would seem to me the Syrian Army, given its links to the Hizb'Allah, would be unlikely to ignore that experience - and to me that makes very unlikely your scenario where tanks in CMSF are engaging infantry at 500 meters or more with any regularity.

Ambushing and a running battle are two different types of engagements. The IDF suffered most when it was ambushed, not when it was acting with infantry in standard combined arms tactics.

Also, as you are well aware, the real world has more cover in it than in a computer simulation, and real world humans in danger of their lives will find it. CMSF does not, as far as I can see, replicate this. (Maybe it's too hard, I dunno.)

Sure, and that's easily abstracted. We have that in the game already, just to a far lower degree than CMx1 did.

If it were left up to me, I would give dismounts the ability to scurry to almost invulnerable cover within seconds - before or after, and the better-warned the infantry the more likely before - of a big HE shell. We disagree, obviously, if you deny such cover exists. But if it's impossible to program, well, there it is.

Well, we disagree because what you've suggested simply doesn't exist in the real world. If you have a 120mm HEAT round land within a few meters away from you, unless you're in an armored vehicle designed to withstand the effects of such a blast, having a couple bricks ain't going to do squat. The overpressure alone would likely kill, if not incapacity, anybody that close.

Well, you've got members of the community making the assertion that HE is too effective against infantry, and you must admit the chance exists

Yup, I've said exactly that several times now

we are not ill-informed cranks, but rather gamers using your product who have identified a problem.

I'm not saying anybody here is an ill-informed crank, but a decade of doing this has shown me that with the majority of gamers perception is often times completely at odds with reality. So far I think this is one of those situations. Hyperbole is also a common, even if unintended, part of many an argument that something is wrong. Meaning, very often the claims can not be verified at all or at least not in any way that is inconsistent with the effect of luck.

But since you made the game, and if you judge the hypothesis that maybe there are grounds to suspect HE is in fact overly effective against infantry, I suggest you run some tests of your own.

If I had the time I would. If I were required to double check each and everything people say here is "wrong" we'd still be working hard at finishing up CMBB

I have stood - not been prone but stood - behind a brick-concrete building of nodescript 3rd World construction, and had everything from 81mm - 152mm blown up on the other side of the building, with the explosions 50 - 75 meters away.

That's a fair amount of distance compared to the point blank stuff we've been discussing. Also keep in mind that a controlled explosion produces a different effect than on the battlefield. First of all, no kinetic energy of the round impacting the earth, no proximity fuses, ground chosen for being soft and open, probably buried into the ground, etc. So while your first hand experiences are not irrelevant, they must be kept in context.

Yes this was a gross violation of NATO safety standards (I think the rule is a half-kilometer official safe distance) but nonetheless every one of us lived, no one got a scratch, including the camera on the lip of the hole. Dmitry the cameraman in the hole got his pants dirty.

Besides what I just said, you were likely outside of the blast effect radius and a solid brick wall is very good protection against shrapnel.

Obviously, had it been 20 meters not 50 meters, the danger we faced would have been greater. But it was pretty obvious to me, and more importantly the sappers who worry about explosions and blast effect for a living, that HE effect dissipates fast, it tries to dissipate in a sphere, the effectiveness of the blast and shrapnel deteriorates pretty much logarithmically as distance from the explosion increases, and a couple of brick walls or about a meter of dirt are what you need to keep you safe.

Yes, and that's simulated within the game.

I think the basic problem the game is having is, that had those been CMSF explosions, the effect would have been the same in front of the building, or behind the building, provided one of those effectiveness circumfrence lines didn't happen to cut through the building.

This is not the way the game is coded, so if this assertion can be demonstrated in a reliable way then it would be due to a bug that has not been identified previously.

A secondary problem that I see is, the game assumes prone people will not do whatever it takes to get a solid object between themselves and explosions.

When the explosion hits, at that range, there's almost no chance to get into cover unless it is as simple as ducking behind something one is already in position behind. This is very different from your suggestion of proactive cover seeking. That is somewhat reasonable to expect in some circumstances and it isn't in version 1.08. That will change soon enough

So here is a partial fix I recommend: Make prone infantry far more resilient to HE than it is, especially in anything besides open terrain. As an example, brush terrain is not perfectly flat, the way nature makes desert brush is each bush sits on a moderate to substantial mound, and if humans were caught in there by HE they would find the biggest mound and place it between themselves and the HE.

I offer this I think constructive suggestion to anticipate your "just another player whine" reaction.

I appreciate that, but I hope you appreciate that I've not once said that any of you are whining. I've not even said any of you are inherently wrong about HE over modeling. What I have said is that based on what has been said here so far, it doesn't look like there is a problem.

As to "shoddy 3rd world construction standards", well, as it happens I have more than a little experience with that too, including inspecting walls and buildings more or less recently blasted by HE, this during visits to FSU conflict zones. Peculiarly enough just last month I was on the border of Abkhazia where the Georgian Army among other things showed me the results of a BM-21 rocket strike (or maybe it was Hinds, they're not sure) on a very 3rd World building indeed.

My personal opinion, if you are saying a generic brick/concrete wall won't give excellent - i.e., keep you alive in most cases - cover from HE/shrapnel effect, then you are off base.

I'm not. What I'm saying is housing stock in the Arab world tends to be extremely shoddy, even by Georgian standards.

In my view, cement is cement, and the main difference between 1st world bricks and 3rd world bricks is, the 3rd world bricks are baked less and so crumble more. That in my opinion would mean little in terms of limiting HE effect, as the energy of the blast when it hits a 3rd World building is absorbed cracking the bricks a bit loose from the concrete, and on the edges crumbling the bricks. To dismiss buildings in a place like Syria as poor cover because they are "3rd World construction" is I think to ignore facts, and frankly to offer a cheap excuse.

As I said already, we had an EXTREMELY detailed discussion about this already including scientific examination of the properties of various building materials and construction techniques. There was even first hand experience in Syria and Iraq on hand. So no, I'm not dismissing anything... it's just that it's already been examined in great depth before and I don't see any reason to recover the same ground again. If you're curious about this discussion then do a Search and hopefully you'll turn it up. I'm sure it was done post CM:SF release.

Brick is brick, cement is cement, mortar is mortar. Further, construction materials are cheap, and the standard exterior wall is not one but as many as 3 or 4 rows of brick, this for insulation and exterior wall rigidity.

Based on the previous discussion, this is simply not true. Cement can be improperly mixed, watered down, etc. for example. Again, that was part of the previous discussion.

Walls built using that construction technique will stop, or better absorb energy pretty well, they are not sheetrock, not paper.

True, but the specifics of the materials, distance, source of the explosion, etc. are all vitally important considerations.

Casualties along 8 metres of trench from a single tank main gun round, to me, is evidence either the infantry got caught standing up, an abnormally strike by the shell, or nerve gas having been loaded inside the round.

Or the half dozen other effects that are present that close to a detonation, the most important of which would be overpressure at that range. I see nothing incorrect about the results of Secondbrook's test.

May we have similar tests against infantry in bush, forest, rough, and whatever else, please?

At close range to a significant explosion none of these forms of cover should have any tangible effect, so I'd say such tests would be a waste of time. What would be more interesting to see are the effects further out (30m or so) in things like buildings or in forested terrain. That's where cover should definitely have some positive effect for sure.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Pandur,

The trenches are indeed trenches, not irrigation ditches. IIRC the depth is 1.5m, not .5m as you think. Trenches should be effective in relation to the range and height of the projectiles being shot at it. Direct fire HE is a different thing completely, as is indirect HE fire. The type of munition is also very important to consider.

JasonC,

If an MG armed AFV can park 100 meters from infantry in the best field fortification the game provides, and kill them all just by holding the trigger down long enough, then it is flat wrong. Same if the distance is 20 meters, or 5 meters. That simply isn't the real relationship between armor plate and earth as forms of protection.

I agree, provided of course we're assuming that the MG shooter is at the same or lower height. At higher heights the equation may change, depending on the height differential.

Steve

[Pandur]

@steve

thanks steve thats interessting, so trenches are 1.5 meters deep, but you have to say that this must be a little abstracted, as they arent 1.5 meters in the virtual world.

I agree, provided of course we're assuming that the MG shooter is at the same or lower height. At higher heights the equation may change, depending on the height differential.

i made the post above less becouse of blast effects and overmodeling of it but to state that the trenches arent "trenches" in my view and that one should keep that in mind. now i know that trenches are 1.5 meters deep for the engine but i post the picture of the incident i described in my post above.

it was posted and discussed a little in the "cowering in the trenches" thread.

either i am not fully aware of the capabilities of modern fighting vehicles or something is a little off. i know that a breadley isnt equiped with WW2 optical gear but can they look around corners downwards, also the coax cant be bend!?

fill me in please...

it looks generally vehicles spott better the closer the enemy is, up to the point the enemy is below the vehicle.

but to spott someone 10-20 meters away isnt so easy i guess when youre buttuned up and your minimal optical zoom is 3 or 4x i asume, 12x times magnification or more doesnt help here. just the commander has the copula to look around directly.

i imagine it pretty hard to look for targets 15 and less meters around the vehicle while buttoned and at the same time maybe keeping an eye out for distant targets as "vehicles" should do.

JasonC,

If that is all CMSF provides in the way of field fortifications, then the game is wrong about field fortifications instead of explosives or machinegun bullets or spotting.

i didnt tried to say anything is right or wrong i just said basicly that trenches are in fact more ditch like in my view, in CMSF.

whatever, i "feel" that this is "flat wrong" as tanks are by design not trench clearing vehicles. and trenches are designed to be not clearable by a vehicle that easylie. however it works fine in the game, but i dont have to tell you