Blast effects are too strong?

[SlapHappy]

Here might be a useful linky:

http://members.tripod.com/~nigelef/wt_of_fire.htm#The%20Effects%20of%20HE%20Shells

[Battlefront.com]

Pandur,

Based on that screenshot I see nothing wrong. The Bradley is on a higher elevation and the MG is even higher up, with a very short range. Even if the trench was 2m deep I think the Bradley would be able to pick guys off, especially the ones at a more right angle to the vehicle.

So in terms of LOS/LOF there appears to be absolutely nothing wrong with the example you've cited. Therefore, trenches are trenches and not shallow ditches

As for Spotting, I can't say from that shot if the Bradley should have spotted the infantry or not. If someone else identified the Syrian infantry being in that trench, and the information had a chance to filter through the Chain of Command (C2), then the Bradley would know the infantry was there even if it couldn't see it before getting to the trench.

The main point here is to make sure you're complaining about the right thing There are so many different factors involved in the game that it's very important to focus attention on the correct one. In this case it may be that there is a Spotting problem, which is completely different than what we've been talking about so far.

Steve

[SlapHappy]

If you can get the login clearance this must totally rock:

https://pdc.usace.army.mil/software/beem/

[Flanker15]

A Bradley's coax can't deflect that far though.

[Other Means]

Originally posted by Flanker15:

A Bradley's coax can't deflect that far though.

Exactly what I came here to post. The issue there is that the Bradley wouldn't be able to deflect it's gun low enough to shoot into the trench from the angle. It would have to stand off a distance, giving the guys in the trench earth to hide behind.

[Guest Guest]

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[Other Means]

Originally posted by Adam1:

The "problem" is the shrapnel model is based on a "bubble of effect" instead of vectors. Fix that and we should be doing a lot better regarding bomb blast effects.

I think that's an oversimplification ground, walls etc has an effect on the blast radius and as such I don't think it actually needs vectors.

[Guest Guest]

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[flamingknives]

I would hazard that the fragmentation model is a bubble of probability of effect, rather than a simple bubble of effect.

As a result said probability, properly defined, should be every bit as effective as a vector model. After all, how do you assign those vectors in the first place?

If you calculate the probability of a fragment passing through an area (where your man happens to be standing) then this is far, far cheaper, computationally, than determining where each fragment goes and plotting the trajectory individually. That method takes very powerful computers considerable amounts of run-time.

[Guest Guest]

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[Other Means]

Originally posted by Adam1:

Wrong. Try "Fortified" from cmmods. 5m of earth won't protect you from a bomb's "lethal bubble".

How do you explain Secondbrooks findings then?

[cool breeze]

Its like you didnt read what steve said in his second to last post on this thread. He explains how LOS between the explosion and the virtual soldiers is checked to see if any fragments have a chance of hitting the soldier. The only time LOS doesnt come into play is within the area where overpressure/ shockwave are the dominant destroyers. within this area cover still matters but not much because most cover wont stop your lungs from collapsing and bones breaking.

[Guest Guest]

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[SlapHappy]

I just made a test using command squad (3 guys) inside normal 1 story building calling in F16 bomb drop at various distances to their position. I had a number of bombs fall well outside the targeted point, but also several that were spot on.

In any event I measured distance from squad after blast and noted the effects. The individual results were pretty consistent in effect. Any blast over or at 100m did not produce any injury whatsoever. Neither did 3 blasts at ~75 meters. However, I got two results at ~60 meters - One and two yellow injuries respectively. Things start to get really nasty at less than 50 meters. In one case the bomb impacted behind the building, on the opposite side from where the soldiers were standing (50 meters) - One red casualty and two yellow.

The other was a very close blast near one opposite corner (~35 meters) - All KIA's and a hole blown in one of the walls. I finally got one impact and dead center 45 meters in front of the building wall where soldiers were positioned - All red casualties. It would appear from what I have seen so far that 60 meters (196 feet) is the tilting point where lethality starts becoming very pronounced. I haven't tried any tests with soldiers in open or in trenches.

[SlapHappy]

Hiding also seems to help a lot inside buildings to lessen effects of near proximity explosions.

I was glad to see that as it takes soldiers out of the line of fire of the windows and makes perfect sense.

[Battlefront.com]

Yes, I can see that gun deflection of the Bradley is lower than it probably should be. However, the effects of the fire itself are apparently fine. This is what I mentioned earlier about people getting things confused by the multitude of factors involved in significant aspects of the simulation as a whole. Blast effects, cover, etc. get singled out incorrectly sometimes, as the cited Bradley example shows. If anything is wrong there it's that the coax depresses too far, which has nothing to do with anything else being discussed in this thread.

Coolbreeze,

Its like you didnt read what steve said in his second to last post on this thread.

That's exactly what I was thinking As I clearly stated, there is no such thing as a "bubble" in CM:SF. Both the blast and the shrapnel/debris calculations take LOS/LOF into account. The properties of the blocking terrain is then factored into the determination of casualties. It's just that the blast radius isn't reduced much by blocking terrain. That's realistic, plain and simple.

SlapHappy,

Thanks for the testing. That's about what I would expect. Aircraft bombs are of course quite nasty, as they should be. I remember an incident in the PTO where a Sherman drove over a buried aircraft bomb (IED style) and was literally thrown into the air. Very well documented, including the recovery operation.

Note that Charles has recently rewritten portions of HE effects code. It shouldn't have much of an impact on CM:SF since it was primarily targeted to handle "outlier" rounds found in WWII. Basically, shells with extreme ratios between shell mass and explosive content (in both directions).

The possible impact on CM:SF may be noted on really big boom-booms. Currently the effects are inline with the chart that Adam1 posted to start out the discussion, but now the effects in the game will actually be a bit LOWER than that chart at extreme ranges by large explosions. This has to do with Charles tweaking certain values to better reflect reality than theory, which that chart (and others) most likely illustrate.

Steve

[Battlefront.com]

Flamingknives,

If you calculate the probability of a fragment passing through an area (where your man happens to be standing) then this is far, far cheaper, computationally, than determining where each fragment goes and plotting the trajectory individually. That method takes very powerful computers considerable amounts of run-time.

There is no way that a home computer could simulate every last shard coming out of an explosion and then tracking where it goes. It's not only a ridiculously taxing thing to ask of a computer, but also (as you say) totally unnecessary. It would also be harmful to have it simulated in that amount of detail since it would then be completely out of line with the fidelity of the rest of the modeling. So it isn't a good thing to have even if the computers we use could handle it

But there is a middle ground and that's what we use. A bubble effect, based on probability alone, is what CMx1 used. The terrain being occupied, along with the unit's stance, were taken into consideration in an abstracted way. But as far as I know LOS/LOF (which was a single concept back then) wasn't taken into consideration.

With CMx2 the explosion's vector is taken into consideration. This means that if you have guys next to a wall, and the explosion is parallel to it, the wall offers zero protection. Whereas a unit on the other side of the wall would get some protection from it. How much protection would depend on all sorts of factors, but most importantly LOS/LOF. If the source of the explosion has direct LOS/LOF to the soldiers on the other side of the wall (picture an airburst for example), then being behind the wall doesn't matter.

Probability, of course, has a big say in the matter. The further out a soldier is, regardless of other factors, the less probability there is of being hit. Blocked LOS/LOF, the type of blockage, stance, etc. further reduce the probability of becoming a casualty. The problem with being close to the source of the explosion is that the probability of being a casualty is so extremely high that the chances of being able to avoid harm is, of course, correspondingly low.

This is one of the theories behind the fairly new SDB (Small Diameter Bomb) program. The theory is that if you can drop the bomb very close to the target you don't need to have a huge effect radius to cause casualties. In fact, it's overkill to have such traditionally large overall effect range. Such a thing increases collateral damage to infrastructure, civilians, and friendly forces. Put another way, if you can land a bomb within 1.2m of a target, then all you need is a blast range of a dozen or so meters instead of one that is measured in hundreds. The effect on the target of a 250# guided munition is therefore just as good as a 500# bomb, but without all the collateral mess! That's because the core of even a 250# bomb's area of effect is so extremely lethal that the secondary effects aren't really all that important.

Steve

[ June 22, 2008, 02:33 PM: Message edited by: Battlefront.com ]

[SlapHappy]

I did notice the exposure in trenches that was referred to in the thread. Impacts within 15m of troops hiding in trenches were almost always devastating using even 155mm artillery. 81mm rounds were much less effective - requiring very close proximity to achieve casualties. However, I noticed that adding a low brick wall in between the trenches and the blast area cut lethality down to nothing at the same range. One of the limitations of the terrain editor is that you can't combine terrain items - Such as creating a trench line with a wall directly in front of it...although that would effectively block your LOS out of the trench.

[Battlefront.com]

Thanks for the additional tests!

Yes, there are some restrictions as to what can be in an Action Spot concurrently. Linear things, such as trenches, walls, roads, etc. tend to be mutually exclusive. You also can't have mixed vegetation of the same type, for example two types of brush/bushes. IIRC you can have something like 8 different types of terrain on the same Action Spot concurrently. Vastly better than CMx1's 2 max (and usually just the base terrain), but still not infinite.

Steve

[Bigduke6]

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.

Why? An infantry squad with any experience at all with armor is going put 5 or even 10 meters between men, and members will do whatever it takes to place hard objects - bumps of ground, buildings, etc. - between them and the tank. The overall area of effect the shell, if the squad's members have any sense of self-preservation at all, is not going to encompass 10 guys standing up, but maybe 1 - 3 guys lying down and hiding like their life depends on it.

As a brass tacks exercise, I went to the Rusoboronservis (Russia national arms exporter) web site and found that the generic 125mm HE round has a rated area of effect of 520 square meters, which works out to a 12.86 radius of effect, if the explosion were a perfect circle.

Get yer 125mm Shells here, DIRECT FROM THE MANUFACTURER!

So now some questions:

1. Does CMSF plot the explosion of a 125mm HE shell as a circle? (Or maybe a teardrop?)

2. How big is the overpressure area for this 125mm HE round in CMSF, i.e., how many meters from the center of the explosion does the game engine assume cover does little to protect infantry?

3. You seem to imply 8 metres is "normal" for an overpressure effect from a tank main gun HE round - first do I read you right and second if I do how would you reconcile this with 12 - 13 meter blast radius of a 125mm HE shell?

The implication is that the lethal/extremely hazardous overpressure radius is roughly 2/3 of the entire official advertized area of effectiveness. That seems excessive to me.

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?

I think this really is the essence of the problem. You make clear, that when any infantryman in his right mind would be doing nothing but hiding from the damn tank, in CMSF they generally stand up.

Your justification for this behavior is, some infantry in CMSF needs to be willing to stand up and expose itself to tanks in order to use AT weapons, therefore, all infantry will default be standing up in the presence of all armored vehicles, even if very frequently the infantry cannot harm the armored vehicles at all.

Further, you label infantry self-preservation as "Hollywood" behavior, and justify potentially suicidal behavior by A/I-controlled infantry as at least necessary, as "they would have something else to worry about."

I think it is clear to the both of us that the main limitation here is coding infantry behavior in a computer wargame simulation.

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.

For Heaven's sake Steve, are you arguing the Syrians would ignore the Hizb'Allah example, and reject ambushing for a nice standup fight where they slug it out with the Americans? Are you saying that the only engagements CMSF deigns to simulate, are ones where the Syrians a priori will not have the ability to ambush their opponents? Is your assumption the Syrians would not learn from Lebanon at all, but rather ape the defensive tactics that the Israelis whomped up on in '67, '73, and '82; and that the Americans ran roughshod over in Iraq in '91 and 2003?

If your intent with the simulation is to replicate a Syrian army so stupid as not to learn from any of that, then I apologize, I thought BFI were interested in a probable war scenario.

:confused:

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.

Yes but...

1. Would that single HEAT round land within a few meters of every member of a 9 - 10 man squad?

2. Wouldn't a brick wall, or two or more, do more than squat?

3. Wouldn't lying down behind that brick wall, or two or more, do even more than squat?

4. Isn't the overpressure area of a 120 - 125mm relatively small?

5. What about a guy lying at the bottom of a 2 meter trench? Are you saying that overpressure is so deadly that a guy lying in the bottom of a trench 8 meters away, in a dirt trench, and generally aware there are tanks around and one might shoot at him, will certainly be caught in the lethal (well, casualty-causing) overpressure?

You seem to make clear the answer to these questions are "yes", but perhaps I've misunderstood you.

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.

Fair comments all. So, let's talk kinetic energy, seeing as you and I agree the motion of the round has a great deal to do with where the explosion goes.

Tank crew spots infantry in a trench more or less perpendicular to the tank, and decides to blast it with an HE shell. Round is fired, and it hits more or less on the lip of the trench over one of the infantrymen. The explosion, of course, doesn't travel in a nice line up and down the trench, most of the force of the blast keeps going forward.

So how is it that a CMSF situation like that consistently kills/makes casualties pretty much of all infantrymen in a trench 8 meters away? Not, some, few, the unlucky ones? Standing up or lying down? With the shell and its explosion moving at whatever speed it is moving, and so not in the trench? Wouldn't most of the force of the explosion go elsewhere than down the length of the trench? Is it reasonable to assume that, 8 meters away from the explosion on the lip of the trench, overpressure will snuff infantrymen cowering at the bottom of the trench?

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

Good to hear it will change. It may well make this discussion superfluous, for which I apologize if that's the case.

No, I am not talking proactive cover seeking requiring a half-minute or more. Rather, mostly, I am talking about infantry seeing a main gun swinging their way, or a spotting round nearby, dropping to the bottom of the trench, making friends with a curb, getting close and personal with the drainage ditch, and generally going prone and hiding in your helmet. So 1 - 5 seconds or so.

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.

You didn't respond to my suggestion (well, directly anyway) that a partial fix could well be: make prone infantry in cover a whole lot harder to kill with HE, and make infantry prone in a trench close to impossibe to kill unless you detonate an HE shell within the trench itself, by which I do not mean on the lip of the trench.

Seriously, I think that's not a bad idea. It would make infantry more resilient, and allow players to stick their troopies prone in case of a HE threat, which is fun. I bet it would also make for better A/I behavior as - I'm guessing here - the engine would make infantry biased to getting just as low as they can where they happen to be, if hit by HE, instead of opting for a crawl of death.

Even better for the game fun aspect, that would mean that for players to order troops to run to better cover, if the troops are hit by HE, the troops have to be higher quality.

I.e., greenies hit by HE will just go to ground and cower and not do anything no matter what orders they get, but crack could be told to run the heck out of the impact zone - which I think you would agree would be a very accurate representation of troop quality in the face of HE attack.

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

Well I for one disagree. I haven't been to Iraq, but I have been to Syria, Jordan, Egypt (all Arab), Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and pretty much all the former Soviet "stans". So from my personal and admittedly limited perspective I would say your assumption is on bad grounds there.

From what I have seen, it ain't rocket science. Private building, people get bricks, cement, and build. Old school, the more structural strength you want, the more thickness to your brick wall. The wealthier the region, the more likely people will use reinforced concrete, almost always as pre-fabricated slabs incorporated into a partially brick structure.

Public building, the government uses the same technique but for a bigger building using steel girders where necessary, which theoretically makes for a stronger building but that can be offset by construction materials stolen by the workers. More recently the concrete slab pre-fab apartment building has been added to the landscape.

But a counter-offset is, of course, public buildings aren't under budget constraints but rather are built for show to the max given resources committed, so sometimes you get these overbuilt monster structures.

The main variables to building strength are, as a general rule of thumb in the region, builder competence, degree to which bricks were fired, the amount of cement used in concrete, and how much the builder mixed materials (brick, concrete, wood, etc.) as opposed to used one material throughout, pretty much in that order.

It occurs to me I might even argue that buildings using these construction techniques in Arab regions might well be more solid, as the region is drier and so chances are higher of the concrete drying uniformly, and the structure itself not settling into the ground due to a crappy fundament on wet ground. But that would be speculation.

I will say, my unscientific evaluation, developing world buildings like these certainly blast apart more easily than say those personal home fortresses the Germans build out of cinder blocks. But I don't think you can reasonably make the case that somehow buildings in Syria are inherently weaker, across the board, than elsewhere in the region; nor do I think the buildings themselves won't resist blast.

Grozny, Sukhumi, and Bendery from what I've seen are are solid evidence developing world buildings, as a rule, require more not less HE; and that if infantry chooses to hide in a built-up area like that, leveling the area without carpet bombing is not so easy. One man's opinion, the same would be the case in Syria.

[Fat Dave]

I just want to chime in and say I also feel that the blast effects are currently too strong - especially when 'trenches' are involved.

Last night, after re-running a small battle consisting of entrenched Syrian troops vs attacking Syrian troops, I saw a BMP use one shot of it's main gun (75 mm I think) to kill - all red dot - 14 guys! Admittedly, 9 of these were in the open and about to reach the cover of the trench the other 5 were already in when the shell hit. I couldn't believe my eyes...all those crosses. OK, if it had been a 500lb bomb, fair enough...but a BMP main gun? Bad luck once again perhaps?

The guys in the open I can deal with, but the boys in the trench? They should have received some cover bonus. Anyway...

[Pandur]

This is what I mentioned earlier about people getting things confused by the multitude of factors involved in significant aspects of the simulation as a whole.

oh well, last time i tried how much tanks are restricted by the elevation and depression limits of their gun(1.02 or .03) i got tanks shooting in 45°´s and more upwards.

that told me its not relevant how far the gun can move in CMx2 as it wasnt relevant in CMx1 too as far as i saw.

that made me exclude the "obvious", iam sorry for that. also didnt i said "...optical gear but can they look around corners downwards, also the coax cant be bend!?" wich implies for me that the coax cant lower that far.

Blast effects, cover, etc. get singled out incorrectly sometimes, as the cited Bradley example shows.

my basic intention was to show that trenches are "ditches", do not forgett that please. and i still belive their ditches , after that example is apearently fine, beside the coax depressing to low.

If anything is wrong there it's that the coax depresses too far, which has nothing to do with anything else being discussed in this thread.

actually i didnt wanted to take it that far, thats why i stoped to replie after you said "everything is fine" basicly(beside the coax).

but luckylie other people also see the obvious and pointed it out.

whatever, i just want to make sure that i did not confuse my infantry getting coaxed in trench as too strong blast effects, you have to belive me that

[Guest Guest]

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[SlapHappy]

I've been frustrated trying to find data about the effects of overpressure blast on troops in trenches. There's a little discussion about it in the most basic way in various links, but nothing empirical (or even close). In fact, I'm getting the impression this is sort of a "hot button" topic and unless you are civil defense or some time of first responder, this information seems to be kind of suppressed.

For instance, you can download a program called Eblast, but even the demo requires you identify your qualifying status as a first responder and even the examples in the screenshots show intentionally wrong data so as to be useless.

I guess we have to get used to living in a world where we're all "Timothy McVeigh" until proven otherwise.......

[Battlefront.com]

BigDuke6,

You're arguments are becoming more extreme and less logical as the discussion goes on, which is not unusual in a debate like this. Positions harden and to the point of brittleness when the other side (usually me ) doesn't cave like a soufflé when the oven door is slammed shut mid way through the cooking process I've tried to say that I don't think you're inherently wrong, it's just that your position is extreme and not taking very tangible factors into consideration. Therefore, you're advocating an unsupportable hypothesis instead of suggesting where the simulation can be reasonably improved. I'll attempt to restart this discussion instead of going point-for-point, which seems er... pointless at this point

I do agree that in some circumstances individual soldiers, and perhaps an entire unit, would be able to figure out that they are about to get shot at by a tank. If they do this then they would take whatever evasive action they could, which would range from beneficial to harmful. Meaning, sometimes soldiers have the right instinct but improperly act (or not act) based on that. Experience is only one reason for this, Suppression and Morale are two others. Also, with only a second or two to evaluate, plan, and execute the likely outcome is not weighted towards an optimal result. This is the heart of my disagreement with your position... you're arguing that the optimal outcome would be the norm, I argue that it would be the exception for a variety of reasons. But it is true that currently the game does not support preemptive protective behavior from a specific threat point, so currently the range of behavior is not as dynamic as it should be.

Soldier spacing is also something your position is too extreme about. 5-10m spacing for a well trained, well lead, well disciplined unit is appropriate for certain conditions, while literally touching the guy in front of you is correct for others. Sub-optimal unit specifics means that the unit will be less well spaced in both extremes. To some degree CM can't handle extreme spacing, in either direction, even when it is arguably what that particular unit would be doing. Therefore, we generally have a wider range of average and have to just live with the fact that the extremes aren't obtainable consistently (units on the move tend to be closer to optimal than units at a standstill). To partially compensate for this the effects of certain weapons, especially HE, are "dumbed down" against infantry so as to give the benefit of the doubt to the little pixel warriors. But it would be inherently incorrect to have the game skewed towards all soldiers being extremely spread out regardless of all other factors. Therefore, the way the game is now is overall more realistic than the viewpoint you are proposing as the norm.

Lastly, you wish to re-engage me in a discussion about buildings and their ability to absorb the effects of explosions. I've said I don't want to get distracted by something that has already been discussed in detail before. If you wish to, dig up that old discussion and point out where the ultimate conclusions are off instead of trying to start the discussion from the ground up again. If you do look up that discussion you'll see that I concede that the variety of building strengths in CM:SF are indeed not as varied as they are in real life. We hope to be able to address that sometime soon.

These things do have an effect on casualties, but not nearly as much as you feel that they do. And that gets us back to our main point; the possibility that HE itself is over modeled.

I've already explained, a few times now, how explosions are simulated. The short of it is there are two ranges and both pay attention to vectors, cover, relative heights, and so forth. One problem I see here is that you're still vastly underestimating what a "direct hit" can do.

Charles couldn't give me the specifics of the 125mm HE round that something like a T-72 packs, but he did give me the stats for US 105mm HE (which would be in the Stryker MGS). The ranges are as follows:

Blast - lethal: 2.2m

Blast - casualty, might be killed: 4.5m

Blast - possible serious wound (i.e. casualty): 6.8m

Shrapnel - possibility of serious to light wounds (depending on distance): 144.6m

This presumes optimal conditions where there is basically nothing inbetween the unit and the source of the explosion. The number you cited for the 125mm HE is the "Blast" area, not the "Shrapnel" area. That's pretty standard for citations of weapon effectiveness, though unfortunately there is no standard terminology and explanations are rarely given with stats. Think about it, though... do you really think a 125mm shell would only have a 12.8m maximum "reach out and touch someone" range? A M67 hand grenade has a total effective radius of 15m and a kill (Blast) radius of 5m. An RPG-7V's OG7V has a kill radius of 150m according to one source I just looked up. Are you saying that the 125mm HE round is less effective than a hand grenade? I am sure you aren't, therefore I ask that you kick the tires of your own argument a bit before posting

You've also been arguing that even point blank range hits can be shrugged off. I don't know of any evidence to support this sort of extreme position, though I do grant you that there are circumstances that can mitigate the chances. That's in the game already, it's just that REALLY close to a big explosion is pretty much a one way ticket off the battlefield. That's supportable by all the evidence and I really don't think it is productive for you to challenge it without some pretty solid evidence (personal opinion does not carry weight here).

Another thing to keep in mind is the common mistake made by you gamers... that if someone's Red that they are KIA. That's not true at all. Yellow means lightly wounded, but still (mostly) capable of continuing to be effective. Red means heavily wounded to the point that combat effectiveness is minimal to none. It also means KIA, but not necessarily. This is a bit of a UI problem on our part and it's already been addressed in the current v1.1 beta by making a different color for KIA vs. seriously WIA. The point of this is that it is probable that many of the casualties you see from a large explosion are not KIA, rather they are combat ineffective.

The blast is treated as a circle and not distorted based on a host of physical properties, including velocity, mass, angle of approach, etc. This is partly because the resources needed to correctly distort an explosion's effect are seen as too taxing for the computer in relation to the increase in fidelity. The reason is that, on average, the results should be about the same. What you're likely to see, however, are some differences in extremes where soldiers laterally positioned would be far enough away to not have a good chance of getting hit if the envelope were distorted vs. having it be circular. Likewise, soldiers that would be in the path of an elongated explosion are "let off easy" because the circle stops the effect short of their position. Recent changes will probably lessen these sorts of outliers.

So there you go... there is some room for improvement for sure, but not the sort of "the sky is falling" kind of thing I've seen pushed in this thread. In short, things are currently reasonably accurate, though not perfect depending on specific circumstances.

Steve