Armor over run attacks.

[K.A. Miles]

What would be too "exotic", for instance?

Sure, I think tanks should fall off cliffs.

[Philippe]

I suspect that one of the reasons that you don't see many of the consequences of vehicle collisions in CMx1 is that the AI is extremely bad at collision avoidance. A simple thing like trying to get a halted column of tanks to move down a road almost always results in collisions unless you intervene with some aggressive micro-management. If collision effects had really been modeled, it would be pretty hard to launch an attack with more than one or two vehicles in it.

When large heavy vehicles run into things, armored or not, the laws of physics tend to make things go splat. People complain about bogging now -- just wait until they start running into things and really start throwing treads.

[Battlefront.com]

Gotta agree with the oddly lucid ramblings (is there such a thing?) of Seanachai. Hortlund, if you aren't talking about JasonC's bashing of Sajer, then what are you talking about? I haven't seen JasonC derride or otherwise dismiss other 1st hand accounts that have been written up in this thread. In fact, I have seen him state, quite clearly, that he doesn't have any doubts that these events happened from time to time. Neither do I. It's just that they are rare instances.

Now, as for supporting ramming and other battlefield oddities. To do this sort of thing we have to write code to make them work. If we want them to work realistically, then we need to put in even more code. For what? Something that should only happen once in 10,000 games? I don't think that is a very good use of our limited time.

You old hands here might remember my Bovine MG42 Sponge example from the early days of CMBO when people requested all sorts of very unusual battlefield events. The short of it is that some GIs used cows to block the fire from a MG42. Bad for the cows, good for the GIs, then bad for the MG crew because the GIs got around the flank. So...

When we look at ANYTHING that happened in a particular setting we have to ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Is it realistic?

2. Is it relatively common?

3. How difficult is it to code up?

If the first answer isn't "Yes", then we stop right there. If the second answer is somewhere between "Slightly Uncommon" to "Very Common", then we move onto the third question, otherwise we abandon the item right there. The less difficult to code, the more likely we go to the final question:

Is it worth doing?

The balance between commonality and difficulty results in either a thumbs up or thumbs down answer. If it is a thumbs up, then it goes into a mile long list of other requests and it is prioritized in relation to the others. If it is thumbs down, then it doesn't have a chance of going in.

Tanks ramming each other passes question one, fails question two. Even if it passed question two it would likey pass question three but would ulikely pass the final question. Even if it did, it would be so far down on the list of priorities that I doubt it would ever get coded.

How's that for an answer?

Steve

[K.A. Miles]

Rather dissapointing, to be honest- but I guess I'll have to live with it.

[Michael Dorosh]

You could answer yes to all three, and then ask "Will it be abused more often than used"? though, right? Or is that what ya mean by "worth doing"?

And couldn't you use a sports car analogy to make it easier to understand?

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by JasonC:

[sNIP]

Boy, you really like the sound of your own fingers clattring against the keyboard dont you?

Remember Jason, that the only reason we are having this conversation right now is because you were caught making stuff up out of thin air. No wall of text, no matter how many impressive words it contains, will change that fact. You should, really, just say "hey, I know I just made that stuff up, but it sounds plausible to me, and I believe that is what happened". If you did that I would have no objection to what you wrote. But no...instead you present your own pet theory as fact, and then you end up having to defend yourself by posting what you just posted.

Anyway, there is one thing I take objection to in your little essay here, and it is this part:

...something I know is false because of the consequences such a hypothesis predicts. Consequences for typical tactics and the typical results of various kinds of military collisions, which we can clearly see (from an overwhelming mass of contrary reports, from people not even aware of the question) do not occur.

I guess we see the natural extension here of your theory on what war is (War = an anonymous, violent industrial accident on a continental scale, whereby men are ground up by machines...was it?). The logic next step is of cource that you'll assume to know how everyone involved will act based on your own understanding of their reality.

Lets just say that I disagree, you cannot look at a situation from a purely theoretical perspective, and from those various theories think you can deduct how the individuals involved will act. Why? Because human beings does not always behave rational...it comes with our free will.

Incidentally, that is why you are wrong on your war theory too, I dont believe war is a gigantic industrial accident where the nations focus their industrial might into one location, where both sides strive to do as few misstakes as possible while waiting for the law of averages to decide who wins. I believe that war consists of countless of micro-events that all taken together lead to macro-effects.

But that, as they say, is a different topic.

[Philippe]

I agree that tank-ramming is such a rare occurence that it is probably not worth coding.

I'm not so sure about basic collisions, though. Vehicles run into things by accident all the time. The result is dented tree, crushed fender, bruised elbow.

But sometimes it is much worse.

In a perfect world I would start moaning and groaning for more collision effects. Most of these would be accidently self-inflicted, by the way. In that context ramming is just an obscure subset of the class of common everyday collisions, some of which do damage, some of which don't.

But as I hinted in an earlier post, I don't want to see collision effects without collision avoidance AI and vehicle convoy behavior.

Vehicles run into things all the time in CM.

Usually you don't notice.

In the real world there would be a sickening crunch, and one or more things might get broken (including you).

If I send a jeep or a truck flying down a road and am sloppy about how I take a curve, I probably just hit a wall when I was going 35 miles per hour.

I really, really, seriously would not want to be in that vehicle when that happened.

Most of the time you hug a building with a tank, and bump into it moving slowly. I'm sure the real life result would be a few kicks and insults to the driver from the other passengers.

But sometimes it would result in a thrown tread. Or a small dent or hole in the wall. Or both.

I'll be the first to admit it. I'm a lousy driver. I manage to do something like this to myself ever couple of turns in a typical CM scenario. I should learn to be more careful.

And note that if the bumper-car effect were fully implemented in CM, people would be a little more careful about the distance they maintained between vehicles.

[Which reminds me -- we probably need an intermediate speed or two as well as a vehicle follow command so that we can do column movement manually].

[Philippe]

A quick note on tank-ramming as a tactic.

I would love to see it implemented.

And I would love to play an opponent who tried to abuse it.

Because playing bumper cars is, ordinarily, just about the lamest way I can think of to take out an enemy tank. While you're closing to ram he'll probably blow you to hell.

[Hortlund]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

Gotta agree with the oddly lucid ramblings (is there such a thing?) of Seanachai. Hortlund, if you aren't talking about JasonC's bashing of Sajer, then what are you talking about?

Im talking about him making stuff up in an effort to make a point about something he believes is correct.

Come on Steve, honestly, this is the third time Im spelling out exactly what it is I object to.

[Abbott]

Originally posted by Peter Cairns:

I'd be worried that if done badly we would go from a WW2 sim to an episode of "Whacky Races".

Peter.

I agree with the above. I have just about given up on Combat Mission tournaments because I do not possess the patience to teach tactics to players that constantly play uhm...abstractly. With CM X2…I will most likely contact a few known opponents that adhere to a more (IMO) realistic type of play style. If combat KO’s resulted from crashes in CMX2 I would expect to quickly see many US fast gun tractors (75mm or 37mm tanks) purchased that hardily ever fired a round. Their entire purpose would be used to seek out heavy armor and crash into it. BT-7’s and T-34’s come to mind when we see the Eastern Front. Probably in the same manner as a giant shotgun or like the comet that hit Jupiter a few years ago…a player could even say “Hale” as he drove towards your armor at a high rate of speed then yell “Bop” just before the crash! Thus inventing the Hale-Bop tactic of tactical armored warfare.

[ September 20, 2005, 10:51 AM: Message edited by: Abbott ]

[aka_tom_w]

Great !

Did Steve just say they WILL now model cows (as LOF blocking MG sponges) in CMx2!??

Woo HOO!

-tomw

[MikeyD]

Considering how often I've got my Sherman up to within 10 feet of a Tiger I's rear and MISSED my shot (beofe being blown away) I wouldn't mind having a ramming feature just take out my frustrations! :mad:

Tank ramming might be something to keep in mind if you ever return to T-34-76s in 1941. I'm not much concerned with it otherwise. But the ability to crush cars, break fences, drive through shacks, etc. would be cool... if not exactly important tactically.

[aka_tom_w]

Tank ramming might be something to keep in mind if you ever return to T-34-76s in 1941. I'm not much concerned with it otherwise. But the ability to crush cars, break fences, drive through shacks, etc. would be cool... if not exactly important tactically.

Very COOL indeed!!

he he

-tom w

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by aka_tom_w:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Tank ramming might be something to keep in mind if you ever return to T-34-76s in 1941. I'm not much concerned with it otherwise. But the ability to crush cars, break fences, drive through shacks, etc. would be cool... if not exactly important tactically.

Very COOL indeed!!

he he

-tom w </font>

[Battlefront.com]

MD,

You could answer yes to all three, and then ask "Will it be abused more often than used"? though, right? Or is that what ya mean by "worth doing"?

Ah... yes, that is a separate question indeed. Thanks for reminding me of it. We need to keep in mind the realism is the sum of its parts. A realistic piece, misused to gain unrealistic results, has the potential to unbalance the simulation as a whole. One example of this was firing WP at German heavy tanks to make them think that they were on fire. It certainly happened, but if it was common the Germans would have learned that this was just a trick and would have ignored it. It was effective because it wasn't expected, and it wasn't expected because it was obviously used very rarely. Therefore, we can conclude that for some reason US/UK forces did not use this tactic except in a handful of situations and therefore it would be unrealistic to add it to the game for use at any time and any reason.

And couldn't you use a sports car analogy to make it easier to understand?

Sure! It would be like taking a driving test in a simulator and being confronted by a situation where your windshield is shattered by a deranged sniper. Does this happen from time to time? Sure. But how many drivers in the "industrialized" nations that have such simulators ever experience such an event even ONCE in their 40-60 years of driving? So why bother simulating it?

How was that?

LH,

I believe that war consists of countless of micro-events that all taken together lead to macro-effects.

Quite true. CM is designed that way. However, the tricky bit for us is that we have to code each and every one of those micro-events so that they work and work realistically. If we could simulate each one of those things, completely realistically, then the macro-effect would be perfect. Unfortunately, this is not possible because we can not simulate each micro-event possibility in the first place, nor can we always code them to be foolproof realistic. That means instead of allowing the macro-effect to develop on its own we must look at the micro-events to see which ones we should/can include and then evaluate what their impact is on the macro-effect. Having some first hand accounts of x happening is simply not enough to automatically justify their inclusion. A broader examination is necessary.

Philippe,

Indeed, collisions in real life are extremely common. That means that collisions themselves easily pass the first two tests. It would even likely pass the fourth test, which is "does it unbalance the game?" if it were not for test three... "how difficult is it to code up?" That is the bugger here. As you say, there are a host of compounding issues to be considered, most specifically TacAI (and even StratAI). This turns a rather straight forward simulation of "if x bumps into y with z force then do this" calculation into something a heck of a lot bigger.

Don't get me wrong... I'd love for us to do a full physics package for CMx2, complete with collision effects. But I don't see that for the first game and perhaps not even for the second one. It's a big deal. However, we do want to get this in at some point. And when we do, why guess what? We'll have tank ramming. Why? Because it will be automatically supported simply because all the necessary things for tank ramming are also required for collision detection.

Steve

[Dirtweasle]

What is the old saying treat a tank like a fragile egg with big hammer attached to it or some such thing? having said that, it seems to me you ought to be able to push a wood fence but I can offer no proof of it happening. Seems like a reasonable thing to do if you need to cross a field, and in the current CM offerings you go through and the fence remains in place. Not sure, but I thought there was a risk of bogging, a dice roll or some such thing, when you go through a fence or though scattered trees.

The logical next step would be to show the fence damaged and trees pushed down. Kind of like leaving tracks behind, which is another thing...

[Battlefront.com]

LH,

Come on Steve, honestly, this is the third time Im spelling out exactly what it is I object to.

You also said you were objecting to JasonC making stuff up to discredit 1st person accounts that contradicted his position. Yet that is clearly not the case since he doesn't dispute that these things happen, only that Sajer is a work of fiction. You seem to have focused in on what was a rather straight forward, and very obvious, interpretation of what might have caused that GD officer to change his tune. Jason is perfectly entitled to do that as long as it is clear that he isn't saying that someone else came up with those theories based on fact. He didn't, and therefore I haven't the foggiest idea what has got you so riled up.

To restate...

Sajer is trotted out as a reliable source. Sajer is discredited. Sajer is defeneded by questionable rebuttal. JasonC shows why the rebuttal is questionable by pointing out that motives for changing the story must be taken into consideration. Ardem presents another take on the same thing but from a point of view defending Sajer.

I don't see any problem with either Jason's or Ardem's arguments about the GD officer's change of tune. I don't see a problem with any of this. Especially since it is completely irrelevant to the topic being discussed since there are other accounts and facts to take into consideration that aren't in dispute.

Steve

[Philippe]

CM is a tactical unit simulator, not a tank simulator, so though I would like it to model everything, it only needs to model enough to make the tactics work. What is being considered is how all the pieces relate to each other, not how one piece behaves in the universe.

Panzer Elite, by contrast, is more of a simulator and should model things like shell fligh-times, overturning vehicles, and collisions.

As an aside, if the terminology and mechanics of bogged and immobilized are being retained, I'd like to suggest renaming 'bogged' to simply 'stopped'. Less colorful, but also less confusing when it happens on a railroad crossing and has nothing to do with soft ground. In CM parlance that Panther tank in the place de la Concorde that I mentioned earlier was probably 'bogged'.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Philippe:

As an aside, if the terminology and mechanics of bogged and immobilized are being retained, I'd like to suggest renaming 'bogged' to simply 'stopped'. Less colorful, but also less confusing when it happens on a railroad crossing and has nothing to do with soft ground. In CM parlance that Panther tank in the place de la Concorde that I mentioned earlier was probably 'bogged'.

Stopped simply means "not going", a state most tanks in CM are in most of the time, by intent and design. If you're looking for a less confusing label to refer to a state of temporary immobilization, I would suggest that isn't it.

Incidentally, I was wondering if you were going to nip back into the briefings thread? I found your comments on map reading comical and a little damaging to your credibility. Wondering if you had anything else to add to that discussion.

[Philippe]

Since I think my response got lost in the update, I'll try again.

I don't really enjoy argument for argument's sake, so I probably won't be going back in until I have something useful to add.

Having said that, I'm trying to get in touch with the few surviving WW II vets that I know to see what they think about it. If an army institutes an extensive training program about something, it often means they had detected some weakness -- most of the testimonials that I saw in the thread were about modern training, so not that relevant (to my addled brain).

So far I haven't come up with anyone remembering much about whether most people could read maps or not. But I did come up with a training anecdote from an ETO vet who mentioned that whenever they put aircraft silhouettes up for identification the tent started chanting "BFP, BFP", which meant "Big Effing Plane". So much for taking training in WW II seriously. Aviators' silk maps often didn't survive contact with civilians because they would get traded for favors and converted into stockings -- but we weren't talking about that kind of map.

My credibility, like my odd sense of humor, is situational. So is yours, and I'm not too worried about it, either. If you think it that much of a concern send me an e-mail. We really shouldn't be discussing this here.

Like Euripides I tend to look at people as they actually are, whereas I suspect you're a bit more like Sophocles, extrapolating back from their current training regimens and imagining that they were as they should be.

[Bamse]

Steve!

Don't you have some screenshots or whatever too make?

/BjörnE

[ozi_digger]

Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:

And also against explicit regulations. Not saying it wasn't done, I'm saying drivers generally did not do such things, in order to preserve not only drive train, but also optics, gun sights, even attached camouflage, not to mention that tank crews very often had to store personal equipment on the outside of the tank (sleeping bags, haversacks, helmets/sun helmets, etc.) and probably wouldn't be too keen on having it ripped off. Ditto schürzen.

If ramming is to be included, make it out of the player's control, the way pushing vehicles on a blocked road is.

You forgot to mention bending the gun barrel dammit! (Think crashing into something solid, not a fence, or even moving through woods) Which, IMHO, would be #1 or #2 on the list and therefore a reason for not playing demolition derby.

[JonS]

no silly - they don't need the barrel since they're just going to squish the crunchies with their tracks, same for any ATGs, and enemy tanks just get rammed. Haven't you been paying attention?

[Ardem]

Tank ramming could be part of the Tac AI and not part of player control, say for instance a tank is within 50 metres of a tank, the driver decides instead of the backup I can't win this fight, that I will ram the tiger 1.

That takes away from the common situation, it also takes away from the abuse factor and it also create war to be unpredictable individual events.

Gun ramming I view differently, I think guns were overrun and squashed on purpose if they were found too close and you could no get enough depression on the gun in time.

Infantry squashing, tank drivers loved to kill infantry its the only way they could of killed anything. Human nature to run over an enemy. (smile)

[ September 20, 2005, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: Ardem ]

[JasonC]

Theories pet or otherwise are the only contact with fact any of us ever has. You have to deliberately posit an ambitious theory to touch reality at all. (No logic will do it for you, for instance). And nobody can ever tell you anything beyond their opinion based on the sum of their knowledge. Seems to me you mostly object to anyone reasoning from the sum of their knowledge. A pointless objection, since everyone is designed by nature to do so. If you want to attack other men for having opinions, you might as well attack them for having noses.