Observations of tank behaviour

[Pandur]

I just played my RED vs. RED "test" Tank battle, as i do in every version to see how tank battles got, but i didnt in 1.05 up to now.

i noted several problems(!?) or faults in their behaviour, maybe this things could get a little more tweaked or better, id like to know at first if these things are intentional or not -> means are there any problems where i belive to see some(steve!?)!?

note; i play WEGO and basicly watch the replay seperatly for every involved tank in action or tank groups at least, if there is "some" action. so i see pretty accurately what happens to every unit throughout the battle.

tanks involved in this scenario, equal for both sides so all in all 8 tanks of every sort;

4xT72M1

4xT62M

4xT55MV

the things i saw;

- tank-fired ATGM´s;

about 4 Tanks(62M and 55MV have some) depleated all their ATGM´s, yet i saw NO SINGLE hit. also the AI enemy, wich shot some, scored not even a close shot. distance to targets where about 2000m down to 400m. basicly they went way over the enemy tanks or into the dirt on the way there. but not really "close"

in the battle, it leaves you with the conclusion that your and enemy tank´s value is considerable reduced as long as it has ATGM´s. with normal shells, i got good results when compared to the ATGM´s wich did nothing. the fact that they shoot no APFSDS isnt new so i dont say more about that here.

- TC´s;

it is much much better with 1.05. sometimes they button by themselfs but your still on the saver side when they stay down permanently.

i would really like to see them buttoning "as soon" as they spot an other tank, and the "as soon" really counts for "tanks". they can look out again soon after they dont see anymore , but when they face direct fire weapons of larger caliber and are aware of that becouse they can "see" them, they should go in, fast. if someone shoots my TC out of the hatch while my tank didnt saw anything, well nothing to do about it

- auto rotating vehicles;

i know, i cant let that go. in that battle i had a great example of how this auto rotate becomes a big hinderance.

i did a screenshot to be able to explain it somewhat better.

you can see the single enemy tank in the right portion of the screen, this tank was spotted about 1 minute and 30 seconds ago, the turn befor.

at first it shot at my lone T55MV, the one next to the crew, in the background.

i decided to back up the T55 and turn around the T62 you can clearly see, in this turn. the T62 was acually in a bad position, not able to retreat somewhere without significant risk of getting shot.

however, now in "this" case it was a good position, the T62 and the enemy T72M1 didnt spotted each other the 30seconds of the last round and the T72 was facing towards my T55. the T62 had the same facing, as the blue line in the picture, at the start.

unfortunatley, what you dont see are the two crews, bailed from their vehicles, advancing towards their objective. one of those, on the little hilltop, where the blue line is facing in the picture, one to the right outside of the picture.

good i think, the crews have pistols and AK´s and are acually no danger i thought. i order the tank to rotate towards the enemy tank, to help it see the enemy one. there the horror started; while turning, my tank spotted the crew on the right side, tuning towards there, it didnt saw the enemy tank, it simply aborted my whise and elaborate "order" in order to turn 180° towards the right side of the screen :mad:

at the same time the lone T55 in the background, backed up to its waypoint close behind, to wait 15 seconds there in order to come back to shoot the T72 again.

after the T62 rotated towards the right screen edge, dircetly the oposite of where he was facing befor, it spotted the 2nd crew runing about 5 meters away from my dead crew(3 guys, left on picture). it started to rotate towards the crew, the blue "rotate" command wich is seen in the screen.

you see how far my tank came, it rotated acually 360°(in summ) in about 50 seconds, had 2 targets shot no single time. got shot by the T72.

now, if this auto rotate has to stay(i can see why) please tweake it a bit more

they should ignore what they think as soon as i gave em a manual command and should keep that up at least for 60 seconds, to the next turn. or something more subtile, but this is not good.

this goes hand in hand with the next point.

- "turning vs. shooting";

right now the vehicles value turning above shooting it seems. it leads often to situations where a vehicle spots a enemy vehicle, the auto rotate kicks in, the gun cannot move until the vehicle is correctly aligned to the point the AI wants it to have. only than the gun gets free and can be aligned with the target, to return fire. often, though, the target would be destroyed allready when the vehicle would make shooting the first and turning the 2nd priority of those both.

it would be better to turn the vehicle, and turn the gun at the same time with help of the vehicles rotation. if this is done, halt a moment, shoot, continue turning while the loader reloads and so on... . or any more "modern" procedure

in CMx1 that worked reasonable, in CMx2 they currently behave a bit like WW1 tanks.

thanks;

EDIT: i forgott the screen, damn.

here it is;

[ January 28, 2008, 04:57 PM: Message edited by: Pandur ]

[Roter Stern]

Well the obvious question is.. why arent you playing 1.05?

So far I think it's an amazing patch and I can't say i've encountered the stuff above, at least not enough to really notice.

[Pandur]

sorry if this was or is not written clear, with "so far" i mean up to the battle "i just played", as i have written. that means the playthrough for 1.05 happened today not so long ago.

maybe i should edit that!?

[H.W. Guderian]

Originally posted by Pandur:

I just played my RED vs. RED "test" Tank battle, as i do in every version to see how tank battles got, but i didnt in 1.05 up to now.

[snip]

- tank-fired ATGM´s;

about 4 Tanks(62M and 55MV have some) depleated all their ATGM´s, yet i saw NO SINGLE hit. also the AI enemy, wich shot some, scored not even a close shot. distance to targets where about 2000m down to 400m. basicly they went way over the enemy tanks or into the dirt on the way there. but not really "close"

in the battle, it leaves you with the conclusion that your and enemy tank´s value is considerable reduced as long as it has ATGM´s. with normal shells, i got good results when compared to the ATGM´s wich did nothing.[snip]

Ditto . . .

my consistent experience with Red AFV "gun-fired" ATGM's is the same. They seem to be both the "preferred" ammo choice (given standard ranges of engagement) and I've also never seen them hit a thing? Frustrating when you work hard to surprise an M1, give yourself away with a useless ATGM shot, and then get smoked seconds later.

What gives? Do these systems simply suck in real life? Any feedback from BF on this?

Can I please have a UI button to tell the loader to dump all the Red, gun-fired ATGM's onto the dirt to start with? =)

[Battlefront.com]

The problem is that Red tanks, especially the older ones (which includes the T-72M1), have just about no chance of killing an Abrams from the front or turret side. This is not exactly akin to a Stuart firing at a King Tiger, but it's not far off. Since the ATGM shot is about the only hope they have, that's what they use. Sometimes they use HE instead, but that will go away with v1.06.

Other major disadvantages:

1. Situational awareness sucks very, very badly when buttoned up.

2. If the crews are good they stand a decent chance of landing a hit if the target is stationary, significantly less if it is moving. Especially if it is moving very fast, which is what the Abrams was built for.

3. If the crews aren't good they really don't stand much of a chance of hitting much of anything at less than point blank range (800m or less. There is no hard number). This is very similar to WWII.

4. Turning the turret at the same time as the hull isn't necessarily realistic. Depends on the vehicle and the skill of the crew. Abrams, obviously, don't have this sort of problem. The T-72 TURMS-T shouldn't either.

5. Vehicle "retreat" logic has been greatly improved in v1.06.

So Pandur, I would recommend holding onto that scenario and see how much it changes in v1.06. I can't say exactly what the differences will be, but I am sure you'll see some things that benefit the Red side.

Steve

[Pandur]

1. Situational awareness sucks very, very badly when buttoned up.

thats why i mill about the TC´s all so often. you want to have them out, but they dont even button up properly when they "spott" something "dangerous". so you better let em in or you have a Tank platoon without commanders faster than you may think.

its ok for vehicles equiped with MG´s or similar, but something wich lobs biger stuff should make em button up after they spotted it.

4. Turning the turret at the same time as the hull isn't necessarily realistic.

in summ, the problem i have with it is that they are so stuborn in turning that they dont even halt when the gun passes the target(!), they could shoot and probably hit the target. no, they keep on turning until the hull is lined up, than they turn the turret back to the target they allready passed

the behaviour in CMx1 where the tank started to turn towards the target and as soon as the gun pointet on the target, the tank shot, and continued turning while reloading, was ways better than what we have now. if a specific tank type can not rotate the turrent and the hull at the same time(wich ones are that!?), they should better do the CMx1 style behaviour wich was more "effective" in my view.

5. Vehicle "retreat" logic has been greatly improved in v1.06.

when this means the vehicles "rotate" more smart or less dumb, than it is a good thing.

if this means vehicles back up by themselfs for a minute in the worst case, id like to see if the pathfinding got slight upgrades. anyways, thats a different discussion, lets see how it gets.

So Pandur, I would recommend holding onto that scenario and see how much it changes in v1.06.

more than fair enough. acually i thought if i should maybe skip the 1.05 playthrough and wait the next 1-3 days(hopefully)for the patch to be released.

couldnt do it, had to play the game

thanks,

looking forward to the 1.06 release

[Paper Tiger]

Steve:

-The problem is that Red tanks, especially the older ones (which includes the T-72M1), have just about no chance of killing an Abrams from the front or turret side. This is not exactly akin to a Stuart firing at a King Tiger, but it's not far off. Since the ATGM shot is about the only hope they have, that's what they use. Sometimes they use HE instead, but that will go away with v1.06.-

Does this mean that the TacAI for Syrian tanks reacts to ALL tanks like it's an Abrams? It makes sense since the game is designed primarly to be played Blue on red and that's the only tank Blue forces presently have. But in Red v Red situations, Red tanks will follow the logic that the enemy tank MUST be an Abrams and make the less than optimal choice too?

[Battlefront.com]

TacAI, like in CMx1, is adjusted to the specifics of the unit that it is controlling. This is done by using "fuzzy weights" which are specific to that unit and, usually, the state it is in at the time. This allows Charles to write one AI behavior and have it self adjust to a very wide range of possibilities. The AI also has no concept of sides, just units. This means an Abrams will react differently to a T-72 than it will another (enemy) Abrams.

Steve

[Paper Tiger]

Okay, I think I got that. It's just that I've been doing a Red on Red tank battle this morning and the opening exchanges of fire are almost exclusively ATGM shots. The tanks onboard are T-72TURMS v T-62MVs, certainly T-62 'somethings' and the opening range is just under 1km. Perhaps that's what they're carrying in their guns at the start of the scenario?

I also assume that if an Abrams reacts differently to an enemy Abrams than with a T-72 TURMS, then the same logic applies for a T-72 TURMS v a T-62 in a Red on Red game? I'm more interested in what Syrian tanks do that what an Abrams does as I do mostly Red on Red.

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

Hello,

for me the biggest problem in tank behavior is the missing C2 chain when on the field. No ground unit shares information about enemy with tanks.

Another problem is, that for me its really hard to believe that the tanks are so blind. I am hidden behind a house and down the street are moving few Strykers. They easily move in front of my tank and start to shoot on me and even immobilize my tank with machine gun!!! The distance is 100 meters, so don't tell me i cannot see them because too far away... If i am in ambush position, i expect enemy coming and cannot see him moving just in front of me? How do you explain this blindness to me please??? And i don't see some difference when commander is out or in - is there any?

Thanx.

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

I forget to write that my tank was T-72M1 and later T-72M1V ... because i am Red player

[Paper Tiger]

Agree about the C2 thing.

I'm not sure what could be happening there as I usually have the opposite problem, instant spotting. What is the quality of your crews? Is it night? It might help to set a covered arc if you expect the enemy to be moving into an area. That certainly helps with spotting.

[Roter Stern]

Originally posted by Marwek77 aka Red Reporter:

If i am in ambush position, i expect enemy coming and cannot see him moving just in front of me? How do you explain this blindness to me please??? And i don't see some difference when commander is out or in - is there any?

Try giving your tank in an ambush a 20-30 degree forward facing arc of fire – that seems to force the crew to concentrate their spotting on a smaller field of view allowing them to spot units quicker. This actually seems works for all units, not just tanks … but of course “you mileage may vary”.

[Marwek77 aka Red Reporter]

Thanks for help.

My crew is regular or veteran and it was during day. What will happen if the Stryker just move very fast and will move out from facing arc? I will test this today.

What influence has it when commander is unbutonned or buttonned?

[Pandur]

I have to update the ATGM prblems section.

i replayed the battle today and befor i did i made sure that all my crew´s are regular. they where all "green" last go. i see the point that "green" guys dont hit too much with ATGM´s but maybe they should get some hit from time to time. after all if they knew they suck shooting ATGM, they wouldnt use the gear they cant use in the first place i think.

however, the "regular" crews really scored hits with their ATGM opening shot. quiet pleasing.

now i changd the current version to have one T-72 less and i added a self propelled ATGM section instead. also regular expirience. but i really want to wait until 1.06 is there to test this tincans against tanks.

What influence has it when commander is unbutonned or buttonned?

basicly he can look out of the hatch,...or not.

both bring their own set of advantages and disadvantages.

thats basicly it.

[Flanker15]

It shouldn't matter how wide the ambush arc is if the tank is buttoned up: it will have constant forward vision from the driver, constant 360 vision from the commander and constant vision along the turret from the gunner.

I have noticed this blindness too and it's killed my tanks, not see infantry straight away is one thing but taking 30 seconds to see an apc in front of you is another.