Engagement Ranges and AP Penetration value worries...

[Salkin]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

Mumble.

I think we get into a problem of discussion style here, not of game features.

For the purpose of this game I am mostly fine with a penetration model that is not acumulative-damage based and does at least have some resemblence of armor penetration table, even if those tables are compressed in range.

However, there is no question that the ranges are indeed compressed:

....

Hmm...not being the ubergrog like half of the people here I'm probably more of a casual CMer. I'm kind of intrigued by the compressed penetration values. Facing of with tanks with regular penetration values on the shorter ranges that TOW seems to offer could turn into very short and unexciting episodes.

With the compressed penetration tables you probably get to maneuver more to get to that kill.

I'm thinking 1C have playtested this for quite a bit before changing penetration values. Well, maybe things will change again when Battlefront get to make some changes...

//Salkin

[kipanderson]

Hi,

As weapons data cannot be edited, only some scenario data can be, it is important that ToW ships with the correct penetration figures and ranges.

To many, me included, a large part of the fun comes from “realism”. As the maps in ToW will be of the usual CM size, 2km by 2km, there is no need to compress penetration figures/ranges. If you have 2km by 2km maps the answer is to build realistic terrain and have realistic penetration figures/ranges. It need not all be open terrain in every battle. Historically the average range in WWII for tank v tanks combat was 700m-1000m, well within the map size.

I realise that ToW is not meant to be CMX1 plus, but something different. That is fine, but compressed ranges are a very big hit on the realism front. If in the real world a Panther, when no more than a dot on the horizon, could destroy a Sherman than that is how it needs to be in ToW. Why? So as to present real world tactical problems.

Without real world tactical problems what you have is a strategy game that happens to be in a WWII setting…. not a wargame.

Looking forward to ToW ,

All the best,

Kip.

[Scipio]

With all respect, but I think this discussion is some kinda hysterical, because people take some screenshots and develop theories about the things they believe to see - without any knowledge what the numbers should exactly reflect, and why they show what they show.

In another game I have seen for example things like range and possible damage changing each time when you change the ammo and target. Wasn't a wargame, BTW, but I hope you get the idea...

[ July 30, 2006, 05:46 AM: Message edited by: Scipio ]

[kabex]

First of all, hello to everyone this is my first post.

I am impressed by the level of intelligence and professionalism displayed by the members of this board, and the people of Battlefront, who seem to be extremely active and involved in the community.

I have been following WWIIRTS since it was first announced, and as a fanatic Wargamer I was very interested. Just yesterday I found out about the venture with Battlefront, which in my eyes is a great thing as the CM series are great Wargames.

I also noticed discrepancies in the game's penetration ranges. We all understand that there needs to be a compromise between fun and realism, for the benefit of the developers and the commercial well-being of the game, however the Wargamers always prefer to have by-the-book technical data and performance.

Personally, I prefer the Wehrmarcht, I guess I could be called a bit of a Germanophile. What kind of dissapointed me about what I've seen of this game(it's still not finished, so I may be completely misinformed) is that the ranges seem to be very small.

If one is not going to bother using tanks in a realistic fashion, one should not try to achieve realism in this form. As we all know tank warfare in WW2 took place at very long ranges, especially in the late war.

The best thing about German armor was that in mid-to-late war they were incredibly precise and deadly at extreme ranges, thanks to their unparalleled optics and cannons. Tigers, for example, are deemed as untouchable behemoths by popular culture, but this was not the case.

The only advantage the Tiger had on the 44-45 Western front, was that Allied tanks were very underpowered, the Tigers medium-velocity 88mm cannon could quite easily engage and annihilate Allied tanks at upwards of 1.5 kilometers(to a maximum of 3km). I don't even have to mention the Tiger2's high-velocity 88!

Basically, at 500 meters tank combat is utterly unrealistic and meaningless, as almost any tank is deadly and the deadliest tanks are completely average. A Tiger2 can be outmanouvered with ease and annihilated.

If the penetration ranges are "compressed" one would have the same performance at 500 meters in-game than in 2000 meters in real life(exclusively in regards of penetration, not in tactics or maneuvering). Okay, we can understand this, however this is not a realistic depiction of WW2 warfare.

Personally, I'd rather have tank warfare limited if it can't be realistically displayed. 500m ranges were suicide for German crews, no one in their right mind would dare get that close.

German tankers(especially those with powerful tanks) always preferred to engage at upwards of 1 kilometer, where being outmanouvered is not a problem and your situational awareness, training and cannon will, without a doubt, win the battle every single time. German panzers were unparalleled in all of these qualities.

Thanks for your time.

[Steiner14]

Hi kabex, great 1st post. Good points. But we should have trust in BFC. If they claim, they were blown away by the game, this means a LOT. And for ultra realism, we will get CMx2 anyway. Welcome at the forum.

[Redwolf]

I have to say that if combat ranges are pretty much restricted to around 500m anyway, I like the compressed armor penetration tables.

Yehowa yehowa! Stone me!

Because if both is compress then you get the same tactical thinking back that you had before. Some thinking, just different parameters inserted into the thinking.

Of course there are limits to that, too, it seems that angles are indeed not considered at all, which will provide a challenge for e.g. Panthers and T-34. There's no way to just pick an "effective" armor thickness combining thickness and angle for WW2 ammo like you can for modern ammo. You are bound to either over- or under-model these tanks.

It also seems that some of the base penetration values are odd but those are easy to correct.

[kabex]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

I have to say that if combat ranges are pretty much restricted to around 500m anyway, I like the compressed armor penetration tables.

Yehowa yehowa! Stone me!

Because if both is compress then you get the same tactical thinking back that you had before. Some thinking, just different parameters inserted into the thinking

No. Not unless you compress everything this including speed, rotation, enemy profile, shell speed, etc etc.

Basically, if this happens, German tanks are very screwed. The Tiger and TigerII are a joke because they can be easily outmanouvered.

It benefits the Allies, and cripples the Germans(which I don't like, personally).

[Vergeltungswaffe]

The main problem I have with compression is that if you halve effective range, then you need to halve rate of fire.

Say a Panther has an effective range vs a Sherman of 1500m. The Sherman has an effective range of 500m. Now, in CM, if there is los, the Sherman will have to traverse 1000m of ground under fire to get into range. Here, the Sherman only has to go half as far, thus taking only half the fire, if rate of fire is left alone.

Makes the tank rush much more viable here than it should be, imho.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Vergeltungswaffe:

The main problem I have with compression is that if you halve effective range, then you need to halve rate of fire.

Say a Panther has an effective range vs a Sherman of 1500m. The Sherman has an effective range of 500m. Now, in CM, if there is los, the Sherman will have to traverse 1000m of ground under fire to get into range. Here, the Sherman only has to go half as far, thus taking only half the fire, if rate of fire is left alone.

Makes the tank rush much more viable here than it should be, imho.

There is no such thing as "effective range" on the scale of a CM game, much less ToW game. You can specify an effective range maybe on battalion scale. On a smaller scale it is an abstraction that creates nonsense results.

But you are right (both of you), even if you compress the armor penetration tables along with the combat ranges you end up with different tradeoffs, more severe than I was just stating.

[Madmatt]

Let me just make a brief comment (so I can return to testing the game itself). There are a lot of assumptions being posted here but there are based on anicdotal evidence. While the screenshots you have seen would seem to indicate the the penetration values may be compressed, there is no evidence yet that the game itself actually uses these compressed values.

What does that mean exactly? Basically, a distinction must be made by what is shown to the player, in a static format (such as those penetration amounts vs. range charts that appear for each ammo type) and what the game itself actually uses.

This was also a factor in CMx1. For example, in CM, we show you a firepower rating for a squad, what many people don't realize is that number is purely arbitrary and the code itself never used such a firepower rating, it computed small arms in a much more consise and detailed way.

I have been conducting long range gunnery tests in ToW, and I have seen kills out beyond 500 meters while it would seem based on the penetration table displayed they might not be possible. What does that mean? It could be as simple as the fact that the devs havent updated the graphic files for those penetration tables yet. I honestly don't know, but rest assured this will be asked of them. This is still a beta I am playing and taking screenshots from and not all graphics are yet incorporated.

One of the reasons they have decided to sign with us is because of our focus on historical accuracy, and they have proved very willing to hear what we have to say so far.

Having said that, I have to say that now that I have played through probably 75% of the battles available (43 currently), the battles, to me at least, really feel very well balanced, have a great back and forth flow to them, and more importantly (although often overlooked) they are FUN. The AI puts up a good fight, doesn't do anything really stupid, seems to react well to whats going on and makes you work for a victory or feel stupid that you got your butt handed to you.

What continually impresses me is how tightly designed and intergrated all the various facets of the game really are, and this is something that is so hard to convey without getting hands on time with it.

Madmatt

[YankeeDog]

Thanks for the comment, Matt.

I've been watching this thread, but not have not commented yet because it seemed like an awful lot of conculsions were being drawn, based on a few numbers on a beta-build screenshot.

Not that I think this thread is a waste of time. IMHO, this thread shows just how important it is to many of your loyal customers (myself included) that things like armor penetration/kill performance in the game be within the envelope of historical plausibility (recognizing, of course, that there is always some room for debate as to what the acutal performance of weapons systems was).

So thanks for letting us know that you're aware of this issue, and have registered our concerns. I'm sure the final product will be the better for it.

If, in the demo, shots from my PaK40 are consistently bouncing off of Sherman front Glacis at 500m, *then* I'll start whining.

Cheers,

YD

[Scipio]

I've said it all the time, haven't I?? *sight*

[Diceman]

Originally posted by Madmatt:

I have been conducting long range gunnery tests in ToW, and I have seen kills out beyond 500 meters while it would seem based on the penetration table displayed they might not be possible. What does that mean? It could be as simple as the fact that the devs havent updated the graphic files for those penetration tables yet. I honestly don't know, but rest assured this will be asked of them. This is still a beta I am playing and taking screenshots from and not all graphics are yet incorporated.

Madmatt

This is the first game I've really been excited about in years; however, I really hope the game doesn't go too simplistic on armor penetration. I don't expect CM ballistics accuracy but it would be good if you could look into how the game handles armor slope and angle of attack. Even if it's a simplified system I'd very much like this game to take these two values into account.

[mike_swift]

If the game is nerfed in anyway, it wll likely become unplayable for me. I play CM not because it is pretty, but because it is done right. This could become just another pretty game for the simple minded children that I will not play. I don't mean to sound rude, but I imagine that BFC would like to know our opinions.

[RMC]

Nerfed. LOL. You realism purists are a joke.

[Megakill]

Well, demo is going to be finished relatively soon - it should answer all questions about ballistics, etc.

[Sivodsi]

The demo, now that is something I'm really looking forward too.

"When when when?" cry the masses!

"When its ready" reply the gods at BFC.

[Denwad]

I come from 5 years of WWIIOL, so the word "soon" has no meaning to me

could be a week, could be three years.

[Megakill]

I don't want to confirm any specific days, but we are weeks away from demo, not months.

[Salkin]

Excellent news !

//Salkin

[Lt Bull]

Originally posted by Megakill:

I don't want to confirm any specific days, but we are weeks away from demo, not months.

:eek: Certainly an unexpected (but welcomed) surprise so soon.

Personally I would be against any kind of "armour penetration table compression". I agree with several of the implciations of it mentioned in this thread (eg. the Panther vs Sherman example) but mainly becasue I don't want to have the realism skewed like that so that it can "better package" into the rest of the game.

As has been mentioned, at ranges of under 500m, basically all your later year tank guns were as deadly as each other. I have read comments by BTS/1C saying that they are looking to attract new players to "historically correct"/"realistic" wargames like ToW and CM. I think that it would be wrong to perhaps give these newcomers the wrong impression of reality (and irk your hardercore wargmaers) by compressing the armour penetration scaling so that say in the game a Tiger appears as invulnerable and deadly to a Sherman at 500m range instead of 1500m as it was in reality. I really think it is important for wargames to keep their scale as true to realistc as possible. I do want the game to provide me a means of achieving some feel/sense of perspective on the realistic weapon effectiveness/engagement ranges of all the weapons modelled in a game and their implications on battlefield tactics. The key to achieving this is to ensuring 1:1 scaling for everything.

If realistic armour penetration values for your typical tank guns at engagment ranges under 500m aren't as diverse as they are at 1500m (and hence do not provide much measure to distinguish the true battlefield worth/value of a Tiger say up against a Sherman), and if (for whatever reason) we find most ToW scenarios involve armour engagements occur at less than 500m (why that might be the case? I don't know, it's just been mentioned), then so be it.

I know CC suffered from tank fights at ranges much less than 500m. Why? Perhaps it was a map size or LOS limitation as a result of not beign a true 3D battlefield. I think I do recall that the armour penetration tables of all the guns in the game seemed a bit compressed or wierd. I do remember thinking just how ridiulous/pointless it was how the "cost" of different tanks varied so much, where in fact, at thoise ranges it really didnt matter whether you had a 75mm or a 128mm gun. At those ranges, it was all about who had the fastest gun and the quickest tank, unless of course you wanted to HE the hell out of infantry. What was the point of buying an expensive Tiger 2, or worse a Jagdpanther (no turret!) for example when both of them at those close ranges could easily be outflanked by fast moving Stuarts that you could manuever around to their rear and nail them from behind? Better off just sticking with a PzIV.

Surely this kind of thing in ToW can be addressed by map and scenario design.

Lt Bull

[Megakill]

Most of the combat happens in close quarters - less than 1 km distance and mostly because of a 3D landscape, forests, buildings. etc. It is absolutely possible to engage targets that are farther than 500m and kill them.

Anyway - demo will answer al questions, furthermore we will gather all opinions and perhaps apply some of those. BF guys already pointed out a few tweaks that you guys would love and we are already working on those.

[Moon]

Lt Bull, it shouldn't really be unexpected. The game IS scheduled for a release this year, and it's already almost August :eek: So things will be moving quick around here.

Any of you guys plan to visit the Games Convention in Leipzig, Germany next month? Drop by the 1C booth

Martin

[tools4fools]

At those ranges, it was all about who had the fastest gun and the quickest tank, unless of course you wanted to HE the hell out of infantry. What was the point of buying an expensive Tiger 2, or worse a Jagdpanther (no turret!) for example when both of them at those close ranges could easily be outflanked by fast moving Stuarts that you could manuever around to their rear and nail them from behind? [Razz] Better off just sticking with a PzIV.

That's what I'm worried about as well, much more than the penetration figures (I have no doubt that they will get that 'about right' even if not as accurate as CM).

But due to the terrain (looking at screenshots) with lot of cover hills, etc, it could happen that fast and manouverable tanks are the way to go. Means fast turrets, fast targeting, fast speed will be more important than big gun and heavy armor.

And protecting flanks with AT teams.

****

[RSColonel_131st]

Sorry for sounding negative, but I really can't see how they will get out of this self-created mess with the too small maps.

If penetration stats and armor values are realistic (like, say, the CMBB data) then at 500 meters or lower the germans will lose all their historical advantage they had with Tiger and Panther, long-barreled StuGs etc.

Like others have said, at 500 meters the faster, more manouverable tank wins, not the one with better optics, better armor and gun. StuGs or other self-propelled pieces will be about worthless if they can so easily get rushed and flanked.

On the other hand, if penetration stats are "compressed", then you have all the other problems with rate of fire, target shilouette & relative size etc.

Either way you turn it, this will be very strange modeling of tank warfare. It may still be fun, but it doesn't sound like it will be detailed realism.