Impossible to stalk tanks

[SlapHappy]

Artificially created test mission. One Panther tank with "regular" grade crew. Soviet Superhero with 100 Leadership, Accuracy and Scout skill. And two RPG-40 grenades. Set to crawl mode, our Soviet hero made a circuitous route to the back of the Panther without being spotted. Had his grenade in hand, so I knew the attack range. He got to within about 20 feet of minimum attack range. The Panther pivoted on a dime, one burst of MG fire, over. This needs to be fixed. You have to give the infantry some chance in the anti-tank role. These super-sensitive tank crews need to have their "spidey-sense" toned down quite a bit.

[K9crump]

Yes, this same thing happened to me with a bazooka man. I was directly behind the Panther tank and when I was in range, He suddenly swung his main gun around and BAM. Game over... You are very much correct in this manner.

Mike

[Madmatt]

Hmm, interesting. I will do some tests on my end and pass on what I see to 1C. I know I was playing a battle in the Battle for Moscow add-on last night and my armored units absolutely did not see some enemy infantry that was behind them.

This could be something that was already addressed in the patch I am testing with, or it could be something else. Either way, I will have it looked into.

Madmatt

[SlapHappy]

Thanks Madmatt

I just tried again with FOUR supersoldiers with anti-tank nads. Same result. Even with multiple targets the tank gunned them down and let out a hearty yawn. I'm hopeful that the Moscow test proves out that it was fixed in the patch. There seems to be some "alert zone" which tanks respond to which is just outside the grenades range. The tank pivot occurs at almost exactly the same relative range every time. I'm also glad the "order change freeze-up" is being addressed. Soldiers just seem to stand there confused when I tried to assault the tank as well.

[Xerxes the Great]

hear, hear.

What I don't understand is why Tanks have omni-view?

They can spot enemy with a 360 degree site. Their vision should be conical at about 90 to 120 degrees.

There should be an option for the Tank commander to open the hatch up and look around to get the 360 degree view but at the chance of exposing himself to enemy snipers. A tank with a closed hatch should not have omni-vision at 360 degrees. It doesn't match the optics reality of the tanks of WWII era.

I have also been trying to test how to sneak a tank behind a enemy tank but every time the enemy tanks spots the sneaky tank and turns around to face it even if the sneaky tank is directly approaching from a blind side.

Giving Tank a more realistic spotting ability is a MUST to give this game more real feeling and infantry a snowball's chance in hell to survive!

Over and out.

[SlapHappy]

Well, buttoned and unbuttoned is not simulated in the game TOW as it is in Combat Mission. It would seem from the graphic indications that tanks are always buttoned without an officer in the cupola. If the tank commander were present in the cupola, I could see him spotting a stealthy enemy soldier...at least if he were looking in the right direction.

[Fetid]

Right on. Even a whole squad should be able to sneak up on to a buttoned up tank from behind. And even unbuttoned if near buildings or other heavy cover. A single man is less likely to be spotted but more likely to be stopped if spotted. Whereas a whole squad, approaching a tank from different angles, each man can not be engaged at the same time. Someone will deliver his package successfully. Tall grass--if you've ever seen real tall grass, you can't see into it past the outer perimeter. Like Russia, the midwest has areas of tall grass like this that you can't see into. Close assault was and still is a valid tactic to disable a tank. Even the M1Abrams has been taken down with RPGs by Iraqis. And they have a much better spotting ability then WW2 tanks. Also, believe it or not, in the early part of the war, most tanks had no locks or latches for their hatches. You could simply open them up and shoot in them or toss a grenade. Later, latches were provided although not always universally used by the crews.

[R33GZ]

I have experienced similar thing on the bulge battle. a king tiger seeks out an M10 from the opposite side of the map. The M10 is on a reverse slope on the outer edges of the map... not even remotely possible for the King Tiger to have seen it (or any other axis units for that matter), yet it made a beeline straight for it. The only upside is that I saw it coming and kept the M10 in hold position and waited for the cheating bugger to crest the slope, then wax it at point blank range

Have also had massive problems with AT guns snipering my snipers. Same type of scenario, my allied sniper crawls up a reverse slope, when he gets visual on the AT gun, it promtly turns about face and turns my poor fella into pink dust with its 75mm sniper cannnon... I tried flanking manouvers from every angle possible (approx. 180 degrees) but to no avail

I dont like complaining... but it gets pretty frustrating

[John Kettler]

SlapHappy,

For goodness sakes, they're antitank nades, not nads. What a ghastly image you've conjured in my mind! What's next? Scrotal charges?

(rushes off to shrink for PTSD treatment and ECT)

Regards,

John Kettler

[SlapHappy]

Right you are. Sorry for planting that image in your brain.

[John Kettler]

SlapHappy,

It was so delightfully, yet inadvertently, perverse I simply had to comment. Love wordplay!

All,

A buttoned tank, especially any of the earlier model T-34s and other tanks lacking a cupola, is not just practically blind, with severely keyholed vision arcs, but is all but indefensible from most angles because the gun and coax MG can't be depressed enough to engage close-in targets. Pistol ports and such (KV series rear mounted MGs) offer some small assistance, but also create vulnerabilities in the process, e.g., as when open pistol ports on immobilized Ferdinands became marvelous insertion points for Russian flamethrowers at Kursk.

Decades ago, AFV-G2 magazine published an interview with a former German tankhunter and supported the interview with a German drawing showing the sight lines from a buttoned T-34/76A. Inside of ~10 meters, a stalking infantryman was unengageable by turret mounted guns. Period. Consequently, German close combat against tanks emphasized buttoning the tank, separating it from protecting infantry, if any, blinding it (quite possibly with smoke grenades whose contents got sucked inside, disorienting and gagging the crew), jamming or breaking the trackwork, then finishing off the now immobilized beast with a demo charge, Teller mine, or sometimes, clambering onto the turret and dropping a grenade down the hatch. BTW, the AFV "spidey sense" issue's not peculiar to ToW, for BiA has the same problem. Just try stalking that StuG III/B in the graveyard by the church! The thing pivot turned in an instant and blew the hapless Screaming Eagle right out of his boots before he could even climb on the back.

I sure hope the omniscient buttoned tank problem is fixable, seeing as how infantry's practically gutted by the current inability to, inter alia, use buildings.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Reichenberg]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

...A buttoned tank [...] lacking a cupola, is [...] just practically blind...

John Kettler

That is exactly the point! As soon at it has a cupola, like the Panther, the commander has the ability to check a 360° angle. BUT the commander:

1) can look only at one direction at a time

2) has to peek through viewing openings around 2cm high

3) has to deal with glas covers of these openings that get dirty (dust, smoke of engine or gun....)

4) has to command a tank and its crew (probably getting shot at) at the same time

So there should be the chance of spotting at 360° - at a reduced rate, depending on scouting and experience of the commander.

SlapHappy, can you try your test with tanks without cupolas and with crews other than regular?? Maybe this gives more hints to where the problem exactly is or how it can be fixed.

Thanks for the good test set up. These are the ways to improve ToW - hopefully 1C is going that way with the community and with Battlefront... BF is obviously already on this way.

Uwe

[nonickch]

the omni supersense the tanks have is only part of the problem.

The other part that is present in at's is their uncanny ability to shoot through soldiers.

That's right, 3/4 of my soldiers die to tanks/at's from the bullet effect. Not by the explosion, but by the shell going through even while ducking and running (I've had more than once a prone soldier get the bullet effect and the HE round land like 10-15m behind him).

Now, put those two things together and you have the supertanks we see in the game. All seeing, never missing.

Oh, and I believe tanks of WW2 took way more than two seconds to rotate the turret 180 degrees. Especially the heavy ones.

I would not complain much about the sense of the AT's. It should be as much as a soldier, at least as long as the officer stands in clear view scouting things.

[John Kettler]

The Men Against Tanks, Parts 1 and 2 here show some of the nitty gritty of close-in antitank defense by infantry. Note particularly the way the tanks, despite their overwhelming destructive capabilities,

are progressively rendered ever more helpless, first by stripping them of their protecting infantry, then by immobilizing and blinding them, then stalking them from successive cover and obscured approaches until explosives can be flung or placed, then detonated by time fuze. Defense using Puppchen,Panzerfaust, Panzerschreck, bazooka or PIAT is less demanding because of standoff, with the various flung hollow charge grenades falling between the two main camps.

http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=63;t=001276

Regards,

John Kettler

[FinnN]

Originally posted by Madmatt:

Hmm, interesting. I will do some tests on my end and pass on what I see to 1C. I know I was playing a battle in the Battle for Moscow add-on last night and my armored units absolutely did not see some enemy infantry that was behind them.

This could be something that was already addressed in the patch I am testing with, or it could be something else. Either way, I will have it looked into.

Madmatt

SoaN confirmed there's 360 spotting for all units in one of the threads. The red lines on the ground are firing arcs, which you can see to be the case fairly easily as they change depending on which weapon is selected. I pointed this out and asked for clarification, as what you were saying and what SoaN was saying was contradictory, in another thread but I guess you must have missed it.

It is possible to attack tanks with infantry but I find it's because the tanks are focusing on something else. Usually another higher priority enemy, but I suspect that sometimes they have some sort of move order that ignores almost everything.

Another thing about infantry and tanks is the weird way that spotting effects are distributed. I'm reasonably good at sneaking now and in the German bulge battle I can get my infantry right up to the enemy lines. In their starting positions my tanks and some of the enemy AT guns and artillery are in direct LOF but don't have LOS due to the weather. As soon as my infantry has spotted the guns my tanks open fire and, with veteran crews, are pretty good at picking off the guns. It's not totally one sided as when my guns open up they get spotted by the americans and get some return fire. I find this very strange, but is it a bug or design?

Have fun

Finn

[PFMM]

In Combat Mission it's known as Borg spotting, ie if one can see it all can see it, and is often exploited.

It seems that Theater of War has toned it down a bit, but not eliminated it completely.

[FinnN]

I get that they're aware of the tanks presence - not great, given that the spotting unit might be a lone sniper in a bush on the other side of a hill, but to be expected. The odd bit is how it affects the firing accuracy. At the ranges the tanks are they should be attacking with quite poor accuracy, but *seem* (can't say for sure if this is the case) to be hitting with the accuracy that they would have if they were at the infantry's location. The devs have said that the quality of aiming (not just spotting) is affected by more than just LOF - am wondering if this needs rebalancing too?

Have fun

Finn

[PFMM]

You're quick Finn I'll give you that.

Since Theater of War doesn't have replay function (Oh! The Humanity!) it's hard to test. However, I agree that the visibility effects seem at little wobbly. I'd also note that there seems to be some fixes stated for it in the next patch.

[Muldoon]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

SlapHappy,

For goodness sakes, they're antitank nades, not nads. What a ghastly image you've conjured in my mind! What's next? Scrotal charges?

(rushes off to shrink for PTSD treatment and ECT)

Regards,

John Kettler

LOL - John, that is the funniest thing I have read on these forums in a while. Thanks.

Muldoon

[FinnN]

Brings a whole new meaning to 'Men Against Tanks' doesn't it?

PFMM, I guess it's this part of the patch notes as it's the only mention of this sort of thing: "LOS tweaks - The visibility conditions through forest were changed (being tested still but improvements allow for each individual tree trunk and tree crown to be calculated for LOS)". It's a bit vague about which problems are getting addressed though, and whether the tree thing is an example of a correction or if it'll happen as a result of other changes. Oh well, I guess we'll find out soon enough - the changes all seem worth while and I'm looking forward to what the campaign is going to be like.

Have fun

Finn

[FinnN]

Originally posted by nonickch:

...That's right, 3/4 of my soldiers die to tanks/at's from the bullet effect. Not by the explosion, but by the shell going through even while ducking and running (I've had more than once a prone soldier get the bullet effect and the HE round land like 10-15m behind him)...

3/4 is probably an exaggeration but I see this often enough for it not to be a freak instance. Equally bad but more typically I find tanks/artillery against infantry plant HE shells directly at their position, picking them off one by one - even if spread out and on the move. You can see this especially clearly on snowy maps as the white clad bodies show up nicely against the brown crater.

On a related note, something I noticed over the weekend when playing the last German mission is that every time an explosion happened (not just nearby) the crew of my Jagdtiger would flash red. It only lasts an instant but they're clearly reacting. I wonder if this affect has been tuned right the way down so that crew members don't freeze constantly, but in turn infantry are fairly immune to suppression (they also flash red, but also recover immediately).

Have fun

Finn

[Drawde79]

I certainly hope things like this will be fixed in a patch, even if not the first patch! These issues sound at least as bad as the LOS/LOF and pathfinding issues in terms of "gaminess" and immersion-breaking. For a game intended to be a realistic portrayal of WW2 combat, things like omniscient tank crew, unrealistically fast rotation times for tank turrets and AT guns, and heavy cannons picking off individual troops with sniper-like accuracy (whether with AP or HE) sounds rather worrying.

Still, I don't have the game yet, and wouldn't be surprised if I don't receive it for another week or so (waiting for the boxed version in the UK) - so I'll definitely reserve judgment until I actually get the chance to play it.

[Col Deadmarsh]

Just one more reason why I won't buy this game...

[nonickch]

Originally posted by FinnN:

3/4 is probably an exaggeration but I see this often enough for it not to be a freak instance.

Yes, I just run the numbers and I was indeed wrong.

I put 2 squads, one standing up @150m and one kneeling @100m off a pak40 with a gunner of 60.

Even tho the pak was shooting HE charges, ALL of the men died to the bullet effect.

Accuracy of the pak was about ~50% (didn't count).

Not a single crater close to the bodies, all shots landed far off.

So that's 4/4

The pak was in very slightly elevated position (like .5-1m up)

[jhmorneau]

>Originally posted by John Kettler:

>SlapHappy,

>

>For goodness sakes, they're antitank nades, not >nads. What a ghastly image you've conjured in my >mind! What's next? Scrotal charges?

>(rushes off to shrink for PTSD treatment and ECT)

>

> Regards,

>

> John Kettler

Hmmm, I wish some english speaking folk would explain to us foreigners what "nad" and "nade" mean...

Thank you for enlighting us !