Sniper ATGs

[Spartan]

Hi,

Has anyome else come across this. Rushing an enemy ATG from about 100 meters and the gun proceeds to pop the troops one by one. Its like rifle fire to protect itself....

I think this needs fixed at least to have an HE explosion or two..

Mike

[Bad]

Originally posted by Spartan:

Hi,

Has anyome else come across this. Rushing an enemy ATG from about 100 meters and the gun proceeds to pop the troops one by one. Its like rifle fire to protect itself....

I think this needs fixed at least to have an HE explosion or two..

Mike

you rather want HE round to kill 5 of guys around the blast instead of 1?

[Spartan]

Hardly the point. Even if the men are spread out it picks them off one by one. Try it.

Mike

[SlapHappy]

Yeah, I'm not sure how effective firing on infantry was with field guns at fairly short distances. Especially infantry moving towards them. I think this a way to compensate for IG's defending themselves when unsupported by infantry.

Not very realistic, though.

[FinnN]

This has been discussed several times - both tanks and AT guns will usually do this, although not 100% of the time for some reason. You also get infantry shot directly through the chest.

Interestingly if you look at the results of a HE blast you'll find that the surrounding troops usually take wounds, but as troops don't change their visible behaviour that much when wounded you don't notice it that much. The basic mechanics all seem to be there - HE blast effects, troops diving when an explosion takes place, etc but the overall effect is quite unrealistic. I would have thought that against infantry at close range the gunners would swap to small arms instead of sniping away.

Have fun

Finn

[Spartan]

Finn,

I agree. I the ATG is not defended and the enemy gets in close I would have said their morale would determine if they stay or even run away.

What der it to my attention was that the attackers seemed to fall one by one with each ATG round. Maybe their are firing AP rounds:)

All these comments are in the interest of making this the best game ever. Not having the usual free pop at the developers.

Mike

[Starlight]

I have used this process when playing the french in the campaign, use HE at long range to kill large German infantry formation. But the infantry are oftem well spread out and so it appears that you can kill only 1 per HE round, but thats because they are spread out. the only other option is to find a general bottleneck and give area fire orders.

I do not think the AI is capable of doing Area fire at infantry, I think it tries to target an individual (clearly some aim point has to be used when trying to hit many infantry spread out)

[Fifty Cal']

That's why there should be cannister rounds, historically issued of course.

AT guns simply aren't designed to fire on infantry, if you think about it the best they can do is fire a round, of any sort, at individuals, AT HE shells aren't the same as arty HE shells they're designed to do different things.

More importantly, if LMG's and HMG's provided "area fire" they could be placed to protect field guns from infantry as it isn't always feasible to place AT guns "behind the lines" for protection.

[Jeff Duquette]

I guess I’m not tracking – why is it unrealistic for an antitank gone to fire HE at troops that are 100-meters away? Seems like a rather reasonable thing to do to me.

Regarding the post by Fifty-cal – yup, you took the words out of my mouth. Some antitank guns carried canister rounds in their standard ammunition load outs. Soviet 45mm PAK is a good example of a gun that should prolly have a canister round. Soviet 76mm also could fire shrapnel with the fuze set to “canister mode”.

[FinnN]

It's not so much the firing that is a problem, but the results and the accuracy. Now I don't know if it's possible, but I find it hard to imagine that a crew would be able to manhandle a gun into position, get the range and position perfectly right and pick off a single infantryman with a shell precisely at their feet or directly through the chest - and then repeat this 10 times.

With infantry headed directly at them I would have thought that cannister, which isn't in (?), or small arms would be more effective overall. Not exactly the most reliable source of information, but Close Combat did it that way, and seemed reasonable to me and matches what little I've read on the subject. I would expect heavy casualties in a frontal assault in open ground, but just the way they happen seems weird to me, not that I'm an expert or anything though.

Have fun

Finn

[Jeff Duquette]

Still not tracking. If I'm about to be overrun, I reckon I'm gonna throw as much HE down range as I have at hand. Nothing unrealistic about it. But hey -- that's just me. Lighter AT guns usually are set up with a yoke where by the gunner simply traverses via a nudge from his shoulder toward the direction of the target. Or if the weapon isnt traversed by a simple yoke than theres a simple traversing wheel utilized by the gunner. If the target is outside the frontal arc of the gun than what I see is the "game" crew exposing itself by picking up the trails and manually traversing the entire gun. But if the attack is within the frontal arc the gunner traversing to engage individual targets isn't the result of some monumental effort required on the part of the gun crew.

Personally I'm not seeing a problem with the game -- at least not for this particular issue. If infantry starts closing in on an Antitank gun what I see is the gun trying to defend itself by firing HE. The crew is typically taking casulties from small arms fire. If the gun gets flanked it is very easy to kill the crew -- i.e. once small arms fire is directed into the crew position from outside the covered arc of the gunshield the crew begin dropping like flies.

If your doing a frontal assault on an antitank gun and crying cause' you're taking fire and casulties from HE -- well you need to look to your own errors in tactical judgement rather than blaiming some "bug" or foible associated with the game engine. Try some overwatch via a sniper or an LMG. Than try flanking the gun with a maneuver element.

[ May 30, 2007, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: Jeff Duquette ]

[SlapHappy]

I think what he's questioning Jeff is the ability to hit a moving man-sized target as consistently as it happens in the game with the actual trajectory of the round. Now, with an AT gun I'm not sure. Perhaps. But this also happens with the field guns as well. I'm not sure.

I saw a documentary once with a old-time artillerist group who had a competition with a "parrot" gun vs. a modern piece of field artillery. The parrot gun crew was able to consistently hit direct fire targets much more precisely than the field gun with trained army crew. This was primarily because the parrot gun has the characteristics of a direct-fire gun similar to AT gun while the field gun does not have that direct fire accuracy.

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by SlapHappy:

I think what he's questioning Jeff is the ability to hit a moving man-sized target as consistently as it happens in the game with the actual trajectory of the round. Now, with an AT gun I'm not sure. Perhaps. But this also happens with the field guns as well. I'm not sure.

I saw a documentary once with a old-time artillerist group who had a competition with a "parrot" gun vs. a modern piece of field artillery. The parrot gun crew was able to consistently hit direct fire targets much more precisely than the field gun with trained army crew. This was primarily because the parrot gun has the characteristics of a direct-fire gun similar to AT gun while the field gun does not have that direct fire accuracy.

Yeah I saw the same show on the history channel. Very entertaining. Weren’t the dudes Canadians recently returned from Afghanistan? I think they were firing a 105mm Howitzer. I have to wonder if these dudes had ever done much direct fire shooting before this competition. But than you don't need a direct hit between the eyes with 105mm HE to get a **** load of target effect. The 105mm Howitzer isn’t optimized for direct fire. I dunno for certain about this particular make of 105mm, but some of these howitzers require one crewmen adjusting for elevation and another crew member adjusting for deflection and lead. Sorta like two guys trying to aim the same rifle at the same time. Although elevation is gonna be whatever you need for the range estimate, so maybe not so complicated. In practice these things could fire HEP\HESH and HE over open sights – just in case the battery (or gun) were about to be overrun by tanks or infantry. You see accounts of this sort of thing – particularly during the initial phases of the Korean War. Over-running artillery batteries wasn't always a cake walk for attacking tanks or infantry.

The Parrot crew were ringers. They manufactured their own ammunition, and I think they also made their own precision gun barrels. It wasn’t their first competition either -- they were old hands at that game. I’d guess these guys with their precision made Parrot and precision made ammunition would have out shot 99.9% of the gun crews in the Army of the Potomac.

On the other hand, light and medium ATGs have one gunner dealing with both elevation and deflection. The system is obviously optimized for direct fire against point targets. Training was routinely conducted against moving targets – for obvious reasons (albeit it vehicle sized moving targets). I have collected several WWII antitank gunsights over the years. I’ve got sights from a 2-pdr, Canadian made 6-pdr telescope, a US-Army 57mm and a telescope for a German 37mm PAK. They are pretty much like a telescopic sight for a rifle, cept’ some of these things also included lead lines and stadia lines for different ranges and different ammunition types.

As to the rest, I’m gonna have to disagree about the pinpoint accuracy stuff in the game. I’m really not routinely seeing 10 shots, 10 kills against infantry. I just finished replaying a scenario with a couple of Soviet 45mm Paks. Yes the guns can kill infantry with HE -- I'd guess that's why they gave these things HE. There real good at killin' dudes at close range when the dudes are settin’ still. But guys runnin' -- yeah I suppose there was the occasional one shot one kill thing going on -- but ten for ten... Maybe a gunner with maxed-out gunnery skills. On the other hand I did experience the joy of a German sharpshooter getting four for four kills on some of my low crawling guys. I finally killed the sniper with HE from a 45mm PAK. He took off running after my gun crew spotted him and started shooting HE in his direction. It took about six HE shots to bring the sniper down. This was pretty short range too – less than 50m initially and prolly 100m by the time the Pak did him in. It wasn’t a direct hit between the eyes. More like a near miss. But it was a gratifying kill all the same. Shell splinters must have got him as he ran for the tree line. The 45mm HE round is I suppose sort of akin to a fragmentation grenade going off. In other words it doesn’t need to be a direct hit to generate target effect. It only needs to be close. And a fellow moving upright is far more susceptible to being hit by shell splinters than a dude lying prone.

But I think there might be an easy go around on this – that is for players that think the ATGs are too accurate with their abilities to fling HE. Crew skills can be tweaked in the editor. There is an accuracy skill rating and a gunlayer skill rating.

[ May 30, 2007, 10:15 PM: Message edited by: Jeff Duquette ]

[Spartan]

Jeff,

Try it out I think you will see that the infantry just drop like they have been hit by a rifle bullet there is no HE explosion.

Mike

[FinnN]

For some reason you don't get the absolute accuracy in all scenarios, but when it happens it's pretty obvious. I would guess it's a combination of factors, mostly skill - I do see it more often than not though.

One example of when it happened to me was during the Bulge battle in the German campaign. Basically you're attacking a line of interconnected ATGs and artillery, I think something like 14 or so in all. I'd knocked a hole in part of the line using artillery and tank fire where I could deploy my troops for a flank assault towards the left of the hill. Two squads had crawled into an assault position in front of an AT gun, whilst I arranged some tanks and assault guns just below the brow of the hill to the side of the AT gun, where the hill also shielded them from attack from the rest of the enemy artillery. The plan was to pin the guns with infantry and then knock them out with the tanks, if they turned to face the tanks then small arms fire would hopefully get them. The second time I tried this it worked out, but the first time I mistimed the tank movements and they took longer to get into a firing position than I expected leaving the infantry exposed with no support. Every single one was killed by a single HE round, in the snow it was easy to see this as the body in white stands out nicely against the shell-hole. Again not always, but a shell through the chest as Spartan mentions isn't unusual.

Now I've been reading the Osprey book about WWII company and battalion tactics and it has a small bit on ATGs. It's a little vague on detail, but it does say that ATGs stood little hope of withstanding an infantry assault and (in the British case, doesn't mention at all other nations) that the crew were to defend with a Bren gun when not covered by supporting infantry. To me that strongly implies that at close range small arms would be used.

I have no problem at all with them using HE at larger distances, and troops do indeed take wounds from nearby blasts - although only critical wounds seem to have much of an impact on their behaviour. I would rather that the accuracy of hits was reduced, but to offset the impact of wounds be increased. The way the game formulas seem to work is that the closer you get to something the easier it is to spot and get an accurate hit, now most of the time this makes sense but in one or two instances (tanks against infantry being another example) this model breaks down I think.

Have fun

Finn

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by Spartan:

Jeff,

Try it out I think you will see that the infantry just drop like they have been hit by a rifle bullet there is no HE explosion.

Mike

I did -- see above. Sorry -- I disagree with your assessment. I don't think there is an issue. But as I said above, if you do think there is an issue, than tweak the gunner skills in the editor.

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by FinnN:

I have no problem at all with them using HE at larger distances, and troops do indeed take wounds from nearby blasts - although only critical wounds seem to have much of an impact on their behaviour. I would rather that the accuracy of hits was reduced, but to offset the impact of wounds be increased. The way the game formulas seem to work is that the closer you get to something the easier it is to spot and get an accurate hit, now most of the time this makes sense but in one or two instances (tanks against infantry being another example) this model breaks down I think.

Have fun

Finn

Wounding and there effects within the game are a different issue. Not having seen the coding, I have no idea what a wound means in real game terms. I know my little computer dudes seem to get about reasonably well after a wound -- and they can still shoot and such. I assume there is some effect for being wounded, but what it is I don't know. Probably worth opening a seperate thread on wound effects.

[Jeff Duquette]

In an attempt to move from anecdotal toward pseudo-scientific, I setup up a simple scenario to test antitank guns snipping capability. Two German 37mm PAKs vs. two Squads of Soviet infantry. And since it was indicated above that ATGs were pretty much getting direct hits on infantry dudes, I also edited the ammo load out for the PAK’s. I eliminated all the HE ammo and gave the guns only armor piercing ammunition.

I setup the infantry about 150meters from the PAKs.

The gun crew ratings were regular – one gun had a gunner with a +5 gunnery rating. The other crew – well I didn’t have a chance to see the gunner’s skill rating as the crew from the second gun was mowed down before the gun could do any shooting. The remaining crew got whittled down to two guys relatively quickly -- but did manage to do a fair bit of shooting before getting completely eliminated as well.

As to the pin-point accuracy of the PAK vs. the Infantry dudes, they fired 58 APCBC rounds and killed three Russian infantrymen. Typical ranges were between about 100 to 200meters.

[SlapHappy]

Jeff

I think this striking infantry with various shells is a function of a couple of things. Firstly, the relative accuracy of the gunner and then an attribute of the ammo itself called SOLIDPOWERRADIUS. Best as I can figure SOLIDPOWER is a function of the velocity and size of the projectile, while SOLIDPOWERRADIUS is an area of effect exerted around a projectile based on it's size. SOLIDPOWERRADIUS seems to have a range of .1 for regular bullets (7.92 mm, etc.), while 20 mm up to 150 mm ammo range from a factor of 1 up to 4. I think this is the area of effect for the projectile based on collision with an object (or a person). If you notice, soldiers hit by shells tend to literally fly back (as they should) when struck. This is the SOLIDPOWER factor exerting it's energy onto the mass of the soldier. Also probably explains the "rocking" effect of large vehicles when struck. They also have a MASS rating. There are definitely physics calculations at work here.

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by SlapHappy:

Jeff

I think this striking infantry with various shells is a function of a couple of things. Firstly, the relative accuracy of the gunner and then an attribute of the ammo itself called SOLIDPOWERRADIUS. Best as I can figure SOLIDPOWER is a function of the velocity and size of the projectile, while SOLIDPOWERRADIUS is an area of effect exerted around a projectile based on it's size. SOLIDPOWERRADIUS seems to have a range of .1 for regular bullets (7.92 mm, etc.), while 20 mm up to 150 mm ammo range from a factor of 1 up to 4. I think this is the area of effect for the projectile based on collision with an object (or a person). If you notice, soldiers hit by shells tend to literally fly back (as they should) when struck. This is the SOLIDPOWER factor exerting it's energy onto the mass of the soldier. Also probably explains the "rocking" effect of large vehicles when struck. They also have a MASS rating. There are definitely physics calculations at work here.

Very interesting SlapHappy. Thanks for posting your findings. What data file is this stored in?

Have you been able to determine where hit probability is calculated and how it is calculated? I'm curious to see if or how systemic dispersion is handled by the game engine (gun/projectile inherent shot dispersion -- or streuung -- or whatever other term you might like using).

[Jeff Duquette]

Sorry -- just an aside -- but while futzing around with another test scenario I determined that tanks can run over and kill infantry. It would seem the designers actually intended for this sort of thing to happen as the soldier graphics actually look like a dude is being run over. Not that I am morbidly dwelling on this sort of thing, but it is one of those additional touches to a game that is rather interesting.

I also noted that I could change positions of crewmen within a crew by a simple drag and drop method during game play. So if my loader has better gunnery skills I can simply drag and drop him into the gunnery position and he will take over the shooting.

[SlapHappy]

I think hit probability is largely a function of soldiers gun-laying skill modified by size of target, environmental conditions, firer's health, target's disposition, etc.

In other words, loads of things, but not sure of the actual recipe.

Most of the penetration stuff is in a file called damage.ini but these again are just the calculations. I think the penetration models are actually calculated using a mass/velocity vs. thickness/angle model rather than just derived from some kind of gun vs. armor lookup table.

Which is nice, because if you have this info about velocity and weight of shell and type it should be possible to very accurately reproduce new AT guns into the game assuming the calculations formulas work correctly.

[FinnN]

Spread and things like ricocheting are in AmmoRating.ini and AmmoTypeProp.ini, but some other variables probably affect this. Actual penetration seems to be calculated once past all that though.

These files, and lots more are just plain text .ini files sitting in the SFS files. One of the best thing a patch could do would be to move these outside so that people could tweak them themselves, thus freeing up developer time for new things for the game rather than (potentially) tweaking things backwards and forwards.

Have fun

Finn

[hellraiser]

got the same feeling as some of you guys - ATGs are t3h Sni(+)peRz

Tried several times (dunkerque scenario, playing as the germans) to disable some frog ATGs in the open (well more or less open, there is grass around...I guess:P ) using only infantry - ordered them to sneak towards the ATG location and throw grenades. No way ! Those ATG guns snipe your crawling infantry like there's no tommorrow!

I wish I could use some sort of smoke screen...

[Wildwolf45]

As more evidence for the AT Gun sniper syndrom -

Playing the German campaign and came up to the "Wacht am Rhine" scenario. I plowed over the US defenders and fought of the tank wave with only one Panther immoblized and my poor PzIIIM destroyed. So when I discovered a 57mm AT gun down in the little riverbed next to the town, I decided to send some infantry after it.

They were able to sneak to within about 100m of it by crouching behind the wall of the town and use the buildings to block LOS. When they reach the end of the wall, I issued storm orders and upped their speed to double time.

Within that 100m of having a full squad of screaming Germans charging from out of their line of sight, that 57mm gun was able to (using AP rounds it seemed) kill six of my men. This is after having to move the trails to fire upon them!

I ended up having to order another squad in and they managed to catch it on the flank.