TOW vs. ASL

[SlapHappy]

I've been looking over some scenarios for ASL and it dawned on me how much more lethal small arms are at longer range in TOW than ASL.

In ASL, the typical rifle group has a range factor of 6. With a scale of 40 meters per hex, that equals out to about 240-250 meters at maximum. The German light MG's are rated at about 320 meters; MMG's about 480 meters and the king of the battlefield (or should be) the German HMG at 640 meters (it employed optics, people, optics). The Russians feared and respected the German HMG and snipers always prioritized German MG crews.

In comparison - In the Classic Cards I was looking at - The Russian troops were much more range limited in most aspects, with rifle troops topping out at around 160 equivalent meters. The equalizer for the Russian troops seems to be numbers....enjoying typically a 2-1 advantage and sometimes more......

[SlapHappy]

Anyhows, I was getting cut up by a Polish soldier with a BAR and a couple of riflemen in a trench at about 450 meters. True, my guys were aligned along a roadway and did not have the cover the Poles did, but I had as many as 3-4 LMG's targeting a relatively small are of that trenchline and I don't believe I ever hit anything. Meanwhile, I've got a small pile of bodies forming in this area where I'm manning these LMG's. Some of these guys had decent if not above average marksmanship skill. I would have liked to see what that Pole BAR guy's numbers looked like...this guy was like a sniper with that thing, killing or injuring one of my guys with like every 3rd burst.

[Von Omar]

Firing a MG at a trench is the reverse of its inteded trench line roll.

You really shouldn't be able to kill or wound much at all on a squad tactical level by firing at a trench line. That includes any direct firing weapon.

The reverse, however, is true. A MG fired out of a trench should do significant carnage on a relatively exposed group of targets.

The best way to deal with a trench, realistically, is indirect fire. Mortars, artillary, aerial bombardment. The only thing a MG should be for is to suppress any return fire from the trench line.

The MG was originally developed to mow down swaths of advancing infantry, not to destroy entrenched earthworks.

As far as ranges go, you're absolutley right. The average rifleman's effective range was 200m at most. Adjustable sights at the time ranged up to 2000m (depending on the weapon) but this was just to accomodate the range of the weapon itself. Most kills came even closer than 200m. Optics would be a very welcomed thing in ToW and would change the tank combat and AT gun abilities extremely.

Even the differences in iron sights made an impact, albeit too minor to simulate in ToW.

ASW is a little more realistic in this regard... The Germans were always outnumbered on every major front (other than Poland) strategically. However, on a tactical level, it wasn't until later in the war that they suffered a significant numerical inferiority at a tactical level, which ToW is inteded to represent.

In your Polish BAR scenario, your men were doomed without cover and indirect fire support. Realistically they would have withdrawn and awaited further support. Your squad would probably have had a 50mm mortar nearby as well, or maybe an 80mm if they were lucky.

LMG's didn't have the optics you mentioned either, if they were true squad level LMGs. They'd be lucky to have a tripod and most likely had only a bipod. You'd be lucky to hit anything at a trench line against anything but the most pathetic of foe.

[nachinus]

I've always thought that infantry is too vulnerable to any kind of weapon in this game, even at very long ranges. The relative lack of cover for infantry in ToW doesn't help much either (lack of rocks/rough terrain like in CM, no proper hedgerows...)

[SlapHappy]

I do know this: The game has a dispersion characteristic based on range. For heavy weapons it is based on 1000 meters. It goes something like this

Dispersion 1000 .25

The first number is the range base and the second is the dispersion offset. The higher the 2nd number, the higher the dispersion characteristic.

For small arms it looks like this:

Dispersion 100 .17 (this is the actual number for the HMG-42)

I think a weapon with a historical effective range of 2200 meters needs to be classified along with the heavy weapons or at least bump it's base range up considerably.

[SlapHappy]

OK, "dispersion" does not seem to effect the INHERENT ACCURACY of the weapon, but does determine how rounds will 'spread'.

However, the spread characteristic seems to be more like the base of a cone. It has a vertical and horizontal spread characteristic.

I'm trying to get my MG to hose down an area, but would like to get more or less a HORIZONTAL ONLY spread of rounds. Is there any way to do this?

Also, what besides marksmanship or gunnery skill affects ultimate accuracy? I've set up a test with a HMG and crew firing on an unarmed group of Russian soldiers at about 575 meters. They both have 100's in marksmanship and gunnery. Yet they can't seem to get very man hits even after burning through about 10 belts (750 rounds).

Before I took their ammo away, they would typically gun down my two crewmen fairly quickly - Over iron sights!

[Von Omar]

Could it be the difference between moving and stationary targets? What were the field conditions? Were the Russians in an open field on flat ground or something else?

An exposed HMG team in a static position should be very vulnerable.

That being said, if the Russians are in the open an HMG should rip them up pretty consistantly, all things being equal (which they usually aren't)

[SlapHappy]

MG was on top of a hill with infantry standing down in an open field. Troops were moving around a bit under AI control, but they had no movement script, so they were primarily stationary.

I found the pertinent tables in a file called accuracy.ini.

It is as I expected, the MG's have been nerfed.

[Von Omar]

I'd tend to agree with you completely.

I think at those ranges they could keep the MG deviation but seriously nerf the rifles to compensate.

[SlapHappy]

Well, even though the useful range of the MG's are much higher their inherent accuracy is LOWER THAN THAT OF A PISTOL. Below is the table they use, higher numbers indicate better accuracy....

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">[section]

Infantry // 1

TankLight // 2

TankMedium // 3

TankHeavy // 4

SPGOpen // 5

SPG // 6

Artillery // 7

ArtilleryHeavy // 8

DOTHmg // 9

DOTArtillery // 10

DZOT // 11

HMGun // 12

Mortar // 13

Flak // 14

Car // 15

ArmoredCar // 16

Plane // 17

CrewArtillery // 18

CrewOpenTanks // 19

OtherCrew // 20

[Accuracy]

// 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Pistol 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 1 1 2 100 17 17 16

Rifle 12 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 1 1 2 100 14 14 13

Submachine_gun 7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 1 1 1 100 9 9 8

Sniper_rifle 20 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 2 2 4 100 22 22 21

Machine_gun 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 100 9 9 8

Anti_tank_rifle 30 20 18 16 18 16 20 18 10 10 15 25 25 16 25 25 100 30 30 30

Faust 50 40 35 30 35 30 40 35 40 40 40 45 45 40 45 45 100 50 50 50 </pre>

[Sneaksie]

Well, SlapHappy, your determination is admirable, but let's be more careful with assumptions:) None of weapon types was intentionally nerfed.

Accuracy.ini stores values for Accuracy SKILL.

Each successful hit at infantry using pistol grants the shooter 15 experience points, and hit using MG only 5, because it's easier to score a hit with MG spray than using a pistol. Note that there are separate columns for each target type - hit at infantry will grant AT rifleman 30 points for increasing his Accuracy, while hit at heavy tank 16 (much bigger target).

These exp points are used in Skills.ini. Accuracy skill can raise during battle, btw.

[SlapHappy]

OK So you got me....Actually I was unsure of this anyway because the numbers on the table didn't jive up with a logical progression.

I'd be more than happy to quit conjecturing if some cold hard facts could be put forward

BTW, I'm not so much questioning the implementation as much as I am questioning the results on the battlefield...which just don't make sense to me....

[SlapHappy]

So inherent accuracy is SOLELY determined by either gunnery skill or marksmanship skill level?

[CharlieMike24]

I found the gunnery accuracy too high with artillery/tanks making my first attempts playing TOW short-lived!

I reduced the values in the data/ai/levels textfile under the Shooter/Gunlayer heading by about 50% thoughout the Novice-Elite categories.

This reduces the gunnery accuracy of both my enemy and my own army... but leads to a longer game-play with more chance of manouevering and tactics - I still get beaten, but at least I get to see the battle unfold!

[SlapHappy]

CharlieMike

I agree that's probably the best way to go about it overall (especially since this seems to be the overriding factor).

I was genuinely hoping, however, that there was some unique characteristics weapon for weapon that I could exploit. Specifically I wanted to tweak by weapon type, but that doesn't seem to be doable. I feel that some of the weapons are over-modelled, while others are under-modelled.

[Sneaksie]

Of course you can. You should look in Guns directory. There are nationality directories in it, and ultimately you need files named like 12_7mm_DShK_HMG.ini.

About Lines and LinesH - Lines is obsolete and not used (this is old values when weapon ranges were scaled to 500m maximim range).

Dispersion is inherent characteristic of the weapon, you can change it or change another factor - aiming error.

It's AimDistance and AimRadius strings. The numbers in AimRadius are for 100 skill shooter, for example, 100 skill shooter will have aiming error of 10cm at 100m while firing this HMG. Of course, aiming error is greater for lower skill shooters.

[SlapHappy]

Ok thanks for the info, Sneaksie. I kind of figured out what dispersion was, but it didn't seem to have direct bearing on INITIAL accuracy. That is, if the MG did not have initial accuracy any hits caused by bullet dispersion would be totally incidental. Am I wrong about this? Even when I made dispersion very very tight, it didn't seem to effect overall accuracy, it just meant that the repeated rounds tended to strike within a very confined diameter...but not neccessarily any mkore likely to strike the target.

I think you are right, it's probably the AimDistance and AimRadius factors I need to be looking at.

Thanks for the tips......

[SlapHappy]

Ok, those values are the ones I needed. Now it is possible to spec the guns individually for inherent accuracy. I mainly want to be able to do that for things like the HMG's, although there could ultimately be minor deviations for rifles with iron sights. My thinking is that most iron-sighted rifles that are not carbines and fire the large battle rifle rounds (7.62 or 7.92 or 8 mm) have roughly the same "real-world" effective range. My feeling right now is that might be a bit high for all rifles. I think it's very cool that the system uses real-number deviations based on shooter skill. Once the numbers are tweaked for "best-case" marksman, all the grades below that should level out nicely.

I recently looked at a web-page of a gun collector and skilled shooter who had ordered himself a couple of mint condition mosin-nagant's. One was the standard rifle and the other the '44 carbine version. In his firing tests, he was getting on target hits with about a 3-inch spread at 50 yards. This was controlled fire from a skilled marksman under non-stress conditions.

Using Sneaksie's example above, we see that a highest level marksman (100 skill) will experience a 10 cm variance at about 100 meters. 10 cm is equivalent to about 4 inches. So that is a slightly higher variation at about twice the effective range (45 meters vs. 100 meters).

According to what Sneaksie is saying, there must also me an inverse relationship between shooter marksmanship and shot variation - ie., as shooter skill level decreases, shot variation increases.