Challenger 2 aiming

[TheVulture]

I've just finished playing "British Mettle" (great scenario BTW; nice to play tank duels at 2-3km engagement ranges) and had a few issues with the targetting behaviour of the challenger tanks.

Early on there are a bunch of static t-52 tanks to take out. They are cunningly hidden behind stone walls, and in elevated positions, so that they are very much hull down (and an absolute sod to spot...). When the challengers finally got around to spotting them, they opened fire. Obviously. And missed a lot.

Missing a lot isn't the problem, necessarily. Trying to hit a turret at 1800m isn't trivial, although I don't know what kind of accuracy would be expected in real life. It is the fact that they seemed to miss the same way over and over again. First t-52 had 4 shots, from the same tank each time, miss the top of the turret and hit the exact same spot in the ground behind it. I kept the camera in a fixed position for the turn and took screenshots of where each shot landed. They all landed within inches of each other as far as I can tell. Finally the fifth shot hit, but just barely glanced the top of the turret and didn't kill. Another 3 or 4 misses and finall another hit which killed the tank. The other t-52s had similar stories, with repeated misses just a little too high all landing in pretty much the same spot each time.

Which set me wondering whether the shot was in fact being aimed too high by the game engine. Not by much; something like 0.5m or less at 2000m range would acount for it, and make no practical difference except when trying to hit only the turret of a distant tank.

If the game was actually aiming shots at the correct point (the center of whatever was visible of the enemy tank, so the turret center in this case) you'd expect the misses to spread more or less evenly around that target point. Instead they were systematically too high by virtually the same amount every time. Which looks a lot more like the aim point is in fact too high, and the shots are spread around that aim point, and with enough shots finally one falls low enough to actually hit the tank. Which would also explain why the expected improvement in accuracy on successive shots failed to materialise too; they were more accurately aiming at the wrong point.

I'd note that later on in the battle, first round hits at 2500m+ on non-hulldown vehicles were frequent for both sides, although again, since I was being suspicious of the potential problem by this point, I noticed that vehicles for both sides were almost always being hit high up on their bodies (one warrior took a direct hit to the MG on the roof which predictably trashed the gun and harmed nothing else at all), and any misses that did occur were always too high rather than too low.

[hoolaman]

I don't think this is unique to the Challenger. Dug in tanks even in the very first mission of the old TF Thunder campaign still produce some weird spotting and targetting issues.

You are right that the game picks an aim point for certain targets. Maybe this can be tweaked, but I don't know how many levers there are to pull, if it can be changed according to the target or the shooter or the hull down state? If the Challenger is consistently aiming high on every target, that might be a problem.

[hcrof]

Could it be because of the low profile of the T-54? Perhaps the targeting is aimed at a taller tank?

I too have noticed this issue on 'British mettle'.

[c3k]

Interesting observation. ISTR that in GW1 there were stories about M1's firing THROUGH berms to destroy the Iraqi tanks dug in behind them: successfully. Would a tank, sighting an enemy behind a wall, fire at center of mass, or at the tiny portion exposed?

In regards to the original issue in "British Mettle", perhaps a test or two is in order? Anyone want to open up the editor?

Ken

[Damian90]

Strange, normally they should hit them without problem and destroy them even with HESH round hit, and with modern FCS low profile of a enemy tank isn't really an issue, I read about some M1 trails in Saudi Arabia where tanks hit 80 of 80 targets with size half of that normally used in NATO excersies... so?

And firing through the sand berms is only possible when sand is not dense, other wise it will be not so deadly.