need glasses for the sharpshooters ....

[siffo998]

i set up a test regarding tc sherman commanders:

8 lanes each separeated from the other.

8 German Snipers Squads "Elite" (everything else on normal "0") in buildings (2 floors, placed in the upper floor) facing the enemy (one us rifle squad) in the lane with a cover arc. (each squad consits of 2 men, sniper and spotter)

8 M4A3 75mm shermans "Regular" (everything else on normal "0") standing (each in his own lane). (no passengers) (each with short cover arc so that he wont fire back) (placed with the backside facing the buildings because this way the 50cal wont interfere when shooting at the tc (tank commander)

(every tank is unbuttoned)

range between the teams in one lane: 300m (the german spotter would not use his mp40 at these range)

(so every german squad is facing one us-sherman in his lane. i know the test conditions are not perfect because in some situations the germans in the 2nd floor could shoot over the wall that is separating the lane and kill enemys from another test lane!)

Results after five minutes (five rounds) testing = 8 different tests a five minutes:

German Side:

No losses

No panic

US Side:

no losses (even after 5 minutes shooting)

no panic

My opinion:

the problem is: this test would indicate that my first test at page 3 (in this thread, regarding snipers and tcs killing ability) was not correct (50 m range) because what really killed the tcs in the first test was the spotter with his spraying mp40. the snipers could not kill tcs even after five minutes in my second test. the tcs stayed unbuttoned all the time (never feeled any threat. this indicates that the center mass problem (sniper shoots aimed shots at the center mass of the tank or the tc, which is inside the tank) was not fixed with 1.01 and a sniper is still unable to shoot at the tank commanders head. i think the same thing happens when shooting at a halftrack but in this case the bullet goes trough the armor (thin) and kills the gunner in some cases.

[siffo998]

my conclusion after the 3 tests (+ the one questionable test at page 3) i did in this thread:

behaviour of snipers against infantry is ok

behaviour of snipers against halftrack is questionable

behaviour of snipers against tank is very questionable

both might come from the same problem: center mass firing

[De Savage]

I made Sherman vs. Sniper test too. 13 lines, divided by building to make one continuous line. Range about 300 meters. Sniper was in second floor - perfect line of sight to target.

After two minutes of firing all hits were "front hull". Not a single tank commander was hit. I made the test with regular skill level and with immobilize tank.

It seems there is a problem when snipers are firing tanks. Other test against infantry or half-tracks seems ok to me.

[akd]

i set up a test regarding tc sherman commanders:

8 lanes each separeated from the other.

8 German Snipers Squads "Elite" (everything else on normal "0") in buildings (2 floors, placed in the upper floor) facing the enemy (one us rifle squad) in the lane with a cover arc. (each squad consits of 2 men, sniper and spotter)

8 M4A3 75mm shermans "Regular" (everything else on normal "0") standing (each in his own lane). (no passengers) (each with short cover arc so that he wont fire back) (placed with the backside facing the buildings because this way the 50cal wont interfere when shooting at the tc (tank commander)

(every tank is unbuttoned)

range between the teams in one lane: 300m (the german spotter would not use his mp40 at these range)

(so every german squad is facing one us-sherman in his lane. i know the test conditions are not perfect because in some situations the germans in the 2nd floor could shoot over the wall that is separating the lane and kill enemys from another test lane!)

Results after five minutes (five rounds) testing = 8 different tests a five minutes:

German Side:

No losses

No panic

US Side:

no losses (even after 5 minutes shooting)

no panic

My opinion:

the problem is: this test would indicate that my first test at page 3 (in this thread, regarding snipers and tcs killing ability) was not correct (50 m range) because what really killed the tcs in the first test was the spotter with his spraying mp40. the snipers could not kill tcs even after five minutes in my second test. the tcs stayed unbuttoned all the time (never feeled any threat. this indicates that the center mass problem (sniper shoots aimed shots at the center mass of the tank or the tc, which is inside the tank) was not fixed with 1.01 and a sniper is still unable to shoot at the tank commanders head. i think the same thing happens when shooting at a halftrack but in this case the bullet goes trough the armor (thin) and kills the gunner in some cases.

Test: 10 separate lanes, each lane with 1 elite m1903a4 sniper (reduced so sniper only, no spotter) at ground level 100m from 1 Panther parked side-on unbuttoned.

Results: half of TCs (5) killed in first 15 seconds (first or second shot).

You are drawing excessively broad conclusions from narrow tests.

[siffo998]

Test: 10 separate lanes, each lane with 1 elite m1903a4 sniper (reduced so sniper only, no spotter) at ground level 100m from 1 Panther parked side-on unbuttoned.

Results: half of TCs (5) killed in first 15 seconds (first or second shot).

You are drawing incorrect and excessively broad conclusions from narrow tests.

all i said was "i think" or "in my opinion" or "might be" so i dont know where you see any excessive conclusion... the rest was just a report from that what actually happened during my test !

but nice to hear that it actually works for the us side...maybe (i marked it so you cannot call me excessive) the whole problem is just for german snipers...or maybe US tcs cannot be hit that easy because of multible reasons ?! or it might be that the ground level was the factor which actually did it. so maybe the problem lies in the snipers position when shooting at the tank.

also desavage reported the same problem with german sniper vs. sherman tank ! so it isnt just me, finally going crazy, i guess

[akd]

all i said was "i think" or "in my opinion" or "might be" so i dont know where you see any excessive conclusion... the rest was just a report from that what actually happened during my test !

but nice to hear that it actually works for the us side...maybe (i marked it so you cannot call me excessive) the whole problem is just for german snipers...or maybe US tcs cannot be hit that easy because of multible reasons ?! or it might be that the ground level was the factor which actually did it. so maybe the problem lies in the snipers position when shooting at the tank.

also desavage reported the same problem with german sniper vs. sherman tank ! so it isnt just me, finally going crazy, i guess

So maybe do some more tests before declaring a bug and its cause. Here's something that should help:

I repeated my same test above with Panthers pushed out to 300m: after 30 minutes no TCs had been hit.

I'm not ready to declare that a bug or speculate on what is causing the outcome (1 run with 10 individual tests in a single circumstance is not much data), but this may point to a more specific problem.

[siffo998]

ok nice results... of course we should do some more testing... but come on you cannot forbid someone to guess around or post his opinion regarding the ! 4 ! tests he did during this tread ! where are we ? in an autocratic system with you as the ruler ? or what ? i never blamed the game or anything like this i just tried to be productive and help to improve the game !

all what i said was marked as my opinion so i can post it wherever it want...even in an scientific work i can post my opinion or a summary regarding the testing i did... so why shouldnt i do it here ???

nonetheless this really points to something different... so maybe the answer lies in the distance. some further tests might help but i have no idea how we should proceed further...maybe steve shows up and helps us out... !

[c3k]

These results track with my preliminary results vs. TC, as well.

Thanks,

Ken

[Battlefront.com]

This is a great example of why anecdotal game reports are often times not useful. It also shows why different tests need to be done and not base conclusions on any one test. Sometimes there is a bug that is very, very specific and only a couple of different tests will get us to start narrowing it down. Well done so far!

A great example of this is the bug that had it's own sticky here prior to release. This involved a supposed "bug" where Shermans were overly superior when going against Tigers. Turns out the Tiger's tank commander was turned around the wrong way and basically wasn't seeing the Shermans, so the Shermans had free reign. Charles was pretty frustrated with us for a while because we got overly focused on the Sherman and he couldn't find any problems there no matter how many times we banged our heads on it. It wasn't until I sent him a test where it was shown that the Tigers weren't even spotting the Shermans (Hotseat works great for this sort of thing), and the problem was found very quickly from that.

Steve

[akd]

In fact, what we are assuming is a very specific bug, might even be a broader bug that is only very obvious in these specific circumstances, but I am dreading what it Is going to take to test this hypothesis. :/

[De Savage]

Another test round. Veteran German sniper, range 200 meters. Immobile Sherman M4A1 (late). 13 lanes.

1 min - all tanks unbuttoned, several hits to: front hull, weapon mount. and front turret

2 min . all tanks still unbuttioned - no TC's hit

Second test from 100 meters.

1 min - all tanks unbuttoned, several hits to: front hull, weapon mount. and front turret

2 min . all tanks still unbuttoned - no TC's hit - lot's of "kling kling" from turret and weapon mount hits. But no effect at all.

NOTE: I had to modified sniper team to 50%. Assisting MP40 spotter did fire on tanks and on first 10 second about 20% tc's were killed. This is why previous tests had been done with only sniper in team.

Going to test this with Stuart tank if it makes any difference.

[siffo998]

nicely done savage... btw if the sniper team is 300m away then the spotter also does not fire so you can leave him inside the team in this cases...

strange thing is:

according to your test the sniper never hit the sherman tc at 100m distance

but akd reported that a us sniper (also without spotter) would hit a panther tc 5 out of 10 times in 15 seconds at a distance of 100m ...(ok difference to your test was that his sniper teams were elite.

this would indicate in my opinion : that its not only related to the distance but also to the vehicle or sniper team (german/us).

[permanent666]

hedgerows as cover and between lanes - terrain falls from 30 to 20, distance between tanks and snipers ~250 noon, overcast, no wind, elite, wego, 5 lanes

on the us side (ai) elite snipers without spotter behind hedgerows

on the german side(player) pz4s facing the hedgerow, no covered arc, unbuttoned.

no tcs killed, tcs didn't even button up

[De Savage]

Another test round, this time I changed Sherman tanks to M5 Stuarts. Veteran German sniper, range 100 meters. Immobile tanks. 13 lanes. All tank crews green, normal, 0.

1 min - all tanks unbuttoned, several hits to: front hull, weapon mount. and front turret

2 min - 3 tanks buttoned, still no TC's hit.

As in Sherman test - it looks like most of the shots are aimed to "tank commander's belly".

---Edit:

I wanted to test if this problem occurs with US Springfield sniper. So I changed all German snipers to US snipers. Rerun the test. Very similar effect. No TC's killed in Shermans, but after two minutes there was two buttoned tanks. Firing range was 100 meters.

[siffo998]

i retested the setup that akd provided at page 6 because he was the only one that experienced tank tcs killed. in a panther tank with us snipers.

here is his post from page 6 regarding this test:

-------------------

Test: 10 separate lanes, each lane with 1 elite m1903a4 sniper (reduced so sniper only, no spotter) at ground level 100m from 1 Panther parked side-on unbuttoned.

Results: half of TCs (5) killed in first 15 seconds (first or second shot).

You are drawing excessively broad conclusions from narrow tests.

------------------

i used 8 lanes (akd used 10), us snipers (elite) at 50 % (without spotter) distance 100m, all panthers (panther A mid) parked side-on (side facing the snipers), unbuttoned, all snipers at ground level

My results after 8 minutes: no tcs were killed, panthers still unbuttoned

(all kind of side turret and hull hits)

My opinion:

my test setup was the same as the one from akd but showed different results (actually my results are supporting the rest of the tests from other people that tcs cannot be hit from snipers.)

which panther did you use during your test akd ? is the m1903a4 sniper a special sniper ? i just used the normal "sniper team" under "specialised teams" in the editor.

[IMHO]

I'm probably shooting my own feet as I love the snipers but...

I read a couple of lengthy interviews with German and Soviet snipers of WWII. If my memory does not fail me the main points were:

1. The maximum hitting range for the best super elite German snipers was 600m. And 600m was a very rare event - the standard was 400m. Beyond 600m they never attempted to shoot, it was a waste of concealment.

2. The maximum hitting range for an "average good" German sniper was 400m and that was also a quite rare event. The standard was around 300m.

3. The more experienced guy actually told that scoring hits was not the major objective for a German sniper. Rather they were mostly tasked with suppressive fire. Interdiction, harassment, delay of enemy advance etc. NOT kills per se. And the suppressive effect of sniper fire was devastating.

Also if we assume we model an "Average Hans" (whatever the experience) in the game realistically then kill-ratios should be quite low. After all the guys who scored more than 30 kills for the whole of WWII are all in the hall of fame now But the question is supression - all the German veterans told sniper was extremely effective in this respect.

If anyone interested I can try to dig up the source.

[stoex]

Do tell of your suspicion, akd. I would be very interested - and of course treat it as what it is prior to testing, which is informed speculation.

[akd]

i retested the setup that akd provided at page 6 because he was the only one that experienced tank tcs killed. in a panther tank with us snipers.

here is his post from page 6 regarding this test:

-------------------

Test: 10 separate lanes, each lane with 1 elite m1903a4 sniper (reduced so sniper only, no spotter) at ground level 100m from 1 Panther parked side-on unbuttoned.

Results: half of TCs (5) killed in first 15 seconds (first or second shot).

You are drawing excessively broad conclusions from narrow tests.

------------------

i used 8 lanes (akd used 10), us snipers (elite) at 50 % (without spotter) distance 100m, all panthers (panther A mid) parked side-on (side facing the snipers), unbuttoned, all snipers at ground level

My results after 8 minutes: no tcs were killed, panthers still unbuttoned

(all kind of side turret and hull hits)

My opinion:

my test setup was the same as the one from akd but showed different results (actually my results are supporting the rest of the tests from other people that tcs cannot be hit from snipers.)

which panther did you use during your test akd ? is the m1903a4 sniper a special sniper ? i just used the normal "sniper team" under "specialised teams" in the editor.

I will upload my test range later, but I've tested many times now and am still seeing hits on TCs at or below 100m.

One thing to note: when you reduce headcount of a sniper team, the sniper rifle will always be retained, but sometimes the sniper (labeled "marksman") is removed and the spotter retained. You may have to repurchase a team to make sure you are getting the sniper.

[De Savage]

I rerun my test with elite snipers. Finally there was happening something. Against Stuarts German elite snipers 100m away scored ONE tank commander after 1 minute. Two tanks buttoned.

After 2 minutes - 3 tank commanders dead, 5 buttoned tanks. I added 14th lane, so there was totally 6 tanks unharmed and unbuttoned.

I must say I was expecting most of the tanks to button and more tank commanders dead. Not very elite snipers IMHO. First tank commander was dead around one minute, so it took multiple shots for elite sniper to drop him. Not a single tank buttoned after first shots.

I even changed terrain from witch sniper fire to see it if make any difference. Earlier test was made from 2nd floor building (sniper standing inside). I made +3 meters high hill with ow bocage and elite snipers were prone this time. It didn't see any change on that.

[siffo998]

One thing to note: when you reduce headcount of a sniper team, the sniper rifle will always be retained, but sometimes the sniper (labeled "marksman") is removed and the spotter retained. You may have to repurchase a team to make sure you are getting the sniper.

that might do the trick... maybe my snipers were not really snipers...

i will retest it immediately

dasavage also sees tcs hit at 100m or lower range with elite snipers... wtf is going on here...i have no idea were this is pointing to...

because sniper accuracy seems to be ok at least against infantry... and when snipers can also hit (in very rare cases) tcs at 100m the center mass theory is also false i think... *confused*

[IMHO]

May be obvious info but...

Scoring headshots at TCs actually must have been quite difficult at that time. Current military issue sniper rifles provide ~1MOA accuracy for a new barrel and match grade ammo at a test range (controlled distance, no wind). So for WWII technology we may assume 1.5 MOA in ideal conditions (1.5MOA is about the current standard for a sniper munition - cheaper than match grade - and designated marksman rifle). So add here no range finders, significantly higher barrel wears, non-sniper munitions, no ballistic computers, no weather stations - you can easily end up having 3-4MOA. And that will be 7.5-10cm dispersion at 100m.

[siffo998]

actually at training conditions even without scopes, for a trained person aimed shots out of a kar98k at 100m are no problem (i`ve seen it my granddad used one at the range)...so why should shots at 100m with a scope fired by a elite sniper (not the average hanswurst, more like the russian Vasily Zaytsev) at a melon sized target be nearly impossible ? we are talking about 10 misses and more at a standing target !

by the way zaytsev had 242 veryfied kills according to wiki...

[De Savage]

Even more tests. I removed low bocage, lowered 5 meters to make even more perfect firing position for snipers. Elite snipers 14 lanes, 14 IMMOBILE stuarts, 100 meters. After two minutes - no TC's killed, two tanks buttoned (green tank crew).

It seems there is something wrong with the snipers against Sherman or Stuarts tanks. I havent tested this against German tanks. Might do that too to confirm this.

[akd]

I swapped PZIVs for the Panthers and was still able to get TCs hit, although this is much harder to test with PZIVs due to another bug, so the Panther is not the controlling variable.

To be clear, there is definitely something off here, but my results posted here are anecdotal and not meant to indicate what is typical, but only what is possible. I'm am relaying them only to show:

1. The claim that it is across the board impossible for snipers to hit TCs at any range is too broad.

2. The claim that snipers cannot hit TCs because they are always aiming at an unexposed part of the TC is also not certain, as moving the targets closer would not correct this error, assuming the sniper is at the same level or lower than the exposed TC.

I absolutely agree that the for some reason the vast majority of shots are hitting too low.

[De Savage]

Here's result from one run with Panthers. I used axis vs. axis - so same elite German snipers shooting Panthers instead of Stuarts.

First hits 10, 15, 20 and 20 second. After 1 minute, 2 Panthers panicked, two more rattled. Four buttoned.

After two minutes, four TCs killed, 8 tanks OK.

Totally different result with Panther than with US tanks. This is odd. Very odd.