Super Sherman annoyances

[RockinHarry]

I´ve already been bothered from it since the beginning, but now I caught it all in a short video sequence.

Limitless gun (and MG) elevation, allowing to shoot where it isn´t capable of in RL.

Continuous machine gun bursts. Something that non tank mounted MGs are capable of.

Smoke mortar capabilities, I´ve never seen before for such an AFV.

...and all while beeing hit by two Shrek rounds in short time.

BFC...fix or do somefink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5pAZqCs_wA

[siffo998]

i think the etraordinary survivability of the sherman in this situation comes from the extreme slope he is standing on. it adds extremely to the the allready strong upper frontal glacis plate (strongest part of the sherman). i`ve had the same situation in a pbem where one of my shermans survived (bounced off) a panther ap shell from the glacis plate while standing in a sloped position like the one shown in your video.

to provide some technical data:

in jentz book "germanys panther tank and the quest for supremacy" he writes at page 127 that a panther with his 75mm main gun must come at least 100m close to penetrate a shermans upper frontal hull armor if the sherman is standing in a 30° angled position. and cmbn simply reflects this facts i think.

when it comes to shreks i think the situation is similar. as far as i know the shrek uses hollow charge which would explain why even in this situation he is able to penetrate the shermans glacis at all. but due to the extreme angle the sherman is standing only a very small penetration (not really leathal) occured while most of the energy simply bounced off.

in my opinion your example just shows how sophisticated the armor calculation in cmbn really is.

[LemoN]

I've noticed this with all tanks, they'll depress their guns well below their RL capabilities.

[RockinHarry]

i think the etraordinary survivability of the sherman in this situation comes from the extreme slope he is standing on. it adds extremely to the the allready strong upper frontal glacis plate (strongest part of the sherman). i`ve had the same situation in a pbem where one of my shermans survived (bounced off) a panther ap shell from the glacis plate while standing in a sloped position like the one shown in your video.

to provide some technical data:

in jentz book "germanys panther tank and the quest for supremacy" he writes at page 127 that a panther with his 75mm main gun must come at least 100m close to penetrate a shermans upper frontal hull armor if the sherman is standing in a 30° angled position. and cmbn simply reflects this facts i think.

when it comes to shreks i think the situation is similar. as far as i know the shrek uses hollow charge which would explain why even in this situation he is able to penetrate the shermans glacis at all. but due to the extreme angle the sherman is standing only a very small penetration (not really leathal) occured while most of the energy simply bounced off.

in my opinion your example just shows how sophisticated the armor calculation in cmbn really is.

Sorry, you missed the point, or maybe I used a misleading thread topic. It´s not about Shreks, Sherman armor and the like, it´s mainly about:

Limitless gun/mg traversing capabilities, continuous mg burst capability and smoke mortars pesting the map with ease.

Just wondering that nobody in WW2 sent a lone, unsupported tank battalion through the streets of Berlin, rooting out Hitler in quick order.

To be more serious and not that mentioned issues had been discussed before:

CMBN tanks appear not to have "blind spots", increasing their all around awareness to unrealistic levels, particularly vs. nearby infantry. If it´s not blind spots, it is the capability of robot like tracking and engaging nearby targets, when gun traverse and elevation limits actually should prevent this. (check YT video) But CMBN AFV do apparently NOT have these limits.

Continuous fire MG bursts for tanks only? Why?

I´ve not tested other AFV smoke mortar capabilities and their FX in the game, but I can´t recall having something like that seen before. Can somebody enlighten me?

[womble]

The gun depression/elevation thing is a programming compromise. Making it accurate meant programming the AI to take it into acount and that was considered too much effort for too little return to be worthwhile.

I don't see the 'continuous MG bursts' you're concerned about. What is shown does look like longer bursts than a tripod MG generally uses, but I think it's because the coax and bow MGs are nearly lined up in the view you're using, so it looks like they're originating from just one MG, when in fact it's two MGs firing bursts one immedately after the other.

Surviving 2 frontal penetrations from Shrecks isn't that unusual, and that front glacis is pretty good protection against kinetic AP.

[RockinHarry]

The gun depression/elevation thing is a programming compromise. Making it accurate meant programming the AI to take it into acount and that was considered too much effort for too little return to be worthwhile.

I don't see the 'continuous MG bursts' you're concerned about. What is shown does look like longer bursts than a tripod MG generally uses, but I think it's because the coax and bow MGs are nearly lined up in the view you're using, so it looks like they're originating from just one MG, when in fact it's two MGs firing bursts one immedately after the other.

Surviving 2 frontal penetrations from Shrecks isn't that unusual, and that front glacis is pretty good protection against kinetic AP.

The MG burst originates just from the turret MG and it surely is longer than anything I´ve seen from infantry HMGs.

Shrek hits. That was just a sidenote. Disregard please!

The gun depression/elevation programming compromise is a bad compromise. It just produces Rambo tank capabilities and makes them lone rulers of urban combat.

[flamingknives]

No elevation/depression limits are modelled. It's pretty annoying but BFC have stated that they feel that the necessary UI to communicate these limits to the user and make the AI intelligently adapt to cope with the limits would take time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Machine gun length of burst are related to how threatened the unit feels (amongst other things)

Not sure I understand what the problem with smoke mortars is?

[siffo998]

Limitless gun/mg traversing capabilities, continuous mg burst capability and smoke mortars pesting the map with ease.

Just wondering that nobody in WW2 sent a lone, unsupported tank battalion through the streets of Berlin, rooting out Hitler in quick order.

To be more serious and not that mentioned issues had been discussed before:

CMBN tanks appear not to have "blind spots", increasing their all around awareness to unrealistic levels, particularly vs. nearby infantry. If it´s not blind spots, it is the capability of robot like tracking and engaging nearby targets, when gun traverse and elevation limits actually should prevent this. (check YT video) But CMBN AFV do apparently NOT have these limits.

Continuous fire MG bursts for tanks only? Why?

I´ve not tested other AFV smoke mortar capabilities and their FX in the game, but I can´t recall having something like that seen before. Can somebody enlighten me?

like womble said... i havent seen limitless mg burst either... i `ve seen a tank crew that uses his mgs in a emergency situation to surpress the spotted enemy.

further i cannot second that tanks have no blind spots... I`ve seen numerous encounters where tanks rolled by my troops in only some meters distancce and havent seen anything. the moment you shoot at the tank (for example with a shrek, especially frontally where the tank has the best sighting capabilities its obvious that the tank opens fire on the the enemy who threatens him. i think a lot of people would complain when the tac ai from a tank would not do this.

the limitless gun traverse is a compromise like womble said. i`ve even seen a thread in the cmsf forum that is covering this topic. imagine you would send up a tank ingame up a slope and he wont open fire because the tac ai has problems with gun traverse. i think a lot of people would complain because... "in reality the tank commander would position his tank the way that he could use his main gun/mgs etc".

i cannot see a problem with the smoke screen either. the smoke mortar could cover the sherman in smoke within seconds.

[Michael Emrys]

i cannot see a problem with the smoke screen either. the smoke mortar could cover the sherman in smoke within seconds.

Perhaps the problem is that it may be getting more use in the game than was historically the case. I don't know if that's so, but I can't remember any historical accounts where it is mentioned, FWIW.

The longer or more frequent MG bursts might also be an attempt to model the effect of the humongous amount of ammo that tanks carry, so that the gunners are more inclined to use it.

Michael

[Sublime]

I´ve already been bothered from it since the beginning, but now I caught it all in a short video sequence.

Limitless gun (and MG) elevation, allowing to shoot where it isn´t capable of in RL.

Continuous machine gun bursts. Something that non tank mounted MGs are capable of.

Smoke mortar capabilities, I´ve never seen before for such an AFV.

...and all while beeing hit by two Shrek rounds in short time.

BFC...fix or do somefink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5pAZqCs_wA

To be fair - to call tanks masters of urban combat in this is an extreme, extreme stretch. For one my tanks get plastered all the time without it being in urban combat. I have not seen this 'borg spotting' your reffering to with the tanks seeing infantry, if anything they seem to be pretty realistic - blind as bats unless unbottoned generally.

The gun traverse has been explained already.

The smoke mortars when threatened - I dont think they're overly modelled either. To be fair IDK if Shermans had the Nahverteidigungswaffe the German heavy cats have but still..

As far as the MG bursts - coax MGs are indeed more heavy duty than regular machine guns, and Im pretty sure can fire for more extended periods. If anything the ability to carry a stable mount, huge amounts of ammo, and coolant for the MGs on a tank.. ?

I agree the robotic bursts are annoying on the MGs, especially on HMGs that should be putting out streams of lead. But theres only so much the game designers can do.

Dont take this the wrong way man, Ive read a lot of your posts I know you're not trolling and you're a intelligent enuff guy, Im just wondering if this is a result of a really bad day or a fluke situation?

[Redwolf]

Modeling minimum elevation would create nightmare for both TacAI and programmed opponent.

You wouldn't like your precious tank to drive into a position and then do nothing about the gun elevation problem, standing there until shot. Coding a reaction to this condition isn't obvious since all the easy looking things you can do (would do in real life) can quickly get out of control with AI which has no common sense.

Just for starters, driving forward until the slope is "correct" is a non-starter since there's no intelligence stopping this mechanism if it would expose the tanks "too much". What's "too much"?

[RockinHarry]

I´m about to finish my "Block by Block" scenario very soon and I´m looking forward to unavoidable comments re Sherman Rambo tanks in this one.

Might be, every CMBN tank has blind spots when watching around, but as said there´s no blind spots for shooting, particularly at very close range (point blank range actually). I´ll make some more videos, as these are better than a thousand words...

It´s mainly a tank vs infantry at close range problem and It bothers me since playing Busting the Bocage in the Demo.

I have no data re Sherman smoke mortars, but in the game I find them to be as effective as a full light artillery smoke barrage.

Tank MG emergency fire: Could be, single burst are fired without interruption, making them look/sound like a "long burst" instead. No problem with that. Yet can´t get rid of the "Star Wars robot gun" impressions, when watching tank vs infantry engagements at close range.

[LemuelG]

The Sherman is Super, glad you noticed. Soon I shall start petitioning for them to be able to fire indirectly as well

[RockinHarry]

Not to be misunderstood, while the thread indicates "issues" with the Sherman, it´s a general problem with CMBN armor. The Shermans is the only tanks in my scenario WIP, but if the scenario would see germans attacking with armor, it could also have read "Super Pz-4, Panther, Tiger,...annoyances". Beside the excessive smoke laying capabilities, I have no other general problems with the Shermans in the game.

@ LemuelG

No petitioning necessary. If you watched the video in my initial post, you noticed its indirect fire capabilities already, did you?