[chuckfourth]

Hello
I should of course firstly say thanks to all those who have brought to me so many many hours of enjoyment by contributing to this game.
Below I have attached the "results" of a test I did on the DOS version some time ago which may have some relevance to this thread. Of course I do not know if the causes of this descrepancy in results between indirect and direct fire has been addressed other than to make open topped vehicle a bit cheaper.

Thanks for your time Chuck

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control;
DIRECT fire of 50 mm Russ mortar (range > 250m) at sdkfz251 face armour 1 target, yields from 43 hits: 1 destroyed, 3 immobilised, 1 "*" hit. About 300 (give or take a couple) rounds fired.
test;
INDIRECT fire of 50 mm Russ mortar at sdkfz251, yield from 48 hits: 15 destroyed, 5 immobilised, 3 "*" hits. Total of 360 rounds fired.
test conditions;
big park of sdkfz251(1 per hex) surrounded by snipers (if not in view I dont get the 'hit, no effect' message) Artillery spotter AO cannot see target.
All shots reported as 'No Line Of Sight'
My conclusions;
The ratio of kills to hits is much higher for indirect fire than for direct fire
Possible cause(ignoring airburst);
shells falling directly in open back of vehicle
problem;
Probability of round falling in open back if they fall randomly in the 50 m hex, about 1 in 625 (given open back area of about 4 m sq.)
Actual probability according to test, 15 in 360. ie 104 in 2500 or 1 in 25
Possible causes;
1. Being in view is being interpreted by the Game as being in Artillery OP view(ie directed fire).
2. Consistency or Dispersion of the mortar is much less than "random in 50m square" ie by a significant digit shouldnt apply to "undirected" fire however as in this test.
3. Game considers being in blast zone equivelent to direct hit for purposes of calculating indirect fire effect, as this is indirect (plunging) fire the game is testing the HE effect against the top rather than the much more probable side, rear or front armour. This effectively increases the vehicles open top to the size of the blast zone explaining the difference if kills between direct and indirect fire.
While watching the fall of shot for results you soon realise that the distrubution of the results is even enough for this to be considered a big enough result set to draw conclusions from.

Also No. of rounds fired for the indirect test is an underestimate by about maybe 5% as rounds that fall in a hex where the vehicle has already been destroyed should be ignored.

Re: point 3 If this is in fact the case then (for closed top vehicles) near misses from indirect fire are being tested against the top armour rather than the side armour.
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