[Mobhack]

have played these games since day 1 when SSI first released them as Gary Grigsby programmed them and I recall a large hugh and cry back then about atry effectiveness.

As we found when we had the code in our hands - the AI was getting large "hints" as to enemy location, as well as the ability to "teleport" just-arriving fires across the map AFAIR - but we removed such code back in 2001 or whenever the DOS version of SPWW2 came out. However - the SSI team would have had only the usual 1 year to market game development cycle, and we have been refining WW2/MBT for much longer than that. So I had the time to do such a specialist AI routine (and tune it too), whereas they most likely did not.

However there seems to be a "folk memory" of borg-AI arty in the SP community, despite the repeated statement of fact by the programmers of the Camo verion that we have removed the original SSI code borg, and instituted a human-style decision matrix on the AI. This "folk memory" may still apply to non-Camo versions of the code, but frankly, we are tired of it repeatedly being ressurected as applying to ourproduct .

First off this game is primarily a surpression game, ie if your troops are surpressed they cannot see, move, or fire with any accuracy. To me the 81mm motar is just waaay to effective vs armour in this representation. I think I would have to look very hard to find any real life events where tanks were disabled by motar fire (I am sure there must be some but I feel it must be rare, since I am a baby boomer and so grew up with tons of WWII Vets around me my own father having fought at Iwo Jima).

In the original SSI code, if HE pen was equal to the armour - it went though. But as stated somewhere in the release notes - now HE pen needs to have signifigant overpenetration to have a chance of penetrating, and WH size of the HE round is assessed. So little 81mm mortars are no longer very effective armour killers. In SP III the 81mm mortar was the primary human M1A1 killer of choice (cost/benefit analysis) because in SP III with its multi-vehicle platoon unit lumps, it could not differentiate between killed and mobility killed (disabled vehicles were not separated off the lump as individuals) - so an 81mm track hit removed (=killed)the tank. (I have no idea whether or not this behaviour was modified for the SPWAW code - based on the SP III code).

And the first Tiger II met by the Allies was killed by a British 2 inch mortar - opinion varies as to wheter it dropped down the turret hatch, or blew up the ammo truck parked beside it but the result was the same - one cooked tigger.

Now the root of my problems to a large degree are that I play for ONLY a decisive victory (this maybe a flaw in my chracter) so when odds like 95% to hit are given and the result is 6 misses or no effect in a row it tends to raise my ire.

And we have already discussed the random number generator in SP, and done dumps of 1000s of numbers, published (whether here or on the old Yahoo board) which proved entirely normal distribution of the random numbers, and no unusual chains of numbers in the output stream.

Sometimes you have a "bad hair" day and miss the barn door several times, and others you get the opposite effect and get a few low percentage pops on target. Such is life. Such are random number generators (which are not "random" but pseudo-random, if you want to be pedantic .

Cheers
Andy