Artillery

[dwmalesevich]

What I am saying is not that I use the mortars but in a generated campain game in 2 games I have lost an average of 6 armored vehicles to 75mm artillery and 81mm mortors including at least one sherman, and 2 M-10's. Most losses being M-3 apcs. As a 20 year armor man I have seen what an 81mm mortor round looks like when it hits and it is not like the movies. Also If you take the square meters of a hex 2175 and the square meters of a M-3 (15) the number is way to high. If you plot out the burst radius of an 81mm mortar round at about 40 meters in diameter you get that high a hit ratio. However that diameter is the 50% hit radius on personnel targets with the shrapnal. You have to use the size of the projectile agains the area of the hex and the actual area of the vehicle. Then on an open topped pc you would have to halve the area for the open rear compartment. I could see more mobility hits or the killing of passengers rather than the destruction of the vehicle. Your example of a British 2 inch mortar killing a King Tiger is a case of using the exception to prove the rule. I doubt if that has ever happened again.

In summery what I do not like is the high precentage of vehicle kills by 75mm and 81mm mortars. If they were mobility hits I could accept that but not that many kills by mortars.


Dave Malesevich

SFC USA-Ret 19K4HA7

[Miki]

Hi gents,

Andy, Don, Thanks for looking into it.

[DRG]

We are looking into this and we are testing changes but it's a delicate balance to keep everyone happy ( well.......not EVERYONE, that's impossible.....just most people )

Don

[DRG]

dwmalesevich said:
In summery what I do not like is the high precentage of vehicle kills by 75mm and 81mm mortars. If they were mobility hits I could accept that but not that many kills by mortars.


Dave Malesevich

SFC USA-Ret 19K4HA7

We are looking into this. The "problem" was not obvious to us while playtesting. It was only after the game was released and the complaints started and we specifically set up tests that the issue really showed up. The changes to the code to make these changes are always small and subtle otherwise we end up with the pendulum on the other side. It also depends on the tests run. The first few we ran didn't really show a problem so we had to refine the tests. There are quite a number of random variables built into the game and these can throw off test results in small test samples so what you see in a couple of games may not show up in a couple of tests simple becasue the game tossed in a couple of curve balls to my test ( or your game )

Don

[dwmalesevich]

Don,

I understand what your are saying. So you understand where I am comming from leave me tell you a little about myself. 1st I have 21 years of Active Duty in the US Army as a tank commander/platoon sergeant and Master Gunner. I have also taught soldiers how to be tank commanders. On computers I go back to an Altair 6000 with 640bits of memory. In gaming I go back to 1961 and Avalon Hills D-Day. In the 70's I acquired over 100 SPI games. Your two games are the only armor games that I currently play to any extent. They are fun and fairly accuate.

What I do not like comes from over 2500 main gun rounds fired out my tanks. I do know tank gunnery.

After the 1st round is fired any competent gunner should be able to hit the target by the 2nd at latest 3rd round fired. Once you have hit the target the largest problem is solved (determining range) From then on you should be able to continue to hit the target as long as the err budget doesn't cause you to miss. In game turms once you hit you should probobly get a 15-20% bonus for contiued hits on the same target or any target within 2 hexes of the origional target.

Secondly I do not like the way that each tank will fire all of its weapons at the same target even if there is no chance of target damage. I would really like to see the possibilty of multipule engagements ie(engaging 2 or more targets with 2 or more weapons systems) In game turms this means putting the gunner on to a main gun or mg target and then letting the TC fire his 50 at a different target. The bow gunner should always engage the closest infantry in his line of sight.

I realize that I have rambled here. I'm sorry.

In conclusion please do not think that I don't like what you guys have done because I realy apprciate your hard work.

Dave Malesevich
SFC USA-Ret 19K4HA7

[Charles22]

You do recall these are WWII tanks don't you? I mean some of them didn't have anything more thna the most rudimentary optics. Also consider that your targets in many cases are not standing still, because even though the enemy unit is stationary as you see it, sometimes the unit actually has a speed that it's traveling. Of course, the shot is more difficult still when your tank is moving also. The WWII tanks found it pretty close to impossible to hit much of anything while moving as I understand, and then there's the often added difficulty if the tank hits a bump or divet in the ground, further throwing the shot off.

[dwmalesevich]

Yes I understand that these are WWII tanks I started on the M48A2 which is basicly an M-26 with a balictic computer and a rangefinder. Using the balistic sights on a tank an experianced gunner can hit moving targets by the 2nd or 3rd round. Now if you are moving (and cannot execute a short halt attack) that is a differnt story unless you are in an M-3 or M-5 light tank that had a stabalization system. Then you have a great 37mm gun that is usless against anything made after 1942. Altho there is a story about an M-8 AC that destroyed a Tiger with its 37mm. (It was a shot up the rear of the tank at about 10 feet range.)

Dave Malesevich
SFC USA-Ret 19K4HA7

[Charles22]

Have you considered the high-velocity issue too? Because I would assume the vast majority of the modern or semi-modern systems see a much higher proportion of high-velocity, therefore making the shot much surer with or without any optics.

Also, please consider that you said "experienced gunner" as there's a great many of these nations that aren't using those sort of gunners at various times. Get a Panther out there with an experienced gunner (what, a guy with experience in the 80's?) and I think you'll usually egt them by the 3rd shot in not too far a distance. Also, remember the game is just giving percentages, so for every decent tank that misses the first 6 shots, you may have another that hits the first time, which would average what you're saying the average gunner could do.

[DRG]

dwmalesevich said:
<snip>
What I do not like comes from over 2500 main gun rounds fired out my tanks. I do know tank gunnery.

After the 1st round is fired any competent gunner should be able to hit the target by the 2nd at latest 3rd round fired. Once you have hit the target the largest problem is solved (determining range) From then on you should be able to continue to hit the target as long as the err budget doesn't cause you to miss. In game turms once you hit you should probobly get a 15-20% bonus for contiued hits on the same target or any target within 2 hexes of the original target.

OK.... do you have any examples of what you are unhappy with exactly becasue if I take a tank with an experienced gunner in this game and fire it at a target it will almost certainly hit and kill that target in three shots. ( assuming the gun has the penetration to kill ). Set up a test sceanrio and show me the problem. Give the gunner 95 experience

dwmalesevich said:
Secondly I do not like the way that each tank will fire all of its weapons at the same target even if there is no chance of target damage. I would really like to see the possibilty of multipule engagements ie(engaging 2 or more targets with 2 or more weapons systems) In game turms this means putting the gunner on to a main gun or mg target and then letting the TC fire his 50 at a different target. The bow gunner should always engage the closest infantry in his line of sight.

I realize that I have rambled here. I'm sorry.

In conclusion please do not think that I don't like what you guys have done because I realy apprciate your hard work.

Dave Malesevich
SFC USA-Ret 19K4HA7

Point 2 I'm almost 100% certain you are never going to see the way you describle it. The tank may switch targets but having the turret engage one target and the hull MG engage another is very, very unlikely to happen

Don

[Mobhack]

The game system uses a 3 shot ladder for most weapons (exeptions are infantry small arms and missiles mainly).

Roughly speaking, first shot at a target is 1/3 the chance, second 2/3 and third (and subsequent) at full to-hit chance.

And I changed the code in MBT for laser range finders (20+) to a 2-stage ladder, if within a certain multiplier of the RF number, which I cannot recall ATM - may be 1.5 .

The Fire Control and Range Finder, and other factors also produce limitations, so if you have a shot that goes say 25% and then sticks on say 50% for subsequent shots, then you have reached some sort of limitation (FC, range finder, or movement (yours or target) etc).

Personally, I do not really like the SP "formula based" sytem. If I were ever to do my own engine from scratch, it would be a system based like all good tabletop wargames, on tables. Same for target effect. For an example - see any of the WRG or TTG wargames rule sets. So - a to-hit table for each gun/ammo combination, and an effect table for each ammo type, with columns for 0-50, 51-100 etc, and line items for adjustment factors (Target in woods, -20, and so on). Tables can be published easily, formulae would need the end user to scrabble through thousands of lines of C code. Tables are also easier for the programmer to debug too, as you can make an educated guess on what some adjustment would do to hit chance or kill chance, otherwise you have to debug thousands of lines of C, calling various subroutines and so on.

This game system has no "I have hit the target" modifier either, unlike say the WRG 1950-2000 system. Just number of shots fired on target which gets reset if you change to a new one.

The other problem with the SSI formula-based system is that it uses one set of numbers and then tries to fit this into various entirely different types/modes of fire (AA, HE, AP, missile) etc.

It probably made sense back in 1990 or so, when PCs were so limited in storage both disk and RAM, that a few bytes shaved here or there allowed an extra 100 units. And individual tables for each weapon would be a bad case there as well. The limitation to HEAT and sabot for weapon 1 is likely from there - my guess is there was only HE and AP, and someone added that at the last minute. And instead of extending the original array of ammo for each weapon slot, (ammo[slot][2] to ammo [slot][4]) they were tacked on as single bytes in the weapon data, and then in order to fit HEAT weapons in slots not #0 the "222 kludge" came in, which would not have been needed if the extra 2 ammo type slots had been added to the ammo array in the first place. But back then, 6 more bytes of storage (times N units) was probably important due to the limited memory. After all - when PBEM replay was added then you had to have a PC with extended memory and at least 4MB (?) of RAM, which back then was considered huge .

So - all likely inherited limitations from the original target system, i.e. a 1MB or so RAM PC (486 processor, if lucky).

Cheers
Andy

NB - WRG have published the old out of print "Infantry Action" rules on-line here WRG 1925-75 Rules - a good use for you 1/72 Airfix figures, or an excuse to get a few boxes

And for a typical "table based" approach rather than formulas see the infantry results table of the above Anti Personell table