Axis armour can't shoot

[Phoenix100]

edit

[navwarcol]

Looking at this.. very early/late here.. but a quick question, are you only seeing it with the M3?

[Phoenix100]

Took it down, Navwarcol. There was a 57mm gun in the Allied unit and I think that skewed it. Might have been the case when I ran your modded estab too, so will have to re-run that. I've just ran the tests again - used a unit without an AT gun - and been happier (didn't lose a tank if there was no AT gun). Also increased the range to just over a km - a good stand-off range.

Basically, 12 Panthers, or Tigers (in my tests so far it's been the same result whichever)versus 2 M3s and 3 M8s will use about 20 shells in 3 minutes and take out 1 M8 and 2 M3s. That's 6 shells per target kill, roughly, which is unnecessarily high, perhaps, if you're thinking that it took one tank six shells to kill a halftrack, but it's all in about 3 minutes, with all the Panthers or Tigers (I assume) all firing off together. So there's a huge overkill involved arising from them all firing at the same time perhaps? I can't tell, of course, if they all just open up. But that might explain the high ammo expenditure over a short period of time. And might explain why it takes 6 shells to kill a halftrack. So it might not be an issue with their accuracy. I will now run the tests with less tanks!

[navwarcol]

Realize that the "reliability" will factor in also... though it should not be THAT much of a factor I think.. but it is the % chance that a given vehicle, weapon, etc will actually fire in any given chance to fire.

[navwarcol]

I will mess with this a little later today [:)] I have not seen this bad of results with mine, but I am wondering if I tweaked the reliability down so much that it erased some of the good I did.. was trying to avoid them becoming TOO strong...

[Phoenix100]

This is not running with your modded estab yet, Navwarcol, just the original. If I reduce the confrontation to, for example, 2 Tigers versus 3 M8s and 2 M3s then I can't get the Tigers to kill them at all. 30 shells fired off and no kills. If I close the range to about 200m then what happens is the 3m8s and 2M3s very quickly kill either one or two Tigers!! They have a couple of bazookas too. Not sure what would kill the Tigers like this, the bazookas or the IG on the M8s. Either way, it seems unlikely, no? The Tigers are front on.

Will try with your estab now.

[Phoenix100]

Well your modded estab seems to work nicely, Navwarcol. 2 Tigers versus 2 M8s at about 900m, daylight, clear. 2 minutes, 2 shells, I M8 killed!!

[Deathtreader]

ORIGINAL: phoenix

Well your modded estab seems to work nicely, Navwarcol. 2 Tigers versus 2 M8s at about 900m, daylight, clear. 2 minutes, 2 shells, I M8 killed!!

Just curious as to how this is playing out.........has it gone to the dev for review and maybe into the next patch?? Or is it a custom mod that will become available for download. Or Or.....
If AXIS armour are really all that bad in the vanilla estab then maybe Panther should take a look at their numbers vz. your modded estab. Yes, no, maybe?

Rob.[:)]

[Phoenix100]

It's just a work round, I think, Rob, not really a fix. The fixing needs putting into the coding, I think. At least, that's what I seem to recall being the approach last time this issue arose - and it has risen before in slightly different contexts, I think. More likely - if Arjuna et al have entered accurate values in the estab - there's an issue with how the AI determines a hit given certain accuracy values etc against certain targets. In the past we had another type of halftrack that was virtually indestructible, for example (remember?). That was fixed. I guess this needs looking at too. But no one is looking at anything at the moment as the single coder (Dave/Arjuna) was recovering from a hand operation, and now is doing contract work to earn money, we've been told. Hence Navwarcol and others start messing with the bits we can mess with. If you PM Navwarcol he may send you the estab to mess around with. He hasn't posted it. For myself, I only tested it in the limited way I outlined above and I'm cagey of using mods like this without a lot more testing. If the problem was just with certain targets then it wouldn't be so good making super-Tigers/panthers for everything else too. I haven't had time to mess with it further so far, though it looked good, sure.
Peter

[navwarcol]

I second what Phoenix said... for the most part, my estab when I finish it, is meant as a mod. For the most part it has worked well for me, and definitely has made the Tigers and Panthers deadly, just today also added a T-34 to play around a little with the Soviets for future use. When the issues are fixed, in the coding, I will try to pull out of it, the parts I just put in as temporary fixes, however, and just leave the mod estab itself. If you like I will send it to you though, just keeping in mind that disclaimer.

[Deathtreader]

Thanks for the replies!

Just PM'd you navwarcol.

Rob.

[simovitch]

What are you guys using for unit characteristics? In BFTB there are a lot of tank units that lack experience and other traits. I just want to make sure you are comparing apples and apples.

We went through the ballistics evaluations carefully and made several adjustments to the estabs since the original HTTR and COTA. I'll follow this thread to see what you guys find.

[Phoenix100]

Well the first set of tests I tried with them all maxed out to 100% for the Tigers and Panthers and had the same sort of results, Simovitch. But I'll try again.

I should add that I encountered a problem with these tests in trying to determine just how many enemy units there were to start with. At first I thought to check the scenmaker data, but then ran into the issue we've already mentioned - it's not accurate. So then I would start up the scenario and surrender immediately, then count the units. But then I discovered that the numbers given in the E&S part of the tab differed from the numbers given in the gen part, under 'AFV's. So which is right? I have no idea. Maybe it's connected to the scenmaker issue. I would then run the scenario, not really knowing how many AFVs I was fighting, surrender after 10 mins or so and check the AAR. But was that reliable? I don't know. It gave a different tally when compared to both the E&S tab and the AFV slot in the gen tab. ???? If the AAR is reliable then it gives an idea. And that's what I went with in the end, but there's certainly something going on there, something buggy.

[Phoenix100]

So. I ran it again for you, Simovitch. See pic below. I have saves, if you wish - let me know. (I have the .cos file too, which you would need to run the saves).

What you see below is the positions the units were in through a roughly 20 minute engagement. The Axis unit is a single Tiger 2. The E&S tab says there's 4 crew and 42 rounds each of 88mm AP and HE. I have maxed everything to 100% for this unit - all the stats, including the commander. It's a crack Tiger. I put the engagement distance as about 500m.

The Allied unit is given - via me surrendering to check - as 8 personel in 3 jeeps and 2 M8s. I'm not sure what the capability of the M8s is to destroy Tiger 2s front on. I thought they were only an infantry gun.

What happens? The Tiger fires 3 AP shells in 3 minutes (I only get one graphic and update, so I'm guessing roughly 3 minutes), I surrender and see he has killed all 3 jeeps!!! Hurray! Super-accurate 1 shot kills. That's what I would expect.

Then, for the remainder of the time, he fires off another four shots (it updates every two shots) and I check each time via surrender and see that he hits nothing!!! Indestructible M8s. Once the M8s vanish, I assume they're popping smoke or something, or the jeeps are burning. But when they re-appear he fires again. But no hits. After 20 mins the Tiger is suddenly greyed out in the E&S tab that I'm watching, meaning they've killed him. Front on at 500m. 2 M8s???? How? Immediately after that - CTD!!! I rinse and repeat, same result (including the CTD).

So something funny going on.

If I run this scenario from the Allied side I get completely different start up materiel. I get 5 jeeps, 2 M3s and 1 M8, plus a bazooka with 4 rounds (which never appears in the E&S on surrender when I run it as Axis - so the surrender info doesn't seem accurate, or the engine has some kind of randomising feature on top of what you select in the scenmaker?) The bazooka might have killed the Tiger at 500m? front on? I hadn't thought that was possible either.

[Phoenix100]

So. And again for you, Simovitch. This time with a full company of crack 100% all stats Tiger 2s. The CTDs only happen when you run it with 1 or 2 Tigers in the unit, I've found, so hence this test.

In the pic below it's midday, clear, the engagement distance is again no more than 500m. The Axis unit is 14 Tigers, as I said, all stats maxed out. They have 588 shells of AP and 588 of HE. I give them a defend order facing the Allied unit, with attack checked.

The Allied unit, on surrender, is given as 11 jeeps (6 of which are mortar jeeps) 1 M3 and 7 M8s. 2 bazookas.

At 12.15 my Tigers get a visual (nice this - perhaps - because they were facing the wrong way at start and there was no visual).
At 12.17 I get a fire graphic. I surrender, check the stats. They have fired (between 12.15 and 12.17, I suppose)22 AP 88mm shells. The AAR says 1 AFV has been killed. The E&S and Gen tab for the Allied unit, however, show the same numbers as at start (I let it run for 1 min after the fire graphic before surrendering to let all tabs update, but still, maybe it didn't update?)So I'm not sure if any of those 22 shells from this crack unit hit anything.
We start again. At 12.21, four minutes later, another fire graphic. On surrender I see the AAR and E&S tabs agree that 1 M8 has been killed for another 21 AP 88mm shells fired.
We start again and at 12.23 I get another fire graphic. Another 25AP 88mm shells fired. result? 1 jeep killed.
At this point I quit, thinking this is enough data to prove the point. I have saves if you need.
Basically, the most crack Tiger 2 unit you can create has fired 68 AP 88mm shells in 8 minutes at a great range, in great visibility and killed 1 M8 and 1 jeep. Nuf said?

[navwarcol]

I have looked at your issue Phoenix.. and what you just said seems to be close to a hit... there seems to be some random effect that adds or subtracts some small amount from the units between scenario editor mode, and game play mode.. if this is a feature, that is a cool idea I think... but would be nice to know. I set 3 different times, in scenario editor, German Pz Komp, German PzG Komp, American Para Coy. In all three cases, the game strength was different than the scenario creation strength. In all three cases, as well, I had played with the % strength in the scenario editor. When I did not alter the % in the editor the game strength seemed to match the editor strength closer (within <1% of strength points) as compared with the 3 cases of altering unit strength which varied in the game then by approximately 3.5% average.

[Phoenix100]

Thanks Navwarcol. Hope Simovitch looks at the tests above as well. There's clearly something wrong with the stock Tigers. I'm going to run this again with your estab now.

[navwarcol]

OK I have noticed something else... these particular American units are listed as target class "hard" despite all other units of comparable makeup being target class "mixed".. in the estab, they also SHOULD be mixed as they show some infantry type weapons, bazooka, etc... Is it perhaps that the Panzers are firing all AP rounds, and the game logic perhaps is not matching with what should be also HE rounds for them?

[Phoenix100]

So. your estab only fared slightly better, navwarcol. I think the issue is in the code.

See pic below. This is running your up-gunned estab with a 100% crack unit of 14 Tigers. everything maxed out, as good as they can get.

The Allied unit started with 13M8s, 4 m3s and 4 jeeps.

After an engagement lasting 2 hours and 41 minutes your Tigers had taken no losses. they had fired no less than 313 AP 88mm shells. To achieve a grand total of 4 M8s and 3 m3s. In great conditions, clear visibility (except when smoke etc obscured the target - for about one hour of the time, I would say, during which they didn't fire) and a range of about 300m. If you subtract the time with no firing and no visual that means they fired 313 shells in an hour and a half to kill 7 vehicles. They need training, no?

I wouldn't say that was a good result. No? 313 shells to kill 7 vehicles.

[Phoenix100]

Is it perhaps that the Panzers are firing all AP rounds, and the game logic perhaps is not matching with what should be also HE rounds for them?

AP might be overkill, but it should still kill, and, indeed, should still hit, no? But they are either not hitting or not killing.