Axis armour can't shoot

[navwarcol]

Phoenix, what actual opfor unit are you using for the American one? (I mean in the estab.. is it a company you just created with the parts you mentioned? or is it a unit out of the estab file? )

I am having a sneaky suspicion it is something to do with the target unit, rather than the firing one...

[navwarcol]

AP probably wont kill targets that are being seen as soft targets... that is what I am wondering, if somehow the guns are firing AP shells and wasting them all on the soft targets such as the bazookas, etc... it just is weird that this is the only type of target that is having this effect, while trying these tanks on pretty much anything else, is a cakewalk.

ORIGINAL: phoenix

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.

[navwarcol]

1:1 Tiger Coy: US Sherman Coy.. the Shermans are wiped out.. 5 tests, only 1 with a Tiger destroyed. The same one that suddenly cannot kill these M8 scout companies...

[Phoenix100]

But they do kill them with the AP rounds. Just not enough. The AP rounds killed 7 vehicles I one and a half hours, using 313 shells, with your estab.


The allied unit is just picked out of the estab. Not modified. It's B company, 82nd Armoured Recon Bn.

[Phoenix100]

Yes. When Daz originally mentioned this it was with M8s. It's the halftracks are the problem, I think. M8s and M3s.

I will set up your estab with Shermans.

[Phoenix100]

OK. With your estab. 3 Shermans versus 14 Tigers with 100% stats. In 2 minutes 22AP 88mm shells fired. All 3 Shermans dead.

Overkill on the number of rounds, because they all seem to fire off at once. But that aside, job done.


I'll try it with the stock estab now.

[Phoenix100]

Ok. With stock estabs. 14 100% Tigers against, this time (lovely this random thing!) 5 Shermans. In 2 minutes the Tigers fired 26AP rounds and killed 4 Shermans, no losses. So, just as good as your estab, perhaps.

It's the halftracks. And maybe other types of target. Who knows? I've only been watching the halftracks. For that matter, I've only been watching the AP and HE ammo usage. Maybe they shot off MG rounds as well and it was these rounds which killed the targets? Update: Just checked this, and yes - they fired thousands of MG rounds too. So possibly the AP rounds killed nothing.

I wonder if you could be right? I hope so - that might be something Simovitch could fix - it's a data issue, right? Not a coding issue. I wonder if the AP scores less effectively against soft targets - as you suggest. But if they appear as 'hard' in the estab then surely they are hard, no, for these purposes? So why aren't the AP rounds effective?

[navwarcol]

Well.. infantry would be soft targets..people holding bazookas, rifles, etc... in all other formations in the estab, it lists units with the same makeup, as mixed. Mixed, according to the estab editor instructions, will cause the enemy to fire a mix of HE and AP (because as you know, AP shells in real life will not kill a soft target, they will just fly through a truck, for instance) So what I am wondering is if somehow the game is allocating fire (since we cannot see exactly where, for example, the bazooka-man might be inside the unit footprint) and perhaps it is firing most of the shells at him..maybe he is the closest, or it recognizes him as a valid anti-tank threat, or whatever... but because the target type is showing "hard target" the tank just keeps firing AP shells... the estab editor manual actually warns that something like this could happen if you set something that is not armored, to be a hard target in the estab. It actually is something any of us can go edit, I will try to after I sleep a bit, and see if it will make a difference to make it a mixed target so that the tanks will fire HE and AP. I just find it interesting that these are the ones causing the issue, and they also are the only units of comparable makeup, NOT listed as a mixed target.

[Phoenix100]

Well, I tried that. Did I do something wrong? I went into the estab editor, picked those formations featuring the M8 and changed the type to mixed. apply and save. backed up my estab, replaced it with the altered estab. Ran the scenario. They still only fired AP shells (with miserable results). Not a single HE shell fired. If I didn't do anything wrong, then that might be the issue, though can't work out why they don't fire HE shells.

Update: compiled the changes too. same result. They won't fire HE shells!

update: Panthers the same. No HE shells fired.

[navwarcol]

That looks like it would be the problem then.... It would also explain why sometimes the tanks do still destroy vehicles, while for some reason they are firing most of their AP rounds at the soft portion of the enemy unit. Now to figure out how to change that behavior....
In your experiment, did you entirely remove the unit, then re-place it into the game, after you altered it in the estab? This is usually needed, it usually seems not to just grab the new version if it is still deployed in the game.
In the estab.. units consisting of ONLY these vehicles, should remain "hard targets" while units consisting of the vehicles, plus other infantry type (including bicycle, motorcycle, probably jeep...anything with no armor) should be (and in all other cases, ARE)'mixed' target type. ie. If you see a company with only the vehicles you mention, then it is ok to be a hard target, if those vehicles all have armor. If, however, as you noted above, the unit also consists of infantry type units in addition, it does need to be a "mixed" target type... for some reason it seems that if not, the panzer unit is firing copious amounts of armor-piercing rounds, and most of these are somehow being aimed at the soft portion of a target that should be mixed...while still a few are impacting on the hard portion, but VERY few, it would appear.

[Phoenix100]

Well, what I did was I removed the entire stock estab (the xml and the estab) from the estab folder in the game. Then made a copy of both and put those copies into the game estab folder (completely replacing the originals with copies). ie; I backed up my estab originals and worked on a copy. I then used the estab editor to alter only that setting, for those units, to 'mixed', then hit 'apply', then 'save', then 'compile'. Then put those two modded files into the game folder. Was that enough, do you think? I didn't do anything scenario specific. I just modded the entire estab, in effect.

But STILL the units wouldn't use HE shells.

[navwarcol]

You want to actually delete (from the game) the piece you are using, and then create a new unit in the scenario editor... it will just keep using its same stats each time, if you leave the "piece" in the game. For example.. the allied unit has a strength of 8.. if you go into the estab, give that piece a strength of 7.. then come back out and use it, even if it **may** SHOW the new value, it will not be using it... you have to remove the one '8' piece from the game, grab the same type, create an entire new piece, and add that new piece into the game.
In the scenario editor when you do that.. on the 'game piece' there will be the units specific name.. in the case of yours, "B Company 82 Armored recon ...." below that name is the estab unit that you need to grab, to replace it when you do this... (that is the name I was asking you for earlier) I am guessing that you were using something along the line of "WF US M8 75mm AG Troop" because I could not find the specific unit you are using to see what TO&E, but I saw the same problem (hard target classification) in ALL TO&Es that I could find with M-8s in them.

[Phoenix100]

Thanks Navwarcol. But how would it keep using the same stats when I've overwritten them? Where would it get them from? Remember, this is the only estab in the folder that it can use when the game boots. When the scenario looks for the default estab it is tricked into finding the new one, because it has that name, surely? The original isn't in the folder. When I go to the estab to check the stats now then all the M8s are listed as 'mixed', as if that had been saved. So I don't understand where it would get the old data from?

When I used your estab I did exactly this too - just renamed it the same as the default estab and removed the default estab from the game folder. Would that not work, you think?

[navwarcol]

Well... can only say that for me, it has not worked... almost as if inside the scenario itself, it holds a copy that overwrites the estab version.. I know that some games explicitly do this (Gary Grigsby's War in the East comes to mind, where you can have entirely different stats on a scenario by scenario example... also the new Command-Naval and Air Ops game, in both cases what you do in the scenario edit, overwrites (just in that scenario) anything else in the database.

[Arjuna]

Let me clarify that the scenario file does not make a duplicate of the estab data within its file. It just has a pointer to the estab within the estab file. That's the way it should work. Let me also clarify that AP rounds should only be fired at hard and mixed units not soft ones.

[jimcarravall]

ORIGINAL: navwarcol

Well... can only say that for me, it has not worked... almost as if inside the scenario itself, it holds a copy that overwrites the estab version.. I know that some games explicitly do this (Gary Grigsby's War in the East comes to mind, where you can have entirely different stats on a scenario by scenario example... also the new Command-Naval and Air Ops game, in both cases what you do in the scenario edit, overwrites (just in that scenario) anything else in the database.

The Estab allocations are modified by the "percentage of fill" parameters defined in the SceneMaker.

Historically Accurate Scenarios ought to represent the difference between "authorized strength" (Estab maximums) and "available strength" (Estab strength decremented by prior combat losses) at the time the combat takes place.

One way to view it is airborne formations dropped into HttR scenarios have an "authorized strength" of XX personnel when loaded onto transport craft, but that "authorized strength" reaching the combat zone is decremented by the number of paratroopers whose aircraft don't reach the area where the troops can deploy to the ground, troopers suffer injury on landing, or are eliminated because their trasport craft can't reach the landing zone.

Few, if any, battles start at what amounts to Estab authorized maximums.

Most other combat models mask this fact. BftB doesn't.

[navwarcol]

ORIGINAL: Arjuna

Let me clarify that the scenario file does not make a duplicate of the estab data within its file. It just has a pointer to the estab within the estab file. That's the way it should work. Let me also clarify that AP rounds should only be fired at hard and mixed units not soft ones.

Hey Dave, good to see you around. Have you by chance followed any of this thread? We are throwing what essentially amount to educated guesses out to explain the phenomenon of why certain units seem impervious to Axis Panzers, even to the very best ones. It caught my attention that the units in question were listed in the Estab file as hard, despite the fact that A- they include in a few cases nearly half of their strength as infantry based, and B- All other comparable units in the estab file, show as "mixed" target types. So the panzers are firing only AP rounds at these targets in test after test, and failing mostly to do much in the way of damage. Could it be that because the estab shows the unit as a hard target, the panzer is firing AP, yet because the target is in some cases composed of what really are soft targets, those fired AP shells are not doing any damage, as shown by the usage of 20-30 AP rounds fired, with in some of these, no hits ?
Thanks in advance if you can take a look at this.

[dazkaz15]

That's a very good description of what I have observed navwarcol.

Its these mixed units of infantry, and hard targets that seem to be the big problem, and your absolutely right about the, "firing round after round of AP at them".

I knew there was something seriously wrong with it, and now you have come up with a likely reason.
Thanks [:)]

[simovitch]

These are valid observations, but according to phoenix, changing the forces to "mixed" didn't change anything?

@phoenix: after you edit the estab file forces, you sometimes (always?) have to get back into the SM and drag the modified force estab into the units in the OOB; it won't re-seed automatically. I complained about this PITA before in the development forum but I'm not sure it was ever fixed. Please try this and report back.

I'll look into this a bit as well.

[navwarcol]

Yes I saw that he had changed them to mixed as well.. it still rings as having ***something*** to do with it however... I just cannot avoid the coincidence that the only units with the issue, are also the only units of "like composition" that are not already listed as mixed. Have tried many times to see if the Tigers or Panthers will fire any HE rounds (besides the machinegun rounds which they do fire a lot of) and cannot get them to fire any at these units... while they do also, fire HE rounds at other "mixed" and "soft" units. I am not sure if the game models the fact that AP will mostly not kill soft targets, but it seems to, and that then seems somehow linked to this entire issue.