How powerful are the Household Cavalry Armoured Cars?

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: phoenix

I have no idea how to post into dropbox, Miguel. But they're all little files and I can mail you them if you give me your email.

It's even easier if you happen to have a GMail account - then you also should have a Google Drive account, with a couple GB of space (I reckon). If you don't trust Google with your bytes, creating an account in Dropbox is really easy, and they have a little desktop application which helps you keeping in sync the files in your HD with those you have chosen to backup on the cloud.

Very useful for work and for other purposes, such as exchanging files when doing PBEM [:)]

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: skarp

Hi Bletchley_Geek

I've put game scenarios and screen shots of results into this folder. Screenshots are named with the side I played at the start of the file name followed by vic(tory), def(eat) or draw then scenario name. Hope this helps.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ewwcdtv4uoskwnv/tsKy56ExZT

cheers

Thank you skarp, this will help me a lot to see the differences between what we have now and the 264 build.

[skarp]

Bletchley_Geek cool. When playing as axis I often saw the ACs disappear at surprisingly close ranges (600m) and had to move the panthers closer to spot and engage. I don't know if that's part of the problem. I can see how it's a difficult balance as for the ACs to be any use as scouts they mustn't be too easy to spot and destroy.

[Phoenix100]

Skarp. I see that periodically during an engagement, and I had assumed it was them popping smoke. If you don't move the Panthers then after about five minutes the ACs reappear, as if the smoke had dissipated. happens in tank engagements too. I thought it was cool - the modelling of smoke defences. Of course, I've no idea if these ACs are meant to have smoke canisters.

[skarp]

ah could be! Mind you my scenarios run over 60 hours so presumably they'd run out...

[Arjuna]

Miquel with a lot of support from the beta testers has been working and making changes to the Fire routes. We'll be trialling these over the next week or so.

[skarp]

[:)] thanks for the update. Let me know if I can help.

[BletchleyGeek]

What Dave said. I haven't got time to check out your scenarios skarp, but 60 hours is too long to pinpoint the kind of issues we're after - engagements extending for 2 to 4 hours or so are optimal. I'll have to cut them down. The kind of tests I'm looking after look like little Combat Mission scenarios (such as a platoon of Panthers and a depleted grenadier coy defending a town against a Recce squadron with armour support, and stuff like that).

Regarding the AC's popping in and out of your sight, that isn't part of the problem, yet it's another problem I think Dave already fixed with Intel reports flickering too fast. Also take into account that FOW in CommandOps is very brutal: take with a spade of salt any assessment on enemy forces. If Dave grants his permission, I'll gladly talk you guys through the problems we've found and we've already fixed or on our way to fix.

[skarp]

cool. I didn't worry too much about the length of time - I wanted there to be sufficient time to achieve a decisive result as units do retreat and then attack again and whatnot. Usually the panthers were wiped out in the first 24 hours. I tried to ensure the killed unit was selected to show surrender time on the screen shot and then I went into "run until" scenario that only took a couple of minutes.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: skarp

cool. I didn't worry too much about the length of time - I wanted there to be sufficient time to achieve a decisive result as units do retreat and then attack again and whatnot. Usually the panthers were wiped out in the first 24 hours. I tried to ensure the killed unit was selected to show surrender time on the screen shot and then I went into "run until" scenario that only took a couple of minutes.

One of the test scenarios that Richard (simovitch) made for me involved a Panther Platoon defending a village against a British Recce Squadron. Indeed, the Panthers' were being wiped out too easily, usually inflicting little casualties to the British Recce Squadron, something I consider very unreasonable. I'm happy to be able to tell you guys that now that's no longer the case, it kind of looks like the Charge of the Light Brigade, if you get my meaning. But sometimes - just sometimes - it can happen that the British Cavalry is actually led by Errol Flynn and they - with heavy losses - overrun the Panthers (meaning that mixing it up with Staghounds in close terrain - the village - can be very bad for the Panther's help). Now it's also possible that the Panthers "pull a Villiers Bocage" on the Brits, causing substantial losses on the approaching Brits, retreating to cover, and then counterattacking the hapless British squadron sitting in the town.

And the best thing is that we know why that was the case, and we can explain it all in a clear way [:)]

[skarp]

brilliant. That sounds much more like it. I avoided urban terrain cos I thought that would advantage the ACs even more when close in to the panthers.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: skarp

brilliant. That sounds much more like it. I avoided urban terrain cos I thought that would advantage the ACs even more when close in to the panthers.

The chances of a unit to press on when sustaining heavy casualties is dependent on a number of parameters (like unit aggression or commander determination). Note as well that if the Panthers have a poor commander and they become heavily suppressed, the unit might pull back. And withdrawing under fire without suffering losses is also very unlikely. Especially if those AEC's haven't been knocked out...

I must say that you seem to have got something which is not apparent in Command Ops: there's a lot of room for having very different outcomes from a particular engagement (or there should). It's all about checking that this variation is rich enough, and also being careful about ruling out 'magical' things from happening. Quite challenging, I must say.

[skarp]

Thanks. I have wondered about command effects as I forgot to equalise commanders until half way through the trials and then didn't want to throw away the data as I still thought it showed something. I had noticed the panthers were getting a spanking in retreat so I doubted they were firing effectively enough at long range to deter a charge of the light brigade. As you say there has to be room for the unlikely but not the magical.

Have you tested against infantry? It all came to my attention when my opponent's ACs were forcing entrenched SS infantry in urban terrain to retreat. Gave me a shock. I would have bet on the SS still being in position at the end of the war.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: skarp
Have you tested against infantry? It all came to my attention when my opponent's ACs were forcing entrenched SS infantry in urban terrain to retreat. Gave me a shock. I would have bet on the SS still being in position at the end of the war.

Yes, I have a variant of the scenario above where the Panthers were supported by a company of PanzerGrenadiers. In that setting, the halftracks of the PanzerGrenadier company were a fire magnet, and their eventual destruction prompted the company to retreat with bad consequences. But that was happening just about 20% of the times, the rest the grenadiers were standing firm and giving a very warm welcome to the light brigade with their Panzershrecks. With a dismounted company things were different, those guys clung to their positions and lacking any kind of artillery support, the Light Brigade didn't have much success. There we go with another topic: the Estab is designed so to support a great variety of scenarios, but not all possible scenarios.

If you feel like an scenario feels better by separating the infantry from the apc's so they can be used as a fire support element, just go, fork the estab, and change unit composition to suit your needs. But if the infantry will need to go to places, then leave the 251/1's or equivalent with the infantry, since we haven't the ability to have units to ride onto vehicles, unless the vehicles are part of the same unit. Also, if you are modelling a relatively short engagement where the infantry is mostly going to maneuver by foot, I'd also suggest to detach from the current Coy estab a platoon (or two) with the appropiate mix of vehicles.

[Phoenix100]

Hope Dave gives you that permission, Miguel. Would love to have more detail on fixes. It all sounds great - fantastic there's some life come back here again and the game is again being worked on. really can't wait for this patch! I'll be able to have a go at all the airborne scenarios again.

[skarp]

That all sounds great to me. Many thanks. [:)]

[dazkaz15]

Thanks for all the work you have been doing on fixing this issue guys, and Skerp for all the testing.

There has definitely been "something up", with this, and I can vouch for that in the games I have been playing, and the testing that I started on, but got bored with.

It seems to me there are far to many misses (equating that to the amount of AP rounds fired to kills) especially against the Allied AC's.
There has to be a fine balance, where the AC's acting in a scouting role, would be hard to hit due to concealment, speed, and a cautious approach, but they should not be able to stand a determined attack by a company of medium, or heavy tanks.
In fact if there is just 1 or 2 AC's left as there often is, an armoured Coy should be able to drive straight through them, without hardly missing a beat, in my opinion.

[skarp]

I'd like to hear more about the fixes and more about how widely the issue went. For example playing Axis in Assault on the Sauer I've been having dreadful trouble dealing with m18s, Stuarts, HTs etc even in conditions I would have thought favourable to infantry.

[BletchleyGeek]

ORIGINAL: skarp

I'd like to hear more about the fixes and more about how widely the issue went. For example playing Axis in Assault on the Sauer I've been having dreadful trouble dealing with m18s, Stuarts, HTs etc even in conditions I would have thought favourable to infantry.

Weren't you joining the beta team, skarp?

[vladn]

ORIGINAL: skarp

I'd like to hear more about the fixes and more about how widely the issue went. For example playing Axis in Assault on the Sauer I've been having dreadful trouble dealing with m18s, Stuarts, HTs etc even in conditions I would have thought favourable to infantry.

It looks to me that balancing issues for infantry versus armor battles are also common to other wargames sharing the setting with BTFB.
I recently saw a "Let's play" video for Close Combat: Wacht am Rhein about the Andler scenario, it was German infantry versus US Recon on December 16th, German side was controlled by AI and attacking from the north-east corner. The terrain did not favor armor, as the German forces started in a village surrounded by forest.
Although the US player did not change the default deployment to get some pre-calculated ambush positions, the German side lost most of their vehicles in the first minutes to fire from either a Stuart, M8 recon car and bazooka teams.
From a Command Ops point of view, this battle would appear on the map as a clash between companies, leaving all the details somewhat behind the scene.
Is there a way to see the movement of platoons/squads with an additional zoom level, for example? I wouldn't even think of giving orders directly to squads, it would be overwhelming given the number of units, but it would be interesting to see them manouver.