Bug or Feature???

[Paul Vebber]

There are two types of shot ppatterns, onboard and offboard. On board mortars are pretty accurate, offbaord artillery will land across a range of hexes...

If the Offboard is all landing in teh same hex something is amiss, A four gun battery should land in 4 hexes "in a row".

Some Aircraft oare gorund attack specialist and will come back (looks a 1 flag in top armor. If you want all planes to act that way you will have to change it in your OOBs. THen they should comback until they have no more "good" weapons.

There is still some work to do on the A/C.

But frankly they are out of place in the game at this scale they just weren't used as players use them as close to friendlies.

We will take a look at the Ammo replacement rate, I didn't see any complaints in testing, but we are certainly open to revisiting it. You have to pick your shots carefully and close to realistic ranges and manage shooting and moving carefully. IF you move over half all teh time and shoot like in old SP youaaare right you will run out of ammo. You have to keep your troops unsupressed (there is a BIG bonus for having 0 suppression) and not shoot the first opportunity you have, but wait until you are in effective range.USe teh penetration table against your target, while you can't tell for sure you can kill, you can tell for sure when you can't

[3rd Recon]

Marine log rifle pit is a half track icon.
3rd Recon

[Desert Fox]

Thanks for the info Paul. I am gonna look for a ground attack specialist in the future, but I still think 200+ points is too much to spend on 2 or 3 passes. I also don't usually use off board artillery, but I think I am going to if all my on board stuff is gonna be really accurate all the time.
As for the ammo resupply, it works fine in a delay or defend mission where you just sit on a hilltop with an ammo truck to your back. In that situation, my tanks would not run out of ammo. However, in something like an advance or assault mission, I regularly run out of ammo, even though I usually don't shoot once I have moved since it gives bad accuracy. In those cases, I have an ammo truck tag along and keep it out of the line of fire. When one of my tanks runs out of HE or AP or whatever, I send them back for resupply, but because the transfer rate is so slow, it takes a really long time to get ammo back up to a useable level so that the tank can get back into the action. This is even more of a problem with tank destroyers and self propelled guns.

[Alby]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
If you have a question on whether to submit something as a Bug , or want clarification... post it here.

Played campaign UK vs Ussr 45-46
B26 mauradar appeared to be a truck flying across the screen, same icon in the purchase screen, a truck(i think, definately not an aircraft)
also, how do reply without quotes!! ha ha

[von Lucke]

Ok, here's a thing or three I've noticed:

1. Just want to confirm / reinforce what was said earlier about the bottom armor vs. reverse-slope defense. Hit a Polish 7TP at a higher elevation with several rounds of 37mm at a range of 1 and was informed the under-armor was something like 466! Yikes! Is this something to do with the hull-down calculations due to height advantage?

2. Playing in the WWII Long Campaign as the Germans, bought a single off-board 105 batt (damn, but arty is expensive now!)Observer. Problem is, in the 20 or so turns I played the beginning scenario, every time I tried to request a fire mission, the 105 batt was unavailable! The arty was highlighted in red, and constantly "Out of Contact"! I'm playing with Command Control and Unit Comm turned off (just because I'm used to SP1 & 2), even so, the Observer was never more than 2 hexes from the A0 unit. So what was the problem?

3. Noticed that the random campaign mission generator (or whatever it's called) still likes to copy your force distribution, double it, and throw it back at you dressed up like the enemy (ala SP2). Is there some way to limit the AI's forces in Campaign mode? Just kinda annoying to always be out-numbered all the time --- especially now that it takes a lot more ammo to take out nme tanks. Which brings me to:

4. Noticed that my Pz III's, with height advantage (ie; hitting top armor), at minimum range (1-3), stationary, rarely achieve a kill --- yet the Polish 7TP's, moving, from a lower elevation, and medium range (6+), are popping me like bottles of Champagne at a Warsaw victory parade! Is there some element of AI fudging going on here? These two AFV's should be relatively even in ability...

[This message has been edited by von Lucke (edited 05-11-2000).]

[Wild Bill]

We did not want to give aircraft that big a role in the game. Aircraft were considered to be more of an incidental. That is why their cost is so high.

I too am disappointed with the performance of aircraft once they are purchased, especially rocket firing Typhoons. As it is now, airpower is not to be feared. I hope to see that changed in a patch and I advocate that it will be.

Wild Bill

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Wild Bill Wilder
Coordinator, Scenario Design
Matrix Games

[Seth]

Last night I decided to play a campaign. All of a sudden the game started crashing all the time. I mean once every minute or two. It seems like moving a unit was mostly what did it, but sometimes clicking on a unit would crash it. It also crashed twice when I reloaded and clicked on start turn. What is going on here? Afraid I can't provide too much info about my system, it's my girlfriends POS computer that her Dad made out of parts.
Two other things: The sidebar seems to pick up terrain graphics as you move around, and the Polish flag is misaligned. The white part is slightly to the left of the red part.

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Wild Bill:

I too am disappointed with the performance of aircraft once they are purchased, especially rocket firing Typhoons. As it is now, airpower is not to be feared. I hope to see that changed in a patch and I advocate that it will be.

I haven't managed to play that many missions as yet but in those games that ac were available they did enough damage for my taste.

If you can get a copy of 'Air International' magazine, june 1998 issue it has a good article about effectiveness of ground attack ac against tanks. Some examples:

- after the battle of Falaise Gap 385 wrecked tanks and armoured vehicles were examined, only 13 of these bore evidence that they had been killed by air attack.

-march 1945 2nd tactical air force analysed the effectiveness of rocket attacks and concluded that an 8-rocket attack against a tank had a 2% chance of scoring one hit.

It's a five page article that examines also specific ac types like hurricane IID, HS-129 and JU 87G and basically ends up concluding that these ac were pretty much overhyped.

Now based on this article ac should _not_ be very effective against armoured vehicles, against soft targets is another things. Perhaps someone who has access to more research material can comment on this?

Voriax

[Larry Holt]

Hmmm, Everything I've every read said that aircraft were _very_ effective against tanks. That's why the Germans hated the jabos (spelling?) so much and could not move their armor formations on the West front during daylight hours. The battle of bulge (Wacht am Rheine) was timed for a period of poor weather to avoid allied aircraft, etc.

Wittman, the German tank ace, was killed by a rocket.

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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

[Mark_Ezra]

Bug Report: When a unit on a stone bridge was destroyed so was the bridge icon. Access to bridge remained intact

[Seth]

I thought Wittman was killed by Sherman Fireflies.

[Larry Holt]

Originally posted by Seth:
I thought Wittman was killed by Sherman Fireflies.

see http://www.achtungpanzer.com/gen3.htm

Until 1983, the destruction of Wittmann's Tiger was an mystery even for crews of sSSPzAbt 101. Many
sources say that it was destroyed by the "Firefly Ambush", but different units claimed to ambush and destroy
Wittmann's Tiger, including those of the either 1st Polish Armored Division, 4th Canadian Armored Division
(Canadian Shermans supposedly surrounded and shot Wittmann's Tiger to pieces) or 33rd British
Independent Armored Brigade. In the memoirs of a former member Mr.F.R of sSSPzAbt 101, official version
at the time stated that Wittmann's Tiger was destroyed by an airplane bomb. Both presented a picture of
Wittmann's Tiger without its turret with the gun barrel placed on the hull which in fact is the picture of
SS-Untersturmführer Alfred Günther's Tiger destroyed by an airplane bomb at Evrecy. Along with those two
versions, some claims were made that units, which were not even present in the area at the time, were
responsible for destroying Wittmann's Tiger. Both versions were proven wrong in 1945, by Mr.Serge Varin
who found Tiger #007. Mr.Varin was interested in this tank because its turret was teared away from the hull.
Mr.Varin examined Wittmann's Tiger and noticed that it was not penetrated by any shells fired at it during the
fighting. The only damage to the hull was a big hole in the rear, near the engine dec

[Panther]

The reason that the germans oppted for bad weather to move units on the west front in general were to conceal their movements end efforts. Especialy towards the end of the war. Air power was very good at detection of formations and their movements. Also air power is very good at destroying and/or scattering briefly soft tasrgets (trucks and men.) not so much hard targets etc tanks. If units traveled in convoys (which was the most effective way to move stuff of the same formation) there was a greater chance of hitting something that could possibly be destroyed or damaged. Since most fuel and ammo were delivered to a division by truck in convoys they would pose graeat targets even a lucky shot could have set them off. Considering that about 50% of the division is not the main fighting force loosing your support stuff can imobilize you fighting force very effectively. Since steel panthers is a company front type of simulation I do not think that air power should that power full againts front line hard targets etc (tanks.) Now if you have lots of truck to shoot at, your airfoce should be able to go to town.

[3rd Recon]

Paul-
Trying to take out polish tanks is really hard in long campaign. I tryed a huge minefield and this is what I got:
1: Destroyed polish tanks had crews bail and then they cleared mines at end of turn. Do you think they would do that?
2: should crew moral be low after tank is destroyed? My crews wont retreat or rally and the poles tryed to advance and assualt my tanks(polish tank crews).
not sure if this is a bug, but the mine thing really got to me.
3: what is the % chance of hitting a minefield of 1?
I whatched polish tanks drive over 4-5 hexes with one mine each and nothing.

thanks
3rd Recon

[IivilSmai]

Originally posted by Paul Vebber:
If you have a question on whether to submit something as a Bug , or want clarification... post it here.

I'm trying to play a random campaign 41-47 with Germans confronting Americans, English and Russia, and I can't upgrade or fix my equipment after battles. The game just skips the fix-screen and goes straight to 'buy reinforcements'-screen. Also reinforcements for the first battle are carried to the following battles without extra cost!?

I liked the way SPWW2 had a 'default' terrain option in preferences for random campaigns. Would it be too difficult to add to SPWAW?

Great game, though I could use that functional random campaign...

[Seth]

Larry,
I read that site, and it seems pretty conclusive. I'm afraid the new 'Wittman's Last Stand' scenario will be rather boring. 1 Tiger vs. 1 Typhoon.
I would also like to restate my problem with the constant crashing while playing campaigns (not scenarios apparently), for fear that it got lost in the airpower debate.

[alexgariepy]

Great game guys,

I'd like to report a bug.

I was playing a Chinese civil war battle for the heck of it, and I noticed that when the Communist side takes an objective flag, the thing just dissappears. No flag. Well, it's still there, but my guess is there's no CC flag when taking objectives.

*shrugs*

[alexgariepy]

Great game guys,

I'd like to report a bug.

I was playing a Chinese civil war battle for the heck of it, and I noticed that when the Communist side takes an objective flag, the thing just dissappears. No flag. Well, it's still there, but my guess is there's no CC flag when taking objectives.

*shrugs*

[alexgariepy]

Blasted thing made me post twice... weird.

[Larry Holt]

Originally posted by Seth:
Larry,
I read that site, and it seems pretty conclusive. I'm afraid the new 'Wittman's Last Stand' scenario will be rather boring. 1 Tiger vs. 1 Typhoon.
I would also like to restate my problem with the constant crashing while playing campaigns (not scenarios apparently), for fear that it got lost in the airpower debate.

So it seems that Wittman had only a 2% chance of being hit but rolled the dice badly. I am interested in learning more about the results of ground attack aircraft in WWII. Perhaps their value was more in busting enemy morale than in busting tanks. I've not found any good references through a WWW search. Can anyone suggest sources, hard or digital copy?


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An old soldier but not yet a faded one.