Update SPWAW OOB's

[o4r]

Can somebody fix that problem with the close support unit of the German and the Russian.

Whenever I change any of my unit in the solo campaign to a close support vehicle like a Pz I 150, Pz II 150 or SIG 33, my artillery will change from fast reponse artillery to sometime either recon unit or no status. Thus losing its fast reponse artillery status permanently.

I think there is something wrong or conflict problem with the close support vehicle and the on board artillery.....

I have tried the Russian unit and whenever a vehicle during the late senario change to SU-152 which is the russian version of close support weapon, the same thing happen.

This problem was there since the first version of the SPWAW is out but nobody knows just what made the conflict in the program?

Finally after year of playing and quit and play and testing I realise the problem arise on the close support weapon.

If anybody wish to try to see the conflict. Simply start any senario with German for Sep 1939 and Russian with Dec 1941. Once the German reach to the Franch campagin and immediately after, you can change your unit to a close support Pz (try change all 4 of them) and then you on board artillery will lose it status and become either recon unit or no more fast reponse artillery.

As for the Russian, sometime changing to a KV-2 will do that too. Else when you are enable to get a SU-152, the problem will arise.

Somehow any weapon in the close support weaponary conflict when you have on board artillery.

To make the test fast, every start of the turn, press F9 for surrender and remember to on the fast artillery cause sometime when you defend, the enemy arillery is a pest.

[BryanMelvin]

Originally posted by o4r
Can somebody fix that problem with the close support unit of the German and the Russian.

Whenever I change any of my unit in the solo campaign to a close support vehicle like a Pz I 150, Pz II 150 or SIG 33, my artillery will change from fast reponse artillery to sometime either recon unit or no status. Thus losing its fast reponse artillery status permanently.

I think there is something wrong or conflict problem with the close support vehicle and the on board artillery.....

I have tried the Russian unit and whenever a vehicle during the late senario change to SU-152 which is the russian version of close support weapon, the same thing happen.

This problem was there since the first version of the SPWAW is out but nobody knows just what made the conflict in the program?

Finally after year of playing and quit and play and testing I realise the problem arise on the close support weapon.

If anybody wish to try to see the conflict. Simply start any senario with German for Sep 1939 and Russian with Dec 1941. Once the German reach to the Franch campagin and immediately after, you can change your unit to a close support Pz (try change all 4 of them) and then you on board artillery will lose it status and become either recon unit or no more fast reponse artillery.

As for the Russian, sometime changing to a KV-2 will do that too. Else when you are enable to get a SU-152, the problem will arise.

Somehow any weapon in the close support weaponary conflict when you have on board artillery.

To make the test fast, every start of the turn, press F9 for surrender and remember to on the fast artillery cause sometime when you defend, the enemy arillery is a pest.

I will look into this as best I can. This maybe a coding issue in the system and not the oobs.

It could be the radios too. Do these units have radios?

[TheOriginalOverlord]

The USA OOB still has some problems that I ID'd over a year ago and no changes have been made. Not trying to be a pain in the butt, just trying to get some "historical accuracy" in the OOB.

The M3 GMC is still useless as a TD (which is what is was made to do) because you have 52 rounds of HE and 8 rounds of HEAT but the 75mm gun has no HEAT pen . This gun didn't fire HEAT, only AP and HE. The M1897 75mm used the SAME ammo as the M2/M3/M6 75mm guns. Barrel length is between the M2 and M3 and AP pen should be somewhere in between. This gun/vehicle combo needs to be fixed in every oob that has it (US, UK, USMC and others?)

Wrong start dates for the Flame and Dozer Shermans. Should be March'44 for the Dozer and May '45 for the Flame(USA and any other county that has it).

The M8 Scott in the CS role has no HEAT ammo while in the SPA version has AP ammo and it should be HEAT ammo as this 75mm Howitzer only fired HE/HEAT/smoke ammo.

Other minor problems.

The USMC OOB still has the M8 "Scott" HMC in it. The Marines never used this AFV. Also the LVT 3 Bushmaster has the wrong weapons.(delete the TMG and leave the BMG) Other than that it's in pretty good shape.

[BryanMelvin]

Originally posted by Overlord
The USA OOB still has some problems that I ID'd over a year ago and no changes have been made. Not trying to be a pain in the butt, just trying to get some "historical accuracy" in the OOB.

The M3 GMC is still useless as a TD (which is what is was made to do) because you have 52 rounds of HE and 8 rounds of HEAT but the 75mm gun has no HEAT pen . This gun didn't fire HEAT, only AP and HE. The M1897 75mm used the SAME ammo as the M2/M3/M6 75mm guns. Barrel length is between the M2 and M3 and AP pen should be somewhere in between. This gun/vehicle combo needs to be fixed in every oob that has it (US, UK, USMC and others?)

Wrong start dates for the Flame and Dozer Shermans. Should be March'44 for the Dozer and May '45 for the Flame(USA and any other county that has it).

The M8 Scott in the CS role has no HEAT ammo while in the SPA version has AP ammo and it should be HEAT ammo as this 75mm Howitzer only fired HE/HEAT/smoke ammo.

Other minor problems.

The USMC OOB still has the M8 "Scott" HMC in it. The Marines never used this AFV. Also the LVT 3 Bushmaster has the wrong weapons.(delete the TMG and leave the BMG) Other than that it's in pretty good shape.

Thanks for the info

This helps!!

[TheOriginalOverlord]

Another bug I've been messing with:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=17485

I've come up with some answers and hopefully some solutions.

The reason all of the 20-25mm AA guns are not killing is simply because they have NO "HE PEN" value. A value of 7-10 is what I've found to work and be comparable to "realistic" results.

The reason the quad 50's kill ALL the time is because of the super inflated (IMHO) HE kill value of 36! I've experimented and brought this down to HE kill of 7 for the single 50's, 12 for the twin 50cal and 18 for the quad 50's, this seems to work much better allowing some damaging shots as well as getting kills.

This means that MG's in 12.7 (50cal) to 15mm range will need the HE kill values lowered a bit but certainly this will not "nerf" them. Why do they need lowered? Because these particular MG's generally fire "non-explosive" ammunition and just because they are larger than rifle caliber doesn't make them more effecient killers. Take the 50cal M2 Browning and it's smaller brother the .30cal M1919A4. I made both HE kill the same at 7. Because they have similar ROF's and they fire regular ammo. For many of you who have fired these weapons in real life you will see where I'm coming from. A bullet is a bullet is a bullet and size doesn't really matter when you are shooting at Infantry...if you hit them they are going to be hurt no matter what you hit them with. However when you start shooting at light AFVs and other vehicle's is where the superior penetration of the .50 shines above it's little .30cal brother. Now when that .50 cal punches through the scout car etc. it is more likely to just punch a hole in the armor and maybe injure a crewman...HE kill of 7 works fine for this. Earlier with it's inflated HE kill any penetrating hit was a "brew up" for the vehicle.

On this same note some of the MG HE kill #'s need to be tweaked as well. The Vickers HMG has a 14 while it's CMG version only has a 10??? These could both be brought down to the 7-8 range and no one would notice as they would both perform similarly.

Did all that giberish make sense??

Regards,

[o4r]

Originally posted by BryanMelvin
I will look into this as best I can. This maybe a coding issue in the system and not the oobs.

It could be the radios too. Do these units have radios?

According to the status show, yes they have it. It is a value of 1.

But I still dont quite understand about the changing of unit. Once I was told by one of your admin for the OOB editor that I cannot purchase a whole company of unit and then delete them thus giving me only the commander which have the special ability of recon. That was sometime last year June. After which I stop for quite awhile after a month Sept 11.

This time I reload and start all over again. I purchase unit from platoon level and some section of this and that. But I still get the same thing once I change them to a support unit.

Is it that I must purchase recon unit only to change them to a recon and if I purchase any support unit, I can only change them to support unit in order to prevent them from crashing with other unit. If the existing unit have 4 vehicle in one unit, it is a must that I must have four units too to prevent same occurs.

I like solo campagin since I have actually completed all the campagin and my friend recently is engaged in something else. But this frustration of when unit change and other unit status change made m game very frustrated. I dont mind other unit change their status but the fast respond artillery is always in my main core unit cause I am already quite familiar with it. I can used them intenstively even playing with human player but with computer I always have this stupid problem. It is quite sad actually.

I recently tried something else. I omitted purchasing FO for my main core and change my HQ to it but after playing nearly to the end of 1942, when I managed to change some of my tanks to Tiger, it happen again. The artillery again change to recon unit? I am acutally quite confused. It seem like may not be the problem of the 150mm gun. It is something that we change during the game that made the changes to other a problem.

Maybe I start to play another new game and try to only change unit like support to those appear to be support on other unit and HQ seem like nothing to change......forever infantry I think.

Once I get the result I will get back to you. I think it is not so simple as I have trial.

From the very sad......

[JimPY]

I agree that the HE Pen values of MG's and AA guns are mystifying. The 12.7 mm and .50 cal. have a HE Pen of 23,but some 20mm AA have a HE Pen of 0.
Also, I think that the accuracy ratings of MG's of 12.7 mm and below are too low. These MG's were rarely causing any casaulties to infantry. I have increased the Accuracy ratings by about 20% for .30 cal and below mg's and 10% for .50 cal MG's. These changes increased casualties to infantry, especially under 400 meters range. Now infantry squads cannot kill off MG's at will.
I recommend examing this issue when you finish updating the 7.1oob's in addition to HE Pen ratings.

Jim Yalem

[Voriax]

Those 20mm guns you talk about..they have the weapon code 222 which means they only need one type of ammo, the AP. It's used either as HE or AP depending of target. They tend to have APCR which balances things a bit.

Voriax

[TheOriginalOverlord]

Those 20mm guns you talk about..they have the weapon code 222 which means they only need one type of ammo, the AP. It's used either as HE or AP depending of target. They tend to have APCR which balances things a bit.

However regardless of the weapon code if the ammo has "NO" HE pen then it will not penetrate AT ALL. Try it yourself against an armored ground attack plane. The 20mm Flakvierling will generally scrape the paint off of a FW190 WITHOUT doing any damage.
Now go back and bump the HE pen to 7-9 and run it again. You get damaged A/C and also kills as well. The NO HE pen value was keeping it from penetrating the A/C armor. So by only giving them a HE pen value you can now damage/kill armored A/C.

[RobertS]

Overlord-Seems there's a couple different issues here. Now you're talking about 20mm Pen against planes. The pen against armored VEHICLES works okay. But as I read your post, I became concerned about planes and ran some of my own tests. It seems Overlord is right and we may have a serious problem here. With no HE PEN, I got a couple damage points here and there,no kills. I changed DURABILITY(not armor) to one and finally shot the plane(Mosquito down) with FLAK38. So it's penetrating, but it's got the killing power of a AAMG. After changing to higher HE PEN I got kills right away. Now here's where it gets serious. The .50 cal and 12.7 have HE Pen in the 20's. This was done so they could cause supression like a regular MG and still penetrate armor, since they only carry HE ammo. Unfortunately, if the game uses HE PEN as the means for determining plane damage, this means those mg's have more knockdown power than most 75mm AAs. With those guns, planes came down pretty easy. (I forgot to mention I set EXP very high so they always were getting the hit.) If I'm right about what I'm saying here, the only thing I can think of is to take away or at least reduce HE PEN from guns like the 50cal AAMG and provide some values for the 20-25mm. By the way, the 15mm AAMG has code 222 in a couple of OOBS and has a HE PEN. Can any with code222 experience chime in on this? I think this is serious enough to cause me speak up after only reading posts for 1/2 year. Speaking of OOB's, Let me close by saying, I have gone over every weapon and every unit in every last godforsaken OOB and my opinion is that these OOB'S require a complete overhaul. Over time, much has been changed in one OOB and not another, strange values entered in some weapons, AA guns with no AA capability...ect,ect...the list just goes on and on.

Thanks for listening!

[TheOriginalOverlord]

Actually I think it's a simple fix (IMHO). Give the 20-25mm guns the HE Pen they need/deserve and reduce the HE kill of the 12.7-15mm weapons a bit.

The reason the quad 50's kill ALL the time is because of the super inflated (IMHO) HE kill value of 36! I've experimented and brought this down to HE kill of 7 for the single 50's, 12 for the twin 50cal and 18 for the quad 50's, this seems to work much better allowing some damaging shots as well as getting kills.

When I reduced the HE kill a bit I started to get more damages and less "kills". I believe the HE pen value is only checked to see if the weapon can penetrate the targets armour. Once it penetrates then the "HE Kill" value is applied. THAT determines the extent of damage on the target.


One way to see this is to give the .50cal a super HE Pen of 100 and a HE Kill of "1"...it will be less lethal than it is now but it will be able to penetrate about any AFV....it just won't kill it! At least not right away!

I've checked and double checked the 50cal HE pen value and it "acts" like a real 50cal should on lightly armed vehicles so I wouldn't go changing the PEN value but I would lower the KILL value. Remember everytime you hit an armored vehicle with the 50 and it penetrates the only thing going through the armor is tungsten steel slug with NO explosive capability at all. So unless it hits something that explodes it "generally" won't do more than poke holes in the armor.....this means it will take more than one "hit" with a 50cal-15mm HMG to take out an armored car/lt. tank etc. Which is more realistic (IMHO again) than sending an AC up in flames on the first hit.

Similar effect in Kuwait in '91...a Marine with a 50cal sniper rifle put three rounds through the front of a BRDM scout car (comparable to the 222-rad) at near 1500m IIRC and the crew bailed out and ran! No major damage to the BRDM just a few 1/2" holes appeared for ventilation all of a sudden!

I think this could be a simple OOB tweak that would bring some balance to the 20-25mm AA guns without having a major effect anywhere else. Of course someone may come along and poke holes in my theory but so far that's what I've found.

[RobertS]

That was a close one Overlord. I was ready to end it all there for a moment. It appears you are correct ...again. But this issue should be taken note of by person or persons planning to do further updates on these OOBs, because not being able to shoot anything down with a 20-25mm is pretty important!

[Voriax]

Another serious bug, IMO, is that heavy mg's like .50 cal don't use the same set of rules than other mg's.

Now assume your tank has main gun, .50 AAMG, coax mg and hull mg. When you fire at target 10 hexes away, only the main gun should always fire. For any other weapons to fire crew must pass an experience check. However this is not the case with the heavy mg's that have AP pen values. They are considered as secondary cannons and will always fire.

This gives a big bonus to US troops as almost every one of their tanks have a .50 cal, meaning that whenever you fire at lightly armoured target you always have a backup mg shot with a rather high kill possibility coming up if you miss with the main gun.

One of the main reasons I dislike playing US, btw. Unfortunately as the only way to fix this is either remove AP penetration values from heavy mg's or do some code fixes, I guess the situation will stay. Though changing their weapon class from 'small gun' might also help..needs to be tested.


Voriax

[o4r]

Originally posted by Voriax
Another serious bug, IMO, is that heavy mg's like .50 cal don't use the same set of rules than other mg's.

Now assume your tank has main gun, .50 AAMG, coax mg and hull mg. When you fire at target 10 hexes away, only the main gun should always fire. For any other weapons to fire crew must pass an experience check. However this is not the case with the heavy mg's that have AP pen values. They are considered as secondary cannons and will always fire.

This gives a big bonus to US troops as almost every one of their tanks have a .50 cal, meaning that whenever you fire at lightly armoured target you always have a backup mg shot with a rather high kill possibility coming up if you miss with the main gun.

One of the main reasons I dislike playing US, btw. Unfortunately as the only way to fix this is either remove AP penetration values from heavy mg's or do some code fixes, I guess the situation will stay. Though changing their weapon class from 'small gun' might also help..needs to be tested.


Voriax

I strongly agree with you.

Tanks destroyer like American M10, 18 or 36, when firing their main gun, has sometime temporary effect shock to themselve as it it not covered on top, espically the M36 with its 90mm gun. The tank also vibrate when such tank destroyer fire their gun.

The .5 on the M4 Sherman, the crew cannot in the copula to fire it. It acutally required one to stand outside and fire. But when the M4 in the game is suppressed, it still fire.

The other tank which has the bug, is a unit in Cezh catalogery. The tank is known as Pz 39H RAK. These tank are infact used in the desert by Rommel. It is actually the original French 39 H with attachement of Wuffrahmen 40 rockets, with the same configuration. In fact the only tank in the game that uses it 37mm gun to bombard is this tank. cause the game acutally place the 37mm as a secondary artillery to this tank.

[Lars]

Originally posted by Voriax
Another serious bug, IMO, is that heavy mg's like .50 cal don't use the same set of rules than other mg's.

Now assume your tank has main gun, .50 AAMG, coax mg and hull mg. When you fire at target 10 hexes away, only the main gun should always fire. For any other weapons to fire crew must pass an experience check. However this is not the case with the heavy mg's that have AP pen values. They are considered as secondary cannons and will always fire.

Voriax

Is it possible to move the .50 cal to slot #4 instead?

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Lars
Is it possible to move the .50 cal to slot #4 instead?

I believe this would only alter the firing arc, not the possibility of fire. At least the two cannon tanks (Lee/Grant, Char's) always fire both of their guns. Feel free to experiment.

Voriax

[Lars]

Originally posted by Voriax
I believe this would only alter the firing arc, not the possibility of fire. At least the two cannon tanks (Lee/Grant, Char's) always fire both of their guns. Feel free to experiment.

Voriax

No, you're right. I don't think I need to test it...

[BryanMelvin]

And the oobs are being overhauled even as we type

First, you cannot change AP and HE Kill numbers without a coding effect on weapon graphics and sounds. This, unfortunately cannot be done with all weapons etc..

As for Pen. factors - does HE Pen. have an effect on planes? and can you verify this?

I have fixed many of the issues mentioned in this thread for the finale Matrix oobs.

Let me say that the oobs now in the works are to be completely compatible with the 7.1 oobs currently used. This is to ensure that all older scenarios and campaigns will work with these oobs and sceanrios/campaigns desgined in new oobs will work when crossed back over to 7.1 oobs. This is not an easy task.

Please keep posting your ideas on Pen factors and I'll be listening.

You should be please with the oobs currently in the works:D

[Voriax]

The problem with heavy mg's always firing isn't related to the class, but the fact that they have penetration values in the first place. Remove *both* AP and HE penetration and then they behave like every other machine gun.

However as I already hear the scream of 'unjust' I fear this won't change
I don't think that Matrix Guys are willing to make a code change that would make the 'chance to fire' probabilities same to all mg's...?

Voriax

[KG Erwin]

The satchel charge shows "size" as 222. Should be 2. Easy fix.