Ammo carriers

[Voriax]

Howdy all.

There has been some talk about functionality of the ammo carriers and they puzzled me a bit I ran a test.

I purchased a pile of ammo carriers, German ones if that matters, and positioned them on the map in such way that they were 5-6 hexes away from each other. Then I took various units and positioned them so that each carrier had 1,2 or 3 units of same type next to it.

I emptied all main gun ammo from my test units but left all mg/rifle/pistol ammo so it won't mess things up.

First of all I noticed that there is no difference in the ammo reload amount whether there is one or more units next to ammo carrier, they all got same amount of ammo each turn.

then the results:

PzB 39 AT-rifle: 10 AP rounds/turn
37mm PaK : 4 HE/t
50mm PaK : 3 HE + 1 AP/t
PzJ-1b : 3 HE + 1 AP/t
PSW-222, 20mm KwK30 : NOTHING
Pz IIIh : 3 HE + 1 AP/t
SiG 33 : 2 HE/t
88 Flak : 2 HE/t
81mm Mtr : 5 HE/t

I also noted that after the unit has gotten the full HE ammo amount, then it starts receiving AP rounds and APCR, if applicable. For example the 50mm Pak got 20 HE rounds and then begun receiving 3AP + 1APCR/turn.

What I see from this is that besides something buggy with the 20mm gun in the armoured car the reloading seems to be related to the size of the gun and not the primary task of the gun. For example it would make much more sense if AT-guns got 3AP+1HE, or just plain AP first.

Also it looks like the ammo reload speed has only few steps as the 88 and SiG (150mm) get ammo at same speed. Perhaps also AT-guns should get ammo faster than tanks as there is no need to load them into ammo racks, and afaik smaller AT-guns got their ammo in crates/boxes that had several rounds in one box.

Looks like that currently it's pretty much useless to use ammo carriers except for reloading mortars and perhaps on-board arty.

Voriax

[Arralen]

Originally posted by Voriax:

There has been some talk about functionality of the ammo carriers and they puzzled me a bit I ran a test.

PSW-222, 20mm KwK30 : NOTHING

What I see from this is that besides something buggy with the 20mm gun in the armoured car the reloading seems to be related to the size of the gun and not the primary task of the gun.

Undoubtly.

This guns rates with "weapon size 222" (as a 20mm Flak) and gives a "Flak Pattern" when fired .. this is already noted and will be changed in a OOB patch (hopefully).

Set the weapon size to "6" and try again ..

Besides, from your test result I would suggest that Flak with weapon size "222" wouldn't get resupplied by ammo trucks ?

Maybe you can include a "20mm Flak vier /38" in your test as well ?

.. looking forward to hear about it..

Arralen

[This message has been edited by Arralen (edited 06-09-2000).]

[Voriax]

You were right, Arralen.

I added the Flakvierling and it did not receive any ammo. The 20mm Flak 38 had the same problem while the 36mm Flak 36 got that 4 HE rounds/turn.

What shall I add next?

Voriax

[Dice4Eyes]

Originally posted by Voriax:

You were right, Arralen.

I added the Flakvierling and it did not receive any ammo. The 20mm Flak 38 had the same problem while the 36mm Flak 36 got that 4 HE rounds/turn.

What shall I add next?

Voriax

Maybe test with multiple ammo trucks for each reloading unit to see if you can speed it up. Someone said that units in the Sola airport scenario got more resupply that way. But that was from the ammo packs Wild Bill made for that scenario.

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Mvh Daniel E.

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Dice4Eyes:
Maybe test with multiple ammo trucks for each reloading unit to see if you can speed it up. Someone said that units in the Sola airport scenario got more resupply that way. But that was from the ammo packs Wild Bill made for that scenario.

Having two trucks reloading will double the reloading amount, I did not try with larger amounts of trucks but I'd say it's a fairly safe bet that each new truck adds the previously mentioned amount to the reload amounts.

Hmmm...guess I'll have to test ammo dumps next.

Voriax

[Recon_slith]

Nice work, Voriax. Good idea and method.

I wonder if a unit can be oversupplied if being serviced by more than one ammo truck/dump? Might cause a crash (computer variety that is). Maybe that's just pessimism though.

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Wait for Death. There's a choice?
Recon

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Recon:
Nice work, Voriax. Good idea and method.

I wonder if a unit can be oversupplied if being serviced by more than one ammo truck/dump? Might cause a crash (computer variety that is). Maybe that's just pessimism though.

Thanks Recon, now I'm blushing and look like a radish.

I inflicted six ammotrucks upon a lone 88 and all that happened was that the poor 88 crew now humped 12 rounds of ammo each turn.

I also checked the ammo dumps and they resupply ammo double the rate of ammo truck, except in cases where the rate was 3+1 it was now 7+1 rounds.

The double resupply rate is also mentioned in the SP3 manual, but unlike the manual says it is not necessary for the unit to be in same hex as the ammo dump, next to it will do fine.

Voriax

[Charles22]

Thanks for the research guys. I was wondering why that Gerry 20mm AA halftrack wasn't reloading. Well, I guess I still really don't know why it's not.

I t makes me wonder if in latter years if the Gerry tmg, which is AA in variety, will end up not replenishing as well. I don't remember the round's size but the King Tiger, I believe, has one of those guns, which I believe is the same size employed on the general halftrack (found under halftrack section in '39 selection) for Gerry, which of course makes me wonder if it resupplies. It's not that big a deal it if doesn't resupply, because it starts out with so much ammo, but the HT which has the 20mm AA gun doesn't have so much.

[Voriax]

Due to popular request...

Charles, the 20mm guns don't reload because the weapon size in the oob file is 222. I changed it to same as other guns of similar size (6) and they begun receiving ammo at the rate of 4 HE/turn.

Now I don't know why the size is 222, it may be just a typo or it may have some special meaning, that's up to people at Matrix games to tell us.

Some new reloading amounts, from trucks.

Rifles: 15 HE/t
MG34 lmg: 5 HE/t
Flammenwerfer 1 HE/t

The abovementioned figures were for a rifle squad and an engineer squad. However when Eng. squad got it's supply from ammo dump it received double amounts and one satchel charge/turn.

However when I reloaded a MG34 MMG team, they got _only_ 7 rounds for MG and 4 rounds for the rifle per turn. I feel that infantry units should get their full ammo in just couple turns, after all they'll just grab a few ammo crates.

Voriax

[Charles22]

I would think the 222 was deliberate. Perhaps they regard those guns resupplying as unrealistic in this limited scope or would warp gameplay too much. Still, I am curious about the KT tmg, though it probably has gobs of starting ammo like the starting Gerry HT does.

Voriax: Why do you use the '6' figure? Wouldn't 20mm AA be more like size 2 or 3?

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Charles22:
I would think the 222 was deliberate. Perhaps they regard those guns resupplying as unrealistic in this limited scope or would warp gameplay too much. Still, I am curious about the KT tmg, though it probably has gobs of starting ammo like the starting Gerry HT does.

Voriax: Why do you use the '6' figure? Wouldn't 20mm AA be more like size 2 or 3?

I used the '6' as looking at the other weapons the MG's were 3,a 15mm Besa was 5 and 37mm flak was also 6 so I thought, what the heck I bet that further testing would reveal that changing this gun size affects the reloading rate.

I still think it's a typo as if a 37mm flak or an 88 can reload then why not a 20mm flak? But let's wait what the Makers say

The King Tiger has normal MG34 mg's. The only tank that has 20mm auxiliary weapon is the Maus, and I'd guess it won't reload either as it uses the same gun that was size 222

Voriax

[Mike Wood]

Hello...

The 222 weapon size is intentional. It is a flag used by the program. The lack of ammo loading is a bug caused by the 222. I will fix it.

Originally posted by Voriax:
I used the '6' as looking at the other weapons the MG's were 3,a 15mm Besa was 5 and 37mm flak was also 6 so I thought, what the heck I bet that further testing would reveal that changing this gun size affects the reloading rate.
I still think it's a typo as if a 37mm flak or an 88 can reload then why not a 20mm flak? But let's wait what the Makers say
Voriax

Thanks for pointing it out.

Bye...

Michael Wood

[Charles22]

Voriax: I believe the MG34 is the gun I'm talking about, however, There ARE Mg34's which aren't AAMG, which you'll notice it is. My concern is that since we see 20mm AA guns, generally not resupplying, that the MG34 AAMG may be going through the same thing. It's a very prominent mg for Gerry, about mid-way onwards, through the war. What you say about AA ammo is peculiar, because I recall the 75L24 is considered size 4 for shell. Perhaps the programmers are not stating the size of each individual shell, but for one burst altogether in the case of multiple-round AA guns.

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Charles22:
Voriax: I believe the MG34 is the gun I'm talking about, however, There ARE Mg34's which aren't AAMG, which you'll notice it is. My concern is that since we see 20mm AA guns, generally not resupplying, that the MG34 AAMG may be going through the same thing. It's a very prominent mg for Gerry, about mid-way onwards, through the war. What you say about AA ammo is peculiar, because I recall the 75L24 is considered size 4 for shell. Perhaps the programmers are not stating the size of each individual shell, but for one burst altogether in the case of multiple-round AA guns.

Well, from Mike's reply I get the feeling the bug was related to the weapon size...but if you want I can make you happy and add some AAMG's to the reload test later on

And the '6' was a weapon size, not a shell size. Check via oob editor and you see. My guess right now is that this figure affects only the reload speed and not to how easily it can spotted as there is a different size flag for actual units.

Voriax

[Charles22]

Voriax: No, no, no , no, no, no. We must be talking about different things. There is a shell size rating, which goes into calculating the damage made through HE shot, and also is taken into account for the chance that AP shot results in destroying the vehicle. Perhaps this 222 rating you refer to is something else entirely. If you look at a gun's characteristics in the unit data screen, in the far right column it says 'size', perhaps that's not what you're talking about, but my understanding was that this meant 'shell' size, not weapon, for it's a shell that you shoot at the enemy.

[Voriax]

Originally posted by Charles22:
Voriax: No, no, no , no, no, no. We must be talking about different things. There is a shell size rating, which goes into calculating the damage made through HE shot, and also is taken into account for the chance that AP shot results in destroying the vehicle. Perhaps this 222 rating you refer to is something else entirely. If you look at a gun's characteristics in the unit data screen, in the far right column it says 'size', perhaps that's not what you're talking about, but my understanding was that this meant 'shell' size, not weapon, for it's a shell that you shoot at the enemy.

The 222 I'm referring does _not_ appear in the unit data screen. It appears in the _weapon_ screen that comes when you click the 'weapons' button in the oob editor. It is then displayed directly under the 'weapon class' window. That is the place where the 222 figure is and what I changed to 6 for my tests. however as Mike said the figure 222 is correct but the bug is in the reloading thingy.

In the weapons screen we have this 'warhead' flag which determines the kill factors you are talking about and which mean the shell size. And this is not what I meant


I might add a bit from a mail I got via OOB fix mailing list:

from Paul V.
<quote>
Weapon size 222 is a flag that tells the program that this gun used drums
that typically hada mix of AP and HE ammo. The ammo type is always given
only HE but the game uses the he kill factor against soft targets and the AP
pen against hard targets.

<end quote>
Now it's bedtime..*hic*

Voriax

[Charles22]

Yes, now that I'm home, I can see what I was talking about was called warhead. Perhaps in Panzer Strike or earlier SP's it was called size.

In any event, I looked up the King Tiger and to my surprise it doesn't have the gun I was so concerned about, but I figured the most prominent tank would. Instead, it's on the SGIIIG for example, and it's the MG34 AAMG.

[Tommy]

I think I've found another gun that won't reload - the Panther. The 2 in "Maus that Roared" ran out of AP. I parked them near 2 ammo trucks for 4 turns and got no AP reloads. I didn't notice if they were loading HE, I was in a panic for AP rounds.

Tom