Matrix Games Forums

Looking at this entry ..
I assume range in yards. So, it's max indirect fire range is roughly 10 miles.

Now, how to understand vMAN. What is the blast radius? The KIA and WIA radius?

How to understand vARM. Is that the result of direct fire or indirect fire? If direct fire, then at what range? Further what thickness of steel at zero slope does vARM penetrate or what game armor value? Or throw tracks or cause damage to optics?

Just trying to get a sense of how to visualize this stuff? Anyone ever play MIUS? The gun and AFV tables including round types and slope are quite well done.

Thanks.

I believe the values you want to pay attention to are Acc, vMan and vArm. I've never had the patience to look into vArm but the combat reports show a lot of relevant information for anti-tank combat if you care to dig into them.

Against personnel vMan seems to be the most important value for the Germans. Two guns with the same accuracy appear to inflict damage in rough proportion to their vMan values. Accuracy seems to come into play for the Germans roughly on the lines of: a gun with accuracy 1,000 will do about 50% more damage than you may expect from its vMan value alone; and a gun with accuracy 2,000 will do about 25% more damage than a gun with accuracy 1,000. (I seem to remember someone on the forum saying that accuracy is the range at which the gun has a 50% chance of scoring a hit, but can't find the actual quote.)

For the Soviets accuracy seems to be the most important value. A gun with some accuracy like the ML-20 howitzer does a lot more damage than the M-13 rocket that has a higher vMan value but no accuracy. Also the ML-20 is quite a bit more effective than the M-10 despite similar vMan values and only a moderate increase in accuracy. So I assume at low levels of experience you want guns with good accuracy and at high experience you want better vMan.

Thank you K62.

This is one of the problems with the statistical RNG approach used (although I appreciated that with a physics based approach we could not possibly have such a game). But the numbers are somewhat arbitrary and hard to intuit how to understand them or verify against source data. Although I have no doubt 2by3 has tweaked the abstraction to be as accurate as possible given its limitations.

Look at these beautiful and clear diagrams. And when the battle is over, you can know exactly hit what round hit where and did what damage. It is really impressive. Unfortunately, I don't have an AAR screenshot to show. The following data is available out of game from the database, but it can also be accessed in game; including visibility and fields of fire.

BTW, everything is meters. So, you can see what rounds will penetrate what surface (thickness and slope) at what range. Elsewhere, you see now many rounds of particular ammo type you have.

This is physics based. But such an approach for WITE-2 would have made the game entirely unplayable.

For those, who are interested the above is a two level system like Total War, but with the emphasis on tactical battles rather than the operational level. Unlike CM, the game is not WEGO with battles running from 1-3 hours of real time. Size of campaign battles space from about 40 square kilometers to 180 square kilometers roughly; 3 days - 16 days roughly. If you can run CMx2, PDS recent release, this is within your reach. DLC's are all content (campaign releases); not features. The style is very different from CM as this is broad strokes and not micro management.

The graphics are very impressive. My biggest criticism is the lack of a replay camera. Often you are too busy commanding to enjoy graphics and the awe of it all. Support has vastly improved for English speakers since Achtung Panzer and Operation Star; despite that the developers don't speak English. The developers are ethnic Russians located in Kharkov (so WWII is in the blood). Are they Ukrainians or Russians? Who knows? But given my background in both systems and games, they are gifted programmers and designers who through the current conflict have been online and supported their product better than most. BTW, I do love CMx2 as well. They are really different offerings, and you can no more compare them than GG's games.

One other thing to add. Documentation is adequate as compared to CM or GG games. It is enough to get you in the fight, but it not a comprehensive reference. New features are constantly added, and rarely, maybe once per year is the manual updated, no living manual. On the other hand the developers are more engaged with the community than 2by3 or CM. However, this does not mean this will be pressured. They have a very clear picture a what the game should be. (outside of that scope with the exception of bugs, you will probably not change their minds)

Does understanding the equipment specifications actually matter?

More so in a tactical sense, when setting up ATGs and when to shoot. In this game, simply whether your anti-tank capabilities will be effective or not. Possible how much you must rely and terrain as opposed to fire power to get the job done.