Spotting Anti-Tank Rifles

[PoorOldSpike]

ATR's v PzIV TESTS

I lined up 12 Russian ATR's and ordered them to fire at the panzer at 200 metres.
Against the orangey side armour they regularly scored partial penetrations and the rare full pen (main pic).
After one turn the panzer was panicking, after two turns it was routing and had lost a crewman, and after 3 turns it abandoned.
I then turned the panzer face on (inset) to see how they did against its yellowy front armour, and they were completely unable to penetrate, all I saw were the odd partial pens, and after they expended all their ammo over 10 turns the panzer was still alive and unscratched with no crew losses.
Conclusion - The tests simply confirm what we already knew, namely ATR's can kill orangey armour, but yellow armour defeats them completely.

[Jobu88]

Another item of interest -- ATRs are not completely helpless against infantry, they can pin and inflict casualties under the right circumstances ( although they obviously will take the worst of it in a firefight). If they catch infantry moving in the open, ATRs can usually pin them.

And also of interest to me :) in a recent game with Maakt Droog, I scored a first-shot kill on a moving German halftrack at 732 meters with an ATR.

[bluehand]

I did like to see a listing of the penetrationn abilities of a .50 caliber. they are only slightly smaller than some ATR rounds and do have good enough penetration to bring down an armored airplane. and in the game they seem pretty good at taking out halftracks. I've never tried it on a lightly armored tank.
anybody ever got a kill on a PZ1 or a BT-7 with one?
at close range even with the smaller bullet they should have a chance at the side armor on several tanks.

[Marshall666]

here you can see how powerfull a cal.50 mg really is:

http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image...zerpx1.jpg

seems that pos have to do some more tests ;)

[PoorOldSpike]

It's difficult to pin down in live-fire tests which MG's can kill armour and which can't, but in most cases the gun crew will open fire on a tank without you having to order them to, because they know better than us whether their weapon can hurt it.
Needless to say they'll only fire at light armour, although they'll also spray heavier tanks if the commander is exposed in the hope of nailing him.
You can issue fire orders against buttoned armour yourself, but the crew will cease fire after just one or two bursts if they know their gun can't penetrate.




And this sentence from page 136 of the cmbb manual also confirms MG's can penetrate armour -
"Armor penetration for bullets (ie 12.7mm and under) reduced slightly [from Cmbo]"

https://www.theblitz.club/message_boards...?tid=39837

[Colonel Talvela]

I lost a pziv/70A to a 50 cal from the rear before - well I think I did. it has been a long time. It was a game against JDSU - if he peeks his head in here maybe he can remember.

[kineas]

Also, beware of trying to deal with numerous ATRs in good cover by using infantry to find them and suppress them for you. They will suck away your squad ammo in no time flat, and frequently rally right through the fire. Even if you do KO one or two, the cost to the Russians is tiny, and your squad ammo will not rally.

I had similar experience in a pbem game, so I made some test. A full rifle '41 squad vs a lone ATR team in woods. You should get into close combat range (<10m) as soon as possible, otherwise they just drain ammo.

On average 12 shots was required to kill the ATR team, and in one case it required 30.

[PoorOldSpike]

ATR's v INFANTRY TEST
(Regulars on both sides, midday, clear weather, summer)

The Russians will not open fire on their own initiative because they know they have little chance of hurting inf, so you have to order them to fire, like this -




But after 15 continuous turns of firing they've only inflcted one casualty! (occasionally a German squad or two would be briefly pinned but unhurt)
Conclusion -don't bother wasting your ATR slugs on infantry.
(PS - Notice the infantry haven't spotted the ATR's in the woods, they're just getting ghost icon 'sound contacts' from the direction of the woods)




PS - it'd be a bad idea for the ATR's to let the infantry get closer in the hope of inflicting more casualties, because the inf would spot them at around 100m and start firing back like this..

[Der Kuenstler]

the inf would spot them at around 100m and start firing back like this..

It would be awesome to have a chart of every kind of unit and how far away it can fire safely without getting spotted...spotting is such a key to this game...

[PoorOldSpike]

It would be awesome to have a chart of every kind of unit and how far away it can fire safely without getting spotted...spotting is such a key to this game...

With CM it can't be done mate because there seems to be a 'random factor' built into every aspect of CM, plus a truckload of variables on top, so it'd be impossible to put everything all onto a single chart.
For example quite often after i've posted a tac test, somebody will say "hey i just reproduced your test but got slightly different results!".
That's the random factor fluctuating from game to game, i like it because it keeps things unpredictable just like real life..:)
As for all the variables floating around,the above ATR v Inf tests used regular units on both sides in clear sunny summer weather, yet in any other season there's less foliage on the trees so they might be spotted earlier.
And if the attacking inf were vet/crack/elites, and had a good leader, they might spot even quicker. Then there's all sorts of weather and lighting conditions that would affect spotting.
That's why I tell people to regard all my charts and tests as basic guides only and to play by gut instinct, not by charts..:)
Remember in the Cincinatti Kid where a poker player carefully consulted his charts before placing his bet?
But the Kid played not by charts but by gut instinct and took him to the cleaners..
Right Kid?

"Right!"