Black Sea Discussions

[PoorOldSpike]

I'm guessing that the APS defeating the T-HEAT round in the earlier screenshot is legitimate because the APS gives it a "tap on the nose" to make it detonate before hitting the tank.
But why the T-90 crew fired it at the Abrams in the first place instead of APFSDS is a puzzle.
I ran the following tests to find out who fires what in an Abrams(APS) vs T-90AM (APS) tank battle, and found-
1- all the tanks on both sides fired only APFSDS, which is realistic
2- the APS of both sides never tried to intercept the APFSDS rounds, that too is realistic.

The test- I lined up two groups of 5 tanks at opposite ends of the map (range 700m) and let them start shooting, and monitored ammo depletion each turn. (the enemy tanks ARE there, they just haven't been spotted yet in these screenshots)-




The T-90's came off worst in the battle (below), and in further tests I had to reduce the number of Abrams in to give the T-90's a chance; I estimate the Russians need about 5 to 3 odds, reminiscent of WW2 when Sherman 75mm's had to outnumber Tigers and Panthers to stand a chance of winning.
The key to the Abrams superiority seems to be in its excellent optics which spot the enemy quickly, enabling the Abrams to fire first.
"The day goes to whoever is first to plaster the enemy with fire"- Erwin Rommel
"Whoever fires first, wins"- Israeli tank doctrine, Yom Kippur War



However, if the T-90 can get its act together, it can certainly hurt the Abrams bad as this screenshot shows, this Abrams is riddled and trashed by 6 APFSDS rounds that punched clean through its front armour.
"Oh cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes!"-Richard III

[GAZNZ]

My general cmbs thoughts are its a bit bugged
needs a patch badly
is pro US
u can take lots of jav teams and kill all russian tanks with them too easy
jav teams need to be restricted with rarity
Russian At missiles are useless
US Abrams take absurd punishment
in one case Ive hit an Abrams 5 times in one game from 3 tanks at once and it killed 3 t90 tanks in 40 seconds and the Russian shots are at under 600-800 yards partially penetrated.
US tank is fine.
I seemed to do more damage and suppression with a shikia and it died.
russian tank dies in one hit from us tank
ive found it frustrating as russians
ive tried every trick in the book
im into modern warfare and shoot alot of guns so i know how stuff works
im not playing any more games till its patched pretty much
Cmbs weapons - russian AT missle vehicle - supersonic one is designed to shoot from behind a hull down position and only missile is visible along with sensor but game cannot model this due to engine restrictions
so immediately u are at a disadvantage as the equipment cannot work as designed
and they are not shooting properly anyway. I''e had them sitting staring at tanks they can see for 1-2 minutes and not shooting.
Nato has good sniper options
Russians are poor with no .50cal sniper rifle equiv in game when there is one in real life
general sniper rifles are rubbish for russians.
Nato has superior optics, sniper rifles so range is superior for sniper rifles.
Really the game should have more and cheaper Russian units for your points vs less and more expensive Nato units. Same principle as in WW2 vs Germans.
Javs need to be made more expensive or somefink.
They dominate too much.
Playing one guy at the moment, i took out 12-15 of his armoured units with Javs in 3-4 turns.
I dont think he saw any of my guys.
I took 3 Abrams and only exposed 1 of them so far.
Anyways something different to play with haha

[A Canadian Cat]

My general cmbs thoughts are its a bit bugged
needs a patch badly
is pro US

Humm, well the equipment in real life is pro US, as you likely know. Do not expect that to change. Certainly balance issues can be changed in terms of rarity and points etc. I believe the announcement of the 1.03 patch discusses that.

u can take lots of jav teams and kill all russian tanks with them too easy

Yep. Nasty kit those Javelins. But they have their disadvantages - heavy and not a lot of ammo.

jav teams need to be restricted with rarity

I do not recall anything about that in the patch announcement. I wonder what they will do with that especially as there was mention of infantry getting cheaper.

russian tank dies in one hit from us tank

Right. You think that is wrong? The T90 and the T72 before it have a limit to how much armour they can have and they also have ammo storage issues. Couple that with the wicked gun on the M1 and one shot one kill is pretty much what you are going to get.

T90s and T72 can take plenty of punishment from other opponents.

ive found it frustrating as russians

Yeah it sure can be. I am playing a mirror match of First Clash and in both games the Russians are kicking ass and taking names. And the US has plenty of M1s in that fight. So, there are ways to win as the Russians.

Cmbs weapons - russian AT missle vehicle - supersonic one is designed to shoot from behind a hull down position and only missile is visible along with sensor but game cannot model this due to engine restrictions
so immediately u are at a disadvantage as the equipment cannot work as designed

Yeah, a bummer for sure. I hope changes can be made to address this.

and they are not shooting properly anyway. I''e had them sitting staring at tanks they can see for 1-2

I have not see this - and I test that every single build. Once the M1 is spotted aiming begins and missiles away pretty fast. The aiming takes longer than a T90 and spotting is slow. But once they spot the M1 they try to kill it. And they fire salvo so even APS has trouble dealing with it.

But given the issue about not being able to fire from full vehicle down positioning them is tricky and given their slowness they need good concealment.

[raz_atoth]

I totally agree with GAZNZ that rarity should be reworked. As it stands, at least in QB, i don't think the russian player has much of a chance in a blue vs red battle. That's why i pretty much play red vs red or blue vs blue QBs. Having tons of Javelins walking around and Abrams destroying the armor the russians can throw at it in mere minutes might be realistic, but it sucks out the fun from such games.

[PoorOldSpike]

The 'Force adjustment' option in the QB setup screen can be twiddled to put a damper on the US superiority if both players agree.
For example in a Medium-size Meeting with 'No Change' to the setting, both sides get 8500 purchase pts, but if we set it to 'minus 50 %' as below, the Americans only get 4300 pts, but the Russkis still get 8500 (I checked the figures)-




Another way around the US superiority problem if both players prefer not to use the Force adjustment option would be to agree to play a mirror game where they take it in turns to be the US player.

Another alternative as Raz said, would be for both players to be US players in the same game.

Anyway, players could play Ukraine vs Russia battles, they don't need to be US all the time.
Personally I'd like handling Ukrainian forces for a change and am going to run tests later to find out what they can do.
Putin said on TV "I could be in Kiev within two weeks if I wanted", so it'd be interesting to see if his units in CMBS can walk the walk against Ukrainian forces..:)

[GAZNZ]

War is a numbers game to an extent and Russia has the numbers which is not represented in purchase points.
Looking over the new patch notes 1.03
There is alot of adjustment to Russian tanks armour and firing of guns.
Which is good as all the shots being fired at Abrams in alot of cases were bugged as russian tanks were aiming at the wrong part of the US tank resulting in partial turrent pens.
Ive had a bmp kill an Abrams in a more successful way than a T90 from the side lol
5 T90s fail from mutiple angles but BMP does it :)
As i posted earlier the equipment given to all forces and rarity makes a pro us game on balance and selection available. I note units were left out for a future expansion.
While US tech is superior they dont have the numbers.
Russia does.

If russian tanks/armour were cheaper along with troops and / or javs higher in rarirty it would make players use more of all other weapons and things might make more sense.
APS tanks rarity has gone up in the patch so it will mean its now more viable to take general russian At weapons.
I initially tried using all weapons but just got hammered.
The AT missles were bugged swaying of course
so i stopped using them.
Retified in the new patch.
Javs are so uber firing from weird angles from any where out of buildings and trees and through forest canopy on all occassions ive seen.
100 points is 1200 points of armour dead.
Cheap as chips.
After the new patch perhaps see how thing are and maybe make new guidelines for ladder games?
New suggestions above are a good idea.
I have around 10 pbms running at once so happy to test lol.
I personally find games boring if i uber win or vice versa
So jav issue is something to be considered.
I recommend players make more use of other gear and make things more challanging and interesting.
Cheers

[PoorOldSpike]

ATGM TEST RESULTS AGAINST NAKED MBT ARMOUR (i.e. without APS systems)
(I wanted to see how the missiles did against frontal armour without getting shot down by APS)
US and Ukrainian missiles were targetted on the T-90AM.
Russian missiles were targetted on the M1A2 SEP Abrams.
I fired each missile type multiple times with Regular/ Normal motivation/Fit /0 leadership ratings, clear weather, daytime and logged the effects.
The figures below are condensed into 10 shots each, and rated Kill/ Damage/ Miss, although the figures would vary in poor weather, or with inexperienced shooters etc.
Example-With 10 shots the Javelin scores 8 kills, 1 Damage and 1 Miss against a T-90AM, whereas most of the Russian missiles score plenty of hits but find it impossible to penetrate.

Data deleted as obsolete see chart in post #26

[PoorOldSpike]

Some screenshots from ATGM tests-
As we know, the Javelin dives down on the thinner top armour like this-



And the TOW flies over the tank (launch position circled) and directs a molten blast downwards..


Like this..



But all the Russian and Ukrainian ATGM's try to punch through the armour head-on like this AT-14..

[PoorOldSpike]

ALL missiles sometimes miss, including the Javelin (caused by EW jamming maybe?)




and sometimes it misses by a mile (launch position circled)



Other missiles might fall short or wide like this TOW

[PoorOldSpike]

I also ran tests against APS-equipped Abrams and T-90's, and on average about 7 ATGM's out of every 10 were shot down by APS. The remaining 3 either scored a damaging hit on the tank, or missed.
However, the Javelin did much better than all the rest against APS and scored kills about 6 times out of 10 shots. It scored damaging hits about twice, and was shot down by APS about twice (below)