I hate PzIVs

[BletchleyGeek]

I dont agree that the Sherman outclasses a Pz4. Its just another Role you use him for. Given the short Ranges we are fighting at (almost never had a Tankfight on 1000m or more) the good Optics/Gun doesnt play that Big Role. Add that to the Super High Situation Awarness and Track&Shoot Abilitiy of even moving Tanks and you get that Results you had.

I do entirely agree with the part I highlighted, TimoS. The extremely short ranges at which a great majority of CMx2 scenarios play out tend to skew our perceptions.

Where I don't agree with you is with your assessment of the Pz IV as an equal for the Sherman. For the early Sherman models, I'd say so. But the gap I perceive widens as one consider later 'iterations' of the Sherman against the Pz IV H and the Pz IV J.

The only time acceleration is just us god gamers running guys around quicker than they would, not tending to wounded etc.

That, and leaving stuff stationary much longer than we should.

[Weasel]

Well to resurrect this old thread.

Old opponent talked me into installing CM2 and playing him, reluctantly agreed. Five PzIVs doing leap frog movement, (2 move, 2 stationary) supported by a company of infantry around them. A Brit. 6LB clobbers one of them, no one can see him. Next turn he finishes the PzIV and my infantry spot him, but my tanks still have no LOS, yet the next turn the AT kills another, still no LOS to the AT gun from the remaining 3. Next turn another dies, still no tanks have LOS to the AT! Now down to a single PzIV that took a round but survived and still no one has eyes on it.

SO: HOW THE HELL CAN I BE SEEN BUT BE BLIND TO HIM? And before anyone says it: hatches open, infantry had eyes on AT gun, one of them, the HQ, never moved at all, was on a rise but still couldn't see the AT gun until he blew up.

CM2 might be getting uninstalled really fast, it is a crap game IMO.

[PoorOldSpike]

...SO: HOW THE HELL CAN I BE SEEN BUT BE BLIND TO HIM?..

Probably depended to a large extent on what Difficulty level you were playing at mate, because spotting abilty varies a lot between them. (the Borg or non-Borg spotting thing)
These are the CMx2 Diff levels (Manual page 28)-
IRON
ELITE
WARRIOR
VETERAN
BASIC TRAINING

The Manual seems to recommend Vet level and says-
"VETERAN
Most people familiar with the Combat Mission game system will prefer this setting. It is a fair balance between realism and fun that does not burden the player with unnecessary details or long waiting times.."

Incidentally, you said your tanks couldn't see the 6-pounder but your infantry could.
No sweat, you can still order your tanks to Area Fire into the guns reported position even though they can't see it..:)

But I agree with you that the old CMx1 game engine is better than CMx2, but sadly the CMx1 graphics are 14 years old now and pretty primitive, that's the only reason I switched to CMx2 with its much better graphics.
Ideally, Bfront should have simply kept the old CMx1 engine and given it a makeover with snazzy new graphics.

[raz_atoth]

I'm quite sure the difficulty level doesn't affect the spotting process itself, just the info. in the interface which is presented to the user. For example, this is what the manual has to say on the differences between Elite and Warrior:

Enemy infantry icons are always the plain “soldier” type, regardless of their armament or function.

So, as i see it, the chances of spotting something are the same, irregardless of the difficulty.

In this particular case, it seems more like bad luck for Weasel. From my experience in CMx2 AT guns are more easily spotted than in CMx1, especially the big ones. You could conceal a gun in CMx1 until the enemy was really close, not so much in CMx2.

[GAZNZ]

Before you get angry and quit you need to realize that you need good spotting in CM and C2.
I usually have Hqs on foot with radio or recon vehicles spotting that are in the same C2 net work as my tanks.
Ie Tanks are under the group commander, who is radioed if there are enemy and there positions,
Tanks get spotted and relayed to my tank who position there tank's angles accordingly I''ve noted and spot them easier. This goes out over the radio network.
Buying a crack tank and expecting them to see is not how it works.
You have to understand a hidden AT gun can be hard for a tank to see. Even after repeat shots.
You need a good communication and spotting network.
I hope this helps your game and play style.
Command vehicles, recon and radios - the whole setup is not in the game for no reason.

I recommend Elite or Warrior for best settings.
IRON can create issues with moving and seeing your own units so I do not recommend its use.
I find IRON way overboard and unrealistic.

[Weasel]

There was an entire company around the tanks that had LOS to the AT gun (parts of). And it wasn't that they couldn't see (I didn't make this clear), but when I tried to area shoot the AT gun I had no LOS at all to the area except from the first tank loss, which I have no problem with him dieing. So if I have no LOS to an area how can he have LOS to me? We had an old saying when I was in the infantry "If I can see you then you can see me". BTW - the AT gun is in an open field in front of a hedge, not behind it or in it, but in front of it. When he fired at my second tank he missed with 3 rounds, so when it was my turn I checked to see if I could put smoke down in front of him, NOPE, no LOS to the area, I could only see about 100m to my right. Also I know something of tanks, I was infantry for 6 years (section commander) and armoured for 6 (tank driver/gunner).

The different level of play have nothing to do with spotting, it only effects whether you see icons and how close your units have to be to each other to be in LOS.

Nope, can't say CM2 is winning me back. Anyone want to buy my licenses (seriously), I have up to MG?

[pontaeus]

Thanks for the pointers on spotting.
Personally, I love Iron level. It seems most realistic to me and seems to best facilitate units being able to hit and run or at least fire and survive a while. On the easier levels it seems any unit close to an enemy formation that fires is spotted immediately and is then "seen" by just about every unit in LOS and automatically gets obliterated by return fire.
The AT gun in the open cranking away seems a bit off, but firefights are obviously confusing (loud noises, shock and those bastards trying to kill you) and I've seen similar occasional "bad luck" results. I'm sure you all have played more games than I but so far really incongruous results seem rare enough to seem realistic to me at least.
E

Before you get angry and quit you need to realize that you need good spotting in CM and C2.
I usually have Hqs on foot with radio or recon vehicles spotting that are in the same C2 net work as my tanks.
Ie Tanks are under the group commander, who is radioed if there are enemy and there positions,
Tanks get spotted and relayed to my tank who position there tank's angles accordingly I''ve noted and spot them easier. This goes out over the radio network.
Buying a crack tank and expecting them to see is not how it works.
You have to understand a hidden AT gun can be hard for a tank to see. Even after repeat shots.
You need a good communication and spotting network.
I hope this helps your game and play style.
Command vehicles, recon and radios - the whole setup is not in the game for no reason.

I recommend Elite or Warrior for best settings.
IRON can create issues with moving and seeing your own units so I do not recommend its use.
I find IRON way overboard and unrealistic.

[PoorOldSpike]

..So if I have no LOS to an area how can he have LOS to me?..

Whenever something odd has happened to me in CMBN/RT/BS, I've always surgically analysed a bunch of factors involved and managed to come up with a satisfactory explanation.
Maybe if you posted a screenshot (or even better send me the game file) we could make a few guesses as to what's going on.
At the moment the only guess I can offer is that you were playing with a too high difficulty level. Remember, Bfront recommend Veteran level as the best bet between fun and realism, and I'd tend to go along with that.
I recently played 3 games of BS on Iron level (the hardest) as an experiment and lost them all because I hadn't a clue what was going on, I often couldn't even spot my own units on the map, let alone spot the enemy!

[Steiner14]

Hi Weasel,
sorry to hear that your try ended in frustration.
I still have problems to believe, that the hit results are purely engineered calculations and do not follow a predetermination of where the grenade should hit a vehicle.
The turret size seems to have no impact. If a PzIV is full hull down or a Sherman is full hull down, there seems to be no difference.

Also the spotting mechanism itself has some problems.
I have been working on a full battle replay of "Wittmann's Demise" from level 9 and it will contain lots of ground level action. The clue is, it will be in black and white. When I first saw one of the battle scenes in b/w, I was amazed to see, how important the muzzle blast is to recognize from where the shooting occurs.
Because of the colors and because that they are not as bright and contrasting torwards the environment as in reality, and we players usually do not try to recognize enemy guns from ground level, the effect of the mussle blast on spotting a threat IMO so far has been hugely underestimated.
I have read many accounts, where tankers describe that a muzzle blast of a ATG showed where it was, but I could never reproduce the impact of this visual effect in CM. With the black and white movie behind the smoke of an exploded tank, I suddenly recognized, that it's the muzzle blast, which acts like a huge and sudden "Hello, here I am!".
I hope the movie will be available in two weeks.

Long speech short: I hope that with this upcoming video the importance of muzzle blasts on spotting will get a bigger attention from the developers. In the case with unbuttoned and stationary commanders you describe, I think the gun should be spotted at least after it's second shot. This is not the situation where a company of buttoned down T34s are rolling over the battlefield torwards the PAK of Otto Riehs.

Having said that spotting is not perfect, I would recommend, that you try to access CMx2 with a different mindset:
For example, I finally had stopped playing CMx1, because I could no longer stand, that my tanks automatically buttoned up after some time and I constantly had to click and unclick the button.

So maybe you could try, instead to search for reasons, why the result was not plausible, that you search for possibilities how you could find solutions within the game mechanics to win in such situations and forget, what deems realistic to you.

For example, I always try to make the oponent's tanks button down, before I engage them.
Or to be the one who is moving into position is also a huge disadvantage torwards the stationary observer.
This brings up another potential problem in your situation:
We don't know how the spotting mechanism works in detail. For example, it could be determined, depending on the environment, how long the spotting process will take.
So if you have a ATG and move a tank into it's LOS, maybe the spotting calculates the time for the ATG (seconds), and the time for the tank (minutes).
Now with the action taking place, the spotting duration is modified. For example the ATG shooting reduces it's camouflage bonus and therefore results in a reduced spotting time (i.e. from 250 seconds to 70 seconds).
That's all technically perfectly sound, but it could mean, that you cannot get rid of the disadvantage, that your tank was moving, while he entered the area of potential LOS.

To avoid this disadvantage one idea could be to use smoke to block LOS. Then move the tank and wait until the smoke vanishes. With that trick you could remove the moving factor in the equations. Your tank would be as stationary as the ATG. It will spot much quicker.

Another thing I like to do when advancing against an unknown force, is to use infantry with binocs in front of tanks, like feelers.

[Guardsman]

the spotting works both ways in my opinion. I just fought a battle in CMFI with a light mist and each one of my shermans was taken out by Pz4's before any of my tanks spotted theirs! And that was with un-buttoned and non supressed tanks. I could physically see the German tanks and so could other infantry units around but none of my tanks would engage them before being picked off by the Pz4's. I assumed the German tanks had better optics...or their commanders had those highly rated Zeiss binoculars ;-)