again brit tanks twice that of axis?

[Merlin51]

1 hour ago, goreblimey said:

As probably an extreme outlier , in this actual dollar cost vs effectiveness . British CS tanks,  why would anyone buy a matilda CS as apposed to the standard version, absolute waste of dollars given its obvious high  cost ve low effectiveness ?

Out of sheer necessity, depending oh how you are asking.
They needed something that could go in with the infantry and level obstructions and points of resistance and provide them close direct support.
Their 2pdr equipped guns were not suited for it, due to deciding not to produce (or continue to produce) the ammo for doing so.

They dont need the speed of the A13 (not in T0 anyways) but what they do need is the ability to bounce off things that might try and stop the CS unit
so it can continue to punch holes for its infantry to push through.

The axis were much more forward thinking in designing things like their STUG to be able to cover both this need as well as serving
as a tank destroyer

[jwilly]

2 hours ago, Merlin51 said:

The axis were much more forward thinking in designing things like their STUG to be able to cover both this need as well as serving as a tank destroyer

Yes, but not right away. Certainly not as quickly as modeled in-game.

Remember that German HEAT shells didn't actually work to a significant extent until mid-late-war. Those late-war shells are what's in-game now in T0.

The 1940 L/24 versions of the StuG III and the PzKpfW IV did carry AP ammo, but it wasn't particularly effective in an AT role. Those two weapons basically were intended to be utilized much like the Matilda CS, firing HE and smoke in support of attacking infantry, or sometimes in defense of an all-tank unit that had blundered into an enemy AT trap. 

It wasn't until the long-barrel versions of those two AFVs and similar weapons that the Main Battle Tank concept...the "forward thinking" part; fast-enough, well-enough-armored AFVs with AP, HE and smoke ammo to do all key jobs...actually began to take shape.

In the case of the British, they were somewhat hamstrung by their gun design commitments, skipping right past the general purpose medium-velocity 75mm designs typified by the French Mle 1897/33 75mm that possibly would have been used eventually in an upgraded G1 tank, and the American M3 75mm used so effectively in the M4 tank. So, the Matilda CS 75mm gun had no potential to be general purpose, and neither did the ROQF two pounder, and those guns and others with similar functionality dominated the next several years of British tank design. Even the 17 pounder was essentially a single purpose gun. The British didn't really get to a general purpose tank until the 20 pounder Centurion, just past the end of the war.

Edited December 15, 2018 by jwilly

[stankyus]

4 hours ago, scotsman said:

Right now its not possibie for HCs to alter TOE  or production...that was removed. The community has to live with the TOE provided by CRS. What I provided was the proper TOE mix based on production and budget at each half tier (along with item cost.) Thats what was actually being produced at the time within the brigade budget (which in turn is driven by the player population). The brigade budget was driven by the existing spawn pool size...but the new stuff allows that to change as a function of player pool should they choose to ever implement that. 

I would point out there are good reasons all armies now avoid having to make such subjective judgements and (inadvertently) screwing up their material acquisitions. That level of knowledge is unattainable in any measurable or practical sense. 

The system I gave them is independent of effectiveness per say one platform vs another. It's simply a matter of bigger is more expensive, longer range and larger caliber is more expensive - all because gross vehicle weight rises as you implement these things. It goes down as you delete capability (the turret for example in SPs) The larger guns and armor that come with bigger vehicles is inherent to the gross vehicle weight. 

Its infinitely preferable to a system that's subject to built in intentional or unintentional bias. I can't go into what was...but I was not a happy camper looking at those numbers. They were in no way shape or form 'balanced'. 

Even if we had HC determined TO&E, as long as we adhear to a budget with unit costs, if a side did maximize their best weapon systems... NOTHING being for free, the total supply pool would be greatly reduced. The only benefit to doing such a thing would be determined by player skill. 5 tigers driven by noobs or average tankers running into expert tankers or atg gunners in this game specifically would destroy the tank superiority advantage into a allied numerical superiority with just 5 well placed shots. That is a tight delta to rest your sides laurels on. I dare say it's a rare thing in this game to bet the farm having a skill set that goes unchallenged 24/7.  I can say even I manage to kill some of the best Axis tankers in this game from time to time and I have seen some of the best tankers die to a lucky noob.  Not suggesting we go to a HC determined TO&E, I think your approach still stands correctly.  Establish a balance baseline girded with a truth that nothing is for free and you have given the pb all the tools we need. The pb will take it from there, that's the game portion. Let us take the time to produce a local superiority via overstocking if we wish... that's where the real excitement is generated. It produces a fog of war and pb ownership were we all can make a difference in a battle. 

[jwilly]

So if a delta of combat effectiveness per unit cost exists in a tier due to historical weapon designs and historical production costs, resulting in a side having a significant, recognizable disadvantage in game combat effectiveness, CRS is to regard themselves as prevented by this analysis from making some change to move the game toward what they perceive to be combat effectiveness balance?

That's the key marketing question, right?

[stankyus]

8 minutes ago, jwilly said:

Well, sort of.

Remember that German HEAT shells didn't actually work to a significant extent until mid-late-war. Those late-war shells are what's in-game now in T0.

The 1940 L/24 versions of the StuG III and the PzKpfW IV did carry AP ammo, but it wasn't particularly effective in an AT role. Those two weapons basically were intended to be utilized much like the Matilda CS, in support of attacking infantry. 

It wasn't until the long-barrel versions of those two AFVs and similar weapons that the Main Battle Tank concept...the "forward thinking" part; fast-enough, well-enough-armored AFVs with AP, HE and smoke ammo to do all key jobs...actually began to take shape.

I think we established that the early HEAT represented in the game is grossly over performing, not only in penetration but in proper fusing and slug formation.  Whereas the 50/50 tests had it at around 44 mm....(the best penetration stats I have seen) half the time. In game it fuses 100% of the time. There is no angle that prevents it from fusing. Scotsman can correct me, been a long time since I looked at the data, but the round failed to fuse around 65 degree angles. Secondly the load out is extremely heavy. The vast majority of early 75/l24 armed tanks and spgs did not even carry them... IIRC until 42. All that being said, I'm not making the argument to reduce the load out or penetration. However if we want to give the HEAT better performance then we need not make it fantasy ammo but make it HL/A warped. Otherwise it robs the allies with facing a BS round or it robs the axis of approx 10 mm of penetration. If it's fantasy is kept, it robs the pb of the expectations of using historic equipment and ammo.

[stankyus]

8 minutes ago, jwilly said:

So if a delta of combat effectiveness per unit cost exists in a tier due to historical weapon designs and historical production costs, resulting in a side having a significant, recognizable disadvantage in game combat effectiveness, CRS is to regard themselves as prevented by this analysis from making some change to move the game toward what they perceive to be combat effectiveness balance?

That's the key marketing question, right?

Well I am strictly opposed to a historic timeline of entrance, I am not opposed to a strict production cost. I do stand firmly with Scotsman unit cost balance system. That's why I am not opposed to the Axis warping HL/A ammo for t-0 for balance, nor the S76 or ch7 entering when the tiger does. I don't think Scotsman is advocating a strict entrance.. I could be wrong, but I'm not reading him that way. I think in the most extreme balance issues being t-0 and t3, the pb numbers cannot handle that. Not until we get our numbers back to the 2006 levels then, mb strict date entrance could possibly work... that being said, ppl are fickle and put in a situation of requiring a numerical superiority to advance more than a week and the pb walks. Just an observation but that's where the portion GAME has to take priority over history.

[Merlin51]

5 minutes ago, stankyus said:

In game it fuses 100% of the time.

Yes, or you would have to try to write in some kind of randomizing failure code.
Closest we have to that i think, is the engine starting routine.
Though a lot of times in game you fuse it to no effect other than possibly hurting any EI standing beside the target.
Bad angles or hitting something it cant penetrate through etc.

I would not have any idea off hand how to have it check for angle on fusing.

Shooting some willing victims, i used the tigers face as a non penetrable target to see how far it would burn in
it was a square on shot, i got 45mm, which wasnt enough to do anything of course
then i did a badly glancing hit, im not sure what angle, down the side of the tiger, very bad angle.
It hit the tread guard, it did fuse and detonate, but as for the jet itself, i got a bunch of no hit entries for the vehicle and scored a hit on the grass.
So it will fuse in a craptastic angle shot, but seems it will simply waste your HEAT round unless you hit an unlucky bystander.

Cant say anything about the slug formation from that

Oh i was using a stug B as the shooter, though PZIV should be pretty much the same?
Range was just 50m, was just a quick test

[goreblimey]

4 hours ago, Merlin51 said:

Out of sheer necessity, depending oh how you are asking.
They needed something that could go in with the infantry and level obstructions and points of resistance and provide them close direct support.
Their 2pdr equipped guns were not suited for it, due to deciding not to produce (or continue to produce) the ammo for doing so.

They dont need the speed of the A13 (not in T0 anyways) but what they do need is the ability to bounce off things that might try and stop the CS unit
so it can continue to punch holes for its infantry to push through.

The axis were much more forward thinking in designing things like their STUG to be able to cover both this need as well as serving
as a tank destroyer

Merlin sorry I wasn't clear ... I meant in game. 

[Scotsman]

6 hours ago, goreblimey said:

As probably an extreme outlier , in this actual dollar cost vs effectiveness . British CS tanks,  why would anyone buy a matilda CS as apposed to the standard version, absolute waste of dollars given its obvious high  cost ve low effectiveness ?

Because your two pounder had to be in mg range to have any effect against an AT gun other than a direct hit. The CS tank can either screen your approach and blind it with smoke or engage with HE. It's better against infantry and soft targets...and still has its coax etc.

[Scotsman]

1 hour ago, jwilly said:

Yes, but not right away. Certainly not as quickly as modeled in-game.

Remember that German HEAT shells didn't actually work to a significant extent until mid-late-war. Those late-war shells are what's in-game now in T0.

The 1940 L/24 versions of the StuG III and the PzKpfW IV did carry AP ammo, but it wasn't particularly effective in an AT role. Those two weapons basically were intended to be utilized much like the Matilda CS, firing HE and smoke in support of attacking infantry, or sometimes in defense of an all-tank unit that had blundered into an enemy AT trap. 

It wasn't until the long-barrel versions of those two AFVs and similar weapons that the Main Battle Tank concept...the "forward thinking" part; fast-enough, well-enough-armored AFVs with AP, HE and smoke ammo to do all key jobs...actually began to take shape.

In the case of the British, they were somewhat hamstrung by their gun design commitments, skipping right past the general purpose medium-velocity 75mm designs typified by the French Mle 1897/33 75mm that possibly would have been used eventually in an upgraded G1 tank, and the American M3 75mm used so effectively in the M4 tank. So, the Matilda CS 75mm gun had no potential to be general purpose, and neither did the ROQF two pounder, and those guns and others with similar functionality dominated the next several years of British tank design. Even the 17 pounder was essentially a single purpose gun. The British didn't really get to a general purpose tank until the 20 pounder Centurion, just past the end of the war.

Yes and no ...the bored out 6 Pdr aka QF 75mm was an effective dual purpose gun firing a good HE round with respectable AP performance given its velocity. Esentially equivalent to the Sherman 75mm by any practical measure 

[Merlin51]

4 minutes ago, goreblimey said:

Merlin sorry I wasn't clear ... I meant in game. 

AH ok.

Well, let us assume that we get things to a point where we can much better differentiate an armor unit from an infantry unit, and perhaps even a few sub sets of that.

For sake of argument, let us pretend that HC's can reassign a LIMITED number of garrisons from general makeup, to infantry or armor specialized.
Infantry would be highly limited in what armor they could have, mostly only support units.
A dedicated CS tank might be kind of valuable there, might rather buy a few more of those instead of some vickers?

[Scotsman]

1 hour ago, jwilly said:

So if a delta of combat effectiveness per unit cost exists in a tier due to historical weapon designs and historical production costs, resulting in a side having a significant, recognizable disadvantage in game combat effectiveness, CRS is to regard themselves as prevented by this analysis from making some change to move the game toward what they perceive to be combat effectiveness balance?

That's the key marketing question, right?

I'm not sure I can think of many instances in the timeline where that would be the case if the HCs had the option to alter production or TOE. There might be instances where the force was more defensive in nature vs offensive...but as far as being outmatched within the TOE budget I'm thinking that's not likely. I don't see any overmatched unless the production and TOE decisions were all bad...

[Scotsman]

1 hour ago, stankyus said:

I think we established that the early HEAT represented in the game is grossly over performing, not only in penetration but in proper fusing and slug formation.  Whereas the 50/50 tests had it at around 44 mm....(the best penetration stats I have seen) half the time. In game it fuses 100% of the time. There is no angle that prevents it from fusing. Scotsman can correct me, been a long time since I looked at the data, but the round failed to fuse around 65 degree angles. Secondly the load out is extremely heavy. The vast majority of early 75/l24 armed tanks and spgs did not even carry them... IIRC until 42. All that being said, I'm not making the argument to reduce the load out or penetration. However if we want to give the HEAT better performance then we need not make it fantasy ammo but make it HL/A warped. Otherwise it robs the allies with facing a BS round or it robs the axis of approx 10 mm of penetration. If it's fantasy is kept, it robs the pb of the expectations of using historic equipment and ammo.

The game desperately needs a revised HEAT model. The current portrayal doesn't accurately model the jet behind the armor. Right now the spray cone is fixed...when in fact it should be one that is increasingly narrow with a decreasing spray angle as you approach the penetration limit. I wrote a formula to alter it but like any other code work god only knows when CRS will get to it. IMHO all that sort of thing also needs to be baseline in a 2.0 version. Unfortunately there is no one remaining on staff with the required ballistics background to do that now...unless I were to come back at some point. 

The real problem is the old staff just wasn't well versed in terminal ballistics. They did a pretty fair job on external ballistics, but the calculations on impact and penetration leave a lot of room for improvement. Not their fault...it wasn't in their professional kit bag. 

[jwilly]

I haven't seen the Scotsman-production-cost numbers, but the French industrial history I've read says that most heavy industrial union locals throughout the country hewed to an ideological socialist/communist zeitgeist, and by and large were uncooperative in production increases through 1939 and were ambivalent about the 1940 war due to U.S.S.R.'s (then) alliance with Germany, including 1939's M-R Pact.

Everything I've seen indicates that French production costs were higher for equivalent complexity and materials due to this inefficiency. Historically, of course, France chose to afford a large national defense budget to compensate for this issue, and followed other tactics including purchases of American weapons when suitable and available.

If that is reflected in production costs for T0 French-made heavy weaponry, and if that weaponry is less effective than German weaponry...and with equal budgets...then it would seem as if the French would have an ahistorical disadvantage.

If I were the game marketer, I'd want to be sure that wasn't the case before trusting the proposed approach to result in a marketably balanced game.

[Scotsman]

Maybe in the late 30s.. less so as we move to 1939. Th French govt pushed  hard to get more efficient hence the three fold price decrease on the char-b in short order. The number of man hours needed to produce it didn't change per say...if we are talking 1936-1938 I would expect to see that in larger measure. 

I'm not close to the data at the moment but I would say that's not something I see in the dataset at the moment. 

There are national differences apparent in the costs...but I wouldn't regard any I saw as unbalancing. 

In the end you can use the historic numbers or you can use the uniform pricing model which enforces parity in efficiency. Either path is available... I think the later makes the most sense for game purposes. 

Its too bad more transparancy isn't available here...it might help....but I'm not sure CRS would ever release the data. 

[ZEBBEEE]

1 hour ago, scotsman said:

Unfortunately there is no one remaining on staff with the required ballistics background to do that now...unless I were to come back at some point. 

The real problem is the old staff just wasn't well versed in terminal ballistics. They did a pretty fair job on external ballistics, but the calculations on impact and penetration leave a lot of room for improvement. Not their fault...it wasn't in their professional kit bag. 

This community would love to see you continue to provide that kind of work, I think many of us wants it to remain a simulation rather than a shoebox game.

But as you said, it’s now a matter of ressources... and arbitrary politics until we get the numbers up.

[Scotsman]

If the game goes the shoebox route it loses big time... to many other titles with better resourcing. Restricted terrain allows for better graphics in those titles...albeit with game play that is repeatable and limited. 

The only hope is to remain unique and true to its roots of accurate simulation on a large map  without getting lost chasing other things. 

As for providing any future detailed help on the ballistics side, or doing the actual programming to move the game into a 2.0 sort of ballistics model...it would have to be discussed further with Hatch and Xoom I am sure... I'm not opposed to helping further with some understandings on time etc.

[jwilly]

23 minutes ago, scotsman said:

If the game goes the shoebox route it loses big time.

I don't think any of the shoebox competitors offer a campaign structured around historical battles.

I was positively impressed by that idea for Rapid Assault. 

The existing game, of course, focuses on tactical gameplay, and provides very little realism in regard to the nominally modeled campaign and almost no realism in regard to historical battles. Gophur discussed with us in the ol;d Design/Beta Forum an idea for a branching flow-plan for a given campaign, with each battle representing a flow branch-point depending on who is victorious; perhaps ten to twenty battles in a campaign; a separate map for each "shoebox" battle, with AI forces surrounding the player-controlled central area to concentrate ground action while allowing for air operations; a particular path through a campaign's flow-plan that would consist of historical battles, proceeding from one to the next if battle victories followed history, and with other paths through the campaign's flow-plan consisting of historically consistent alternate battles; and campaign victory probably graduated into five tiers depending on battle outcomes.

Any game designed around historical battles of course would have limitations on replay...as does the current game...so the proposed game structure was to have multiple campaigns utilizing the same model-set and mechanics, so as to eliminate immediate replay. Staleness was also to be managed by varying starting positions and battle TOEs depending on the prior battle's outcome. I thought that was a better plan for replay management than we currently have.

[bmw]

7 hours ago, scotsman said:

 I'm not opposed to helping further with some understandings on time etc.

I hope you do.  Dont know why or what happened on you leaving but seem to have a wealth of knowledge that would prove  beneficial

[stankyus]

On 12/14/2018 at 11:00 PM, Merlin51 said:

Yes, or you would have to try to write in some kind of randomizing failure code.
Closest we have to that i think, is the engine starting routine.
Though a lot of times in game you fuse it to no effect other than possibly hurting any EI standing beside the target.
Bad angles or hitting something it cant penetrate through etc.

I would not have any idea off hand how to have it check for angle on fusing.

Shooting some willing victims, i used the tigers face as a non penetrable target to see how far it would burn in
it was a square on shot, i got 45mm, which wasnt enough to do anything of course
then i did a badly glancing hit, im not sure what angle, down the side of the tiger, very bad angle.
It hit the tread guard, it did fuse and detonate, but as for the jet itself, i got a bunch of no hit entries for the vehicle and scored a hit on the grass.
So it will fuse in a craptastic angle shot, but seems it will simply waste your HEAT round unless you hit an unlucky bystander.

Cant say anything about the slug formation from that

Oh i was using a stug B as the shooter, though PZIV should be pretty much the same?
Range was just 50m, was just a quick test

Rpats don't fuse to angle.. why not HEAT?

[Capco]

On 12/13/2018 at 2:08 AM, Bmbm said:

The values we came up with - Scotsman’s work thru and thru - follow very closely the perceived combat value of units, perception naturally being subjective. Eg Shermans and PzIVG being near equal and the Tiger costing nearly thrice as much. 

The equal budget approach naturally benefits Germany and is completely ahistorical, that country being outspent 1:5 iirc by the Allies. We’re also making other amends for gameplay such as the armor balance in FR1940 where the Pz I and Pz II made up the vast bulk of Germany’s tank force. We can’t of course pursue historical accuracy in that regard.

Using this formula we determined that the axis had been significantly overstrength throughout the tiered game history, especially against the Brits, sometimes by as much as 140-150%. Which tallies rather well with perception, and this is in equipment only - if you add population disparity it gets rather grotesque.

Oh my!  This gem is particularly amusing and aligns perfectly with years of AHC standard operating procedure on deployments and battlegroup compositions.  

 

We knew it all along lol.  

[DOC]

Does anyone remember CVC ? It assumed that the only economy that mattered to a game of combat was combat effectiveness based on equipment attributes and capability. That's where points budgets came from, and were used to balance variations in combat ability superiority and inferiority. You'll always end up with a general rule of less superior units versus more inferior units, but if this disparity of equipment capability exists by design, there really is no other way except to remove all inequalities. Which any historical reality makes impossible. Despite what any player of the game might attest, to any degree ... the only bias the developers can have is the one that keeps them in business. That bias can never, by virtue of what it is to be in business ... be based on selections that a player would make based on what side he plays on. In saying that, in instances where a side based bias does exist at the developer level, perhaps it is best to assume that being in business is no longer the desire of the developer (or never was) but having been one myself, I tend not to believe this is very likely at all.

Edited December 21, 2018 by DOC

[jwilly]

IMO CVC worked for years, in the sense that both sides complained at about equal volume.

The notable balance failures that negatively affected marketability during the CVC period were due to not applying it because of resource limitations and unfortunate decisions to introduce unbalanced sets because that's what was ready to go.

There is no system except red=blue that will result in no complaints about inequality of lethality/effectiveness.

An economic-budget system won't result in balance unless it's jiggered by CRS in accord with game outcomes...and if that's going to be the case, why not just use CVC or a similar lethality/effectiveness metric from the start?

Edited December 21, 2018 by jwilly

[B2K]

1 hour ago, DOC said:

Does anyone remember CVC ? It assumed that the only economy that mattered to a game of combat was combat effectiveness based on equipment attributes and capability. That's where points budgets came from, and were used to balance variations in combat ability superiority and inferiority. You'll always end up with a general rule of less superior units versus more inferior units, but if this disparity of equipment capability exists by design, there really is no other way except to remove all inequalities. Which any historical reality makes impossible. Despite what any player of the game might attest, to any degree ... the only bias the developers can have is the one that keeps them in business. That bias can never, by virtue of what it is to be in business ... be based on selections that a player would make based on what side he plays on. In saying that, in instances where a side based bias does exist at the developer level, perhaps it is best to assume that being in business is no longer the desire of the developer (or never was) but having been one myself, I tend not to believe this is very likely at all.

it's been out of game for a decade (longer actually).   While I don't have access to subscriber numbers, I'd bet that CVC quietly died before many of today's players started playing.  

[madrebel]

CVC didn't account for bugs well either. i recall keldar talking about the 17lber on paper was the finger of god. in practice it clipped into the ground or would make you black out till you died - and that was the 'good' allied heavy ATG the french 76mm ... man if you could get it into position before it flipped it might get a kill.

 

bugged cannons on the german planes didn't offset the speed advantage that gave them their high costs either. in a perfect bug free world with a much larger vehicle set though CVC isn't a bad idea as a starting point.