Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign

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Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 3:21:06 AM

dazoline II

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10 tanks, 2 halftracks and 1 infantry fall to concentrated defenders fire in a desperate attempt to take initial ground on the first day of Barborossa. With a shear horde of Russian infantry still intact and marching across open fields ignoring all still existing machie gun fire the shattered composite company loses cohesion.

Was it the heavy woods terrain? No, they had enough infantry to do a slow beat of the woods, securing the permeter. Was it the shear number of enemy infantry? Possibly, although with an intact force the infantry movement would have been much slower.

No it seems in the company record that the reason for this defeat is the markmanship of the supporting 9 tubes of mortars.

June 22nd 1941, a day I would imagine to be more about victory than defeat for the Germans. At least I'd like to think so when playing a random campaign as that side. Getting 8 tanks and a halftrack gutted from 6 82mm and 1 120mm "green" mortars within the first 8 turns is just a bit much in one game don't you think? And the Russian mortars were still firing up to turn 28 once every 3 - 4 turns.

Besides my obvioulsy dismal tactics the crews in the early model tanks seem to run for the hills at any top hit on the vehicle, not to mention the laser accuracy involved in hitting 10 or so targets directly.

This is also a restart of the first game I played. The stats in the first game were worse or better if you like a lack of playability, in the second turn the mortars fired a total of 12 rounds for 3 direct hit-kills. I had counted the log instances of rounds hitting and the top hits. Seems the second battery of 3 82mm didn't participate in the first battle. Thats hitting at 25% and change. Awesome work for green indirect fire troops.

Its not the carpet of troops I had to run over its the artillery accuracy that killed it for me. This is with the beta patch.

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 4:23:42 AM

Erik Rutins

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Hi Dazoline,

Thanks for the report. Which campaign was this?

I'll take a look before the next beta update to see if we need to balance the artillery a bit more. We increased the ROF for mortars in the beta update and it may have gone too far.

Regards,

- Erik

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 5:06:25 AM

dazoline II

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1st Pz. Short.

This is the most accurate I've seen arty in this game.
I doubt its the rate of fire which seems ok at least to me.

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 7:19:17 AM

Nemo84

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Quite strange. I'm playing the 1st Inf Div 42 short campaign and I almost never see the AI use artillery. They rarely use a first-turn smoke screen barrage (much too early to be effective), but after that it's all quiet on the Eastern front.

My own elite 80mm mortars are extremely accurate by now though, often landing 4 hits within 3m�. Each tube seems to fire two or three times per 40s turn, but I havn't seem them take out anything armoured yet.

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 12:42:27 PM

ComradeP

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Due to the often poor to minimal top armour and the reasonable penetration values for HE rounds for even a 82mm mortar, you'll see a fair amount of top hits that can destroy your tanks when the enemy has plenty of mortars. To me, it's still much more of a problem in defensive battles than in battles where I'm attacking (in those battles, I normally only have to worry about the Soviet opening barrage) as you often don't really have the time or the chance to keep moving your vehicles around.

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 1:45:45 PM

dazoline II

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Its a matter of accuracy, (~10 top hits in a short number of turns) not what happens after it hits that is of most concern to me.

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 3:03:31 PM

Mobius

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It's not the ROF of the mortars that's a problem it's the chance to hit and/or the lack of scatter of the beaten zone. These probably should be taken out of the code and made into their own table. Then users can tweak it themselves if they think it is too high or too low.

I worked out the math as a chance to hit and even with the smallest area fire beaten zone there shouldn't be more than a ~4% chance for top hit. Additional damage may occur on tracks or sides if close hit.

< Message edited by Mobius -- 6/23/2011 3:07:37 PM >

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 5:36:35 PM

dazoline II

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Is that ~4% per vehicle or for all occupants of the zone?

I can't recall seeing a hit on tracks or sides dong damage from indirect fire, does the message look the same as a direct fire hit would do?

Thanks for the details, at least I know you guys know.

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 6:05:35 PM

Erik Rutins

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If a hit causes damage on side or track armor, it would be reported as such and I have seen lots of those for indirect fire results.

I don't think anything changed in terms of indirect fire accuracy recently, so I figured the ROF change may have made mortars more deadly. We'll take a look and see if something changed accuracy-wise that missed our change list and in general we'll run some tests to see if we can duplicate your results. A series of lucky hits is always possible, but the results you experienced definitely seem unusual.

Regards,

- Erik

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 6:12:19 PM

ComradeP

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I've seen far, far more turret/top deck hits than hits to the side or tracks since starting my 7th Panzer long campaign. However, due to the bug with the shells landing on a different spot visually than they actually did, it's difficult to say whether that's just because few shells landed close enough to the tanks to cause a side hull hit or a track hit.

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/23/2011 6:15:39 PM

Mobius

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quote:

ORIGINAL: dazoline II
Is that ~4% per vehicle or for all occupants of the zone?

It is per vehicle per round. That you would get if you divide the horizontal area of a tank into the beaten zone of the area fire. So the chances go up both with more rounds and with more targets.

I'm not saying the game uses this number. Only that it is the theoretical average of 75-76mm shells.

< Message edited by Mobius -- 6/23/2011 6:20:37 PM >

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/26/2011 6:39:05 PM

Owl

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I was on campaign battle 3 of a randomly generated one. Doing pretty well until the 'hand of God' struck. About 1/3 of my tanks all died. The graphic looked like what I'd expect for rocket fire and the audio sounded different than when I've used my own artillery & mortars, but the message said 120mm mortar? Sound was like wind blowing in trees or something (if that helps) I would expect a direct hit from a 120mm mortar to perhaps kill at tank, but mostly wouldn't they do track damage and force them to button up most of the time? Maybe it was a katyusha rocket attack, but those shouldn't be 120mm mortars. If I were the Soviets, I'd just build whatever it was that hit me and forget everything else!

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/27/2011 2:57:53 PM

dazoline II

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The "hand of god" rocket attack was fixed in the beta update.
Take a look at this thread:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2840165

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RE: Anatomy of an Abandoned Campaign - 6/27/2011 3:38:19 PM

Mobius

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quote:

ORIGINAL: dazoline II

The "hand of god" rocket attack was fixed in the beta update.
Take a look at this thread:
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2840165

In PCK playing German I often would time my attacks to the tune of the Russian artillery. I would first bait them into blasting a unit I set out to the side then I would have 5 turns to advance before withdrawing. I would pull back off land I had taken that was sure to get beaten by their artillery. Then wait a few turns then go again.

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Post #: 14