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TheWombat_matrixforum -> RE: Weapons Effective Range (11/4/2013 4:00:15 PM)
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ORIGINAL: wodin
I get that..but as I said during wargames NATO realized very little fighting took place further than 1800m no matter what optics used due to terrain features (woods, buildings, elevation rises from dips to hills, walls, hedges etc etc) ..so any fighting further than 2000m should be the exception rather than the rule..which it isn't at the moment. This is a problem many game shave when they have detailed weapon mechanics but abstract terrain..it can clash. Due to the abstract nature of the terrain you then have to abstract the weapons esp when it comes to range \LOS, making sure they actually make contact with enemy forces at the approx ranges is would be possible. I came across this sort of problem with Tigers Unleashed which has a very detailed weapon and ballistics model..but it can and does clash with the abstract nature of hex terrain.
You need to keep the game within average possible results using that weaponry on that part of the world. There is no room in the game to say well there will be times that combat would take place at 3000m+ in the real battle so we shall have it in because it means you'll have loads of fighting at that distance rather than a few..as clear terrain is clear terrain. The only way to keep it within realistic results is to find out what the average max combat rage was or would be and use that as your max range in game if shooting across terrain on the same elevation. Maybe increase it further if on higher elevation.
quote:
ORIGINAL: TheWombat
quote:
ORIGINAL: wodin
Well thats an issue right there..3500 to 4000m just isn't a range that would be viable in the terrain the battle would be fought on. As I said the max range on average by NATO wargames in Germany during the eighties was 1800m, very little over that before LOS was blocked by terrain features..
Well, there are cases where the terrain lends itself to long lines of fire. From hills across gently sloping fields, down to rivers, for instance, and from ridge to ridge. The key are the NATO imaging systems that extend vision well beyond the unaided or even optically aided eye in conditions of bad visibility. If you get the "perfect storm" of long unobstructed ranges and darkness or limited optical visibility, you can have cases where NATO can actually hit stuff at 4000m reliably. It's not that common, but it does happen when you get lucky. It also points out how crucial terrain is. Even the Pact can rip you up if you insist on traversing open ridge lines in front of them.
I remember driving through the corridor to Helmstedt from Berlin in the late 1980s, as well as taking the duty train to Frankfurt. There were a fair number of areas where you could have had great, long lines of fire assuming all else was equal. It was a mixture of open, wooded, built up, and mixed terrain, that was pretty variable depending on where you were. So the average was relatively low, but there were spots where it was wide open.
You make a solid point, but it's not one that can be resolved to anyone's satisfaction, particularly when we don't have historical data because the war never happened. We simply don't know how the chaos of battle would have played out.
If the game abstracts weapon data to conform to the abstract terrain, and to produce results the combat model says should be produced (a solution I'm not really opposed to, frankly), you will have the inevitable problems of "but it COULD have happened" and "the data says XXX, but you only do YYY." If you use more physically possible or probably weapon data, but still have an abstracted terrain model, yeah, you get more instances of "ideal" circumstances than you would probably get in reality. And if you manage to have accurate data and accurate terrain...oh, wait, no one has accurate terrain at this scale, largely because it's probably freakin' impossible.
I guess it depends on how you want your poison. I'm happy with the long range engagements we do get, as they were technically possible and don't happen all the time, even if they do happen more often than perhaps they should. I'd be ok too with abstracting the data towards an average that would either make accuracy at range less or put a hard cap at, say, 3km. As long as the game is balanced for whichever approach, I can live with the abstractions. But right now it seems ok.
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