[Pzt_Kanov]

I was messing around with weapon data in TLD and found some huge inconsistencies like the BAR having a 1000m range while the MG42 has just 500 and double the penetration of the BAR at PB range. And the Mosin-nagant is kind of a super weapon with a range of 3000 and great penetration values, no wonder the paras at pegasus are under performing. Also the Garand has slightly better penetration than the Mauser k98.

Where could one find a reference table for different weapons' performances in actual tests?
What would you say has the most accurate or most adapted to the game data values?

Also, I tried to have the soldiers survive more to small arms like in cc2, removed the chance to hit the body and reduced the longer ranges of weapons, but they seem to die more easily now, what gives?

other things I noticed:

-PzFaust has a huge blast rating, no wonder the soldiers use them as anti personal weapons even if you code the weapon to fire only at vehicles.
-Some guns are repeated
-In game, buildings seem to offer less protection than say original cc5. I checked the data in elements and found no big changes though.

[vonB]

First off, let me say I am not familiar with the Data Files in terms of what values there are and what they are, so my comments come from a different angle.

For heavy weapons (cannon .v. armour), it is not based on tables of penetration (physics) moderated by envrionmental factors.  It can't be.  I defy a German 37mm AT gun to ko a KV from the front under any circumstances, yet I have seen it happen in CC, even if the crew yell they can't.  It is not kinetically possible for the round to penetrate that much armour at any distance, point blank or otherwise.  (ok, so the 37mm did have some specialised variants, but very rare, and we are talking about the bog standard weapon) Period.  Ok, so the round could find it's way down the barrel of a KV2 with an HE round loaded and blow the turret off?  Mmmmm....

A direct hit from an 88 PaK 43 on the side armour of an M4A1 Sherman at 250 metres WILL penetrate 9 times out of 10 at least.  Of course that does not mean an automatic ko.  Kinetic shot can do bizarre things as I have read reported by tankers writing about their experiences, and it depends where  the shot penetrates.

Somewhere in my archives, I have graphs of the penetration values of most of the common cannon used in WWII from Data supplied by the Ordnance and Testing on both sides, and there is the physics (muzzle velocity, weight of shot, distance, etc, etc).  This was from my time playing table top wargaming with small models, dice, rulers, and books of rules.

Another issue is HE against buildings.  On the whole, I don't think it is a good representation.  Of course there are depends, but if there is a Team in a room which takes a direct hit from cannon fired HE, I would think it unlikely that anyone is gong to remain alive or conscious, or capable of continiung as a combatant.  Small arms are different.  While a .50 Cal can certainly penetrate masonry (but not stone, at least stone walls 12" to 18" thick), .762 ~ 9mm will not.  A grenade is going to stun everyone at least if it discharges inside a room.  The effect will reduce dramatically if soldiers are in other rooms.  To have an AT gun in a building that takes 5 or 6 direct HE hits (or more), and still continues to perform normally does not ring right to me.

Another issue is the type of rounds.  While there are a number of 'specialised' rounds for small arms, on the whole the average ammunition is either soft head or metal jacket (correct me if I have this wrong).  Armour piercing, explosive or incendiary etc would not be the norm.

Then there are 'effective' ranges.  This is more dependant on the fire platform and the operator, than pure physics.  Sure, the 88 FlaK 36 can propel a round thousands of metres (it was after all designed as a AA gun).  It has effective armour penetration in excess of 2,000 metres, but what are the odds of hitting anything at that range, even if it is motionless?  I would say zip if it was moving.

On the whole, the game gives a reasonable simulation, but when you get down to it, there are some poor representations.  How this is handled in the Data files I do not know.  I shall try and dig out the penetration tables I have as they may be interesting, though mostly for cannon.  I do have a number of reference books on WWII small arms, but mostly German, though I would think most of this would be available on the Internet somewhere anyway.

At the end of the day, what matters (to me) is whether the simulation is realistic or not, regardless of 'how' it is calculated under the hood.  Like I said, it is for the most part quite good, but there are some howlers, and this must be because of the way the engine either uses tables or performs the calculations.

Sorry if this isn't a direct contribution to your question... just an outsiders perspective.

[Tejszd]

If you "removed the chance to hit the body" does that mean there is more heads shots?

[Pzt_Kanov]

Well, I left the chance to hit body at 0 and to me it seemed they got killed a lot easier, don't know why if CC2 has the same values and the weapons too yet it is hard to kill a soldier with a rifle in that game. Got 3 of one squad killed with a non modded TLD 60mm mortar round.

Regarding the Garand vs Mauser, browsing through wikipedia and other sources I guess it was more powerful, the cartridge was bigger than the mauser.

The Lee enfield is severly underrated though I guess they took the values from stock CC5 for the mosin nagant and enfield but I think they are very wrong with the MN having 11 in Kill rating at PB and the enfield just 5 while the mauser and garand have 6.

I would like to give every weapon that uses the same cartridge the same stats

[davidssfx]

Hi Pzt_Kanov.
I messed around a little with the two chance to hit values some time ago with CC3.
I noticed strange things happening also when values were changed. I looked at the original game values, and noticed a pattern relating to these values ... when added together they equal 128.
I therefore tested different values that always added to 128, and found more consistent results than when they didn't add up to 128.

I'm not sure if this is a designed game fact or not, but I see in TLD they both add to 128.

That being said ... I think there are whole mods from the past that didn't follow this rule of 128.

maybe someone in the know can comment.

[Dima]

The sum should be equal to 128.

[Pzt_Kanov]

I left them like that and lowered the kill rating of weapons by half instead, much better firefights, not as much deaths inside buildings by MG and rifle fire too. Also upped the min range for rifles and now hand-to-hand happens more frequently, Makes for very intense assault maneuvers. Next step will be to revisit Heavy weapons and their weird blast ratings.

I wonder why in CC2 and CC4's VetBoB soldiers are so difficult to kill? in VetBoB, TT used the CC2 soldier stats, 20 chance for head and 0 for body. Maybe the elements are different too.

About the mosin-nagant, I found out that it was indeed very powerful, but not as much as the game makes it to be (2 times as powerful as the mauser), it was rather one or two notches above the .30-06 that the Garand uses.

Dima, I noticed in your Utah mod that you left the weapons using the same cartridge with the same stats so I guess I was not very wrong about doing that.

[Dima]

[papa_whisky]

The attached file is one of the best anthologies of weapon penetration values that I have found for WWII.

[Pzt_Kanov]

[barbarigo]

hi von be are you still connected on this site sometimes? I m a perfectionist too and fanatic of tank penetration table I have a lot of material about let me know if you want legiox [at] tin [dot] it.

[vonB]

HI barbarigo.  As a realism nut myself, I am interested in real physics.  When I first started serious wargaming (sand pit style), it was as simple as throw a the dice and a 6 kills.  Many of the rule sets would 'classify' guns and armour into categories such as strong/medium/weak, which is a bit better, but is still a cludgy approximation.  Using a computer is the only way to practically model actual battle conditions, as doing so manually would be a tortuous experience, and I have tried it.

If you have data on penetration capabilities and performances of guns/armour, then sure I am interested.  I'll drop you and e-mail...

[barbarigo]

Hi von B, I have the same ideas of youalso because the real differences in combat situations,was in armour resistence and in precision of shoting, also this second aspect it' s very important, otherwise the zeiss optical instruments (balthasar woll teachs) of german tanks gift them an important bit of superiority on allies and specially on russian (totally inaffidable instruments) in long and medium distance fighting.
Another aspect to consider is the hardness of armour that, at the same thickness and angle, gift to german armour a vantage of 20% on allies and untill 40% on russian armour.
I was born like modellers, later wargamer and later pc fighter (unforgettable steel panthers) now, for happyness of my wife I m all thoughether and more.
So, waiting an interesting discussion on this theme, I say HY to all maniacs of perfectionism and playability too and I wait for more impulses and mails.
Ciao

[vonB]

Well, the first challange is 'probabilities'.  This is a value that becomes more accurate the more data the contributes to the set of data.  In a real life situation, the permutations can be huge, and what we might call 'luck' is perhaps only a specific occurence of a curcimstance with a very low probability, or bad luck vice versa.

Some of the issues have already been aired, such as even if a round penetrates, the effect can be nothing (just a hole in the plate) all the way to complete destruction with the vehicle torn apart and the crew mostly vapourised.

The liist of 'depends' is endless.

One of the problems with programming a physics system to deal with combat is the data to use.  Where does it come from?  Real life tests only provide small samples of data, and they can conflict (see papa_whisky's attachment).  We can extrapolate from this formula's to calculate what the likely outcome will be under ideal conditions, but without using physics, this will just be 'intelligent estimation', and there will still have to be assumptions made such as whether the distribution is linear or not.

However, physics is still the foundation for modelling what is happening.  Even the shot that is partially deflected by striking a rivet, thus changing the angle of strike on the plate, thus defeating the shot, is still bound by and described by the physics of what is happening.  The issue for simulation is back to probabilities, i.e. what is the probability of the shot striking the rivet in such a way?

Going back to my table top wargmaing days, we broke it down into:

1.  Can you see the target?
2.  Can you hit the target?
3.  Can you damage the target?

Even if all three were 'yes', the result could still be nothing happens, but to destroy a target, all three have to be yes, but that still does not guarantee destruction.  In the end, just for practical reasons, table top wargaming has to use simpler techniques to resolve actions, otherwise more time is spent calculating than playing (and therefore enjoying).  This is where the computer scores.  When I first played CCII (the first CC I played), it was the closest thing in experience to the best table top wargaming which wasn't table top wargaming, but it was better, because it presented the game in real time!  At the time, quite unique.

If I were a physicist and mathematician (I am just the coarse kind...), I would be trying to find the equations that govern the calculations.

Regardless of the 'types' of shot, they all resolve to the instance when the projectile strikes the surface of the plate, and what happens (or what can happen) after that.  The simple level is the pure physics of the dynamics of the shot and the plate.  The complex level is factoring in 'circumstances' or effects that can moderate the result of the strike.  In a range of cases, this will be very simple.  In others, far from it.

For example:

A 37mm PaK will never UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES penetrate the front plate of a KV.  That is physics.  Thus the probability for penetration is 0%.  At the other end of the scale, an 88mm PaK 43 will always penetrate the plate on a Half Track.  The issue is not so much about the penetration, but what happens when it does.  Just because the 37mm will never penetrate the KV from the front does not mean that is cannot do damage, but that is a more complex consideration.

Thus you can understand for practical reasons why 'probabilities' are resolved to more simple processes, and there are reasonable arguments for saying that it provides just as compelling a game and even an acceptable simulation.  However, the down side is that it will allow unrealistic circumstances to happen, and as far as the simulation goes, the accuracy will depend on the complexity of the modelling of the circumstances, which is not just restricted to the phycsics of projectile penetration of plate.

But to the realism nuts like me, it does matter, but I also have a pragmatic perspective, and that is I also wnt a good 'game'.  As with most things in real life, we put up with compromises, and as a compromise, CC is stunningly good!