Thanks mobhack. Somehow I had seen DRG's response and not your own. I guess when you think you see tanks hovering just beyond you PZIVB AP shot range you start having all kinds of issues. Yes, that 1850 range of which you spoke, that or either 1900 was where the advancing enemy thought the better of advancing anymore. Of course, as the game operates, that's probably a good thing anyway, as it gives any foot forces more time to be used as a combined force.
Do understand one thing however, that when I have a gun that goes out to 60, and then won't AP shot further than my shorter ranged SPAA's, or indeed the PZ38's, it does look very screwy. I was actually thinking there might be some strange bug confined to the early PZIV's for a minute.
Also, though I know you say nothing will be done about it, and as this is something of a somewhat limited anomoly anyway, it's probably better off as it is, I think you would have to at least consider that my chances for destroying a 7TP with the '39 75L24, on a hill, are better for hitting the top for a then downgraded AP shot of 1, than for the endless amount of zero factor HE shot doing nothing at all. If I read you correctly, you seem to indicate that the HE shot has a better chance of immobilizing, but while that has quite a lot of value, that doesn't lessen my problem of getting rid of enamy units in the least, unless, that is, you would be willing enough to find enough artillery to rout them out of their immobilized AFV. Now if the enemy AI will consistenly sit just beyond that critical point of that AP shot ever being used, it's largely already immobilized to be practical, in terms of their possible AFV advancement, I mean, so I really do gain nothing in making it a factual immobilization. So as things are I have to hope for the wild possibility that an HE round will go beyond that gun's normal HE penetration.
I am somewhat surprised though, as I sort of thought that HE rounds, for the most part, were just as effective at close in as afar, and yet my 75L24 I can't say had got in a single 2 penetration in a bare minimum of 80 plus rounds of HE fired. Maybe that's just HVAP I'm thinking of that does that, although I know that all shots will have some sort of variance in them from time to time. I do know gamewise, that the vast majority of HE fire comes out as zero penetration, so I do find somewhat surprising, that even in this limited example that the AI is so insistent on using a shot which has achieved nothing. I understand, from what the two of you have been saying, that if you start including ALL the possibilities that maybe the HE one is best, but as many top hits as I generally get, I can tell you that is considerably superior to no damaging hits as it's currently playing out. I have to wonder if the AI considers that the height of the firing unit might drive the best possibility of a damaging hit back into an AP shots favor due to possible top hits. Unfortunately, to complicate matters, maybe my sitting just beyond AP shot range enemy also knows that if his AFV sits at a certain angle, that the top won't come into play, and therefore avoids that possibility also. You would think that the angle would have very little if anything to do with a top hit though, unless you have a tank that has a conehead top to it
I'm not griping guys, really, but it does at least make the game more interesting to hash some of these things out; to get to know the brain of the beast as it were.