PZIVB AP Use

[Charles22]

I don't think I have seen this in all the years I have played various versions of SP, except the SPWW2 ones, and that is for some reason the early PZIV series, the PZIVB in this case, doesn't fire AP ammo to it's full range. The range of the 75L24 is 40 hexes, and yet through the current game, and many before it, but most noteably now, these things will constantly fire useless HE ammo against armored targets, such as the 2pt armored 7TP and therefore have absolutely no chance of damaging a tank with armor above 1. The vast majority of the time, the HE ammo will hit with zero penetration, so it's not even capable of doing anything should the top be hit by HE.

I think I have heard this explained before, but with the shell size being what it is, which I know is part of the calculation of what kind of effect the hits have (probably only determining damage should a penetration happen) this is a bit frustrating. I have my PZIVB's on a hill, against ground level Polish armor, almost the whole lot with 2pts of armor all the way around (excepting the top) and I am hoping for a top hit (or at least to see the gun isn't registering 2 penetration or better with AP ammo and then wait for closer ranges), because even a mere 1 penetration for a top hit may give some damage.

Now if the argument is that it's primarily an anti-infantry tank, then I would beg to wonder why so much AP ammo, and why I do not see other AFV's doing this sort of thing? Heck, even my 37mm SPAA's shoot AP out to maximum range despite it not being suited for that role (5 rounds), and it's certainly not an AFV built on the notion of using the gun for ATG purposes.

It may have been seen by somebody, that limiting the 75L24 in this way is a good thing, and it well may be in most situations, save that of being on a hill against ground level weak armor, but I don't see other tanks treated in this way. Why wouldn't I want my PZIV's to fire like the other ones; just for consistency's sake if nothing else?

Oh, another thing. I notice that guns will often have to values for range. I was thinking the 2nd range shown was for sabot ammo, if any. The PZIVB has zero for the secondary range, but since it doesn't have sabot that shouldn't matter, but I do have to wonder if that isn't playing some sort of factor for the lack of shooting AP out to full range. What gets me to saying that, is that I see a good number of guns out there that have a secondary range, but no sabot rounds, though I suppose that's only particular to that one tank, whereas that same gun on a different tank would have sabot, but, if that is correct, then why would you have a gun that has sabot, I presume the 75L24 has sabot on at least the PZIVN or something, not have a secondary range such as the PZIVB does not?

Tanks of course

[Mobhack]

It will fire HE if it thinks it has no particular chance against that armoured target - which includes angle off (class 1 armoured target angled at 45 degrees to the firer, has > 1 effective armour).

Best AP at 3000 metres is 1, average is only 0. However the HE ammo average is 1 - and on the odd time it can do up to 5. Even though HE needs more of an over-penetration to reliably do damage to armoured targets (1 overpen with AP has much more chance than 1 overpen with HE, unlike in the original game - we have devalued HE pen), its a better choice than the anaemic AP round. HE has a chance to de-track the enemy, same as AP, and firing that reserves your precious AP for closer in shots that may be more effective.

The 75L24 has a range of 60 hexes (both HE (its primary purpose) and AP - which is not, with a little stubby cannon. The 75L24 is for support tanks to duff up enemy infantry with, and that is why the gun has a 60 range - for long range HE throwing at soft & squishy targets. Not for long range AT fire!. The Panzer 3s are the anti-tank animal at that time frame.

The 75L24 is only worthwhile really close in as an AP round - out to to 300 it will average a 5(7 best), to 700 4(6 best), to 750-900 3(6), beyond 900 it averages 2(5)AP, and then drops to 1(2) at 1850, 0(1) at 3250 .

The code makes the choice on the average expected AP value, not the 'best' which will only arise in well under 10% of hits - the add on comes mainly from WH size, as large shells are assumed to carry more energy further. HEAT, when it arrives is average of 5(10 best) right out to maximum range. Averages are based on a sample of 5000 hits.

The 75L43, to give an example of a proper long AT gun of the same calibre - averages 12(14 best) out to 350, and at 3500 it is still a useful device with 3(4 best), so it will usually fire at little tin cans with AP at maximum range. (HE being the same AP values as for the L24).

SP has always been this way, right back to SP1. It is not going to change. If the HE rounds AP is equivalent or better than the AP at the firing range - then the HE round will be used.

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

This question has been brought up many times in the past. Basically it boils down to the game is smarter than you think it is. The "AI" can calculate if the HE ammo, which is more numerous, has an equal or better chance to damage a tank at a given range than it's AP ammo does and if it decides it has an equal or better chance with the HE it will save the AP and fire the HE.

Don

[Charles22]

DRG said:
This question has been brought up many times in the past. Basically it boils down to the game is smarter than you think it is. The "AI" can calculate if the HE ammo, which is more numerous, has an equal or better chance to damage a tank at a given range than it's AP ammo does and if it decides it has an equal or better chance with the HE it will save the AP and fire the HE.

Don

Thanks DRG, I thought I had read something like this before, but couldn't recall it for the world. You do, however, see how in this case it's thinking is not well founded. Perhaps it's propensity to have a HE shot which penetrates at a 2, has just been terribly unfortunate in this case. I have not seen a single two hit in any of these PIZVB HE shots (at least 80 rounds fired), but maybe a couple of 1 damaging shots, if indeed it would had hit the top they might damage.

The funny thing is, I thought I was imagining things on another front. I am in a delay against the Poles, something very unfamiliar to me. When on the attack against the Poles, as usual, the short ranged AP shot (actually the computer making adjustments as you explained)of the 75L24 is hardly noticeable, but if a defensive action it hurts very badly. It just so happens an entire sector of my front's sole AFV presence was nothing but PZIVB's which made this even more profound. But the weird thing is this. The Poles act as though they're going to run you over with all that armor, and then, mysteriously, as though they saw your OOB's, they halt, or dance around, pretty much a hex out of reach of the AP shot. They did the same thing with the 37L48's on the PZ38's I have elsewhere. They know when that AP shot is going to go just to the level where it gets that one more point of damage and will stay beyond it (though in hte PZIVB case it as a matter of avoiding the AP altogether). It's really quite hard to believe. It causes something of a change in tactics, particularly since standing still unlike as in a assault battle, gives me no defensive advantage, to then advance at least one or two of the tanks up so that some penetrating shots can hit the front units. Pretty wild.

Though I don't like them waiting just beyond the AP shot like that, I have seen some other AI behavior which is quite unbelievable, but very good nonetheless. For example, I had a platoon of flame thrower engineers guarding what has become the central part of his attack, in some woods. I had a spread where there was only one engineer that would likely face the enemy alone. He destroyed the first two units (AFV's) that tried to get in there. Not a single units has tried to go there since. Rambo and then some; he's got them scared!

One last thing. Isn't it true that the opfire flitering isn't available to the AI? That's too bad if true. I feel somewhat gamey by using it if the AI does not, but it is a great system noentheless, or at least the conceot is, as whether it's gamey or not, I am at least doing a little experimenting with it. It's so a powerful feeling to be able to tell your opfire pretty much what to do in all circumstances, which if it worked for the AI too, makes for quite a decisive edge in gameplay between this product and SPWAW. I guess at least PBEM guys will have a field day wit it.

Have you had much feedback on the filtering, does it seem to work for the human players very well?

Thanks again.

[Charles22]

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.

[DRG]

Charles22 said:
Thanks DRG, I thought I had read something like this before, but couldn't recall it for the world. You do, however, see how in this case it's thinking is not well founded. Perhaps it's propensity to have a HE shot which penetrates at a 2, has just been terribly unfortunate in this case. I have not seen a single two hit in any of these PIZVB HE shots (at least 80 rounds fired), but maybe a couple of 1 damaging shots, if indeed it would had hit the top they might damage.

The AI knows in less time it takes to read the first letter of the first word in this sentence that it has a better chance with that gun with HE at longer ranges against armour than AP does and it knows what the odds are on a 1000 shot cycle for every range from zero to the maximum so just because you haven't seen a result yet it maybe because you haven't fired 1000 shots.

Opfire filtering was put in for human vs Human games but left in for play against the AI because it was assumed if we didn't allow it people would complain. NO the AI doesn't use it. It doesn't use arty gold spots either so if you want to play the way the AI does don't use either.

Don

[Charles22]

DRG said:

The AI knows in less time it takes to read the first letter of the first word in this sentence that it has a better chance with that gun with HE at longer ranges against armour than AP does and it knows what the odds are on a 1000 shot cycle for every range from zero to the maximum so just because you haven't seen a result yet it maybe because you haven't fired 1000 shots.

Opfire filtering was put in for human vs Human games but left in for play against the AI because it was assumed if we didn't allow it people would complain. NO the AI doesn't use it. It doesn't use arty gold spots either so if you want to play the way the AI does don't use either.

Don

I'm not sure what yo mean by arty gold spots. You mean like roads and hills, or backs of hills? It does seem pretty random though. Just last game, I had a ammo truck parked in the woods, way out from any possible spotting, and there wasn't any aerial activity prior to what I'm fixing to describe, but also in the woods there were 2 75IG's and 2 150IG's. None of them had fired a single round, and I was jsut waiting when to use them. Then from out of nowhere the ammo truck was attacked by fighters. Now I can see that for artillery lucking out like that, because you know it's random largely, and since it doesn't just hit one hex it needn't had targeted that hex anyway, but let's just say I have never seen the AI use aerial forces at random anyway. My adjustment? Next game, same thing, only I had a, for that time anyway, invincible ammo depo there. The sort that has 8 armnor minimum.

[Mobhack]

Charles22 said:

Thanks DRG, I thought I had read something like this before, but couldn't recall it for the world. You do, however, see how in this case it's thinking is not well founded. Perhaps it's propensity to have a HE shot which penetrates at a 2, has just been terribly unfortunate in this case. I have not seen a single two hit in any of these PIZVB HE shots (at least 80 rounds fired), but maybe a couple of 1 damaging shots, if indeed it would had hit the top they might damage.

the sample in the hack bit of code I have, measures five (5) thousand actual hits - and generates an average result, rounded to integer. Average for that gun HE, is 1, best is measured in passing - no count of whether there were 1 at 5 best, or 15. (more like 5 in 5K shots I believe though!). But at that range, the L24 average HE round gets a 1, and the AP gets 0. So a HE round goes down range.

And I have done some * damage to a few Nazi panzers of the little types (Mk1 and 2s) in my ongoing WW2 LC, a section of A9 CS tanks have happily blown more than just paint off such, and also killed little Italian tankette thingys not worth a 2 pounder round. Not very reliable though, better way to kill an italian tankette is the Ethiopian way - charge with spearmen and manually flip the thingy on its back like a tin turtle..

The funny thing is, I thought I was imagining things on another front. I am in a delay against the Poles, something very unfamiliar to me. When on the attack against the Poles, as usual, the short ranged AP shot (actually the computer making adjustments as you explained)of the 75L24 is hardly noticeable, but if a defensive action it hurts very badly. It just so happens an entire sector of my front's sole AFV presence was nothing but PZIVB's which made this even more profound. But the weird thing is this. The Poles act as though they're going to run you over with all that armor, and then, mysteriously, as though they saw your OOB's, they halt, or dance around, pretty much a hex out of reach of the AP shot. They did the same thing with the 37L48's on the PZ38's I have elsewhere. They know when that AP shot is going to go just to the level where it gets that one more point of damage and will stay beyond it (though in hte PZIVB case it as a matter of avoiding the AP altogether). It's really quite hard to believe. It causes something of a change in tactics, particularly since standing still unlike as in a assault battle, gives me no defensive advantage, to then advance at least one or two of the tanks up so that some penetrating shots can hit the front units. Pretty wild.

I have never seen anything like that, and there is no AI code which "measures danger" like that.

Likely, it was in a tizzy trying to meet some other criteria (objectives or whatever) or had passed beyond the command radius of the platoon, and was trying to get back there, if the commander was still mobile. (There is now a small attempt to close on the command unit in that case, unlike the original SP code which did not care if a platoon was splattered all over the map and so in danger of being out of CC).

Though I don't like them waiting just beyond the AP shot like that, I have seen some other AI behavior which is quite unbelievable, but very good nonetheless. For example, I had a platoon of flame thrower engineers guarding what has become the central part of his attack, in some woods. I had a spread where there was only one engineer that would likely face the enemy alone. He destroyed the first two units (AFV's) that tried to get in there. Not a single units has tried to go there since. Rambo and then some; he's got them scared!

Again- they don't do that. However if your unit is now known about then they may be going somewhere else, or an objective nearby has flipped, or they have decided the hex entry cost is too much (with wrecks in it now) and have gone around another route. Or are simply hanging back as there is now a random choice if enemy is known, to close - the original SP 'tin lemming' code simply charged the objectives with anything that could move, regardless. Our AI code has a little subtlety built in.

One last thing. Isn't it true that the opfire flitering isn't available to the AI? That's too bad if true. I feel somewhat gamey by using it if the AI does not, but it is a great system noentheless, or at least the conceot is, as whether it's gamey or not, I am at least doing a little experimenting with it. It's so a powerful feeling to be able to tell your opfire pretty much what to do in all circumstances, which if it worked for the AI too, makes for quite a decisive edge in gameplay between this product and SPWAW. I guess at least PBEM guys will have a field day wit it.

Have you had much feedback on the filtering, does it seem to work for the human players very well?

Thanks again.

The AI has its own criteria for firing opfire - which is built into the same code you have, if you let your troops fire opfire unfiltered.

The AI will use the opfire filtering - if a scenario designer has set it for the AI. Scenario designers can now set 'fire sacks' etc. This does not matter if you have the CD or not - the scenario is still playable if designed with opfire filtering, if the player is a free game user. Ditto - your units may have opfire filtering set by the scenario designer - that is why the free user has the ability to enter the opfire filtering screen, but no ability to do any setting of data apart from cancelling it, if you want to go to regular fire algorithms.

Some scenario designers have expressed a desire to make some AI defensive scenarios that utilise the feature.

In MBT - I use it often, to e.g. filter my ATGM to only go for the targets of interest (slot the T-72, but ignore the T5X and APCS and little scout cars). In both games, I find it useful to set up my tanks and ATG to ignore grunts beyond a few hexes, and shoot armoured stuff only (the accompanying infantry can opfire the soft and squishy stuff - I want my Valentines to put 6 pounder AP into the P3 and P2s only thank you very much !). Actually - if I have no scout cars and halftracks about, I usually filter out the P2s as well, they can run around and be annoying if I only have valentines, and I can use them for target practice one the Mk3s are toast.

I rarely use the circle of interest - that might suit a scenario designer making a specific kill sack - but have used it in MBT as a 'kill any armour coming out of that wood where the road exits it' tactic, when I knew the wood was full of loaded APC and a few tanks after an air strike had spotted them, and I was prepared to ignore the few tanks I knew were off to a flank as irrelevant for now.

Cheers
Andy

[Mobhack]

A top armour hit takes angle into account as well - just like a side armour shot does. So it can generate rather more resistance than you thought at longer ranges - that "2" can get an effective or 6 armour at long range, as the shell will have a bad angle of fall. Topshots are really only good in rather close.

Says Andy, whose A13s were up on top of some hills shooting down at Italian M13/40s at 1000-1200 yards the other week, and getting top hits with 6 resistance for the top hit shots

Side armour is rather important - it is why the Tiger and Churchill types of tank do well in combat. (Its also a big area, which is why side armour is charged more in the cost calculator). Plenty of bounces from glancing blows to the side, whereas tanks with thin tin on the side (P3, 4, Panther say) - are gloriously easy to kill if you 'fork' them - my tactic in the desert for P3 elimination, is a small armour force in the middle, and 2 larger forces working each flank - if Jerry turns South to engage force A's fire, I switch to force B who should now have a 1000 metre shot at the side, and with even 2 pounders - side hits toast the panzers, even the later model ones with 7 or 8 on the front have this Achilles flank.

The Panzer 3 has a nice feature - it has quite a tough little set of buttocks on it, and so it can run away with relative impunity from any 'up the kilt' shots ! (Achilles flank, but not his heel problem)

Cheers
Andy

[DRG]

Charles22 said:I'm not sure what yo mean by arty gold spots.

Artillery priority hexes that a human player is issued with at the start of the game ( the number depends on the battle type and the number of FO's he has ) and can place where ever he want.

And the AI doesn't have an arty "cheat" that can see your units. I think everybody who starts playing this game thinks that at least once. We had one guy complain the AI always targeted his units then found out he played large unit games on small maps and the AI couldn't miss where ever it dropped arty but the AI IS programed to pay attention to road junctions and areas behind hills out of sight just like a human player would and it will detect firing events like mortars just like a human player would.

Don