Faith in the game.

[IronMikeGolf]

@pzgndr: Doe SS we want the order delay mechanism to differentiated between "orders" a player gives that translate into battles drills/adjustments and operations that require preparation. The former would have minimal or no delay and not subject to order limits. Combine that with an orders queue (move, blow bridge, then move again), contingency orders (move to here if receive arty), and setting posture for each order (move here in Hasty, move there in Deliberate, then move there in Assault) will give us the flexibility and fidelity we are looking for.

[battlerbritain]

I'm liking the sound of the new SS Command orders and HQ stuff.

Wonder if you could keep it easy such that player could just say 'Hasty Attack with this unit, this unit and this unit, along this route (click click click) and your support is this arty, this arty and this one. Roll time 2PM. Go ?'

ORIGINAL: Iron Mike Golf

.... My understanding is that pre-combat boresighting of the 1A46 FCS included manual entry of the following data: ammo lot CCF (Computer Control Factor), air baro pressure and temp, propellant temp, tube round count.

I do hope they don't have to enter pressures and temps in manually, as that would be a PITA and, knowing squaddies, be right at the top of their things to do list. [:)]

Even remembering to keep that funny-stick-thing that sticks up out of the roof, whats-it-called? oh yeah, the weather sensor, even keeping that plugged in instead of the kettle is a minor victory.

Not that squaddies would ever do that [:)]

PS I'm ex-Air Force and I loved working with Brit green machine. Did I get the pi$$ ripped outta me - hell yes, but I loved every minute. Best job I ever had [:)]

[IronMikeGolf]

@Battlerbritain: Those items after the colon are keyed in, as I understand it. I am guessing the Soviets had something similar to a Master Gunner. That little stack you are talking about is the crosswind sensor. During gunnery qualification, US tankers do a boresight (rather involved procedure, what with the FCS, MRS, two sights, and two weapons), then go shoot at the Calibration Range. This is to confirm an accurate boresight. In the event of substandard accuracy, the unit Master Gunner will oversee the crew re-boresighting. If necessary, the Master Gunner will direct the crew use the ammo lot CCF, as opposed to the standard Fleet CCF. The Mike Golf might also compute a custom CCF for that tank. Some voodoo required.

As to the other (point, click, menu select support for a mission), we are working on something along those lines. Sorta like that.

[battlerbritain]

Voodoo = MPI(x), MPI(y), SDs, 3m square with 9 aiming marks, wild rounds, fleet average?

I know (knew) that voodoo.

Long time ago.

[Deathtreader]

Been following this thread with great interest....... and like what I'm hearing for SS! But just to confirm -- player adjustable engagement ranges are part of the package?? Or are at least on the table??

Thanks,

Rob.

[CapnDarwin]

We are planning to allow some control of ranges and standoffs and priority targets assuming we can get all these grand ideas to come together and not tip over the boat. [;)]

[Deathtreader]

ORIGINAL: Capn Darwin

We are planning to allow some control of ranges and standoffs and priority targets assuming we can get all these grand ideas to come together and not tip over the boat. [;)]

Ha-ha [&o]

Thanks!

Rob.

[IronMikeGolf]

@Battlerbritain: For the M1 series, screening is done shooting a 1.75m target at 1500m, using the fleet (whole Army inventory) CCFs for ammo types. Fire up to two rounds of training AP and HEAT and tank passes if at least one of each hits.

The voodoo bit (on the part of some units or Mike Golfs is computing a discrete based on one round when that first round misses. It's not the smartest of moves, but some folks believe they are saving ammunition doing so. By the book, it takes 4 rounds. For example, first round of AP misses. Crew fires second round. misses, and the tank fails screening. Heart rates and blood pressures elevate. the tank is checked for faults, and the crew also has their "oil" checked. Third round is fired, MPI is determined, discrete CCF computed, and it is entered into that tank's FCS. Prayers are said, small animals sacrificed, then the confirmation round is fired.

The thing is, each tank is allocated 2 rds of each type for screening. So, to do it by the book, you need a couple of tanks in the company to pass screen on the first round of that type. And everyone concerned would much rather a crew who needs the extra training fire those rounds in a gunnery engagement than on the calibration range.

[MaxDamage]

The spotting system needs looking at.

Nowdays if the unit has thermals, it will detect an enemy sitting 5 km away dug in even in the 80% town hex.

Units without thermals can only spot nato tank platoons (3 tanks) at ~2 hexes (1km) IF they are moving in a clear weather and daylight.

This is exxagerated.

[clodhellmer]

"We are planning to allow some control of ranges and standoffs and priority targets............." Cptn Darwin, thats the Nr one on my wishlist. I really love the game but sometimes I just want to kick the Laptop from my desk if my forces engaged a unit more than 4k away, even if its a recon unit and blow my ambush! Dont wont to beat a dead horse, sorry but for me its a real game killer! We need some control of ranges and priority. I wont buy SS without any fire control options for my forces, sorry to say!

[pzgndr]

ORIGINAL: MaxDamage
The spotting system needs looking at.
Nowdays if the unit has thermals...

Nowadays, 2016+, may be a focus for a future game, but THIS current game and the next Southern Storm are still focused on the 1980s. There's a whole lot of consideration that needs to factor in performance, reliability, availability and other stuff for that period. And going back to earlier 1970s technology provides some capability but nowhere near what is was in the late 1980s and certainly not now. For all that, nighttime weather variability could maybe consider starlight and moonlight, and how that affects both unaided spotting and night vision spotting. It's pretty complicated, so we'll have to trust the judgment of the team to come up with reasonable assumptions to model the equipment of the period. And again, these models of a group of vehicles engaging another group of vehicles at some distance becomes a probabilistic crap shoot, so the best we can hope for are "reasonable" results for us as game players to factor into our tactical decision making. Arguing about individual gunnery results is getting too far into the weeds for a tactical level game that is not a pure tank sim.

[Rincovsk]

"try adjusting your Chieftain/T-80 scenario to reduce the responsiveness of the Chieftains and up the T-80s. See what that does. You can do that in the Scenario editor by selecting the unit and right-mouse click 'Update parameters for this unit'.

Battlebritain, how exactly do you perform that? Changing the training and readiness parameters or do you change something else in the database as well? I would like to try those adjustments out.

Thanks!

[battlerbritain]

It was quite easy.

In the scenario editor click on a unit on the map and then click on the right hand panel and get the OB display up. The OB helps with selecting the units I find.

Now click on a unit you want to change. Right-mouse click and top of the list is 'Unit parameters setup', something like that.

A small dialog will appear and you can edit the units responsiveness and training on the left hand side. Edit to taste, with 99% responsiveness the max.

I think a training rating of 8 is veteran, 7 regular and 6 trained.

If you want to copy the values to all subunits of the unit click the 'Copy values to subunits' tickbox at the top of the dialog before closing the dialog.

Hope this helps, B

[bootlegger267]

I have been following this thread since last night....

Like Iron Mike Golf, I was also an M1/M1A1 Master Gunner (Class 85-6) and retired as a 19ZA8 (1SG). I served from 77-97, 14 of those years in Germany. I also TC'd everything from M60A1's, M60A2's, M60A3's, M1's M1IP's, M1A1's, and M1A1 (Heavy). I spent all my Master Gunner time at the Co/Bn Level. Between Iron Mike, Stimpak, and myself, and probably others there is a ton of "real life" experience who play/develop/design this simulation/game. (I am a player, no design affiliation)

Regardless if the game simulates this point, it is nonetheless relevant... "If a tank is outnumbered 5-1 but gets off the first round and achieves a kill, the ratio effectively shifts to 2-1 in favor of he who shoots first and kills." So 10 T80's vs 3 Chieftains and the Chieftains scoring the 1st kill is not a stretch by any means.

This was one of the biggest lessons taken away from the 73 Yom Kippor War. It also was one of the major design points while the M1 series was in development. The tank, with a "Properly Trained Crew and a Nominal Fire Control System", MUST be able to maintain a 1st round hit probability of 90% at 2000m.

Now, 3 Chieftains vs 10 T80's, each sitting in Hull Down positions at 1000m's, each force identifies at the same time, T80 wins, just due to numbers alone.

But take into account Crew Training, Gun Accuracy (the 125mm 2A46M was notoriously inaccurate at ranges beyond 1500m's) Armor Package, Ammunition Composition, Fire Control/Sighting Systems, Environmental Conditions, etc etc....too many variables affect the outcome of ANY tank battle.

ps to Iron Mike Golf.....I never once had to use a "Discrete CCF" (Fancy word for "Zeroing a Tank"). Remember your "Variable Bias's? lol!!!

But I will say My Co MG's and I went through each tanks FCS's with a fine tooth comb each quarter during Services and prior to each Gunnery.... (Thanks to my GD Rep who gave me his "GhostBusters" Manual)

Bootlegger267

[battlerbritain]

It's interesting reading that US M-1 crews used only one or two rounds to 'qualify' a tank.

In some ways that's good in that you're using less ammunition.

It's also good that you're using a fleet average as the benchmark to judge against. Even better if you can get all vehicles in the fleet to pass against it. [:)]

My concern is that using only 2 rounds is so small a statistical sample that it's not valid as a statistical sample.

When I was involved in tank gunnery on Challenger 2 it was 25 years ago and things were done differently. For a start we didn't have a fleet value to play with (couldn't use Chieftain or Challenger 1 values).

What the Brits did was to get what values we did have, get an average for that and make an optical graticule to be fitted to all vehicles. The logic for using a graticule was that if you had to fall back on to something due to battle damage the FCS was likely to have gone and an optical graticule was likely to be more robust. So was the thinking anyway.

For qualifying Brit tanks they used 10 rounds as the smallest sample that could be deemed statistically valid.

No doubt 25 years later and with the accountants having taken over they may be using fewer rounds.

Great thread and keep the keep the comments coming,

Cheers, B

[Stimpak]

Another good tip for Soviets is that you need to always be concentrating your artillery where your tanks are attacking. The Soviets rarely, if ever trained without Artillery both hitting them and their targets, and those possible kills/hits/readiness drops are really important for evening the odds before your tanks even take any losses. It's always incredibly satisfying for me to move my T-72s forward and find that I had accurately guessed where an M1A1 platoon was, and they could not do anything to my tanks because they had just been hit by neutralizing fire in triplicate. In a game where so many factors play into the outcome, something as big as Artillery is more than enough to tip the scale.

[mikeCK]

It seems like you just won't accept any result where your Soviet tanks don't win here simply because you want them to. The Soviets may have looked down on the Arab tank crews but they shouldn't have. The Egyptian Army in 1973 was quite good and likely would have won had they not outpaced their air defense. They were well trained and equipped. Not sure why Soviet forces in the same situation would have performed better...

Also, the T-80 isn't that great. At least not so good as to suggest the game is broken because they lose to chieftains with better crews. It was a T-64 with some newer kit. The newer T-72s were better in a lot of ways and so was the newer t-64Bs after the T-80s rolled off the line. So I disagree that there is a generation gap since both tanks were made with 1950's tech. The Chieftans had been upgraded throughout their service time with new fire control systems and kit. So I'm not sure why a T-80 which is an upgraded version of a 1960's tank is supposed to be so much better than an actual upgraded 1960's tank.

it's not that the T-80u is a bad tank...it's that it's not so much better than an upgraded Chieftan as to make up for a less experienced crew.

[bootlegger267]

The Fleet "Computer Correction Factors" or CCF's were developed for each type of ammunition and then updated as the ammunition was updated. These were determined by firing rounds from cannons that had various numbers of rounds fired from them (New, 50, 100, 200) Those averages were applied across the fleet.

Prior to firing any of the "Main Gun" Gunnery Tables (in my day TTVIA/B, TTVIIA/B, TTIIIA/B (Crew Qualification), TTIXA/B, TTXA/B (Section Qualification), TTXIA/B, TTXIIA/B (Plt Qualification),A/B being Day/Night) US Crews fired "Calibration or Live Fire Accuracy Screening Test" (LFAST) to ensure that the Fire Control System was functioning as designed, the Crews had Boresighted the weapon systems correctly, and was used to zero the tank mounted Machineguns. FCS/Boresight Data was recorded and compared to the tanks previous data prior to any rounds being fired. If the data was within tolerence (.3mil) of the previous sampling, the crew was allowed to fire. If not, the Master Gunner would have the crew redo the tanks Boresight, and submit another data sheet. If the data fell within the .3mil tolerence, the crew fired their Calibration rounds. If not, the Master Gunner had to determine the cause of the deviance.

The Main Gun Target was at 1500m and one round Sabot and one round HEAT were fired, the hit plotted on a data sheet. The round was fired using what on the M1 series is called "Normal Mode" (ie using all the FCS capabilities).

The reason US Armor doctrine changed from "Zeroing" each tank individually to a "Fleet" Zero was twofold.

1) The Army was spending hugh amounts of $$$ on training ammunition "chasing bullets".

2) (and you'll appreciate this) A British research paper on tank gun accuracy produced in the late 50's established that there were some 11 "Variable Bias's" (Vehicle Cant, Optical Path Bending, Windage Jump, Fire Control Nominality, Air Temp, Range to Target, Muzzle Velocity Variation, Gun Jump, Ammunition Propellant Temp, Crosswind, Zeroing Procedures) that come into play with each round fired that a tank crew can not control, that effect the strike of any given round.

Also, all US tanks have a Gunners Auxillary Sight (GAS) with graduated reticles for the different rounds if the primary FCS is disabled.

Bootlegger267

[battlerbritain]

I think I've seen that paper. My boss had a copy, usually on his desk. I used to rib him that he had a hand in writing it, but with at least 6 feet head start when saying so. (I don't think he started work on tanks till the 80s so a bit before even his time).

My boss also produced the graticules for Challenger 1, Scorpion, Scimitar and Challenger 2. He was involved in the infamous Cat87 competition, but didn't talk about it.

I also remember him saying that the Gun Jump was different between Chieftain and Challenger 1 even though they used the same gun and ammunition. Something to do with different vehicle structures, but nobody really knew exactly why.

I'm familiar with all those variables though. I put together a software package to allow the collecting of shot strike co-ords and to transfer them into a database for use later, including recording as much detail on those variables as could be recorded. Previously the guys on the tanks had been using a massive form twice the size of A3 paper for each 'occasion'. Nightmare!

Thing is whilst all those variables might affect where the rounds ended up the main thing our guys were after was the MPI and SDs for that 'occasion'. Those were the things they tracked. So long as the SDs kept within limits they were happy. They could adjust the MPI for an individual tank prior to a war kicking off, they hoped.

I saw some US papers on using Fleet average and seemed to hold some promise. Looks like it worked [:)]

--------------------------
Game talk:
I've tried adjusting the Response and crew ratings and putting Sovs up to Response 99% and crew rating 8 makes them a lot more deadly.

I'm still thinking that defenders are shooting much too fast for prolonged engagements. From the limited info I have on the Golan battles it took the Israelis a couple of hours to rack up scores of 30+ tanks hit I think. In the game I'm seeing that in 13 minutes.

If the game evolves into tracking ammunition expenditure for each round type, eg Fin, HEAT, HE, we might see that slow down or the Sovs run out of ammo a lot quicker. I'm not sure. Be interesting to adopt it and see what happens.

What I'd like is an actual record from real engagements on rounds fired and times involved. That's probably classified though.

I know modern well trained crews can fire at daft rates in a short time, eg 10 rds a minute. Question is: would they do that over a prolonged engagement knowing that if they kept up that rate of fire they'd be out of that ammo type in 3 minutes-ish?

I suppose it depends on the circumstances? If the crews can see a horde coming at them then they would probably just let them fly and sort out the ammo loads later?

Don't know - discuss?

[bootlegger267]

Faith in the game.....I can call for Artillery Fire and get rounds on target in 3-4 minutes, but I cant get my damn tank platoon to move out of their Primary positions for 15-20 minutes! Ughhhhhh!

Bootlegger267