Urban terrain and armored forces.

[Hexagon]

Well, i a find again my main "enemy" in game, the WTF moments with urban terrain.

I really want know how works the cover feature in game because is not the first time i see total [:@] moments in game, i explain this with an example.

PzGr section in urban terrain, 80% cover elevation is 4 (between 1-2 more than soviet units) cover+Hold posture+dug in well, a T-80 company start attacking them (in open cover between 20-40%) at or over 2.000m and in 10 minutes the 3 Marders are burning...i repeat this more times and allways the same result only variation is the time to see them burning and if they destroy 0 or 1 T-80.

I notice that AFVs in urban are excesive vulnerable to range combat, this is specially frustrating with NATO where you see how worst tanks with worst crews do over 2.000m excesive number of hits when you have all advantages in defense... at the point that you need retreat from a perfect defensive position because simple you cant hold it and i refer to 8 Leo II VS a soviet tank battalion... i see very few times a good performance in this situations in NATO side when they are in the in teory situations that they are made and training for.

Any point about this??? how really impact cover in survive rate??? and hold offer really better use of terrain or is screen a much better order??? and of course, WHY are soviets to effective at or over 2.000m???

Thanks.

[british exil]

I would assume dug in, would also mean camoflaged, hidden in rubble. Zones of fire would be prearranged so anything wandering into the "Zone" would be finished.

Inf. would be hidden in buildings maybe just as recon or spotters for arty. Urban should pose a big threat for amoured units.


Mat

[Arnir]

I think Hexagon is saying that the units in the urban terrain are getting slaughtered despite the advantages that they should have as you point out. (unless I am reading this wrong).

[Tazak]

ORIGINAL: Hexagon

WHY are soviets to effective at or over 2.000m???

Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K112_Kobra

Russian T64 (later models) & T80 (most if not all models) were equipped with the AT-8 Songster

[Hexagon]

Yes i refer to the low survive rate of unis, specially vehicles, urban terrain or terrain with good cover and other advantages vs direct fire.

i know they use "guided ammo" but they shoot over non open terrain and i see ATMG units whit lower kill over tanks in open.

[TheWombat_matrixforum]

There does seem to be some room to discuss the spotting model. The problems people are suggesting seem to stem from units being able to spot dug in, presumably concealed, infantry way too easily, from way too far away. Even with IFVs or APCs, it's possible they should be harder to spot. I remember in Berlin during exercises I'd be wandering around and there'd be a M113 disguised as a dumpster or something; pretty good cammo, really. In urban areas it's not that hard to hide vehicles I'd imagine.

[wodin]

Isn't Urban terrain supposed to be a nightmare for Tankers?

[wodin]

Here you go..thanks to Clod from my FB page..a PDF on Russian Tankers experience in Chechen war.

http://ciar.org/ttk/mbt/armor/armor-magazine/armor-mag.2001.ja/4chechen01.pdf

[baldbrother]

I totally agree with Hexagon.

[wodin]

Hexagon..one reason why I brought up the LOS\LOF mechanics.

Lets be patient. They are listening and I'm sure over time things will be tweaked and reworked. This is really just the core foundation for them to build on..and what a foundation it is. SO if we do see things that don't seem right or look right tell the developers who will I've no fear keep improving the game to make it more realistic. AT times yes it feels abit sci fi..but it still plays great and is load sof fun and I'd bet money on the game becoming more realistic as patches and new games come out.

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3480744

[Hexagon]

Well, the [:@] is for the "ilogical" situation, nothing more, i know game is new and needs more work only say one thing that i dont feel is working fine.

Maybe is like you say, more a question of spotting but here i think now in 2 questions about terrain protection.

1-cover, when i play wargames where appear the terrain protection in a % i asume it as a %, if i see 80% cover i think that be here provide only a 20% of success for attacker, i dont know if you play Tiller games but they use a protection value in terrain and you know for example that an unit in industrial (50% terrain protection) + trench (40%) is not an unit to engage in a shoot duel, you know that or flank and isolated it or use a masive assault force in waves because direct fire or arty attacks have low efectivity.

2-detection... here is an important thing, when an unit shoot from a good cover is detected and start receiving direct fire BUT if i have a cover of 80% i expect enemy has low hit chance because is shooting to enemy in terrain where is easy camo units and with options to reposition from a fire position to other covered... is not the same reposition a tank in lower terrain only with light cover (and only visual cover, bushes cant stop a shell) than do it in urban terrain in elevated terrain for example. Maybe add a 2nd level of detection between non detected and detected is necesary... i think in a "estimated position" where you see the counter but with no info (you can see the counter with a ? you dont know what kind of unit is or what is his size) and in this situation hit % is lower (50% or similar), is not the same identify units in open terrain than do it in terrain where hide even big things like tanks is easy and of course, defender here has the advantage of be static and have better chance to identify enemy when is moving forward.


Apart this when we leave the terrain protection for direct fire and detection we enter in the shoot duel part, here i see 2 problems in the game.

1-soviets are excesive good in long range duels, i dont think that they be so effective shooting at or over 2.000m or is this or NATO tanks are less effective in long range duels and this is very strange because soviets are not equiped and trained to fight at long ranges, they are attackers in equipment and tactics, this means that they try close range ASAP where NATO try fight all time at max range... is strange see how on their situations NATO performance is not specially superior to soviets.

2-one thing in game i dont understand is why soviets with bigger units dont suffer a malus... i play some naval wargames and in practically all there is a rule that say if you have more ships shooting over the same target over a certain number fire effectivity is reduced because ships cant correct their shoots, maybe here something similar is interesting, the NATO smaller units shoot over bigger units, is harder that they shoot at same targets and is harder they waste shoots unlike the soviet units that shoot with more guns over less targets.

Maybe the cover+urban is the thing that needs more work, if you cant use the advantage to decimate the soviet wave before they enter in urban you are dead because another strange thing i notice is that when soviets enter in urban they simple can overrun the NATO because shoot more times thanks to their bigger units and very few times i see the NATO defender unit has the defender advantage... urban terrain is bad for armor in attack because they dont know where is enemy and the first info they have about their presence is a visual warning... a tank doing BOOOM and well i dont see this kind of advantage in defender.

[TheWombat_matrixforum]

I think there are several things at work here.

One is our preconceptions about a war that never happened. There are any number of ideas about how such a war might have played out. During the seventies and eighties, we assumed exactly as Hexagon has, that Soviet equipment, doctrine, and training meant that they would fight in a certain way--mass, close-range attacks, battle drill, a heavy, unsubtle sledgehammer. We also assumed NATO would be the rapier--longer reach, more agile, more fragile but more precise. There were reasons to believe this, certainly.

But...we don't know for sure. There never was a direct confrontation. Soviet equipment, or versions of it, was used in numerous Middle Eastern conflicts, but not in the numbers or in the manner that it would have been in Europe, and not with the same troops of course. Even much later, in Desert Storm, the Iraqis were not a very good benchmark for what GSFG would have been like. As more and more research is done, using sources that have become available since the end of the Cold War, and as we learn more and more about modern combat, even if it is asymmetrical, I think it's reasonable to reassess our assumptions from the 1980s.

A lot of NATO's assumptions were, I think, wishful thinking. We wanted to believe finesse could trump force, because we HAD to believe that. Otherwise, it was go nuke or go home. We tended to assume as well that Soviet gear was inferior overall to ours, especially in terms of fire control and precision. In some ways this was demonstrably true, but in terms of battlefield effectiveness, instead of trade show demonstrations, I'm not so sure. The Russians have a long history of making effective, usable stuff, and there's little reason to think that they would field thousands of pieces of gear that simply didn't work. They weren't stupid. So it's entirely plausible to think, now, that a lot of what we dismissed as inferior back then might well have worked "well enough" on the battlefield.

And then there's the matter of size and scale. I'm not sure that NATO ever realistically dealt with the reality of what a Pact assault would look like, in terms of sheer numbers and speed. We made assumptions about what air power, BAI and deep strike in particular, would do, and we made equally optimistic assumptions about what our technology on land could do, and we crafted a scenario where it was plausible that we'd be able to win conventionally. Whether that scenario was realistic is something we may never know, but in hindsight I rather doubt some of those assumptions. Not to mention that one of the main reasons there was no war was that no one would win; a successful Pact attack would destroy Western Europe and the economic prosperity that supposedly was the lure for the USSR in the first place, and a successful defense would...pretty much do the same thing. So in effect the only possible "victory" was the one that we got--no war, and the collapse of the USSR and the Pact politically and economically. The most important role all those fancy weapons played was to bankrupt the Soviet Union; whether they would have worked on the battlefield proved to be rather immaterial.

So, if we're trying to answer questions in a game about relative capabilities, I look at each decision as a hypothesis that we cannot, really, ever test. We can test it to see if it is consistent with our stated goals or concepts, we can test it to see if it works in terms of gameplay and balance, but we can't test it against a known outcome, like we can, say, for a WWII simulation in many respects. Is it possible that Soviet units could have engaged at much longer ranges than we thought? Yes. Is it possible NATO forces could have overwhelmed the Pact attack with precision and technical expertise? Maybe. Would a tank company in 1989 fighting in a German town have been more or less vulnerable than one fighting in 1945? Who knows?

Comparisons with other games are useful, but insufficient to answer the question. The Tiller Modern Campaigns are a one-mile per hex scale, and their handling of terrain is vastly different than this game. Tank ranges are one or two hexes, not eight, and while you do get platoons it's usually a battalion/company scale. More tactical games use 50m hexes and the like, where a hedge or a shed make a lot more difference. These are still good questions to ask, but the answers will never be exactly what we want, if we assume that "what we want" is validation of our own preconceptions about the war that never was.

Now, find me a Tardis, and we'll see for real...

[Hexagon]

Well, i dont compare the game with other, i compare a feature from 2 diferent games, in a title COVER is clear what kind of advantages offer to the guy on the hex and you know very well what you can expect, here i dont see COVER working in a predictable way because units with all advantages in defense (expect improved positions) dont look specially well protected from long range direct fire and in urban fight i dont see attacker that enter in ??? zone suffer a lot from this in urban close combat fight.

I think that this thing needs be improved.

And the performance of material... well, in same way you say NATO could find surprises in battlefield same i can say about soviets and i think is not a myth the lower level of training in soviet units a LOT LESS training with the true material and with lower quality simulators, here i find soviets simple excesive effective in long range combat, i dont say that when soviets move under 2.000m improve a lot and be more effective but when they stay over 2.000m and provide a not really bad performance... i think in general soviets need be less effective at or over 2.000m.

We dont know thanks to God how could be a WWIII in conventional fighting BUT some things in game are strange and a little ilogical at least for me.

[2ndACR]

Armored forces in a urban setting are dead meat against trained infantry troops. And in some European towns, the streets are so narrow that a modern tank would not be able to turn the turret around to engage them. Blow a track off and then they are basically sitting in their steel coffin wondering when it ends for them. Of course urban warfare is a terror for any military. Infantry love them for defense but live in terror of them on the attack. So many hiding places, sewers and drainage tunnels become the ultimate traveling paths and hiding spots.

Infantry especially should be extremely hard to detect in a urban area until they open fire, and even then, it should be very spotty. Armored forces in a true combat situation would not hesitate to ram a tank into the back of a store with the muzzle just on the other side of the front window just waiting for the first enemy vehicle to drive by for a easy kill. Buildings would have mouse holes blown thru walls allowing all doors to be bypassed and booby trapped, walls connecting to other buildings would also have holes blown thru to allow passage from building to building to avoid exposing self to the streets.

The only way to really combat a true urban scenario is to reduce the town to absolute rubble ala WW2. No entry into anything until a grenade is tossed in first, catch fire from a building basically you level the place.

[Arnir]

It looks like urban hexes should probably stop cannon and/or atgm fire. LOS might vary by height, but I think that you could see into a hex but not beyond it.

[Hexagon]

I notice to that ATMG shooting over non clear ground dont suffer specially a lose of effectivity... is not the same shoot tanks in open that shoot tanks in urban/forest terrain.

I read about a change in game, lets see.

[CapnDarwin]

I posted else where in the forum that after I get done wit the Modding Guides (which is slow going with many distractions right now both game and real life) and we roll out the 2.03 patch to deal with the PBEM issues, I will take some time and revisit urban LOS and combat to make sure other tweaks have not knocked things off dead center and tighten up the LOS in high visual hindrance areas. We have also been talking about some updates for how mech transports function post deployment of troops as to supporting forward or hiding based on firepower and opponent strength. so hopefully the 2.04 will have some corrections in these areas for you guys.