Spring:1944 dev and testing

[1v0ry_k1ng]

[quote="SpikedHelmet"]Here's an idea for Logistics:

A) Unprotected logistics structures, like the two we currently have, should be extremely weak. Afterall, they are mainly made up of a bunch of fuel barrels and boxes of ammunition. The small one should be so weak that a single spray or two from a submachinegun will blow it; the large one should be similarly weak.

A) I like! chain s'plosions!

B) imo it should be less efficent so you have to choose between eco or security (much like wind vs solar in TA)

C) limit plzkthx

D) Im downloadin latest version now, cant play online at uni but i can still get a pretty good 4v1 against NTAI and RAIs. how does energy eco woork now?


sorry if i said this before, imo getting the upgraded versions of tanks (t60->t70, t3476->t3485) should mean diffrent structures, ie, a low demand armour structure and then high priority armour (kind of like dawn of wars listening post upgrades represent command considering the battle to grow in importance). I say this because the upgraded versions of tanks completely blow the older versions away in most cases and should require a bit of techin to reach

[Felix the Cat]

Except that the upgraded versions DON'T completely blow everything else away and so teching would be useless on a cost/benefit basis.

Teching is cool if it's AK -> Sumo -> Krogoth, but with units like S44's teching is not so cool.

Also, teching is really a TA-esque thing, we're trying not to make a "TA World War 2" game.

[Nemo]

In the case of the sherman, the HVSS actually has a very poor HE shell, so spamming that as a complete replacement for the m4a4 would be a poor choice, and waste you a lot of resources. Unless, of course, the enemy had loads of armor you needed to deal with. In which case the poor HE is probably not a big concern you have.

[SpikedHelmet]

Same thing with the T-34-76 and T-34-85. And Cromwell and Sherman Firefly. Weeeeee.

[Felix the Cat]

In the case of the sherman, the HVSS actually has a very poor HE shell, so spamming that as a complete replacement for the m4a4 would be a poor choice, and waste you a lot of resources. Unless, of course, the enemy had loads of armor you needed to deal with. In which case the poor HE is probably not a big concern you have.

Eh, I find that tanks kill most of their infantry kills via the coaxial MG.

[Felix the Cat]

I was just modeling some planes and was wondering... should aircraft models have independent ailerons and rudders?

[Warlord Zsinj]

Way too detailed for an RTS. Lots of seperate pieces add to lag as well.

[Felix the Cat]

Way too detailed for an RTS. Lots of seperate pieces add to lag as well.

Good, because I went ahead and didn't model them

[1v0ry_k1ng]

t3485 completly blows t3476 away, what are you on about? set a 1v1 with LOS between them at say, 1000 range. or a 2v1, maybe even stretching to a 3v1. i didnt notice the newer sherman to actually be much better, which is why i didnt mention it. t70 owns t60 hard, same applies to the su series assault guns as the model increases. i didnt mean teching in the TA sense, i meant seperating old and new models so that old models are useful beyond switching to for spam. I reckoned small medium and light tanks should be produceable from the early tank factory, with buildtimes and costs limiting the usefulness of heavy tanks spam, then a later more expensive factory that produces the advanced versions. anyway. your the devs :)

[yuritch]

The talk about HE shells wasn't about T-34/76 being able to kill T-34/85. It was about the '76' being more useful against unarmored things. Try a 76 and a 85 against hordes of infantry/AT guns, see the difference.

[SpikedHelmet]

Yes.. in all cases of there being a "basic medium tank" and then an "advanced medium tank" (ie M4A4 vs. M4A3(76), T-34/76 vs. T-34/85, Cromwell vs. Firefly), the "basic medium tank" (ie M4A4, T-34/76 and Cromwell) have far better HE shells in their smaller guns, while the "advanced" tanks (ie M4A3(76), T-34/85 and Firefly) have excellent tank-killing guns but they are poor at attacking infantry and other soft targets. Best part is, that isn't by our design but by realism!!!. The only exception are the Germans, who don't really have a good HE to begin with(but they have the good MG24/MG42).

[yuritch]

Well, Germans had good HE, only that was in the beginning of the war (1939-1942). Pz.IV Ausf. D and StuGIII Ausf. B with their "stumps" (short-barreled 75mm guns) come to mind. Those designs were later abandoned in favor of more anti-tank inclined vehicles and most of the remaining units converted to new anti-armor 75mm guns (but there were Pz.III Ausf. N with the same short 75mm gun, and those tanks were made in 1943). I admit all of those units have little to do with the current S'44 alpha, but still...

[FLOZi]

I've read that the T-34/85 had only a fragmentation round, not a HE or HE-frag round. Can you shed any light on that yuritch? Seems a waste of the larger caliber to not have a HE round.

[Felix the Cat]

t3485 completly blows t3476 away, what are you on about? set a 1v1 with LOS between them at say, 1000 range. or a 2v1, maybe even stretching to a 3v1. i didnt notice the newer sherman to actually be much better, which is why i didnt mention it. t70 owns t60 hard, same applies to the su series assault guns as the model increases. i didnt mean teching in the TA sense, i meant seperating old and new models so that old models are useful beyond switching to for spam. I reckoned small medium and light tanks should be produceable from the early tank factory, with buildtimes and costs limiting the usefulness of heavy tanks spam, then a later more expensive factory that produces the advanced versions. anyway. your the devs :)

Problem is that there would be no incentive to build heavy tanks except for the "cool factor".

True, a T-34/85 kills a T-34/76. However, line up 20 of each. The 85s would (hopefully) win; however, a significant number of them would be destroyed. Compare the ratio with lining up 20 Bulldogs and then that cost's worth of Stumpies.

It wouldn't be worth the cost to build the advanced factory. Heavy tanks are not Krogoths or even Bulldogs; they will not punch through a defensive line on their own; they are not immediate game-changers when they appear. They have their uses (armor vs. armor combat, covering light tanks and vehicles in small numbers against enemy tanks, generally longer range), but medium tanks remain the mainstay of a good tank force.

Consider that, in the current version, when you build a tank factory certain things happen:
1) On most maps, you will metal-stall while building a tank factory, unless you've already practically won the game.
2) This metal-stall slows the production of other vital units, rendering you temporarily weaker than a fully producing opponent.
3) The metal-stall slows down your logistics production. In the current spam-oriented version, this is a Bad Thing (tm).

I understand the reasoning and have even proposed separating heavier tanks out from lighter ones for the Germans, in a slightly different way (ask me later for details, I'm not as coherent as I'd like to be right now ). However, making a "light tank factory" -> "heavy tank factory" as a general rule would be a poor design decision given the current roles of the various tanks, IMO.

[Felix the Cat]

Oh - Neddie, I finished the first of the aircraft you wanted.

[yuritch]

I've read that the T-34/85 had only a fragmentation round, not a HE or HE-frag round. Can you shed any light on that yuritch? Seems a waste of the larger caliber to not have a HE round.

Full ammunition set for a T-34-85 was composed (typically) of the following:
- 36 frag rounds;
- 14 armor-piercing rounds (some of them with tracers);
- 5 subcaliber rounds
----------
55 rounds total.

Those rounds were taken directly from the 85mm AA gun, that is why there was a frag round, but wasn't an HE one. Before T-34-85, 85mm guns were only used for air defence (AP round was developed with the possibility of anti-tank use in mind), and that use doesn't require HE rounds. Germans used 88mm for many other things beside AA, they had naval guns of that caliver even before WW1, so they had somewhat broader set of ammunition for them.

[FLOZi]

How does a frag round function? Presumably it would be effective vs infantry + softskin vehicles, but not structures?

[1v0ry_k1ng]

i think i came across wrong, i meant light medium and heavy tanks all being buildable at the same "tech level" (same factory?) and the advanced versions being buildable at a diffrent factory (a higher tech level) but i guess that wouldnt work so well for reasons you state.

however, line up 20-20 t3476 vs 85 and the 85 models totally smash the 76 (at 1000 range w/ LOS). there is also the question of the learnign curve, how are people going to know that "advanced medium tank" actually means "tank destroyer subtype" ?

the main thing i had in mind that light to heavy tanks should all be avalaible at the same point in the game. the decision on which to build should be a legigitamte decision between the numbers and speed of lights, the comprimise of staying power and numbers of mediums, or the concentrated killing power of a heavy. a good player microing a heavy so it only encounters one enemy medium at a time for example, would get its cost back in easy kills but rolling it out into a 3v1 with enemy mediums would see it get owned. lights are cheap and fast but fail epicly at a straight fight, their strength being moving up close and speeding past the enemy tanks so their slow turrets cant get a fix. lights also mean the most MGs for killing infantry for cost, at the price of being fail against armour. the idea is that all the types of armour have pros and cons deciding if you make them, rather than the oldschool "I can build mediums now so i can stop using lights". by no means would heavys have no use. lights can barely scratch somthing with 7000+ HP, and the su russian assault guns with 10000 armour can blow vast numbers of tanks, as long as they only encounter them 1 at a time.

this way, the skill of lights is getting into melee and avoiding open ground charges, the skill of mediums is getting as many able to fire as possible, the skill of heavys is using terrain to ensure that it only engages one or two enemy tanks at a time so its superior armour isnt wasted.

at the moment, i just use a mix of marders and panzeriii; marders spank vehicles for cost while panzeriii MGs infantry and has decent staying power against lesser enemies.

[FLOZi]

But basically all tanks are buildable from the same factyory currently... The exception being the T-60, as it is really just a light recon vehicle and as such gets the same role as 250/9, Daimler, Greyhound.

Each of the 3 allied sides also gets a good light HE thrower in the vehicle yard, M8 Scott / AEC Mk III / SU-76 (though the AEC and SU have decent AT capability too) whereas the germans get the Marder with excellent AT at the expense of HE. The marder isn't a tank and shouldn't be useable as such. It's essentially a mobile AT gun.

[yuritch]

How does a frag round function? Presumably it would be effective vs infantry + softskin vehicles, but not structures?

The fragmentation round's explosion creates a lot of fragments - the round comes pre-packed with them (kind of like an anti-personnel grenade) - that pierce everything unarmored in an area. Even light armor provides considerable protection against them (except if the explosion happened really close). The bigger the shell, the more fragments there will be (and the farther away from the explosion point they will retain the killing power). Fragmentation shells are ineffective against protected targets, bunkers, buildings and even a simple trench will be a good protection against them (unless the shells are set to explode in the air above trenches, which was quite possible using WW2-era detonators).
Also mortar and howitzer (and any high-trajectory weapon) shells tend to produce more "effective" fragments that scatter in the horizontal plane (where the chance of hitting something is high), whereas non-howitzer guns and generally any guns with high muzzle velocity (tank guns included) tend to send some of the fragments into the vertical plane, making hitting something less probable (that is why good anti-armor guns aren't that good VS infantry, and vice-versa).
HE shells work a bit differently - they are made to blow things up (something frag shells do poorly). An HE shell generally creates far less fragments, but it is capable of demolishing structures (like bunkers and foxholes) and causing considerable damage even to heavily armored things (even if the armor is not pierced, vehicle's internals will be subject to heavy shock which can knock the crew out or even detonate the ammunition). The killing range of HE shell explosion will be far smaller than that of a frag shell, however.
Because of all that, AA guns tend to have more frag shells (most planes aren't particulary good armored) and naval guns tend to have more HE (most ships have at least some protection). Field guns are likely to have both. Of course, all guns intended (or just suitable, like the German 8.8cm Flak18 and Soviet 85mm 52-K) for anti-armor use will also have armor-piercing rounds. There also were HE+frag rounds, combining the properties of both ammunition types, and those were mainly intended for tanks where the ammunition storage is too low to include specialized rounds, but possible targets can require them.