AP Rounds: Forest for the Trees

NUTTERNAME

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What is up with the modeling of AP rounds being detonated or defeated by trees? If this were the case, every tanker in WWII would have mounted a cord of wood on the tanks.

Trees might detonate a HEAT round but does anyone think a APHE round could be detonated by hitting a tree? It takes an incredible G force, a negative G force, to get the explosive filling of the APHE to detonate. I see ricochets being modeled in the game going up in the air and coming down and blowing up. In one case, blowing up a wall to rubble. The high explosive content of most AP rounds is much less than a hand grenade.

Trees, or wood, is not really much protection against bullets. Something like a garand bullet (or BAR or 30 cal. MG...all the same bullet and velocity) can punch through a fairly good sized tree and kill you.

At best, a 75mm class AP round might have its trajectory put off line a bit by striking the trunk of a good sized tree. it might scrub 50-100 fps off the velocity. But the modeling of the rounds detonating or disappearing from tree strikes is silly. Its like some childish perception of reality.

Does any other game get something through design and testing and actual product like this does?
 

mOBIUS

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Does any other game get something through design and testing and actual product like this does?
I think WOT had something like this happen as well. It would happen where the target it the center of the 3D model, not the center of the observable area. Abstract games don't track the shell flight.
 

NUTTERNAME

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I've read of one instance where a US para decides to destroy a captured 88mm FlaK gun. He puts a grenade on the breech and when the grenade explodes, it causes the gun to fire a round that was in the weapon. The tracer was seen careening through a forested area zigzagging a bit as it struck the trunks of trees. since it had a tracer, I would assume it was a AP round.
 

mOBIUS

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What was kind of amazing is that the flamethrower tank fired through about 30 yards of trees, branches and leaves without singeing a single leaf.
 

Redwolf

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Trees are indestructible objects in CMx2.

That wouldn't be so bad but they are also fuzzy wrt their position, and the TacAI hasn't been made aware of them.

The first one I don't rate much of a problem, you cannot have all things destructible in a game. However, the latter is a really bad case (another one) of different abstraction levels having been picked for UI, graphical representation and game mechanics. This is a big problem for CMx2 and stubbornly being defended. As long as this is going on and BFC isn't willing to unify abstraction and representation (which effectively means more abstractions) nothing will change.
 

WBRP

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No, you can slowly obliterate a tree in CMBN, etc.. Seems to take a lot of effort, though.
 

NUTTERNAME

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Maybe they can model trees as telephone poles with bushes on top. Or do bushes also pre-detonate APHE???
 

NUTTERNAME

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I just reviewed the Elvis/BilH tank actions and the effects of tree hits seemed to doom Elvis. Elvis is probably the unluckiest person alive anyway, I would love to open a casino near his house, but if his initial faceoff with the ISU-122s had taken out at least one ISU, instead of a tree, (Panther shot failed because of a tree hit), the game may have gone differently. I believe he also racked up some tree hits when facing off with the T34/85's.

It seems the game models AP penetration on armor. I have killed two half-tracks with one 75mm AP round for instance. It goes through the first and enters the second. Why a tree is stopping AP rounds, and even detonating them, is beyond me. It is goofy.
 

Elvis

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I just reviewed the Elvis/BilH tank actions and the effects of tree hits seemed to doom Elvis. Elvis is probably the unluckiest person alive anyway, I would love to open a casino near his house, but if his initial faceoff with the ISU-122s had taken out at least one ISU, instead of a tree, (Panther shot failed because of a tree hit), the game may have gone differently. I believe he also racked up some tree hits when facing off with the T34/85's.

It seems the game models AP penetration on armor. I have killed two half-tracks with one 75mm AP round for instance. It goes through the first and enters the second. Why a tree is stopping AP rounds, and even detonating them, is beyond me. It is goofy.
You're right. The first T34 I saw in GELB there was an exchange. After reading Bil's thread I saw he targeted the trees. But I was shooting at him and hit the trees with a couple of rounds.
 

NUTTERNAME

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You're right. The first T34 I saw in GELB there was an exchange. After reading Bil's thread I saw he targeted the trees. But I was shooting at him and hit the trees with a couple of rounds.
This makes no sense now since time has passed and now you sound like you are speaking in code.

But I just want to bring to attention what a buzz-kill (anal) modeling can do to a game.
 

NUTTERNAME

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I did a test and this mismodeling is still in the game. I had a Tiger I fire off all its HE at nothing then targeted a building with area fire. The building had a single tree in the way. The AP rounds are modeled to penetrate through the building and fly on. I do not see any explosion. But, sure enough, the 88mm AP gets a tree hit and detonates and that is the end of its flight path as it, presumably, it blows itself up.

The patch HAS ended the silly ricochet explosions. This is the 'modeling' of the flight path of non-penetrating AP weapons striking armor and typically arcing up and landing nearby. They would then explode. The reason for the turn-around in modeling is that the fuse is assumed to fail. Why the fuse would be triggered by a tree is not explained anywhere I can see.
 

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Florida and Arizona. Their doctors say the warm weather is good for their conditions. :)
Well it is better than being buried in snow. But I see them on the World of Tanks and War Thunder forums. The this gun or tank does such-and-such threads go on as in days of old CM over there. They also are allowed to link to other game forums as references to make their point. This is forbidden on BF. I occasionally check the log on my web site and I see access coming from those forums and other game forums.

I'm even signed up on one of their independent blogs just to stir the pot as I don't even play those games.
 
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NUTTERNAME

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Well it is better than being buried in snow. But I see them on the World of Tanks and War Thunder forums. The this gun or tank does such-and-such threads go on as in days of old CM over there. They also are allowed to link to other game forums as references to make their point. This is forbidden on BF. I occasionally check the log on my web site and I see access coming from those forums and other game forums.

I'm even signed up on one of their independent blogs just to stir the pot as I don't even play those games.
I don't disagree as far as the grog-level at BF being so low (more about this later), but I am actually speaking about something being entirely broken, not a nuance of modeling. To me, it is a total buzz kill and as far as I know, none of the 'grog-tards' at BF have raised an issue about this.

As an example of the grog-tardation at BF, I recently read through a thread regarding HE projectiles and their armor piercing capabilities. The discussion seemed oblivious to the many previous discussion that have already taken place at BF, and the 'logic' used seemed to border on the inane. I was reminded of the scene in 'Stand By Me' where the kids are discussing Disney characters around a camp fire.

In any case, HE high velocity shells did have armor piercing capability when set on delay fuse. Tiger crew men knew this well and targeting a T34's side armor was a prime example. The lower side hull armor being especially vulnerable. The Panther Bible pamphlet actually calls this out also with an illustration.

Combat Mission should be a Grog's game. It isn't because of the designers and the rabble that remains on the forum. So, Mobius has a point, but as a customer that has bought in, I still have a voice and an opinion. And my opinion is that things are broken to a point that they need to fix it.
 

mOBIUS

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As for the HE armor penetration discussion there was one of those on the Matrix PCO or PCK forums a while back. Some of those subjects on the WT or WOT blogs as well.

One blog site has translated tests from Russia. There were some in the past about HE tests on German tanks. I can't find it but I did find one on the effect of track protection that might be of interest.
http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2014/04/spare-track-links.html
 

NUTTERNAME

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As for the HE armor penetration discussion there was one of those on the Matrix PCO or PCK forums a while back. Some of those subjects on the WT or WOT blogs as well.

One blog site has translated tests from Russia. There were some in the past about HE tests on German tanks. I can't find it but I did find one on the effect of track protection that might be of interest.
http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2014/04/spare-track-links.html
You are right. There are better websites that are discussing topics and posting information. But, I doubt that the BF 'principals' or their legion of grog-posers bother to continually research and care about the topics. Maybe a couple do, but they are ridiculed. Some do and they have some agenda also. In fact, that guy at tank archives digs up some good sources but has his bent that he needs to feed.

In the case of tracks, one might read that info and make an error in 'logic'. I appreciated the testing since, again, it shows the pak40 having a higher velocity than 750m/s. I also like that it demonstrates the hull vulnerability ranges. But a knee-jerk reaction would be to conclude that tracks would offer that much protection if slapped on near-vertical armor. They won't. The Germans knew that they assisted in oblique hits. Sloped armor, being sloped, will always present an oblique surface. Something like the side turret armor of a panther, which is not that sloped and thin and crappy armor, is typically always shown in photos with tracks draped across the turret sides. They would give very little protection from orthogonal hits but oblique hits would be affected most. The tracks act as 'skid' plates and the protection would be short lived as the tracks would most likely be destroyed or blown off. The best case for the panther would be to reverse and face the enemy with the heavier frontal armor.

As an example of 'bad-logic', one can read the T34 test above, and apply it to something like a Panzer IV frontal armor which was often protected by tracks. The Panzer IV gets 200 meters of range protection from a 76.2mm AP threat. Why? because the T34 got that range protection. In reality, unless the hit was oblique across the frontal aspect of the panzer IV, the tracks would offer very little protection.

But this is getting off topic. We all know that tracks can be replaced with logs right? 'Cause those trees cause the base fuse on the APHE rounds to predetonate and blow that hardened steel to dust, right? Why not shoot logs at tanks?
 

NUTTERNAME

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Florida and Arizona. Their doctors say the warm weather is good for their conditions. :)
Oh, great, a choice...Live in a dusty oven or choose to live in a bug infested steam bath?
 
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