A question of spotting

[Richtig]

@Corsaire31 @Strachwitz

First - thought it best to move this rather than spoil you great AAR, and I think it's great that some players discuss the games and its outcomes and learn and develop.

Second - SPOILER ALERT - if you think the games spotting system is wysiwyg and wonderful don't read any further...

Third - if I am wrong about any of this you all have my sincere apology. It's my opinion based on a lot of games - and a lot of reading.

My question about the tank height (How high is an unspotted Tiger) is everything in this - because the answer is (and its true for all vehicles) it has no height, it's flat. So peering through trees to see a flat tank may be a waste of time. You can (vaguely) check roughly the lines of sight you should expect - but you then need to contend with the spotting system.

My feeling is BF want you to think WSIWYG, but realistically the engine can't model where the leaves are on trees, yet go to any forum page and all the comments will be about detail not the fundamentals.

I had a perfect example to illustrate the flat tank in an East front game recently. My soviet infantry spotted a hull down PzkwIV - my T34s couldn't spot it because to them it had no height - I placed two T34s in line of sight to where it was, and moved another unit as a sacrificial lamb to get the German tank to fire. The second it fired (and it inflated to its height) both T34s fired and killed it.

My belief is that the random spotting is why we all think it's a clever game, it is a step up from the Borg spotting- but I'm with Corsaire if I am sat and my opponent is moving I tend to think I will get the spot and first round out. But again to site a recent game I have watched two allied tanks be killed by a Panther in a wood, and no allied unit has yet to see it.

And this is my real issue with the game. It is meant to be a tactical combat game. Fields of fire are critical yet the game fails to deliver clarity, i would ask anyone who plays to just have a look at the start and end of each turn. What can you see? Now I am far from a good player like Strachwitz, I am just an average guy playing the percentages, but mostly in games I see very little- in fact if you took away the ability to target what you know, rather than what you can see, far fewer pixel truppen would be injured in our games. If I wanted this style of game I could play 'whack a mole'. But that isn't a 'combat simulation' game which this is meant to be. To sum the game up I think it has a lot of lovely chrome but the early decisions made to create the spotting system was/is hugely flawed.

I do also think it's a shame anyone who tries to have a discussion about this is shouted down on the forums - so I agree progress is unlikely. In fact given the revelation that the Bulge is a 'game' not a module, it seems obvious there is still an appetite to charge for what is essentially an old engine rather than refresh it.

If anyone wants to find out more, it is their on the forums, but you go a long way back to find the right references, and you will read a lot about bad sighting issues - the recent one where some players surrounded a vehicle in a street and still couldn't see it is my particular favourite, especially when it cites the accurate mapping of the phases of the moon through 1944. Yes you read that right. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they have accurately mapped the physical position of every leaf on every tree...

 

[Floki]

 

[Corsaire31]

Thks for this thread, I'm glad we are at least two finding weird things in the spotting. I haven't played many games, so I wasn't sure if it was me, but when the same thing happens in three different situations in different games ... This is why I started researching the matter on the forum and read many of the threads.

Now I have another funny happening... In my game with Tiger 67, he brought a SU 85 a bit too close from woods with germans inside and my Panzerschreck team put a round in it at 25 m which penetrated the top front near the gun, where the armor is thin. You would imagine the gunner, the loader and the tank leader are toast when you know how small it is in there and the temperature induced by the hollow charge Pzschreck round penetrating inside... To my surprise, the whole crew jumps out ! And to my bigger surprise, 2 mns later the guys who, if not dead, must have third degree burns all over and are probably almost blind jump back into the SU 85 and start the engine... Now this is one of the best jokes I've seen in a long time !

There are only two possibilities : either the crew is unharmed and the tank is still functional and then they have no reason to bail out and should keep on fighting, or the tank is toast and this is why they bail out... So there's no reason for a bailed out crew with several members wounded to try and get back in the tank 2 mns after leaving it.

 

[Richtig]

@Corsaire31 again the above is not uncommon, especially the soviets, they scare easy so abandon vehicles quickly, but then can rally to return equally quickly in some cases, looks like you just got an extreme example...

 

[Corsaire31]

@Corsaire31 again the above is not uncommon, especially the soviets, they scare easy so abandon vehicles quickly, but then can rally to return equally quickly in some cases, looks like you just got an extreme example...

Thks for info, I will know now... but I still think that if a 88mm HEAT round of a Pzschreck penetrates the top part of a SU vehicle where the guys are packed close together, elevating the temperature several hundreds of degrees (since the HEAT round melts the metal and projects melted splinters inside) they should be a little more than scared !

The rule we most commonly used at CMx1 times was that tank crews would be brought back to your lines once they can receive orders and not fight in anyway or be used as spotters. Has this been changed ?

 

[Richtig]

HaHa I love that rule- because no - most people I have played seem to use them as scouts or even bullet magnets to protect attacking troops - I would happily see them removed...

 

[Mad Mike]

I think you're obviously right about the leaves on trees, i.e. that they are not modeled individually. That would be insane anyway.

But tanks and spotting of tanks is not flat, they were in the very early versions of CMSF, but BFC quickly changed this with the introduction of ELOS (Enhanced LOS), which has four or five different height points for every Action Spot as well as taking into account the different height of units and sensors. So while you might not be able to observe height 1 (just above the ground) in a given Action Spot, you might be perfectly fine to spot units which are of height 2 to 5 (tanks, standing or kneeling infantry). You also see confirmation of this behaviour when observing infantry in a wheat field, which you will be able to see (spot) as long as they are walking upright, but you lose sight of them as soon as they lie down.

 

[Corsaire31]

HaHa I love that rule- because no - most people I have played seem to use them as scouts or even bullet magnets to protect attacking troops - I would happily see them removed...

Well this is absolutely against the reality. Experienced tank crews where very precious people and the first thing was to protect them and bring them to safety asap. Using them to protect other troops is completely nuts... you don't use highly skilled people to protect grunts ! Something like using Co Cmdr in first line.

So this is for me a fourth fact against the use of tanks in small and medium QBs : the maps size, the weird spotting system, the crews miraculously jumping back on board, and the crews used for scouting and sent to death. Already a few reasons to play infantry + light vehicles games.

 

[Richtig]

@Mad Mike Can you point me at where your info comes from? I am perplexed because my tank example comes from Red Thunder - not an old game. And the target tank was in sight at all time (by the infantry) and my ambushing tanks had line of sight to where the target tank was - the only thing missing is spotting - which was accomplished when the target fired.

I am thinking that tanks and units have height to spot from, but perhaps as I have said they are flat until spotted.

 

[Dutch Grenadier]

The rule we most commonly used at CMx1 times was that tank crews would be brought back to your lines once they can receive orders and not fight in anyway or be used as spotters. Has this been changed ?

I still use that rule. Tank crews are not trained for infantry duties.

 

[Rico]

I still use that rule. Tank crews are not trained for infantry duties.

Although it was common practice for panzer commanders to dismount and do recce on foot before attacks to check out the lay of the land.

 

[Mad Mike]

@Mad Mike Can you point me at where your info comes from? I am perplexed because my tank example comes from Red Thunder - not an old game. And the target tank was in sight at all time (by the infantry) and my ambushing tanks had line of sight to where the target tank was - the only thing missing is spotting - which was accomplished when the target fired.

I am thinking that tanks and units have height to spot from, but perhaps as I have said they are flat until spotted.

Here you go, quick search on the BFC forum with "ELOS" as search term:

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/72306-los-errors/#entry919163

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/86735-is-this-right/page-3#entry1133656

http://community.battlefront.com/to...t-how-los-works-sometimes/page-2#entry1202486

http://community.battlefront.com/topic/111851-its-got-to-go/page-2#entry1490888

I agree that it is not conveniently documented in one place. ELOS (different height LOS / spotting / firing calculations) was introduced with a patch to CMSF, so originally the CMx2 world was "flat", but they got rid of this very early on (because it was giving very unrealistic behaviour / results).

If the infantry was seeing the Russian tank but not your PzIV, this is still perfectly fine, at least in the way the game represents reality. Every unit has its own view of the world and they do need to spot the enemy by themselves, individually (no borg spotting / instant information sharing between units - big difference to CMx1). So one unit might spot (and identify) the tank while another doesn't, during the same time period. And I also think it represents reality better that infantry spots better in general than some guys confined in a 30-ton steel monster with narrow viewports.

Anyway, have a look at the information above and I hope it explains some of what you're seeing.

 

[Strachwitz]

First of all thanks for the Spoiler alert I kept on reading because I think just comes closes to WYSIWYG and is not fully WYSIWYG and I also don't think of the spottig system beeing wonderful just satisfying most of the time.

Of course, as @Mad Mike also mentioned, not every leave is modeled in the game. That's not possible with the current home computers. The "internal models" of trees are of course abstracted in a way but they are close to the final rendered tree in the game in height and shape. Basically coniferes are big 3D triangles with a stump beneath, leaf tress are rounder models with a stump. And these models do block LOS/LOF. So it comes very close to WYSIWIG. If you can see a gap between tress chances are very high to get LOS/LOF. So it is close enough to WYSIWIG to function quite well. Otherwise I would not be able to deploy tanks in such spots like the Hetzer to hunt down an enemy tank with such good results. This is no luck. I have my methods finding such good spots and they rely basically on pure eye sight with panning and zoomimg around the map at tank guns height. If I can see a tank from a spot through tress then chances again are very very high my tank will also see the tank. So this works to a good degree of satisfaction. What might be a problem with this is the use of a translucent tree mod like @Corsaire31 and I are using. This can trick you as it looks like trees are far more translucent as they really are. Stock graphics clearly indicate as they are less opaque. So don't get tricked by this.

Now we come to Schroedingers Cat or in our case Schroedingers Tank ;-). This seems to be more a philosophical topic. Is the cat/tank really there if unobserved? The tank case in the game is clear. At least for me. Even unspotted the tank has height. You state it is a waste of time to try to peer through trees to spot a flat tank. But the T-34/Hetzer example alone disproves this. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to spot the tank. I spotted and destroyed it so it was no waste of time finding exact this spot from where I was able to see through a gap in the trees and look beneath the fooliage. And this is not a single event. I do that all the time in all my games and it works.
A second indicator that your flat tank theory is wrong is the following example. If I would have ordered my Hetzer to area fire in the general vicinity of the T-34 then MG bullets would have been ricocheted from the tank. I know that as I had this situation quite often. Ricochetting bullets from unspotted tank. Even from vehicles none of my troops have spotted yet they are ricochetting bullets. So for me this is a definite proof that a tank has height even when totally unspotted. So I think your assumption is wrong and contradict everything I experienced yet in game. And I have at least 500+ hours gaming experience with CM.

And your perfect example with the Panzer IV and the 3 T-34 doesn't really qualify as a perfect example for me. But having said that you have witnessed it ad I don't but your description reveals nothing unusual to me. But of course many informations are lacking. From my perspective: There is a hull down tank (which makes him more difficult to spot) and a infantry squad spotted it. And 2 others tanks not. Happens all the time every day in RL. Ok not with a tank I suppose. Example:
2 guys wandering down the street. One guy says: "he look there is a three legged cat on the other side of there" pointing in the general direction. The other guy responds "Where? I can't see it"
"Are you blind right over there"
"I can't see the goddamn cat"
"Its right over there near the Big Rock"
"Which big rock?"
"The one 2 meters left ot the trees, don`t you see it?
"Ah finally! There is the cat"
So basically one guy spots the cat the other don't at first. Did the cat inflate first for the first guy and later for the second one? I don't think. It was there all the time. A bit far stretched I know but the same is true in CM. The Panzer IV is there all the time. Your 2 tanks were simply not able to spot it. Which doesn't mean it has no height. Nothing unusaul here. The reasons why can differ and maybe could also be a flaw in the spotting system. But this could just be tackled with more information about the situation and so on. Just because you have LOS to a target doesn't mean you are able to spot it at a glance. As in real life. My example shows another meaningful aspect of the game. C&C. As in my example one guys leads the other guy to the location of the cat this can also be achieved in CM via the command chain and reporting of enemy contacts. If the 2 tanks knew about that there is a tank and where, they would have been able to spot it earlier. Information sharing is important and play a big role in CM. For example my Hetzer knew that a tank was there as he was informed by the company commander via radio. Other than the T-34. Although @Corsaire31 thinks he basically told his tank crew that there is a tank because he drawed a armoured target arc this is not the case. The target arc simply tells the tank to just engage armoured targets within the arc and concentrate more on that area. Tharts all. It doesn't tell the crew that there actually IS a tank. This is just possible by C&C.

Besides all I have written above we have consens in many things. The spotting system doesn't work to 100%. There are flaws mostly due to the design descision with the Action spots. The action spot system causes some kind of problems and I admit that there are problems. Targeting of enemy units at the edge of houses when the center of the action spot is not visible, or non-moving vehicles not visible when the action spot itself is not in LOS. But I for myself consider these problems as minor as they occur not that often. And for all I never experienced that 3 times in one single game. As it looks to me, and this is in no way meant offending, @Corsaire31 simply has drawn the wrong conclusions about at least the T-34/Hetzer incident. Which, further infos lacking, seems to me perfectly ok and plausible. I just explained this specific event as I think it is much needed information and as you wrote you need to contend with the spotting system. And I agree totally with this statement. But to contend with the system you need to know where exactly the problems are. And how to find some workarounds for that. And in this example there simply is no flaw in the spotting system and I think this important to know. Otherwise wrong conclusions are drawn like in this case.

And final words from me. It is defintely a shame how newcomers or users with different opinions are treated by some regulars at the forums. Not just in this case. There are many examples. And thats the reason I don`t post much over there. The hostility and trolling is just ridiculous. Thank god some posters weren`t afraid of the forum fights and finally got bugs acknowleged as bugs after weeks of fighting for it over and over. Without them pointing into the right direction many bug fixes wouldn`t have happenend over the course of the last years. But this goes in both ways. Many claims of a broken game or system are simply wrong. Even if it is clearly proven they also don`t want to see that they are wrong. The have their opinion, most due to lack of information how the game actually works, and are also often not able to change their mind. Moreso often questions are not answered which would often help clear the case. This is also a bit true in the T-34/Hetzer case. Also not meant offending just saying what happenend. I also so asked some important and easy to answer questions to get more much needed information. But they were never delivered and it looks to me @Corsaire31 had made up his mind that this incident proves the spotting system wrong. And also don`t want to change his opinion on this or deliver more information to verify/falsify the case. There I am stuck. Totally plausible explanation (although without much needed information) but in his belief the systems still failed in this case. You can even find that in the mentioned thread (Surrounded-Tank-not-spotted-in-woods-in-mist-and-pitch-black-night-thread). The original poster never was willing to answer some interesting questions (for example if the not spotted tank was destroyed of live) which could have helped finding the real problem earlier. But you were right the thread wandered of in a ridiculous way as many others did. Even after some test were run, some of the regulars wouldn`t acknowledge that there is indeed a problem with spotting in this case. Not exactly as the original poster claimed, but the test clearly showed that there is a problem. It doesn`t matter if this one is a minor one (in my view) or not. An error is an error. Period. If it needs adressed is a totally other topic.

BTW: CM really takes sun/moon cycles into account and affects spotting. In this thread it was not so unimportant as for example on newmoon there is bascially no light from the moon rendering the darkness of night even darker. But thats just a sidenote. For my taste this feature is totally unneeded .

 

[Strachwitz]

HaHa I love that rule- because no - most people I have played seem to use them as scouts or even bullet magnets to protect attacking troops - I would happily see them removed...

I also hate seeing enemy tank crews going on mad rushes. Mostly I define a house rule stating that tank crwes have to be removed to the rear. I of course never asked you, as you never would do that

 

[Corsaire31]

I have a new one I would like to have a WYSIWYG explanation about :

I have a Panther ambushing a T34 tank which I know is around there ( because he destroyed my other Panther thks to another spotting bug...) The T34 appears on the slope buttoned up with its gun pointing to the sky and manages to spot in two seconds my Panther and hit it (no harm...) on the lower hull ! With the gun pointing up 45 degrees ! ( the hit on the gun mount is from a previous fight )

My Panther which is flat and has a perfect view on the underneath of the T34 (and don't tell me the T34 in its position sees him and he doesn't see the T34 a hundred meters away...) never shoots back and retreats after taking two lower hull hits...

That's the fourth spotting glitch I have in only three games !

 

[fabishd]

First of all thanks for the Spoiler alert I kept on reading because I think just comes closes to WYSIWYG and is not fully WYSIWYG and I also don't think of the spottig system beeing wonderful just satisfying most of the time.

Of course, as @Mad Mike also mentioned, not every leave is modeled in the game. That's not possible with the current home computers. The "internal models" of trees are of course abstracted in a way but they are close to the final rendered tree in the game in height and shape. Basically coniferes are big 3D triangles with a stump beneath, leaf tress are rounder models with a stump. And these models do block LOS/LOF. So it comes very close to WYSIWIG. If you can see a gap between tress chances are very high to get LOS/LOF. So it is close enough to WYSIWIG to function quite well. Otherwise I would not be able to deploy tanks in such spots like the Hetzer to hunt down an enemy tank with such good results. This is no luck. I have my methods finding such good spots and they rely basically on pure eye sight with panning and zoomimg around the map at tank guns height. If I can see a tank from a spot through tress then chances again are very very high my tank will also see the tank. So this works to a good degree of satisfaction. What might be a problem with this is the use of a translucent tree mod like @Corsaire31 and I are using. This can trick you as it looks like trees are far more translucent as they really are. Stock graphics clearly indicate as they are less opaque. So don't get tricked by this.

Now we come to Schroedingers Cat or in our case Schroedingers Tank ;-). This seems to be more a philosophical topic. Is the cat/tank really there if unobserved? The tank case in the game is clear. At least for me. Even unspotted the tank has height. You state it is a waste of time to try to peer through trees to spot a flat tank. But the T-34/Hetzer example alone disproves this. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to spot the tank. I spotted and destroyed it so it was no waste of time finding exact this spot from where I was able to see through a gap in the trees and look beneath the fooliage. And this is not a single event. I do that all the time in all my games and it works.
A second indicator that your flat tank theory is wrong is the following example. If I would have ordered my Hetzer to area fire in the general vicinity of the T-34 then MG bullets would have been ricocheted from the tank. I know that as I had this situation quite often. Ricochetting bullets from unspotted tank. Even from vehicles none of my troops have spotted yet they are ricochetting bullets. So for me this is a definite proof that a tank has height even when totally unspotted. So I think your assumption is wrong and contradict everything I experienced yet in game. And I have at least 500+ hours gaming experience with CM.

And your perfect example with the Panzer IV and the 3 T-34 doesn't really qualify as a perfect example for me. But having said that you have witnessed it ad I don't but your description reveals nothing unusual to me. But of course many informations are lacking. From my perspective: There is a hull down tank (which makes him more difficult to spot) and a infantry squad spotted it. And 2 others tanks not. Happens all the time every day in RL. Ok not with a tank I suppose. Example:
2 guys wandering down the street. One guy says: "he look there is a three legged cat on the other side of there" pointing in the general direction. The other guy responds "Where? I can't see it"
"Are you blind right over there"
"I can't see the goddamn cat"
"Its right over there near the Big Rock"
"Which big rock?"
"The one 2 meters left ot the trees, don`t you see it?
"Ah finally! There is the cat"
So basically one guy spots the cat the other don't at first. Did the cat inflate first for the first guy and later for the second one? I don't think. It was there all the time. A bit far stretched I know but the same is true in CM. The Panzer IV is there all the time. Your 2 tanks were simply not able to spot it. Which doesn't mean it has no height. Nothing unusaul here. The reasons why can differ and maybe could also be a flaw in the spotting system. But this could just be tackled with more information about the situation and so on. Just because you have LOS to a target doesn't mean you are able to spot it at a glance. As in real life. My example shows another meaningful aspect of the game. C&C. As in my example one guys leads the other guy to the location of the cat this can also be achieved in CM via the command chain and reporting of enemy contacts. If the 2 tanks knew about that there is a tank and where, they would have been able to spot it earlier. Information sharing is important and play a big role in CM. For example my Hetzer knew that a tank was there as he was informed by the company commander via radio. Other than the T-34. Although @Corsaire31 thinks he basically told his tank crew that there is a tank because he drawed a armoured target arc this is not the case. The target arc simply tells the tank to just engage armoured targets within the arc and concentrate more on that area. Tharts all. It doesn't tell the crew that there actually IS a tank. This is just possible by C&C.

Besides all I have written above we have consens in many things. The spotting system doesn't work to 100%. There are flaws mostly due to the design descision with the Action spots. The action spot system causes some kind of problems and I admit that there are problems. Targeting of enemy units at the edge of houses when the center of the action spot is not visible, or non-moving vehicles not visible when the action spot itself is not in LOS. But I for myself consider these problems as minor as they occur not that often. And for all I never experienced that 3 times in one single game. As it looks to me, and this is in no way meant offending, @Corsaire31 simply has drawn the wrong conclusions about at least the T-34/Hetzer incident. Which, further infos lacking, seems to me perfectly ok and plausible. I just explained this specific event as I think it is much needed information and as you wrote you need to contend with the spotting system. And I agree totally with this statement. But to contend with the system you need to know where exactly the problems are. And how to find some workarounds for that. And in this example there simply is no flaw in the spotting system and I think this important to know. Otherwise wrong conclusions are drawn like in this case.

And final words from me. It is defintely a shame how newcomers or users with different opinions are treated by some regulars at the forums. Not just in this case. There are many examples. And thats the reason I don`t post much over there. The hostility and trolling is just ridiculous. Thank god some posters weren`t afraid of the forum fights and finally got bugs acknowleged as bugs after weeks of fighting for it over and over. Without them pointing into the right direction many bug fixes wouldn`t have happenend over the course of the last years. But this goes in both ways. Many claims of a broken game or system are simply wrong. Even if it is clearly proven they also don`t want to see that they are wrong. The have their opinion, most due to lack of information how the game actually works, and are also often not able to change their mind. Moreso often questions are not answered which would often help clear the case. This is also a bit true in the T-34/Hetzer case. Also not meant offending just saying what happenend. I also so asked some important and easy to answer questions to get more much needed information. But they were never delivered and it looks to me @Corsaire31 had made up his mind that this incident proves the spotting system wrong. And also don`t want to change his opinion on this or deliver more information to verify/falsify the case. There I am stuck. Totally plausible explanation (although without much needed information) but in his belief the systems still failed in this case. You can even find that in the mentioned thread (Surrounded-Tank-not-spotted-in-woods-in-mist-and-pitch-black-night-thread). The original poster never was willing to answer some interesting questions (for example if the not spotted tank was destroyed of live) which could have helped finding the real problem earlier. But you were right the thread wandered of in a ridiculous way as many others did. Even after some test were run, some of the regulars wouldn`t acknowledge that there is indeed a problem with spotting in this case. Not exactly as the original poster claimed, but the test clearly showed that there is a problem. It doesn`t matter if this one is a minor one (in my view) or not. An error is an error. Period. If it needs adressed is a totally other topic.

BTW: CM really takes sun/moon cycles into account and affects spotting. In this thread it was not so unimportant as for example on newmoon there is bascially no light from the moon rendering the darkness of night even darker. But thats just a sidenote. For my taste this feature is totally unneeded .

@Strachwitz Your explanation is terrific. It reminds me how in real life (Army life that is) when setting up an engagement area, how a tank crew or infantry fighting vehicle crew bore sight their main guns to cover an area. They usually will take the gunners sights to do this to make sure they can see the important parts of the engagement area. Your sighing technique for the game definitely mirrors real life techniques.

Do you use any real life experience to come up with this technique or just used good common game sense?

Thank you for taking the time to lay out a great LOS and sighting argument.

 

[Strachwitz]

Sorry @Corsaire31 but there is not spotting glitch visible in your screenshots. As you can see in the most bottom picture the tank has spotted the tank and can clearly see it. You selected the Panther and the T-34 is visible. So he spotted the tank. So we are down to just 2 spotting glitches in 3 games and the other 2 are in questions.
Why he isn`t shooting is another topic and has nothing to do with spotting. To clear why he is not shooting please select the Panther again and please make a screenshot with the UI visible. This could provide some clues. What`s the experience of the tank crew, what is their status after receiving the hit (panicked, nervous, etc. ), is the main gun damaged maybe? I don`t know but we will find out why he is not shooting. And yes a bug is possible but not likely. More information needed to clear that.

That the gun is pointing upwards is strange. That must be some sort of a graphics glitch. Not nice that`s true.

I know you are new to CM2 and seem to have some problems how to interact with the game or how to interpret some infos on the screen. It takes time to get used to it all. Keep on playing and all will fall into its place.

 

[Corsaire31]

@Strachwitz : I said that I could maybe understand your explanation with the T34/Hetzer story, but I have now four strange situations in the first three games I play.

I might be a newcomer to CMx2, but I have been playing CM since 15 years and have a lot of reading and studying of WW2 weapons and tactics. I don't know if it makes me a good player, but at least I can say I understand what's going on...

And I agree with you that the use of tank crews in the fight is one of the oldest and most "gamey" tactics we have been trying to eradicate.

 

[Corsaire31]

Haha ! I see you have an explanation for everything ! A T34 buttoned on a slope standing 45 degrees upwards is able to see a tank in front ( through a glass window in the bottom ? ) and put a round in the lower part of the hull !

I surrender...

PS : the Panther is veteran and the crew is in fine shape and rested...

 

[Corsaire31]

That the gun is pointing upwards is strange. That must be some sort of a graphics glitch. Not nice that`s true.

The gun is pointing upwards because the whole tank is 45 ° upwards, no graphic problem there ...