Weapon tests for Combat Mission

Another interesting find out of my small arms/machinegun tests - the effect of the unit's morale state on its ability to hit targets.

Because isolating the tested weapon in a team is difficult (no other soldiers using the same ammunition can be allowed in the team), in some cases I used snipers to kill these unwanted soldiers who would interfere with the test. This shifted the unit's permanent morale state from OK to cautious or nervous and of course I wondered if this changes my results.

So I compared two test series with the M1919A6 LMG - one series with the firing teams in the nervous state (casualties taken) and one in the OK state (no casualties taken). The result: the nervous units ended up using about 20% more ammunition (per unit time) and achieved about 20% fewer kills (per unit time) than the units with OK morale. Fewer kills were achieved especially at short range, while at longer range both nervous and OK units achieved similar kills but the nervous units spent more ammo. In general, nervous units tend to aim less and shoot more.

These new results show that the M1919A6 is not behind MG42 - it matches the performance of German LMG's quite closely.

I'm re-running some tests because of this. No sniper jobs, only OK units without casualties are allowed from now on.
 
Drifter Man said:
So I compared two test series with the M1919A6 LMG - one series with the firing teams in the nervous state (casualties taken) and one in the OK state (no casualties taken). The result: the nervous units ended up using about 20% more ammunition (per unit time) and achieved about 20% fewer kills (per unit time) than the units with OK morale. Fewer kills were achieved especially at short range, while at longer range both nervous and OK units achieved similar kills but the nervous units spent more ammo. In general, nervous units tend to aim less and shoot more.
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This is highly interesting. I actually never thought morale state did anything for aiming, but of course that makes perfect sense. Thanks for testing and sharing this.
 
eniced73 said:
would like to see someone do a test on how many times an unbuttoned tank or HT gunner gets picked off. I swear every time i unbutton I lose a guy within 10 seconds. Then another after his place is taken.......and so one.
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Did someone mention halftrack gunners getting picked off easily? From a game I'm playing right now. I think the Germans jumping up to take the gunner position just happened to be perfectly synced with the firing time of the SMG squad 60 meters away.

 
Maybe I'm paranoid, but I've quickly learned to keep halftracks buttoned up practically at all times. They aren't IFVs. The gunners are just as exposed as a man standing in open ground.
Exception #1: US halftracks at safe distance or out of direct sight can use their M2HB for some suppresive fire.
Exception #2: German halftracks maneuvered into position while buttoned up. If their target is directly in front and no other enemy units are around, you can man the gun at the start of the next turn.
Experience may teach me to eliminate these exceptions as well...
 
jobu88 said:
Did someone mention halftrack gunners getting picked off easily? From a game I'm playing right now. I think the Germans jumping up to take the gunner position just happened to be perfectly synced with the firing time of the SMG squad 60 meters away.

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I generally agree, but in this case, it seems the fire is coming from the side. At 60m, anyone manning the gun would be a sitting duck. If the halftrack was buttoned, I agree the passengers shouldn't queue up to get picked off. They could try firing over the side though.
 
Exposed gunner taking fire at 60m is what I’d call an ambush and not a planned course of action. I don’t find it at all strange that he gets pegged (Or tank commanders) at that short a range. I’m uncomfortable having unbuttoned crews even at 200m and only do so briefly and when lack of spotting by said crewmember will likely cost the whole vehicle.
 
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Stafford said:
Bloody hell mate, that's some amazing work!

How did you manage to make a python script automate the tests and collate the data?
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Thanks! I think there's enough material for us to chew on for a while.
The script is very narrow - it just presses buttons and looks at certain pixel values to see what's going on. No more yelowish green where the target icon was supposed to be? That means the target is dead. Click the forward button until you find the time instant at which it died. And so on.
I thought about using a version of the script to do some data gathering in my battles (How much time did this unit spend suppressed? Which unit came under fire without you noticing, human?). But it's not worth it. It's just that I get a kick from getting computers to do stuff.
 
I'm really impressed with the amount of work going into making this report. Thanks a lot for producing it and making it available.

Minor niggle: The bar charts with weapon lethality at various ranges might be easier to compare if the two groups of weapons used the same scale. But maybe some of the bars would get very long in that case, I guess.
 
Here's an interesting nugget:

"Firing teams with Regular experience and binoculars were able to spot the target troops reliably up to about 350 m; above this range, target troops could vanish from sight by taking cover, and so only “Area Target” tests were carried out at long ranges. Without binoculars the reliable spotting range reduced to about 150 m"

I've long been wondering about what the actual effects of binoculars are. So now I have a ballpark estimate.

Another thing I've been wondering about is: Can a leader with binoculars help an LMG guy spot and aim? It seems from your tests that the answer is no. The leader is able to spot the enemy, but the MG guy also has to spot, himself, before he can shoot:

"Soldiers with Stens and MP40s did not fire at 160 m when the target troops took cover, even though they maintained visual contact as their Leaders with binoculars could spot targets in cover. "

This also means there is not any penalty for splitting a squad. I always assumed that if you split a squad so the leader and his binoculars were in one team, and the LMG in the other team, then the LMG would be less effective. But seems not.

I guess the same goes for sniper teams, where the spotter cannot use his binoculars to spot for the marksman?
 
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Another nugget:

"With the Area Target order, occasionally all four target troop unit members would be hit before the end of the 10-minute test"

I find it a bit odd that this game allows you to clear out foxholes by area fire.
 
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One more thing:

Marksmen seem to have the same chance of hitting their target regardless of distance. Their accuracy even seems to increase with distance.
 
Another thing:

Common wisdom says the Germans should try to engage the US at long range, whereas the US player wants to get close and into "Garand range".

However, the charts seem to tell another story.

Even at 40m range, the German typical grenadier platoon has more theoretical firepower than the typical US rifle platoon. Of course, at close range, the German firepower advantage is more brittle, because it's based on very few LMG gunners, whereas the US firepower is more equally distributed throughout the squads because of the Garands.

At medium ranges, the US has a slight advantage, and then after 280m, the Germans get an advantage again, as rifles drop out of the equation. But at 312m, nobody is going to hit much anyway. Even the whole German platoon on average will make less than 1 kill a minute at that range.

And that's assuming every single soldier is spotting and shooting at individual targets 100 pct of the time. Which of course they won't. What I'm getting from the charts is that LMGs are not useful at the longer ranges where they should be doing the work.
 
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Drifter Man said:
I'm happy to announce that my CMBN weapons tests are finished. I published it on the Battlefront foum (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/137376-cmbn-weapons-effect-tests-2020/). The link to the report is here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/enmae2qpysgkace/CMBN Weapons Tests 2020.pdf

I've done enough testing for several lives and seriously should now go and do something else.

(EDIT: better link for downloading)
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That is some serious piece of work - well done!!!
 
Why do Garand troops engage out to 475m, whereas the Kar.98K will only engage at up to 350m? Was the Garand much more accurate?
 
Bulletpoint said:
I'm really impressed with the amount of work going into making this report. Thanks a lot for producing it and making it available.

Minor niggle: The bar charts with weapon lethality at various ranges might be easier to compare if the two groups of weapons used the same scale. But maybe some of the bars would get very long in that case, I guess.
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Yeah, I was choosing the lesser of the two evils. Initially I put everything into one plot, but then you could only see sniper rifles and HMG's - everything else gets too small to discern any differences. So, in the end, I split the chart up.

Bulletpoint said:
I've long been wondering about what the actual effects of binoculars are. So now I have a ballpark estimate.
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And it has changed substantially in 4.02 vs 4.0.

Bulletpoint said:
Another thing I've been wondering about is: Can a leader with binoculars help an LMG guy spot and aim? It seems from your tests that the answer is no. The leader is able to spot the enemy, but the MG guy also has to spot, himself, before he can shoot:

"Soldiers with Stens and MP40s did not fire at 160 m when the target troops took cover, even though they maintained visual contact as their Leaders with binoculars could spot targets in cover. "

This also means there is not any penalty for splitting a squad. I always assumed that if you split a squad so the leader and his binoculars were in one team, and the LMG in the other team, then the LMG would be less effective. But seems not.

I guess the same goes for sniper teams, where the spotter cannot use his binoculars to spot for the marksman?
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My conclusion is the exact opposite - leaders (or anyone) with binoculars spot for the entire team, they just can't spot when they're themselves firing. This is how the combination Leader/binoculars + shooter/weapon worked in the test at long distances. Soldiers with the "weaker" SMGs stopped firing because they considered trying to hit a target covering in a foxhole at 160 m too unlikely to hit - not because they lost contact. So I think that if you split your squad then you will probably make long-range spotting for the LMG more difficult, especially if you move the leader team far away.

Bulletpoint said:
Common wisdom says the Germans should try to engage the US at long range, whereas the US player wants to get close and into "Garand range".

However, the charts seem to tell another story.

Even at 40m range, the German typical grenadier platoon has more theoretical firepower than the typical US rifle platoon. Of course, at close range, the German firepower advantage is more brittle, because it's based on very few LMG gunners, whereas the US firepower is more equally distributed throughout the squads because of the Garands.

At medium ranges, the US has a slight advantage, and then after 280m, the Germans get an advantage again, as rifles drop out of the equation. But at 312m, nobody is going to hit much anyway. Even the whole German platoon on average will make less than 1 kill a minute at that range.

And that's assuming every single soldier is spotting and shooting at individual targets 100 pct of the time. Which of course they won't. What I'm getting from the charts is that LMGs are not useful at the longer ranges where they should be doing the work.
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I agree with most of that analysis, except that LMG (and even rifles) can be useful at long ranges against exposed targets. Not against targets covering in foxholes as in the test.

Bulletpoint said:
Why do Garand troops engage out to 475m, whereas the Kar.98K will only engage at up to 350m? Was the Garand much more accurate?
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It seems to depend more on the "kills per minute" figure than on accuracy, e.g. the MP44 and especially FG42 are wildly inaccurate at long ranges but, being automatic weapons, they can still get some kills done, and so tend to outrange the more accurate bolt-action rifles.
 
Drifter Man said:
I agree with most of that analysis, except that LMG (and even rifles) can be useful at long ranges against exposed targets. Not against targets covering in foxholes as in the test.
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True, but my own experience is that a LMG42 is very unlikely to hit running targets at 300m+. In a recent PBEM, my opponent charged a single team across open fields towards me, and I had 3 different LMG teams ready at ranges from 300-400m. They fired for several minutes without hitting anything.

Anecdotal evidence, I know, but matches my experience of playing this game for years... The LMGs seem to be more of a force multiplier within rifle range.
 
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Drifter Man said:
It seems to depend more on the "kills per minute" figure than on accuracy, e.g. the MP44 and especially FG42 are wildly inaccurate at long ranges but, being automatic weapons, they can still get some kills done
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But the MP44 fires single shots at longer ranges... you meant the MP40?
 
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