Am creating new balanced MP scenarios

[the_iron_duke]

I'm contemplating reducing the damage done by aircraft to hard ground targets. For example, an Il-2M3 inflicts 35% damage on a Panther G (using GCUR) which I think is too much. EDIT: the GCUR reduces Air Defense for the tank units, so it may be enough to restore these stats to the stock file levels.

Could anyone provide an answer to this question about A.A. vs air combat? In the combat details screen when an A.A. attacks an air unit, there is a rate of fire/total shots parameter. An example of an A.A. attacking an air unit:

Rate of fire = 70%
Total shots = 7
Kill rate = 26%
2 killed, 2 suppressed

Like with suppressive fire, should I be multiplying the kill rate by the number of shots, so the effective kill rate would be (26% x 0.7 =) 18.2% ? If the full kill rate of 26% was occurring, I would have expected the end result to show -3 killed.

[ThvN]

OK, here goes:

Ini is separate from Attack/Defense. Attack and Defense values are compared and produce a chance for each dice roll for either a kill, suppress or miss result, which together will make 100%. One dice is rolled for each unsuppressed unit strength. So normally 10 dice are rolled for a 10-strength unit. What RoF (rate of fire) does: it lowers or raises the total dice rolls a unit can make. So a RoF of 70% will give a 10-str unit 7 shots, but be aware that when calculating the amount of shots only whole numbers are used. For example a 7-str unit with RoF 70% has 0.7 x 7 = 4.9 shots, but those are rounded to 4!

Ini: I've explained it somewhere else in the forum with cowboys shooting each other, but I'll try to use dice this time (and pictures! )

Let's take two unit with equal Ini. Being lazy, I fired up Hylan Vally as single player and bought a British Spit IX and for the German side the captured variant of it. So the fight is between identical units. On my first combat, I was both lucky and unlucky. Lucky because the random pre-combat Ini dice roll was the same for both, and unlucky, because, well, just look at it.

Anyway, notice the following points, in the combat prediction, which we will be comparing to another combat I've been setting up (in a next post).

Percentages displayed for the combat are of course equal for both sides: Miss: 55%, Suppr: 10%, Kill: 35%. Both sided have 10 'Unsuppressed strength', which is displayed at an even level to show that both sides should fire at each other simultaneously. The prediction is a simple 4 killed, 3 suppressed. If you calculate the odds, that makes no sense, because 10 rolls at 10% should theoretically only produce a single suppressed result, with the rest either misses or kills.

But what is not told is that for every two kills another strength point gets suppressed. So if I attacked and rolled only two kills and the rest are misses, than those two kills would still cause a single point of suppression. And this can matter a lot if you may shoot first.

OK, the results are in! Wow, those are very bad rolls for the Germans (Maybe those fickle Spitfires prefer to fly on the left-hand side? It doesn't speak German?) Ouch. The British, however, have a nice string of rolls that only has a single 'suppression' result (in blue), but the other kills add up to more suppression. Which is pointless, because the combat was simultaneous, and both sides got to fire all ten shots at each other.

To be continued...

[ThvN]

Ok, so what happens when Ini is not equal?

For this, another German Spitfire IX is sent in, but the British are content to send in a Spitfire VB. It has the same Attack/Defense, and therefore the kill ratio is identical, so will this be another combat between equals?

No. Because the Spitfire VB has 2 points less Ini. In Panzer Corps, each point of Ini advantage means that a unit will fire 20% of their available shots before their opponent does. In this case, that would mean that the Spit IX would fire 4 shots ( 2 x 20% = 40% of 10 strength), and from then on the remaining shots will be simultaneous, until both sides have fires all their shots. But any kills or suppressed results sustained in that 40% advantage cannot take part in the return attack. So, let's see the prediction:

Yep, same Attack/Defense = the same chances for a Miss: 55%, Suppr: 10%, or Kill: 35%. But not the same predicted outcome, and look at the unsuppressed strength. Now, it's only 7 for the British, but still 10 for the Germans.

And the results are in, and the British actually did alright this time, although the Germans finally seem to have figured out that the sight on a Spitfire uses Imperial and not metric units! So what happened?

The German, having higher Ini, fired first. They rolled 5 kills and 1 suppression. These five kills produce another 2 suppresion, so the end score is 5 kills, 3 suppressed, quite good. The Ini advantage is 2, which means 40% of the shots (and their results) take effect before the British may shoot back.

40% of 5 kills = 2 kills happen before fire is returned, and are subtracted from the 10-str Spit V, which leaves 8 of them ready to return fire.
40% of 3 suppr = 1.2 (rounded to nearest number = 1) so 1 suppression takes effect before fire can be returned, and although the unit does not lose this point of strength it cannot take part in the return fire.

So that leaves 10 minus 2 = 8, minus 1 = 7. So 7 points of strength can fire back, which they do.

[ThvN]

Some final remarks: high Ini it's own it won't do much, and having a high Ini with low attack will not help much, because the unit will not roll many kills/suppression, so a lot of the enemy will still return fire, causing a lot of casualties, unless you have very good defenses. But still, high Ini with low attack is mainly useful to counter opposing Ini opponents, but not much more.

Having a high Ini with high attack has big advantages: if a unit has relatively high strength it will be able to inflict a lot of damage without suffering too much return fire. This is also caused by the fact that every two kills inflicted will cause another point of suppression.

Regarding your observations about small Ini differences not showing up in combat predictions, this is correct. The chance for a kill must be high enough for Ini to be effective. Let's say in combat two units each have a 20% chance of a kill, which means every 10 rolls produce on average two kills. How much does the 'unsuppressed strength' of those units have to be reduced to see a clear difference?

To get to a predicted result of 1 instead of two kills, you have to get the number of probable kills down to slightly below 1.5 instead of 2. That means an unsuppressed strength of 7 (20% of 7 rolls gives 1.4 kills, which would be 1 predicted kill I think). To get the opponent down to 7 from 10, you will need to inflict 3 kills and/or suppression before he returns fire.

If your rolls are average, a 10-str unit will roll 2 kills, and might cause 2 suppression (1 from rolls, another 1 from the 2 kills). From these 4 scores, you need to have a chance of 62.5% to inflict 2.5 (=3) of them and bring them down to 7 unsuppressed strength. So you'll need more than 3 Ini difference in this case to skew the predictions a lot.

With higher chances of kills/suppressions, this percentage will be lower, so in that case 2 Ini might show up as well. If the kill chance is really high ( >50%), a single point Ini difference can show up in the prediction as well.

This is more a way of saying that the predictions are quite crudely rounded, because their scale is very coarse compared to the Miss/Supp/Kill chances and the effects of Ini.

[the_iron_duke]

Thanks for the explanation, Thomas. I feel I understand it, but I still have a couple of questions:

1) Is taking the kill rate and multiplying it by the unsuppressed strength an accurate indicator of working out effective kill rates?

So 40% kill rate versus 40% kill rate with unsuppressed strength of 8 would make an effective kill rate of 40% vs (40% x 0.8 =) 32% ?

2) Rate of Fire. For A.A. against an aircraft, for example, is a kill rate of 30% with a Rate of fire = 70%/Total shots = 7 producing an effective kill rate of (30% x 0.7 =) 21% ?

In other matters, I'm focussing on the tanks again. You had mentioned before, Thomas, about the Air Defense stats being being low in the GCUR and I agree that the stock stats would be better for that.

If we can divide modifications to the units into two categories: global and individual.

So global tank changes could so far include:

- keeping Air Defense stats from stock file

- keeping Soft Attack values from GCUR file

- keeping Hard Attack values from GCUR file (although I shall probably then apply a c.15% reduction to these, and all non-infantry, stats for gameplay reasons)

Any thoughts on global changes to initiative, perhaps reducing initiative slightly for the super-tanks? So a Tiger II down from 14 to 12 or 13? I haven't tested it but thought I'd sound it out. If initiative was reduced in this way, what would it affect? Only ground unit vs ground unit direct combat?

Then there are specific tweaks to individual units. For example, reducing Is-2 initiative as Tarrak suggested earlier.

[ThvN]

Thanks for the explanation, Thomas. I feel I understand it, but I still have a couple of questions:

1) Is taking the kill rate and multiplying it by the unsuppressed strength an accurate indicator of working out effective kill rates?

So 40% kill rate versus 40% kill rate with unsuppressed strength of 8 would make an effective kill rate of 40% vs (40% x 0.8 =) 32% ?

Roughly, yes, but if I remember my math well (it's a bit rusty...) the reliability of the prediction will be less (see next question). I'm going to be assaulted by math teachers if I continue, because I will give very simplified explanations.

2) Rate of Fire. For A.A. against an aircraft, for example, is a kill rate of 30% with a Rate of fire = 70%/Total shots = 7 producing an effective kill rate of (30% x 0.7 =) 21% ?

This is the same statistical mechanism as your first question, so the answer is the same as well. The chance for each individual roll remains the same, but reducing the number of rolls will shift the average outcome downwards, in roughly the same ratio, so as a rule of thumb you are correct. But with less rolls the variation can increase, which means the average will still be reliable, so results may be off further and more often than expected.

To explain, let's say you have a 40% kill rate. But the outcome of the roll can only have three results, Miss / Suppr /Kill. So it is like throwing a 3-sided dice which has a 40% chance of landing on 'K' (Kill), let's say 10% for 'S' (Suppress) and 50% on 'M' (Miss), so the total is 100%. So you expect half of the rolls to miss.

If I roll a single die for each 1 point of unsuppressed strength, the combat prediction will generally be more reliable when I roll more dice. If I roll two dice, I can expect a single miss (50% of 2), but what is the chance for a kill? If I roll ten dice, it's easier to predict that there will be four kills, just like I can predict that I need to roll on average three dice to have a realistic hope of scoring a kill, because 40% of 3 is 1.2 (chance of a kill), and 40% of 2 is 0.8 (which when rounded is still a kill, but probability is actually still below 1, which is my hamfisted benchmark of a reliable chance when a kill is going to occur.

In other matters, I'm focussing on the tanks again. You had mentioned before, Thomas, about the Air Defense stats being being low in the GCUR and I agree that the stock stats would be better for that.

If we can divide modifications to the units into two categories: global and individual.

So global tank changes could so far include:

- keeping Air Defense stats from stock file

Agree, I think the planes in the game are already too effective vs. most ground targets, so I don't know why the GCUR boosted the damage even further.

- keeping Soft Attack values from GCUR file

They look OK to me.

- keeping Hard Attack values from GCUR file (although I shall probably then apply a c.15% reduction to these, and all non-infantry, stats for gameplay reasons)

Still looking good.

Any thoughts on global changes to initiative, perhaps reducing initiative slightly for the super-tanks? So a Tiger II down from 14 to 12 or 13? I haven't tested it but thought I'd sound it out. If initiative was reduced in this way, what would it affect? Only ground unit vs ground unit direct combat?

Ini has only effect on direct ground combat, and especially on combat on open ground, because a lot of terrain caps Ini.

Do you use the stock values for ShotsPerInitiativePoint or my tweak? Because that makes a difference how Ini helps determine combat outcomes. My change makes combat between units with different Ini somewhat closer in outcome than it used to be, so results will hopefully be a little less extreme unless there is a very big difference in Ini.

I read that the Tiger II had a noticable advantage in long-range gunnery, but as ranges decreased the IS-2 got the upper hand, so the Tiger II can keep a fairly high Ini stat.

BTW, now that I've put in an explanation of how Ini works, you can see how may change in the gamerules file works: Now, Ini differences matter less, which also diminishes the importance of that pre-combat Ini roll (I don't like it, +2 is just too much I think). And they give the modder (me) more options because the Ini stat has become less sensitive, so I can make more detailed changes to it without big effects on gameplay.

Then there are specific tweaks to individual units. For example, reducing Is-2 initiative as Tarrak suggested earlier.

One question: is the KV-1C supposed to represent the KV-1S or the earlier KV-1 with extra armour (Germans named it KV-1C)? Because it might need a makeover if you want it to represent the later KV-1S.

Some quick thoughts about CD (close defense) for GCUR tanks:

Too low for the Panther G, T-34-85 and Cromwell, better is 3 or 4.
Too low for Sherman, can be 4 or even 5 for late models.
The Tiger I and II should be about equal, the Tiger I might even have a slight advantage here over the Tiger II.
IS-1 is better at 4, IS-2 is too high, 3 or 4 is better.
Firefly is too high, better make it 2.

[the_iron_duke]

Thanks for clarifying the initiative and rate of fire questions. Testing the stat modifications is very important and so I needed to make sure I was recording results in an accurate way.

I'll have a test of the initiative mod now I understand it better.

I've been re-testing H.A. reduction levels and have again arrived at a reduction of about 15% as the level I feel is needed to improve gameplay. 15% is also the approximate figure needed to reduce the H.A. of the British tanks from 13 to 11 (using GCUR H.A. stats).

The following list shows how a 15% reduction would affect the tank units' H.A. levels (using GCUR). There are some cases where the reduction falls between two numbers and so a one percent change from the 15% figure would push them one towards one number or the other. So there is a small amount of leeway - do you feel, for example, that the Pz IVH should be a 13 or a 14 in the new system...?

Pz IVH: 16 -> 13.6 = 13 or 14
Panther G: 20 -> 17 = 17
Tiger I: 19 -> 16.15 = 16
Tiger II: 24 -> 20.4 = 20

Churchill, Cromwell, Sherman: 13 -> 11.05 = 11
Firefly: 20 -> 17 = 17

T-34-85: 17 -> 14.45 = 14 or 15
KV-1C: 13 -> 11.05 = 11
IS-1: 17 -> 14.45 = 14 or 15
IS-2: 19 -> 16.15 = 16

Here they are sorted by H.A. value in the new system:

20 = Tiger II
17 = Panther G, Firefly
16 = Tiger I, IS-2
14 or 15 = T-34-85, IS-1
13 or 14 = Pz IVH
11 = Churchill, Cromwell, Sherman, KV-1C

One question: is the KV-1C supposed to represent the KV-1S or the earlier KV-1 with extra armour (Germans named it KV-1C)? Because it might need a makeover if you want it to represent the later KV-1S.

I think they can stay as KV-1C. Although they are getting obsolete, they are still being used in 1944 in Soviet independent Breakthrough Regiments. Other Soviet Breakthrough Regiments include similar slow tanks like the Churchill and the KV-2. This implies that the role of these regiments was as infantry tanks, deployed to augment advancing infantry, allowing them to "break through". This is similar to the role the Churchill tanks performed in their independent tank brigades for the British.

Besides, if one makes the KV-1C into a KV-1S then one will basically be reducing its armour and speeding it up and it will become rather like a T-34, which the Soviets have rather a lot of! So I think it's best to keep it a slow tank (like all the other attached/independent tanks - Churchills, Tigers, IS-series).

[ThvN]

Thanks for clarifying the initiative and rate of fire questions. Testing the stat modifications is very important and so I needed to make sure I was recording results in an accurate way.

You're welcome. It is hard to tell through the internet how much knowledge somebody has, but understanding these mechanisms is very handy when trying to decide on stats (and purchasing units).

The following list shows how a 15% reduction would affect the tank units' H.A. levels (using GCUR). There are some cases where the reduction falls between two numbers and so a one percent change from the 15% figure would push them one towards one number or the other. So there is a small amount of leeway - do you feel, for example, that the Pz IVH should be a 13 or a 14 in the new system...?

I have dug up my Excel sheet with gun penetration figures and checked my eqp file; I must say I don't use all those impressive figures which are usually obtained with silver bullets, which often were in short supply (like German HK ammo). So my ranking can seem a little odd sometimes.

Pz IVH: 16 -> 13.6 = 13 or 14

13. It should be lower than T-34-85, and a bit more than the T-34 with 76mm gun.

T-34-85: 17 -> 14.45 = 14 or 15
IS-1: 17 -> 14.45 = 14 or 15

14. Overall it was closer to the German 75mm than the 88mm gun on the Tiger. (disclaimer: except for some special ammunition types) You can always give the IS-1 15 HA to make it a more worthy adversary.

...if one makes the KV-1C into a KV-1S then one will basically be reducing its armour and speeding it up and it will become rather like a T-34, which the Soviets have rather a lot of! So I think it's best to keep it a slow tank (like all the other attached/independent tanks - Churchills, Tigers, IS-series).

Yep, it was a bit of a retrograde step.

[the_iron_duke]

Excellent. The tanks are progressing nicely!

Another thing I'm thinking about is getting units like tanks to scale with each other. Here are four British AFVs resized. The Sherman, Cromwell and Achilles haven't changed that much, but the Churchill is a lot bigger.



EDIT: A cool tank size comparison chart:

http://sanity-x.deviantart.com/art/WW2- ... t-37418298

[McGuba]

Another thing I'm thinking about is getting units like tanks to scale with each other. Here are four British AFVs resized. The Sherman, Cromwell and Achilles haven't changed that much, but the Churchill is a lot bigger.

You are right with those tanks, but what really annoyed me was the differenty scaled guns and AA. E.g. German 10.5 cm leFH much smaller than French 75 mm field gun, or Soviet 37 mm AA same size as 85 mm. Not to mention those huge Italian and British 20 mm AA guns. So I did some rescale as well earlier. However, do not forget, when you make such changes you might have to adjust the fire animation offsets as well!

EDIT: and I think you also need to sharpen it a bit after you increase the size of a unit - compare the contrast/sharpness of your new Churchill with the original.

7.5_cm_FK_16_nA.png (28.07 KiB) Viewed 3444 times

E.g. the new offsets for this enlarged 10.5 cm gun is:
7.5_cm_FK_16_nA.png (40,-24) (-40,-24) (,) (,)



And the original icon:

7.5_cm_FK_16_nA.png (22.33 KiB) Viewed 3444 times

[the_iron_duke]

On re-sizing units, I think there are a few ways of doing it:

1) Getting units within each class (e.g. tanks, artillery) to scale with each other.
2) Getting units in super-categories to scale with each other (e.g. tanks/tank destroyers/assault guns, artillery/anti-aircraft artillery/towed anti-tank).
3) Getting all ground vehicles/guns to scale with each other and infantry have their own scale.
4) All ground units, including infantry, to scale with each other. Might work, although infantry would get slightly smaller. There are no super-sized units, like Maus or Char 2C (have you seen the size of that thing in photos!) which would make it much harder.

Rest of the post on tanks and Air Defense/Attack...

Here are the Air Defense values in the Standard EQ file:

18: Tiger II, IS-2
17: Tiger I, Churchill
16: Panther G, IS-1
15: T-34-85
14: Crocodile, KV-1C
13: Pz IV*, Cromwell, Firefly,
12: Pz IV*
11: Sherman

* in the standard EQ file, the Pz IVH has 12 and the PZ IVJ has 13

COMMENTS:

- T-34 too high?
- Sherman too low?

Of course, some of the tanks have an Air Attack value making them less vulnerable from the air. The Sherman does but the Cromwell doesn't (which is probably correct for the scenarios as the Cromwells would represent those of the Armoured Reconnaissance Regiments of the British Armoured Divisions).

The Panther G (and D) has no A.A. value but, curiously, the Panther A does.

Tanks with Air Attack:

Pz IV
Sherman
Firefly
T-34-85
IS-1
IS-2

Tanks without Air Attack:

Panther G
Tiger I
Tiger II
Churchill VII
Cromwell VII
Crocodile
KV-1C

I would say the questions are:

- should Panther have A.A.?
- should IS-1/2 not have A.A.?

Also, I think I found an error in the GCUR. I was wondering why the QF 17 Pounder AT gun was performing so poorly against tanks and noticed that the British towed anti-tank guns are set as being hard rather than soft targets,

[the_iron_duke]

If going for re-sizing option 4, it would look something like this! Too much...?

[the_iron_duke]

Unless one went for something like this...

[the_iron_duke]

On re-sizing, I think the best way might be a compromise between scale and ease-of-use. I'm thinking of perhaps keeping the infantry the same size, scale the tanks, tank destroyers and assault guns with each other and compromise with the artillery, anti-aircraft and towed anti-tank. The size difference between a German Mrs 18 heavy artillery piece and a smaller artillery, like a Soviet ZiS-3, is quite large and would make the ZiS-3 quite small on the game screen.

So this picture's a rough example of what I'm thinking. The infantry is the same size. The Mrs 18, in the top-left has got a bit bigger, while other smaller artillery pieces have got a bit smaller. The light Bofors A.A. has reduced in size.



Any thoughts?

[ThvN]

Interesting problem, and it will probably need some sort of compromise to work. So bundling several classes makes sense, although some class groups have large differences in scale (Nebelwerfer vs. Long Tom), but I might have a little idea for that (see below).

But first, I'd like to complicate things further: what about aircraft and ships? Big bombers often are at least 20 meters in length (B-29 is about 30m), most fighters are roughly half that, which is a big difference, it might make fighters almost indistinguishable under the wrong conditions (parked on top of large ground units). The ships are even worse as they vary immensely in length...

And... some units have animations that have multiple firing points, they would need to be scaled as well to avoid looking odd. So it might need a lot of work.


Anyway:

A long time ago I had a similar scaling problem while making pictures of firearms for Jagged Alliance 2. The problem was that handguns would be a small blurry pixel-patch if shown at proper scale next to a long rifle, and because of the low-res icons and murky colors (grey guns) it was impossible to get enough detail.

If I remember correctly, I took the longest icon (some rifle) to set an upper limit, and applied a simple formula to the rest of the icons, which would make an icon proportionally bigger depending on the ratio it had with the upper limit. It might not work as well for the PzC icons because of the height and depth perception, but it might help to get an idea of what I mean with some examples:

Assuming the upper limit is 100%, to simplify I will put it at 100 pixels, but it can be anything.

An icon that should be 80 pixels long when scaled properly (20% less) would be made 80 x 1.2 (meaning + 20%) = 96 pixels long

50 pixels (50% less) became 50 x 1.5 = 75 pixels

20 pixels (80% less) became 20 x 1.8 = 36 pixels

So there still would be big differences in length, but the smallest icons would be enlarged more than the bigger ones. Handguns would be almost doubled in screen-size, enough to be to start recognizing them. It looked better to me than having the icons all neatly to scale, but this was because they were generally long, thin, low-res and even-coloured, so it might look weird in PzC, I don't know. You can also add a multiplier to the ratio to make the smaller icons relatively bigger or smaller (proportionally of course).

[the_iron_duke]

I think a scaling system along the lines you suggested would work well. The simplest solution might be to leave the graphics as they are and just resize the ones that are in need of amending, such as Churchill tanks and a few others. Anyway, I'll put that on the back-burner for now and focus again on the unit stat revisions.

Any thoughts on my Air Attack/Defense comments a few posts ago?

Here are some further thoughts...

I've been looking throught the German equipment charts. Units - artillery, tank battalions, independent Tiger battalions, for example - appear to have three 20 mm AA guns integrated within them as standard. The Panzer Division's Panzer Regiment, which is made up of the two Panzer Battalions, has an attached A.A. Platoon of eight 37 mm A.A. guns. This is what provides the Air Attack value of 1, and it should apply to both the Pz. IV battalion and the Panther battalion. So Panthers get an A.A. value of 1.

I've also been looking at the Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment of the British Armoured Division and they had a troop of six Crusader A.A. tanks up until the end of the Normandy campaign (disbanded due to Allied air superiority). Since the scenarios take place before that time, I think Cromwells should also get 1 A.A.

So that currently means all divisional tanks have A.A. of 1 and all attached/independent tanks have A.A. of 0, except for the IS-series. From what I can tell from the Soviet documents, the independent tank regiments don't have similar A.A. capabilities, and so I think it would be fair to also give the IS-series zero A.A. in line with the other independent tanks.

[the_iron_duke]

Since Panthers now have A.A., their A.D. might need reviewing.

As I posted earlier, here are the tank Air Defense values in the Standard EQ file:

18: Tiger II, IS-2
17: Tiger I, Churchill
16: Panther G, IS-1
15: T-34-85
14: Crocodile, KV-1C
13: Pz IV*, Cromwell, Firefly,
12: Pz IV*
11: Sherman

* in the standard EQ file, the Pz IVH has 12 and the PZ IVJ has 13

Although the GCUR has globally reduced the tanks' A.D. level, they have also changed in relation to each other and so add further insight. Unlike the other units, the Shermans have gained in A.D. in the changes. Panthers have lost a lot. T-34s have also diminished,

16: Tiger II, Churchill, IS-2
15: Tiger I, IS-1
13: Cromwell, Firefly, T-34-85, KV-1C
12: Pz IV, Panther G, Sherman

[the_iron_duke]

When measuring tank hull-length, where exactly take the measurements from? Take the British Sherman graphic, for example. It has track mudguards protruding out the back. Should the measurement end where the hull ends, or should it include the extra mudguard? Anyone have any ideas?

EDIT: measuring and comparing from the tracks might be quite helpful. British Sherman, Firefly, Achilles should all have the same size of wheeled-tracks as they are all Sherman derivatives?

[the_iron_duke]

I think these British pieces are roughly to scale with each other. This is going completely on photos of people standing next to the artillery pieces! Of the four images, only the BL 7.2 inch on the right has been re-sized.

[ThvN]

Any thoughts on my Air Attack/Defense comments a few posts ago?

Hi Duke, another quick insomnia post, I've seen your request for some AA/AD input, if I scan the GCUR stats my premature opinion is that deducter seems to have gone for the popular angle that some tanks are easily killed by fighter-bombers, but that has been largely disproved in more recent studies. The only quick link for now is http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Bus ... ters4.html. I'll try to add some thoughts of mine later, as I have been trying to get better values myself.

British Sherman, Firefly, Achilles should all have the same size of wheeled-tracks as they are all Sherman derivatives?

I'm afraid it's not that easy, some variations of Sherman have different bogie distance/track length ratio, depending on what kind of engine was installed.

The version that is markedly different is the one with the Chrysler multi-bank engine, which was also delivered to the British, but there are some minor variations between common versions. To help you on your way, here are two links with accurate info that also list where exactly the measurements are taken: http://afvdb.50megs.com/usa/m4sherman.html and http://the.shadock.free.fr/sherman_minutia/index.html. Don't worry, there are basically only a few basic hull shapes/lengths, but the PzC icons are still giving me doubts as to the exact version they are supposed to portray.

I've been slowly 'correcting' icons which seem to be oddly proportioned, I've not yet altered the Shermans but I've taken a good look at them so maybe I can help out with some icons. So far, I've only encountered one that seems to have the HVSS suspension, but the rest of that icon is somewhat crude (I remember you mentioned it yourself a while ago, the one with the wide, blocky hull). I've been trying to collect different parts of icons to make some kind of simple template (hull, turret, tracks) that can be edited to represent different versions. But I've only made some progress with the Soviet armor (T-34/KV) and not yet with the Sherman.