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Artillery

Hard Attack

In the game, the actions of the artillery turn out very well: for example, during its half of the turn, the ATY unit fired at the infantry, and during the second half of the turn it once provided indirect fire at the infantry, and twice fought the tanks that were attacking it. What remains of the ATY unit does not interest me at all in such a situation. Well, STR = 1.
The question is - what kind of shells did this unit fire?

In the game, any ATY unit takes projectiles from an unknown warehouse with unlimited capability per projectiles type. What projectiles were needed, these are the ones he takes. If there are even five tank attacks on a unit, and only two or three by infantry, the ATY unit will still hit each tank in the face with all its Hard Attack power.

That is, there are no restrictions on the types and quantities of projectiles.
But they were ...

I spent a little time and found on the Internet the composition of the daily ammunition load for the guns of the Soviet army in 1941, before the start of the war.
I will say right away - information from one forum, and not from a serious historical source. But I have no other information. I could not find such information on any other army of the belligerent countries. If someone can help and add / fix - I respectfully ask you to do it!

Basing of this information let me give you an example.

Red Army ammunition norms in accordance with Order N 0182 of 05/09/41:
a) 37-mm and 45-mm AT guns - 200 pcs.;
b) 76-mm field guns - 140 pcs.;
c) 76-mm and 85-mm anti-aircraft guns - 150 pcs.;
d) 107-mm and 122-mm guns and howitzers - 80 pcs.;
e) 152-mm howitzers and howitzer-guns - 60 pcs.;
f) 203 mm howitzers - 40 pcs.;
g) 280 mm mortars and 305 mm howitzers - 30 pcs.;
h) 50 mm mortars - 120 pcs.;
i) 82 mm mortars - 90 pcs .;
j) 107-mm and 120-mm mortars - 60 pcs.;

The norms for the content of armor-piercing shells in the composition of the ammunition load of guns in accordance with this order:
a) to a 45 mm anti-tank gun - 25% of the total number of shots;
b) to the 76-mm divisional gun - 5.7%;
c) to the 76 mm tank gun - 27%;
d) to the 122 mm cannon - 5%.

The composition of the ammunition was determined from the purpose of the guns and the degree of probability of meeting the enemy's armor targets.

Usually, one ammunition daily set load was fiddled with a regiment, 0.8 ammunition load in batteries (divisions), the rest in the regiment's transport. The division was supposed to carry one more ammunition set. The number of ammunition in the army and the district was determined based on the operational situation and strategic direction.

The specific composition of ammunition in ammunition set is determined based on the likelihood of their use and the purpose of the weapon, as well as the storage conditions of ammunition in the ammunition carried with the weapon.

First, from the final part of the order, I understood that all ratios and norms could change.
Secondly, I see that one ammunition load allowed a 76mm cannon to fire for 20 minutes a day (at the rate of 8-10 rounds per minute).

And this is probably why the Soviets retreated to Moscow! Everything was different for the Wehrmacht!

You may not be surprised by the fact that the Wehrmacht had about the same.

The standard ammunition load for the 17 cm K i. Mrs. Laf. consisted of 110 shells. According to calculations, this should have been enough for ten days of medium-intensity battles. Practice has shown that in conditions of intense hostilities, all 110 shells could be used up in one day.

10 shells per day? Even 110 shells in one day is an hour of intensive firing of this gun! By the way, why didn't they shoot as much and as often as PGF? What are these restrictions? Consider a little later, when there will be a conversation about AMMO.

Now only the percentage of armor-piercing shells in ammunition is of interest.
The 76 mm gun had 5.7% of 140 armor-piercing shells (i.e. 8 rounds per set).
The 45mm anti-tank gun had 25% armor-piercing shells.
That is, an ordinary field gun, even if it was modern and could accurately and quickly shoot at tanks, had almost five times less shells in its ammunition than a specialized anti-tank gun!

And how could such a weapon protect itself from tanks during a half-turn? 5.7% - this means almost zero HA when attacking from an adjacent hex for any non-anti-tank artillery.
But there are enough high-explosive shells to fire "over hex".

I wrote:

In general, I want to slightly reduce the Hard Attack for artillery up to 170mm. Up to a ratio of SA : HA = 2 : 1
For some particularly successful cannons / anti-tank weapons, weaken this ratio slightly to 2 : 1.5. That is, something in between firing a high-explosive projectile at a remote distance and effective direct fire. Everything is very subjective, there is room for thought and imagination.
But for museum exhibits, the HA parameter should be absolutely minimal, approximately in the proportion SA : HA = 4 (or 5) : 1
And for super-heavy ATY with rate of Fire 1 round per 1-2 minutes HA should be about zero.

Now I am thinking of changing these ratios to (approximately):
Modern ATY - SA : HA = 4 : 1-1.5
ATY with AT capabilities - SA : HA = 4 : 2
Obsolete ATY and super-heavy ATY - HA must be exactly about zero.

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-17 20:36, Monday Hard Attack(HA)

In general, I want to slightly reduce the Hard Attack for artillery up to 170mm. Up to a ratio of SA : HA = 2 : 1
For some particularly successful cannons / anti-tank weapons, weaken this ratio slightly to 2 : 1.5. That is, something in between firing a high-explosive projectile at a remote distance and effective direct fire. Everything is very subjective, there is room for thought and imagination.
But for museum exhibits, the HA parameter should be absolutely minimal, approximately in the proportion SA : HA = 4 (or 5) : 1
And for super-heavy ATY with rate of Fire 1 round per 1-2 minutes HA should be about zero.

Again a lot of good points! With regards to eliminating HA for the heaviest guns, this needs to go hand in hand with moving fortifications to soft targets. Right now it would make no sense since these guns were primarily used to kill forts and if forts are hard targets they would have nothing to do.

By the way, in my stats calculations i already introduce a 40-50% HA penalty for indirect fire unit classes (ATY and AD). I believe taking more off would be improper because this still has to do even for a situations where the same unit would be on defense from a tank attack when they would be firing direct fire. Unless they are to be completely helpless in these types of situations a compromise is a must.

HexCode wrote: ↑2021-05-17 22:26, Monday

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-17 10:12, MondayCan we create a new type of MVT by modifying an existing one?

Yes ! Absolutely ! However, the "new" type cannot be added. It can only serve as a substitute for an already existing type. In other words, PGF's engine cannot accommodate more than ELEVEN (11) Movement Type definitions.

Good news!
And you can really implement this and create an improved version of the exe file?
I need to think about what needs to be fixed in some types of MVT.

HexCode wrote: ↑2021-05-18 03:01, Tuesday

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-18 02:05, Tuesday... in my stats calculations i already introduce a 40-50% HA penalty for indirect fire unit classes (ATY and AD). I believe taking more off would be improper because this still has to do even for a situations where the same unit would be on defense from a tank attack when they would be firing direct fire. Unless they are to be completely helpless in these types of situations a compromise is a must.

I wish PGF's play system were a bit more sophisticated than the one encountered in PG1-DOS. Dual purpose unit specifications via the Organic Transport feature are old hat, of course. However, couldn't the play system be a bit proactively smarter and appropriately and automatically "flip" on the spot a dual purpose unit under attack so as to (probabilistically) maximize its punch and / or minimize its losses ? Well, it won't be happening any time soon, if ever...

I completely agree! If there was a thinking trigger for switching a unit's combat mode during an enemy half-move, that would be great! I'm definitely adding to my PGF 2100 wish list!

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-18 02:05, Tuesday

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-17 20:36, Monday Hard Attack(HA)

In general, I want to slightly reduce the Hard Attack for artillery up to 170mm. Up to a ratio of SA : HA = 2 : 1
For some particularly successful cannons / anti-tank weapons, weaken this ratio slightly to 2 : 1.5. That is, something in between firing a high-explosive projectile at a remote distance and effective direct fire. Everything is very subjective, there is room for thought and imagination.
But for museum exhibits, the HA parameter should be absolutely minimal, approximately in the proportion SA : HA = 4 (or 5) : 1
And for super-heavy ATY with rate of Fire 1 round per 1-2 minutes HA should be about zero.

Again a lot of good points! With regards to eliminating HA for the heaviest guns, this needs to go hand in hand with moving fortifications to soft targets. Right now it would make no sense since these guns were primarily used to kill forts and if forts are hard targets they would have nothing to do.

Yes, everything is interconnected. Some good changes make other good changes possible

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-18 02:05, Tuesday By the way, in my stats calculations i already introduce a 40-50% HA penalty for indirect fire unit classes (ATY and AD). I believe taking more off would be improper because this still has to do even for a situations where the same unit would be on defense from a tank attack when they would be firing direct fire. Unless they are to be completely helpless in these types of situations a compromise is a must.

Yes, there must be a reasonable compromise between reality, play and other compromises.

Well, we must humbly note the wonderful fact that the thoughts of geniuses resonate!

Artillery

AMMO

If there is a more difficult topic than the AMMO of artillery, then it is probably the AMMO of an infantry unit defending the city with a warehouse of small arms ammunition

So what is ATY AMMO in the game? The warehouse is unlimited and teleports projectiles to the gun without logistical restrictions. Shells of any type are always available in the warehouse. The warehouse is replenished automatically even on a desert island in the ocean.
It's like a supermarket in your home next to the refrigerator, all products have a zero price and trucks throughout the country serve your refrigerator 24 hours a day

Knowing the practical rate of fire of a gun in shots per minute, it is easy to calculate how many shells this gun will fire at the enemy in 8-12 hours. 2000 rounds will not be the limit for calibers 75-105 mm. But this is nonsense!

The gun will fire as many times as the industry produces the shells and how many will be brought to the front, on average for each gun. But we have no logistics and no production in PGF model.

But there must still be some criterion for comparing different tools!
Otherwise, we, guided by our subjective desires, can make any high-quality artillery from "nothing".

I found some interesting information that might help somehow:

The standard ammunition load for the 17 cm K i. Mrs. Laf. consisted of 110 shells. According to calculations, this should have been enough for ten days of medium-intensity battles. Practice has shown that in conditions of intense hostilities, all 110 shells could be used up in one day. In addition, it turned out that the barrel did not reach the estimated survivability of 1,500 shots, it was necessary to make changes to the service manual, prescribing the replacement of the barrel after 800 shots. In addition to the high initial velocity of the shells, the rate of fire significantly influenced the life of the barrel, therefore the "specified" parameter of 2 rounds per minute had a purely theoretical value. In practice, the 170mm cannons were fired at a much slower rate. Despite this, the barrel survivability of the 17 cm K i. Mrs. Laf. was about half the life time of the 150 mm guns and four times the life time of the 105 mm guns.
Article "170 mm special gun" by Andrey Kharuk.(In RU) http://alternathistory.com/andrej-haruk ... nacheniya/
Kharuk Andrey Ivanovich is author of very serious book "Wehrmacht artillery" (in RU):
https://lit-ra.pro/artilleriya-vermahta ... ovich/read

Here one simple conclusion suggests itself: the gun could not shoot more often than the barrels were produced for it. But this principle only works in the case of large and relatively expensive large-caliber guns.
As for the calibers 37-75 mm, the picture is completely different there - shoot as long as you like as long as there are shells, because the gun and artillerymen will still not live as long as the barrel of the gun will serve. Didn't I say very scary things now?

Could a US gun in 1944 in North France have a much larger AMMO than a comparable Wehrmacht gun? Yes, absolutely. Logistics and powerful industry in the rear were the strengths of the American army.

Could a Soviet 45-76mm gun in 1941 have a large AMMO? Yes, because this weapon will be destroyed in the game before half of the ammunition can be fired. In reality, in the summer of 1941, Soviet artillerymen fired one ammunition load and then threw a useless weapon, because the Wehrmacht tankers had already made sure that the second set from the main warehouse was never delivered.

Can a Wehrmacht gun in the autumn mud near Leningrad and Moscow have at least one full ammunition load? Ask Franz Halder's diary. Beginning in July 1941, he wrote a lot about the terrible rains and mud, which often did not allow the transport convoys to deliver even one full ammunition set to the troops.

Within the PGF model, AMMO parameter is a certificate from an insane asylum that the patient wrote to himself.

But if based on barrel life, a general rule of thumb is that the larger the caliber, the smaller the AMMO.
I haven't touched on the cost of one projectile yet, coming soon

And one more message from the insane asylum of the PGF gunners (and other ground units too):

What prevents loading different equipment files depending on the specific scenario? Are we going to build factories and emulate the entire industry of a belligerent country instead of a simple trigger that gives any campaign designer a lot of creativity?
There is no trigger now inside in PGF and PGF UI. It will be implicated in PGF 2100. But now we can emulate this trigger using copy-paste!

For example, write a task in the next briefing:
"Dear digital Rommel! Since this adventure in North Africa began, your units have been entirely dependent on supplies from Italy, which the British strongly disagree with. Before this British counter-offensive, you received only 40% of the cargo you requested. Get out as best you can. Signature: "Your chief Adi and his assistant Franz". And instructions for the player: Please replace the equipment file with the more terrible one from the corresponding folder. "Speaking about AMMO and FUEL - forget about such concepts during this Scenario altogether".

Or: "When delivering cargo, our convoys managed to bypass all British submarines. Well, almost everything. Delivery of goods is ensured by 75%. Signature: "Chief Adi is waiting for the capture of Cairo". For the player - overwrite the equipment file with new one and enjoy even this 75%, because this is the last time you see so high AMMO and FUEL in this campaign. PS: "mischievous and boring Franz fired for realistic thinking."

For myself, I decided: how much AMMO I need in each scenario, so much will be. Looks like criminal voluntarism if you are not interested in the history of military production and logistics.

In next posts: ATY Firing Range and Unit's prices

Artillery

Range

In this thread, we just need statistics. And then a little fantasy. But not a lot of fantasy + some statistics. However, as we will see later, there is room for individual choice when creating your own equipment file.

Physics (scary word, but let it be):
The caliber of the gun gives it a certain range. In general, the firing range is also influenced by the metal from which the barrel is made; the vertical angle of fire is sometimes limited by the gun carriage, which must be re-designed if someone wants to shoot from this barrel at a longer distance; characteristics of explosives in the projectile; unitary or separate loading, which affects the rate of fire ...
None of this is provided for in the PGF model. But in this case, I do not feel robbed at all. Statistics will help!

Statistics say that most 105 mm guns fired at 10-12 km, even more. There have always been exceptions to the general rule, these are especially "incorrect" weapons that fired at 8-9 km. But if I statistically and mathematically sum up the number of "correct guns" produced during the Second World War and compare them with the number of "wrong" ones, then the only thing left to do is statistically laugh at the "wrong" number of guns.

Statistics say that most 150mm guns fired at 16-21 km, even more. There have always been exceptions to the general rule, this is a particularly wrong weapon that shot into the distance, well ... lousy ... But it suited the owners of this weapon until certain circumstances occurred.

Statistics can tell you something else about calibers 150, 170, 200 and above mm.
170 mm caliber's range is 20-25km, even 30 km depending from projectiles.
200 mm - 18 km - 32.5 km
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/203_mm_ho ... 1931_(B-4) - 18 km
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-inch_gun_M1 - 32.5 km
Wider statistical range, and more different individual characteristics for each gun and projectiles.

But... Symphony of Statistics needs listeners.
What is the point of talking about the firing range if, with the same firing range in hexes, a hex is 1 kilometer in one map scale, 5 kilometers in another, and 25 km in another? What wonderful music from statistics will we hear if we swap the musical notes?

I prefer to deal with a scale of 1 hex = 10km. Sometimes I can switch to a scale of 1 hex = 7-8 km. If someone has chosen a scale of 1 hex = 1-2-3 km, then serious work will be required to rework all ATYs and some AT Firing Ranges.
As we found out on the example of SSI maps, they also liked to play at a scale of 1 hex = 7-8-10 km.

Then the question is - how can the distance of artillery fire be historically correctly displayed here?

Answer: historically, it is impossible to display anything from artillery Fire Range here. A smaller scale is needed, at least 1 hex = 5 km.
At the same time, a counter question: why wouldn't someone just draw for free several maps of 300-800 x 500-800 km on a scale of 1 hex = 5 km for gaming use?
Everybody has been playing maps drawn by SSI for 25 years. There are very few new maps during 25 years, and at the same time, some of the new maps are drawn not on a scale of 1 hex = 5 km, but on a larger scale, in the tradition of SSI.
I tried to fix the situation a little, at least for testing some scenarios, drew one good large map at 1 hex = 2 km scale, and five good maps at 1 hex = 10-15 km scale ... but this is a free blob in the commercial sea ... One good 80 x 80 hex map requires 60-80 hours of very specific work.

Therefore, for now, I use the accumulated wealth that has already been created by SSI, by all respected modders and myself, and adhere to the SSI scale of 1 hex = 10 km.

If we go to a scale of 1 hex = 5 km, then a lot of work will also be required to determine the new MVT values. I'm not ready for this job yet. It's easier for me to experiment with the familiar 1:10 km map. And adjust the ATY Fire Range values to this scale. If someday maps of scale 1 hex = 5 km are suddenly made, the accumulated data can be easily adapted to a new higher quality scale.

Right now I'm just testing some things that may have some value in the future.

So, artillery basically statistically shoots at a distance:
75 mm - up to 12km (with a lot of exceptions to "-" side)
105 mm - up to 12-13 km (with some exceptions mainly to "+" side)
150 mm - mainly 17-18 km, and up to 20 km (with a some exceptions to both "+" and "-" sides)
170 mm and larger calibers - up to 33 km

On scale 1 hex = 7-8-10 km it mean, +/- 15% from overall kilometers, that Firing Range in hexes is:
11-12 km = 2 hexes
17-18 km = 3 hexes
22-24 km = 4 hexes
about 30 km and more = 5 hexes

If these data will be applied to scale 1 hex = 5 km, Firing range should be defined exactly in kilometers and precisiously in hexes +/- 10%.
Example:
Firing Range 8 km is equal to 2 hexes.
9 km can be equal to 2 or in some cases to 3 hexes.
13 km is equal to 3 hexes.
14.5 or 15.5 km can be equal to 3 or 4 hexes.
17 km should be equal to 4 hexes.
21 km should be equal to 4 hexes. Etc.

Let's go back to the existing scale of 1 hex = 10 km.
(To me, this scale is more and more somewhat reminiscent of outdated weapons of the First World War on wooden carriages, but there is no way to convert this existing map museum to something more modern now, keeping the dimensions of the original map).

Problem of scale 1 hex = 10 km

There at least one artillery gun that having "border" value is very important for history and the game in terms of Firing Range.
(We're not talking about self-propelled artillery yet. A much more serious task awaits us there!)

There is this example:
15 cm sFH 18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_cm_sFH_18
Maximum firing range = 13.325 m

This ATY unit provided me a quick victories in PGF ... if it fire on 3 hexes. If it fire on 2 hexes, then this gun should be sent to the PGF scrap yard... but Wehrmacht haven't any another gun to replace it.
Mathematically, it seems Firing Range to be formally "3" ... ok, almost "3".
May be. But...

In July 1941, the Wehrmacht captured several hundred ML-20 guns from the Red Army in Bialystok. With ten ammunition sets for each gun.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/152_mm_ho ... 37_(ML-20)

In the early stage of the German invasion of the Soviet Union hundreds of ML-20 were captured by the Wehrmacht. The gun was adopted by Germans as 15.2 cm KH.433/1(r). From February 1943 Germans manufactured ammunition for the gun.

ML-20 firing range is 17.23 km.
The Germans very quickly realized that the 15 cm sFH 18 gun was very inferior in counter-battery fire against Soviet artillery.
But if 15 sFH 18 will have in PGF Firing Range = 3 ... why Germans will need Soviet garbage ML-20?
If 15 sFH 18 Firing Range in PGF will be only 2 hexes ... oh, thanks to smart stupid Soviets for miracle gun ML-20!

I find, and in particular due to the variable scale of some PGF maps, that rather than a linear scale some sort of a square root based scale works the best. Same for movement etc. Of course, if someone is willing to redraw the whole PGF "world" to a consistent scale, this would allow us to switch to linear.

Currently, after a lot of fiddling and experimentation i arrived at the following formula to calculate artillery ranges:

Range = SQRT (range in meters / 1912), rounded to 0 decimals.

If we look at the numbers, this comes down to:

R=0 0 -> 477m
R=1 478 -> 4301m
R=2 4302 -> 11949m
R=3 11950 -> 23421m
R=4 23422 -> 38717m
R=5 38718 -> 57834m

And so on. This same scale would result in R=8 for the infamous Paris Gun of WW1, R=13 for a V-2 rocket (if we treat it as a rocket artillery, not an "aircraft" flying about the map).

So roughly, everything that is being fired over open sights (below about 4.5km which is near the distance to horizon on level ground) is R=1 or below, everything that can fire "behind the horizon" up to about 12 km is R=2, between 12 and 23~24 km is R=3, up to (roughly) 40km (and we're already into battleship territory here) is R=4, and above this is R=5.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-18 17:56, Tuesday I find, and in particular due to the variable scale of some PGF maps, that rather than a linear scale some sort of a square root based scale works the best. Same for movement etc. Of course, if someone is willing to redraw the whole PGF "world" to a consistent scale, this would allow us to switch to linear.

Currently, after a lot of fiddling and experimentation i arrived at the following formula to calculate artillery ranges:

Range = SQRT (range in meters / 1912), rounded to 0 decimals.

If we look at the numbers, this comes down to:

R=0 0 -> 477m
R=1 478 -> 4301m
R=2 4302 -> 11949m
R=3 11950 -> 23421m
R=4 23422 -> 38717m
R=5 38718 -> 57834m

And so on. This same scale would result in R=8 for the infamous Paris Gun of WW1, R=13 for a V-2 rocket (if we treat it as a rocket artillery, not an "aircraft" flying about the map).

So roughly, everything that is being fired over open sights (below about 4.5km which is near the distance to horizon on level ground) is R=1 or below, everything that can fire "behind the horizon" up to about 12 km is R=2, between 12 and 23~24 km is R=3, up to (roughly) 40km (and we're already into battleship territory here) is R=4, and above this is R=5.

And your approach is not devoid of logic ... here you can only admire what tricks amateurs with limited resources can resort to to solve a global problem.

Of course, if someone is willing to redraw the whole PGF "world" to a consistent scale, this would allow us to switch to linear.

This is the real key to solving the problem.
The price of the issue is calculated based on the number of maps required + brain work to create a new PGF 2030.

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-18 07:37, TuesdayAnd you can really implement this and create an improved version of the exe file? I need to think about what needs to be fixed in some types of MVT.

Yes ! By all means. You've already taken the first requisite steps by getting hold of a hex-editor. Practice makes perfect. By the way, content designers who absolutely refuse to get their... hexadecimal hands dirty, are allowing the 10-year period subject to the "statute of PGF limitations" to continue stifling their content design creativity.

HexCode wrote: ↑2021-05-18 19:32, Tuesday

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-18 07:37, TuesdayAnd you can really implement this and create an improved version of the exe file? I need to think about what needs to be fixed in some types of MVT.

Yes ! By all means. You've already taken the first requisite steps by getting hold of a hex-editor. Practice makes perfect. By the way, content designers who absolutely refuse to get their... hexadecimal hands dirty, are allowing the 10-year period subject to the "statute of PGF limitations" to continue stifling their content design creativity.

Thank you! I will improve my primitive skills. When I'm done with the weapon parameters, I'll return to the MVT topic

Artillery

Initiative

The parameter depends on the geographic region and landscape.

Infantry and tanks attack artillery in the desert. Who will shoot first? It is clear that artillery will be the first to open fire at a distance of several kilometers, because the targets are clearly visible from afar.

But what if tanks and infantry attack artillery on such a typical North Eastern European and Baltic landscape?


I do not see anything wrong with the fact that for some scenarios or even campaigns there will be different equipment files with different INI values for artillery.

In scenarios taking place in steppes and deserts, artillery should have a HIGHER INI parameter than in forests, bushes and swamps.

Artillery and Anti-tank guns

Defense

Very briefly here:
all DEFENSE parameters for towed artillery (including anti-tank ones) = almost always near zero for ATY, or slightly more than zero for AT, depending on the characteristics of a particular gun.

AT guns

Soft Attack

I believe that the reader is sufficiently educated, and knows that infantry is fired not with armor-piercing, but with high-explosive fragmentation shells. Inside which there is an explosive, and outside a fragmentation shell.

The weight of the explosive in the 37 mm AT gun's fragmentation projectile (3.7 cm KwK 36 or the same gun in the field version Pak 36, or Bofors, or 2 pounder gun) is approximately 40-45 grams.
HE projectile for 45 mm AT gun contained about 80-110 grams of explosive.

The ammunition sets (per day) of the guns has already been considered here:
viewtopic.php?f=95&t=467&start=100#p9698

Let me remind you that the Wehrmacht infantry division of 1-2 waves of mobilization (the most powerful divisions, model 1935) had 36 anti-tank guns in its staff, and 48 field guns: 36 105 mm guns and 12 150 mm guns.
That is, 36 37 mm anti-tank guns (three artillery divisions with three batteries in each division, 4 guns per battery) are some kind of unit more or less comparable to the division's scale.
Artillery regiment/brigade is equal about 48 guns.

Now for a simple calculation:
AT 37mm-45mm guns regiment of 48 guns fired 48 x 150 = 7200 HE projectiles per day.

A Wehrmacht infantryman's grenade, Stielhandgranate, contained 180 grams of explosive. Soviet RGD-33 grenade contained 140 grams of explosive. In INF division was about 6000-8000 infantrymen. Each infantryman in average had one or two grenades.
Even if we simply compare the weight of the explosive in 7200 projectiles with the weight of the same substance in grenades, then 48 anti-tank guns of 37-45mm caliber already have an SA value three to eight times weaker than an infantry division's unit. But the infantry was also armed with mortars and small arms!
The transition to the scale of a battalion (9 in a division) and a division of 8-12 guns does not change anything.

SOFT ATTACK of AT guns 25-37-45 mm should be 4-6 times less than INF SA. It mean "1" or "0".

And only starting with calibers 57 and especially 76mm anti-tank artillery becomes a really serious threat to the infantry.

Separately should be considered guns 20-37mm, firing automatically at a rate of 170-200 or more rounds per minute. But if you think about it, then miracles in SA should not be expected here, since the projectiles do not have fragmentation damaging effects.
Such an automatic gun is just a slow, large-caliber machine gun. If it hits, then the infantryman is immediately finished. But it’s easier to get there from an ordinary, much faster-firing machine gun, of which there were two or three dozen even in the battalion ...

AT guns

Hard Attack

The parameter is generally fine tuned by both SSI and modders.

Since an anti-tank gun, using its armor-piercing shells, competes exclusively with tanks and the same calibers and shells, it is quite logical that the HA of the same type of guns in the field and in the tank are equal. I would like to slightly increase HA for AT guns compared with the same type gun installed in tanks ... The reasons are very simple: it is worse to see from the tank, it is more difficult to aim from the tank.
And, of course, when setting the parameter, the tables of the armor penetration of shells at distances of up to 1, maximum up to 2-3 km are important, and not the maximum firing range.

Artillery and Anti-tanks: self-propelled weapons

One global PGF problem has put me now under more stress than minor problems like various viruses and global inflation.

It is the Self-propelled ATY and AT units in PGF.

I was looking for a simple solution of this problem. This solution was already sought by dozens of talented modders before me, and even ... writers. I am 99.9% sure that there is no simple solution, which are correct within existing PGF engine.

The theoretical basis of this problem is well described in a children's tale: "The Beginning of the Armadillos" by Rudyard Kipling's.

The ethical principles of the player in following certain rules of the game when dealing with the Self-propelled ATY/AT problem can be formulated as, "And you can play fair to yourself, right?"

The technical principles can be formulated as, "There just aren't a couple of triggers and some lines of code in the PGF exe file code right now. They will be implemented in PGF2100 only".

Why should I assume, when solving a problem, that a player will behave dishonestly? I don't want to be that way. Can a player abide by certain rules not spelled out in the PGF engine when purchasing a new unit? My answer: YES.

Why do I always have to worry that the creators of PG1 and PGF forgot such an important thing as assigning some unit Organic transport not as a whole class at once, but with the ability to prescribe specific numbers of transport units? It mean certain ATYs cannot be moved at all by certain transports but only by transport with proper towing power. And in case of certain mutant units which should only be able to get one specific type of transport.

Because self-propelled ATY/AT can only be realised correctly in game with

Dual-purpose units

One important note:
The AI will not be able to use such invented and deployed by scenario designer units with full effectiveness. Most likely, the AI will only use such units "halfway", in main basic mode. As it does now in game.
And AI will not be able to buy such dual-purpose units. And vice versa, AI probably will start buying inappropriate vehicles for inappropriate units. So for now, until PGF2100 is released, the possibility of such improper organic transport purchases should be taken away from the AI.


But there is no problem in using dual units in a game in H2H mode of two holy players playing "without cheating or cheats" and, I'll repeat again, in "honest smart Player playing against the same fool AI" mode.

By the way, the idea and principles of using dual-purpose units gives rise to the following idea: dual AMMO. Yes, almost all ground units should have separated SA AMMO and HA AMMO...
And at the same time, we can also give at least dual AMMO for all classes of air units.
Fighter sometimes can attack ground targets with the small quantity of bombs/rockets, but mainly will use for attacks same AMMO as fighter use against other air targets. Probably we can "merge" HA/SA/Air Attack AMMO in one AMMO set
But bombers should have two types of AMMO: to attack ground targets and to fight in the air. Each attack to ground unit will decrease Bomber's ground AMMO and air attacks will ask to spend air AMMO.
Maybe, while waiting for PGF2100, this idea can be implemented already now ... in Open General?


But for now let's go back to the self-propelled artillery and shoot on the ground targets.

Armored "boxes" (what else would you call a chassis without turrets? ) on tracks during World War II were divided into four categories (ABCD):

A) Good field gun or howitzer, with some anti-tank capabilities, and lightly armored fighting compartment
Examples: Bison, Bishop, SU-76, Hummel
B) Good field gun with very good anti-tank capabilities, or very good anti-tank gun with relatively good field gun capabilities, and medium or heavy armored fighting compartment
Exmaples: Stug III Ausf B-E, Stug III Ausf F-G, M7 Priest, SU-85, ISU-152

Both categories had relatively large barrel's elevation. Not as large as a "native" field gun on a towed carriage, but quite significant (20, or even 30-40 degrees). This meant that self-propelled boxes of categories A and B could shoot far enough, to 4-5 kilometers.
The "A" guns were mainly used as artillery, and only occasionally as anti-tank guns.
The "B" guns were used almost equally as artillery and anti-tank guns.
Military historians have called these categories: self-propelled artillery, assault gun.

I will return to the subject of categories "A" and "B" and their implementation in the game a little later. I'll continue with the "boxes:

С) Good anti-tank gun and lightly armored fighting compartment
Examples: Panzerjager I, Nashorn, Archer, Semovente da 90/53
D) Good anti-tank gun and heavy armored fighting compartment
Examples: SU-100, Jagdpanther, Jagdtiger
Both categories "C" and "D" were mostly used as self-propelled anti-tanks.
Military historians have called these categories: tank destroyer, tank hunter, tank killer, self-propelled anti-tank. Then, to make everything crystal clear to us, they added some strange lightly armored but heavily armed boxes with turrets to these tank killers .

In fact, you could make an assault weapon out of almost the entire list of "hunters" and "killers". This was not done for the same reason that a bar of gold or an expensive frying pan is generally not used as a hammer. But it is technically possible to use it.

If we had two types of AMMO, the player could choose which projectiles to load the unit with when he pressed "Supply" button. Naturally, the option should not be free in case if Player decided to change projectiles type comparing with standard.
For example, the standard ammo of the T-34-85 tank consisted of 55 shells: high-explosive - 36, armor-piercing - 14, sub-caliber - 5.
This means that, for example, the standard AMMO=8 must be divided by SA AMMO=5 and HA AMMO=3.
But Matilda MkIIA Ammo set was 67 projectiles. All 67 rounds were armor-piercing! For Matilda SA AMMO parameter depends only from machine guns.

!!! Unfortunately, I could not find data on the composition of ammunition for any other tanks or self-propelled guns. Either this is a military secret, or no historian is interested in this data. Only WoT players are interested in ammo composition, but we can't use some strange data without verification... So please to all who meet somewhere data on the composition of ammo different tanks, share this information !!!

I highly doubt that the ammunition of the super-hunters, those truly "golden pans," included HE fragmentation shells in any significant quantities.
That is, these golden pans became "hunters" when armor-piercing shells were loaded into "hunter". HA AMMO=7 and SA AMMO=1...
But we haven't separated AMMOs!
However the fact that armor-piercing shells occupied the space that was occupied by HE fragmentation shells in the tank also matters here... in existing PGF engine for categories "C" and "D" real AMMO quantity in self-propelled anti-tank vehicle affecting Hard Attack parameter!
Let's imagine that against a T-34 tank unit with 19 anti-tank shells each there would be a Jagdpanther unit with 57 anti-tank shells... Let's be realistic, the Jagdpanther has three times the chance to deliver a lethal blow.

Tanks are needed for the offensive. When you don't know where the target is and you have to look around. When you don't know what type of target, but you might come across a fortified point or an enemy artillery battery, and different types of shells will be needed.
"Hunter" will not get to an enemy artillery battery. And the advancing enemy does not have heavily fortified points. The "hunter" doesn't have to look around much. He waits and strikes. It is a weapon of defense. In offensive it was used in mass when Allied began to lag behind Germany in tank building (1943-1944). In 1945 the tanks of the warring parties became equal again, if not even with a qualitative advantage in favor of the Allies.

And, in general, all these "hunters" are not anti-tank self-propelled artillery, but just specific tanks. In my opinion, it is much easier to retrain a tanker from a tank to a self-propelled vehicle than it is to teach a towed anti-tank gunner to become a tanker of a self-propelled vehicle.

The parameters for categories "C" and "D" I see are as follows:
Class = Tank
Very high HA.
Very high INI, more than for tanks to emulate firing from distances 1-2 km.
Large AMMO.
Very low SA.
Very low Air Defense.
Zero Air Attack.
The main enemies of the "hunters" are infantry and aviation. Lightly armored hunters must be very sensitive to artillery strikes.

To be continued about "A" and "B", and wheeled "C" ...

Maybe this helps:

75mm gun armed Sherman tanks in Europe carried a mix of about 70% HE, 20% AP and 10% white phosphorus rounds (depending on the version the total ammo capacity was 90, 98 or 104 rounds)

76mm Shermans had 70% HE, 25% AP, 5% sub-caliber (total 77 rounds)

US tank destroyers (M10, M18, M36) 20% HE, 60% AP, 20% sub-caliber

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 04:47, Monday Maybe this helps:

75mm gun armed Sherman tanks in Europe carried a mix of about 70% HE, 20% AP and 10% white phosphorus rounds (depending on the version the total ammo capacity was 90, 98 or 104 rounds)

76mm Shermans had 70% HE, 25% AP, 5% sub-caliber (total 77 rounds)

US tank destroyers (M10, M18, M36) 20% HE, 60% AP, 20% sub-caliber

Excellent data! Thank You a lot, Radoye!
Exactly what it takes to no longer doubt the proper use of "golden pans" on the battlefield

I don't think it's hard to do a virtual battle between Shermans or T-34s, and "hunters" now. Tanks will very quickly have nothing to shoot at armored targets. Of course, when you run out of AP rounds, no one prevents you from firing HE shells at the hunters in the hope of damaging the sights, tracks, and then ... finish off the blind and motionless "killers" with infantry, or just retreat and call for air help.

I even assume this: in the Battle of Kursk the German heavy tanks had more HE rounds than at the end of the war. Well, as long as the Germans had a choice of what to load at all...
While there is no double AMMO in the game, you can think about this option: the unit "Universal tank Tiger 1943" with parameters, for example, HA=18 SA=12, and the unit "Antitank tank Tiger 1944", HA=24 SA=6. For more money in PP currency for the Player, it is possible to fulfill any wish.

In my battle with the parameters, started without a plan, this plan gradually emerged: make the units more specialized. To get away from the boredom of the game that universal super-units create.

This boredom in the form of an edible product was slipped to us by the SSI guys in PG1. At the end of the game from all the variety of units the Player creates a universal super-army: King Tigers and three or four Panthers; infantry all the same, like regiments at the Friedrich the Great parade; behind the army rides a crowd of evil Hummels; and only in the air there is some biological diversity of winged mechanisms.

I'll try to make some variety. The basic principle: no unit should be universal. However, there were no such units in reality. Each unit was good within its specialization. Narrow or broad, but still SPECIALIZATION.

Yeah, it was the US Army doctrine that tank is to fight against infantry and tank destroyer to fight against tanks. They thought that having a specialized tool for every job is preferable to having a "swiss army knife" type of a tool for every job.

Unfortunately in practice this turned out bad because even though a specialized tool for the job is better at that particular job than a compromise tool that can do everything, often the enemy would not cooperate and you would end up with only the wrong type of a vehicle available.

(Which in end led us to the concept of a Main Battle Tank that we have today - one vehicle that can do it all)

To make things even more interesting, in the Pacific where US tanks were faced with crappy Japanese paper thin tanks, they found that AP rounds would go all the way through (exit at the back), and that the HE rounds were sufficient to kill most Japanese tanks. So they carried 95% HE.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 14:51, Monday Yeah, it was the US Army doctrine that tank is to fight against infantry and tank destroyer to fight against tanks. They thought that having a specialized tool for every job is preferable to having a "swiss army knife" type of a tool for every job.

The point here is that I have described Soviet Army doctrine . And I happen to be describing American doctrine as well. I cannot say anything about English doctrine, because as usual the English decided to keep tactfully silent . Generally speaking, the concept of "tanks attacking" is that of any army that plans to attack rather than sit in ambushes.
The general problem of the Allied forces in early 1943 with the appearance of the Tigers and Panthers was very clear: all available tanks were crap. And something had to be done. A good tank was needed. But it takes time to invent a tank, and you have to fight and attack now. It is very easy to invent a self-propelled vehicle on an old chassis. We take away a good turret, due to that we get a reserve of several tons of weight, we put a more powerful gun. This is the Soviet version. The Americans took another way - to remove the armor as much as possible, and to install a more powerful gun. Yes, as a result of such decision it was clear at once that the combat losses when meeting with modern German tanks would be considerable. But the Allied countries had both mobilization and industrial potential, which by the end of 1943 completely exceeded German potential.
The creation of ersatz tanks (aka "killers", "fighters") bought time at the cost of losses. Neither American nor Soviet industry rested during this period, but worked to create a MASS PRODUCTION tank more powerful than German new tanks.
What the in U.S. lied to the voters about their next war doctrine is not important now. In the USSR government didn't lie anything, they just ordered - now, in 1943-1944, the army should fight German tanks on these boxes. Because there are no others. If you want to survive and win, fight on these.
No one said in U.S. to people: you know, we should be in Berlin before the Communists. Instead of this: "That's just our doctrine now to use strange "hunters" in attacks". After one or two years told: "Oh, sorry for all... but now we have a good tank".
The only truth here is that the Allied armies had no alternative to German tanks. But as a result of this forced compromise between resources, voters, conscience and military realities, by the spring of 1945 the USSR and the USA were ready to mass produce (in hundreds per month) such tanks on the battlefield, as not quite brought up to standard condition, but already suitable for equal combat with Tigers and Panthers M26 (US) and IS-3(USSR).
And are Tiger and Panther were immediately fully combat-ready and did not have a lot of minor problems?
We should not forget about such a nuance as mobility and the ability to move over long distances. The U.S. and Soviet Union were building full-fledged mobile tanks, which, in case of extra-need, could easily be over-armored. But then how to attack? The Germans in 1944-1945 were no longer interested in attacking hundreds of kilometers ahead, so they could afford to make a tank something much more armored and heavy.
Before discussing the weaknesses of these new U.S. and Soviet tanks (and German tanks didn't have any weaknesses in 1945?), it's worth considering this question - what new tanks would Germany have produced in 1946? In 1947? Nothing new, still the same "big cat" family. Overloaded undercarriage, no new engines even in prototypes, or industry is no longer able to master mass production of new engines.
The German tank industry in 1944-1945 was already behind (sic!) the industry of the Allied countries. In 1946-47 this lag would manifest itself in full measure.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 14:51, Monday Unfortunately in practice this turned out bad because even though a specialized tool for the job is better at that particular job than a compromise tool that can do everything, often the enemy would not cooperate and you would end up with only the wrong type of a vehicle available.

(Which in end led us to the concept of a Main Battle Tank that we have today - one vehicle that can do it all)

That's right. We finished off the Germans, got a few years to improve the tanks, and the world returned to the state of usual war.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 14:51, Monday To make things even more interesting, in the Pacific where US tanks were faced with crappy Japanese paper thin tanks, they found that AP rounds would go all the way through (exit at the back), and that the HE rounds were sufficient to kill most Japanese tanks. So they carried 95% HE.

Yes, light tanks are best hit with HE rounds from large caliber guns.

The concept of "light tank" is relative, as is "large caliber". For example, for the 152mm caliber, the Tiger tank was generally... quite light.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISU-152#H ... _destroyer
"However, the massive blast effect from the heavy high-explosive warhead was capable of blowing the turret completely off a Tiger tank. A direct hit usually destroyed or damaged the target's tracks and suspension, immobilizing it."

Actually the American concept of tanks as infantry support vehicles and tank destroyers as something that is supposed to deal with anything a tank can't predates WW2 and American experience with German tanks. They M4 Sherman chassis was ready to accept larger guns (without much problem, as it turned out) and such guns were available, but it was a political decision to arm them with the short 75 mm "peashooter" because that's all one would need for infantry support.

As soon as this was shown insufficient (because the Germans wouldn't play nice and would send tanks against US tanks, not waiting politely for a tank destroyer to show up) the US started putting the longer more powerful 76mm gun on Shermans. Even though tank was still primarily seen as an infantry support vehicle this gave them good enough performance against all but the heaviest of the German tanks.

Now, the British went one step further and used their 17pdr gun which, although also 76mm, was even longer and more powerful than the American gun, and also piled on additional armor to create the Sherman Firefly which could hold its own even against Panthers and Tigers. Which means that weight wasn't an issue, because even with a larger heavier gun the Sherman chassis could take on additional armor (as it was later proven with the American M4A3E2 "Jumbo" heavily armored assault variant). Which means technically they could've built the M10 tank destroyer (at least, maybe even the M36!) with a conventional closed turret making it into a true tank, but they decided not to.

So the decision to initially have the M4 tanks armed with a short 75mm gun thus making them ineffective against tanks was not due to inadequate technology but purely political, as it was the decision to build tank destroyers with open top turrets because they will never fight against infantry so no danger someone would throw a hand grenade or a molotov at them.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 16:33, Monday Actually the American concept of tanks as infantry support vehicles and tank destroyers as something that is supposed to deal with anything a tank can't predates WW2 and American experience with German tanks. They M4 Sherman chassis was ready to accept larger guns (without much problem, as it turned out) and such guns were available, but it was a political decision to arm them with the short 75 mm "peashooter" because that's all one would need for infantry support.

Maybe. Or maybe not, but it's just now being told that way. It doesn't matter to me.
Before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe on September 1, 1939, every army in the world, except the German army, had ten battle concepts and a hundred theorists defending each concept as the only correct one.

Self-propelled ATY in USSR army in 1930? It's not fantastic. https://topwar.ru/89550-sau-vtorogo-esh ... -su-2.html
AT gun on wheeled truck in 1934? https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D0%A3-4
Tank killer in USSR, 1934? https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%90%D0 ... %90%D0%A3)

Between September 1, 1939, and June 22, 1941, the number of concepts greatly decreased. June 22, 1941 filtered out almost all the garbage, and 1943 finally put everything in its place.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 16:33, Monday So the decision to initially have the M4 tanks armed with a short 75mm gun thus making them ineffective against tanks was not due to inadequate technology but purely political, as it was the decision to build tank destroyers with open top turrets because they will never fight against infantry so no danger someone would throw a hand grenade or a molotov at them.

The decision could have been:
Political with a domestic political connotation
Economic, based on the domestic budget
Foreign-political based on economics
Economic based on foreign policy
Idiotic
Too clever
Scientifically unreasonable
Other

Choose any explanation

The British and French doctrine called for two distinct "family trees" of tanks:

- The so called Infantry Tank which was very heavily armored bus slow, often not much faster than marching infantry because these were envisioned to fight side-by-side with foot infantry so speed was not needed; similar to the Americans, these would often be armed with low velocity howitzers, but often they would carry an additional light AT gun (or only have an AT gun).

- The Cavalry or Cruiser Tank which was lightly armored but fast and nimble, to be used in a role similar to cavalry of the old; these were initially armed with light AT guns only (no HE shells) with guns progressively getting bigger as the war progressed.

(there have been some additional side-branches, like the heavy breakthrough tank, the close support tank etc but the two described above were the main)

In the end the two concepts started merging towards an "universal tank" - basically a MBT - with large caliber high velocity guns capable of both good AT and HE performance. Because just like the Americans, the British came to realize that a "swiss army knife" might often be more useful than a machete or a surgical scalpel, depending on a situation.

Even Germans originally started out with two distinct families of tanks (at least that was the plan, in reality early in the war they used anything they had, which were mostly light (pzII) and training (pzI) vehicles). PzIII was envisioned as a tank-to-tank vehicle with a 37mm (later 50mm) antitank gun, where PzIV was to be an infantry support tank with a short 75mm howitzer (same as in StuGIIIb).

Ironically, as PzIII was proven unable to accept larger guns the roles later reversed, PzIV receiving a long 75mm gun giving it an AT capability and PzIII ended up carrying the short 75mm howitzer.

randowe wrote: ↑2021-01-14 02:47, Thursday

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-01-14 00:44, Thursday As I know now - pls someone correct me - wermacht haven't possibility to cross very wide rivers.

Depends on what you mean by "crossing" a river. The Wehrmacht had rail transportable Pionierlandungsboote (kl. Labo 39/40/41) with capacity of 20t - 40t or would use Sturmboote (le. Stubo 39) to cross rivers. The Sturmboot can carry 2 crew and about 7 or 8 men or so.
They had some havier equipment too, but i am not sure if all of them were transportable by rail. So basically they could cross "all" rivers.

Dnepr crossing at Kremenchuk:

I was very interested in the carrying capacity of this bridge.
I went over the old stuff, read again Franz Halder's "War Journal", volume VI. Historical Division, SSUSA. Document No. N-16845-F
http://militera.lib.ru/db/halder_eng/index.html

July 20, 1940.

Worries of the Army Gp.
(f) Bridge-building equipment for the Dnieper crossing. Army Gp. believes that it be able to build only one 16-ton and one 8-ton bridge across the river.

I have no more questions about the load capacity of this bridge.
But how Pz III and Pz IV tanks would cross the river is the question...

But the light tanks in the offensive - now it's kind of clear why the Wehrmacht had them...

But Germany had the best cartography in the world since the 19th century! The Germans in WW2 knew everything, and even specially prepared routes over bridges over rivers for the super-heavy tank!

http://tank-photographs.s3-website-eu-w ... tiger.html
"The engine was underpowered and the weight of the king Tiger meant that bridges had to be tested before they could cross."

- Voice of the skeptic: Germans knew everything in the occupied territory when they were defending themselves. Then, too, the King Tiger became quite a mobile tank... but in 1941, in Russia... light tanks served good until destroyed by AT guns...

Franz Halder, 25 July 1941
[This text is from Гальдер Ф. Военный дневник. Ежедневные записи начальника Генерального штаба Сухопутных войск 1939-1942 гг.— Военное издательство Министерства обороны СССР, 1968-1971: [3] Том III. От начала восточной кампании до наступления на Сталинград (22.06.1941 — 24.09.1942) / Пер. с нем. И.Глаголева, коммент. полк. К. Черемухина— М.:Воениздат, 1971 ≡ Bd. 3. Der Russlandfeldzug bis zum Marsch auf Stalingrad (22.6.1941—24.9.1942) — Stuttgart: W.Kohlhammer Vl, 1964. — 589 S.

Text in Russian:

3. Местность. Карты ни о чем не говорят. Разведка дорог с воздуха! Предварительная разведка с воздуха даже в интересах квартирмейстерской службы.

Автострады!

Не годится, когда нам докладывают, что местность для нас непроходима, а противник оттуда постоянно ведет контратаки.

Translation:

3. Terrain. The maps tell us nothing. Aerial reconnaissance of the roads! Preliminary aerial reconnaissance even in the interest of the Quartermaster's Service.

Highways!

It is no good when we are told that the terrain is impassable for us and that the enemy is constantly counterattacking from there.

In my opinion, in such a situation, when there are not even maps, a tank with its limited visibility would not be a very good offensive device... so theorists before the war did what they could to avoid dependence on aerial reconnaissance and spies

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-24 16:57, Monday Maybe. Or maybe not, but it's just now being told that way. It doesn't matter to me.
Before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe on September 1, 1939, every army in the world, except the German army, had ten battle concepts and a hundred theorists defending each concept as the only correct one.

Well in 1939 Americans almost had more different tank designs than actual combat ready tanks in their armed forces . Due to the Great Depression they did not maintain a large armored force at the time but all that experimentation came to a result that the designs they accepted often used common interchangeable components making them easy to mass-produce and maintain. Also, the dimensions of their vehicles were standardized so that they optimally fit into ships and railway carriages for transport - in a typical American fashion efficiency was emphasized to the maximum possible extent.

But they really didn't need many tanks and other vehicles in 1939, because there was no threat that someone with tanks could attack them. It helps being isolated on another continent.

Having observed what took place in Europe in 1939 and 1940, in April 1941 the Americans concluded that separate mobile tank destroyer battalions attached to infantry divisions were needed to deal with the threat of Blitzkrieg-style armored assaults, so they developed specialized vehicle types to fit this role. These were organized as artillery, in batteries, and were given open turrets to allow better field of vision for the crew to easier spot for targets. This was not seen as a shortcoming because in theory they were supposed to only fight tanks, and never come to contact with enemy infantry. In reality of course this was not the case so the crews often improvised by welding steel plates to create turret tops thus giving them some kind of protection from above.

And since this had the fight against the enemy tanks fully covered, the field manuals for using tanks (M3 Lee, M4 Sherman etc) mostly focused on the infantry support role. Now, M3 had the same low velocity 75mm gun (mounted in the hull) like M4, but in addition it also had a turret-mounted 37mm AT gun; M4 only had the 75mm gun which was quite good against light tanks proved to be ineffective against medium and heavy ones. But they didn't really needed a better gun, since it wasn't their job to deal with enemy tanks, the field manuals said so (only one page out of 142 for "The Tank Battalion, Light and Medium" field manual discussed tank-to-tank combat). For the same reason, tank design that were available at the time that offered better tank-to-tank performance were not put into service, being blocked by people in charge of procurement for the Army as they didn't see the need for better tanks when tank destroyers were supposed to do this job (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesley_J._McNair ).

So in the end as a compromise M4 Sherman received a slightly better gun.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 17:10, Monday The British and French doctrine called for two distinct "family trees" of tanks:

- The so called Infantry Tank which was very heavily armored bus slow, often not much faster than marching infantry because these were envisioned to fight side-by-side with foot infantry so speed was not needed; similar to the Americans, these would often be armed with low velocity howitzers, but often they would carry an additional light AT gun (or only have an AT gun).

- The Cavalry or Cruiser Tank which was lightly armored but fast and nimble, to be used in a role similar to cavalry of the old; these were initially armed with light AT guns only (no HE shells) with guns progressively getting bigger as the war progressed.

(there have been some additional side-branches, like the heavy breakthrough tank, the close support tank etc but the two described above were the main)

In the end the two concepts started merging towards an "universal tank" - basically a MBT - with large caliber high velocity guns capable of both good AT and HE performance. Because just like the Americans, the British came to realize that a "swiss army knife" might often be more useful than a machete or a surgical scalpel, depending on a situation.

I have read a lot about these doctrines.
The French didn't have time to turn the doctrine into anything serious. But there was already a start in 1939.
The British were asleep at the start for a long time, then by 1945 they almost caught up with the Soviet and American tanks of the 1944 model. The British did not compete with the Wehrmacht because it was already too difficult

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 17:15, Monday Even Germans originally started out with two distinct families of tanks (at least that was the plan, in reality early in the war they used anything they had, which were mostly light (pzII) and training (pzI) vehicles). PzIII was envisioned as a tank-to-tank vehicle with a 37mm (later 50mm) antitank gun, where PzIV was to be an infantry support tank with a short 75mm howitzer (same as in StuGIIIb).

Ironically, as PzIII was proven unable to accept larger guns the roles later reversed, PzIV receiving a long 75mm gun giving it an AT capability and PzIII ended up carrying the short 75mm howitzer.

As far as I understood from the books, the PzIV had a better chassis, allowing you to attach more stuff later on.
Why it happened, whether it was the best choice between the two types of chassis, and who was to blame... I'm not seriously interested. Historical-technical intrigue is not my profile. Well, it happened, so it happened... I am more interested in analyzing the consequences of these "accidentally happened" events.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 18:00, Monday

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-24 16:57, Monday Maybe. Or maybe not, but it's just now being told that way. It doesn't matter to me.
Before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe on September 1, 1939, every army in the world, except the German army, had ten battle concepts and a hundred theorists defending each concept as the only correct one.

Well in 1939 Americans almost had more different tank designs than actual combat ready tanks in their armed forces . Due to the Great Depression they did not maintain a large armored force at the time but all that experimentation came to a result that the designs they accepted often used common interchangeable components making them easy to mass-produce and maintain. Also, the dimensions of their vehicles were standardized so that they optimally fit into ships and railway carriages for transport - in a typical American fashion efficiency was emphasized to the maximum possible extent.

But they really didn't need many tanks and other vehicles in 1939, because there was no threat that someone with tanks could attack them. It helps being isolated on another continent.

Having observed what took place in Europe in 1939 and 1940, in April 1941 the Americans concluded that separate mobile tank destroyer battalions attached to infantry divisions were needed to deal with the threat of Blitzkrieg-style armored assaults, so they developed specialized vehicle types to fit this role. These were organized as artillery, in batteries, and were given open turrets to allow better field of vision for the crew to easier spot for targets. This was not seen as a shortcoming because in theory they were supposed to only fight tanks, and never come to contact with enemy infantry. In reality of course this was not the case so the crews often improvised by welding steel plates to create turret tops thus giving them some kind of protection from above.

And since this had the fight against the enemy tanks fully covered, the field manuals for using tanks (M3 Lee, M4 Sherman etc) mostly focused on the infantry support role. Now, M3 had the same low velocity 75mm gun (mounted in the hull) like M4, but in addition it also had a turret-mounted 37mm AT gun; M4 only had the 75mm gun which was quite good against light tanks proved to be ineffective against medium and heavy ones. But they didn't really needed a better gun, since it wasn't their job to deal with enemy tanks, the field manuals said so (only one page out of 142 for "The Tank Battalion, Light and Medium" field manual discussed tank-to-tank combat). For the same reason, tank design that were available at the time that offered better tank-to-tank performance were not put into service, being blocked by people in charge of procurement for the Army as they didn't see the need for better tanks when tank destroyers were supposed to do this job (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesley_J._McNair ).

So in the end as a compromise M4 Sherman received a slightly better gun.

A normal, practical approach. The Americans watched the Wehrmacht victories won with real scrap metal like the PzIIIE and PzIIC, and really thought they had strengthened their armed forces with both theory and steel.
By the way, the Red Army thought so too

Yes, PzIV chassis allowed for mounting a larger diameter turret ring needed for bigger guns. PzIII couldn't be modified so they switched the roles.


In addition:

US M3 Medium (Lee / Grant): 46 rounds of 75mm ammunition - all HE; 178 rounds of 37mm ammunition (all AP); 9200 rounds of .30cal machine gun ammo.

M4(105): 66 rounds, all HEAT

Sherman Firefly VC (British variant with 17pdr) - 60% HE, 30% AP, 10% sub-caliber
Comet (77mm QF, shorter version of 17pdr) - 60% HE, 20% AP, 20% sub-caliber

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 18:27, Monday Yes, PzIV chassis allowed for mounting a larger diameter turret ring needed for bigger guns. PzIII couldn't be modified so they switched the roles.

Yes, this is sort of the main factor that played a decisive role in 1943.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 18:36, Monday US M3 Medium (Lee / Grant): 46 rounds of 75mm ammunition - all HE; 178 rounds of 37mm ammunition (all AP); 9200 rounds of .30cal machine gun ammo.

M4(105): 66 rounds, all HEAT

Sherman Firefly VC (British variant with 17pdr) - 60% HE, 30% AP, 10% sub-caliber
Comet (77mm QF, shorter version of 17pdr) - 60% HE, 20% AP, 20% sub-caliber

Thank you so much for the information!
Russian historians are silent on this topic ... Well, read the PGF forum, in five years another super-new study will come out ...

On AMMO - hell, it looks like these tanks didn't really intend to go to war with German tanks ...
Do they deserve a big HA just because they have a big enough gun?

These are standard loadouts as prescribed by the book; in practice the 17-pdr armed tank crews often modified the loadouts to include more AP because they found the HE round unsuited for the role (it had less explosive charge than the 75mm or US 76mm HE). The 17pdr sub-caliber ammo was expensive and rare but it could basically one-shot kill anything Germans had available. Even the regular AP round would penetrate the heaviest of German vehicles more often than not (only the shorter "77mm QF" variant AP had some trouble against the German heavies so they gave them more sub-caliber).

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 19:08, Monday These are standard loadouts as prescribed by the book; in practice the 17-pdr armed tank crews often modified the loadouts to include more AP because they found the HE round unsuited for the role (it had less explosive charge than the 75mm or US 76mm HE).

I really wanted to find similar information on Soviet Army tanks. You know, it turns out the plain truth is that USA is a free country. Information about pretty simple things is available.
Historians and former Soviet Army tankers don't talk about this at all, or when asked by a journalist, "Did you take more ammunition with you?" they answer: "Where to take it? And it wasn't supposed to be". Did they change the composition of ammunition depending on projected combat? My answer now: I DON'T KNOW. Just because the Americans changed the composition of their ammunition does not automatically mean that the Soviets did the same.

Can you at least roughly determine the HA parameter for Allied 1943-1945 tanks under these conditions? I will say - for American and British - yes, but for the Soviet ones we make any HA you like. Either wait until the information is found.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 19:08, Monday The 17pdr sub-caliber ammo was expensive and rare but it could basically one-shot kill anything Germans had available. Even the regular AP round would penetrate the heaviest of German vehicles more often than not (only the shorter "77mm QF" variant AP had some trouble against the German heavies so they gave them more sub-caliber).

Again, we have to distinguish between different armies. Some armies had tungsten at home industry, while others had almost none.
In the Soviet army, tankers were given 5 sub-caliber shells out of 50 rounds. It was issued under the signature of the tank commander, who was then supposed to sign a special document about the conditions for the use of each projectile (well, or something similar to that). The tankman which was used sub-calibers was not shot later by the terrible Stalin, but he was asked to report specifically about rounds usage. Very high responsibility for an expensive projectile.
And the Germans worked wonders and was tungsten for sub-caliber shells extracted from the Swedish air?

It turns out that not every anti-tank projectile is equally effective. Shall we add HA to the parameters as an additional bonus to the real rounds set for American and British tanks?

Tanks

Hard Attack. Thungsten.

A topic for thoughts about the HA parameter of the guns of the Soviet and German armies: why suddenly there was a tendency to increase the caliber of anti-tank and tank guns in 1944-45?
Possible correct answer: Look at the available reserves of mined tungsten.

For each type of round in use there is available penetration data - the testing methodology between Soviets, Germans and western Allies differed in methodology but sufficient data exists (they tested captured stuff and foreign allied stuff when available) to extrapolate the missing information and get a good idea on the performance of each type of a round independent of these differences. That is a good baseline for HA performance.

You can either decide to use the most powerful AP round available regardless how rare it was (thus get the highest possible HA), the most common AP round available (and get the "normal" HA), or you can average it out over the complete ammo loadout including HE rounds (and get the "practical" HA). I chose to base my calculations on the most common AP but it's by no means the only possible correct solution, all approaches have merit and as long as they are consistently applied they should all give logical results.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-24 21:33, Monday For each type of round in use there is available penetration data - the testing methodology between Soviets, Germans and western Allies differed in methodology but sufficient data exists (they tested captured stuff and foreign allied stuff when available) to extrapolate the missing information and get a good idea on the performance of each type of a round independent of these differences. That is a good baseline for HA performance.

You can either decide to use the most powerful AP round available regardless how rare it was (thus get the highest possible HA), the most common AP round available (and get the "normal" HA), or you can average it out over the complete ammo loadout including HE rounds (and get the "practical" HA). I chose to base my calculations on the most common AP but it's by no means the only possible correct solution, all approaches have merit and as long as they are consistently applied they should all give logical results.

On the whole, this is the only theoretically correct approach.
Because if you start thinking about low-quality or defective shells, barrel wear, and the inability to hit the target just like on an artillery range after a certain number of shots, the PGF model just can't care about it

Yeah, real life is very complex and has too many variables that can't be uniformly quantified all the time. So you either have to disregard some of the complications and go with a simplified model or you might as well pull random numbers out of a hat.

Guevremont Sapper's Kampfgruppe PG2 Equipment File

Looking at the contents of this file and its description. Titanic work!
Respect to college for taking such a serious theoretical approach!

I was just blown away by this file. The methodology, the purpose of creating the file is interesting. I am very grateful to the author of the file for the detailed and clear explanation of his methods of creating it. They eliminate any misunderstanding on the part of the "reader" of the file, and give a completely comprehensive explanation of WHY and WHAT is done here.
While reading the description, a personal reaction to what I have read naturally arose. I will express it here as my strictly personal opinion.
Below are quotes from the Readme file and my comments on them.

"BATTALION ORGANIZATION AND DOCTRINE based E-file is to recognize that war at the battalion level shows a variety of equipment within the same unit." Guevremont

I was not yet familiar with the file when I wrote the same thing, but about the division:
"For example, speaking about German tanks, it is logical to do the same as with the infantry: Panzer Division'39, Panzer Division'40, '42, '43, '44.
Fighters: Fighter JG'39, '40, '41 etc.
This is not the best dish for the gamer, as well as for the icon modder."
viewtopic.php?f=95&t=516#p8692

"You'll find the Infantry class quite strong. Each country, in general, has two or three major jumps in either new technology or organization changes. However, these may not be improvements. For example, the USSR goes through two major organizational shifts. The pre 1941 set is pretty good, the 1941 to 1943 set see the decline of the training and unit strength, thus unit stats. In 1943 you see guard formations and the maneuver commitment by brigades instead of by battalions, thus you see a jump in unit stats. So, for Russia, its infantry class goes through a decline before an improvement. Every country has its own historical development and changes throughout the period of 1936 through 1945; I have tried to replicate these changes as well as each country's doctrinal and other cultural strengths and weaknesses without being tedious." Guevremont

Soviet training? And where did it take place?
Here it went something like this. The divisions received reinforcements, so-called "marching" battalions. Soldiers of these battalions were trained at the front, being among combat comrades. While the army was retreating or making a bad and illiterate offensive in 1941-1942, all soldiers - both new, already learned something, and experienced ones - died. There sometimes were only 100-300 men in the division, and it was either disbanded or manned again.
But since 1943 divisions didn't perish completely. New soldiers had more chances to stay alive and they were gaining experience. Strangely enough, it is a statistical fact that in 1943-45 the advancing Soviet army lost more less soldiers per year than in the unsuccessful defense of 1941.

What about training of the German reinforcements in 1942-45?
I have not encountered in books and memoirs of soldiers and generals of Wehrmacht a positive assessment of the inflow of reinforcements. On the contrary sad assessments were made "We do not have the infantry which we had in 1914", "Infantry is weak" etc.

All the extra armament which the infantry divisions had received since 1941 simply counterbalanced in its firepower the enormous losses in personnel and incomplete unit strength.
The quality of conscripts deteriorated with each year of the war. No chubby 40-year-old soldier in either the Wehrmacht or the Soviet army could be as agile and quick as a 20-25-year-old.
Fragment of Kühn Heinz memoirs, translated from http://militera.org/oh/for/k/t41254/#books
"I - I commanded a company - was greatly depressed by the quality of the new recruits who came to us in the last months of the war. The calls of well-trained young people, who had passed the Hitler Youth school, had by then been knocked out. Nor were there any fanatics left. I remember one such: "I will spare nothing for the Fuhrer - I will give my life! - They were of little use, though: they went under the bullets themselves, and that's not the point in war. Our new comrades... what a crowd they were! Old men who could hardly drag their feet... Demanding from them what you would normally expect from a soldier was useless. And they could do nothing, they had zero training, they had to be taught from scratch. Hence they suffered a lot of losses."

And one more very important nuance, which concerns only the armies of Germany and the Soviet Union, but not the United States and Britain. Since June 22, 1941 no infantry unit on the Eastern Front had ever reached its previous standard strength. For example, Berlin was taken by Soviet divisions, whose average strength was 5,000 men.
In 1941-42, Soviet divisions very often had 2,000-3,000 men each. Companies had 60-70 men, and often 40-50 men each.
In Wehrmacht there was a similar picture.
For example, by the evening of May 9, 1945 189,000 German troops, including 42 officers in the rank of general, in the Courland Pocket had surrendered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courland_Pocket
In the Courland Pocket at the time of surrender there were 24 divisions + Luftwaffe + some crew from ships
Divisions of 7,500 men, and in this figure also a large number of logistics and military administrators...

"The main theme of recon units is just that - recon. Unfortunately, they are often used for cheap, effective ways to soften up a heavy enemy unit for destruction or to conduct artillery ammo consumption attacks. We thought we could change the stats to be able to discourage a player from abusing the recon units so often. To do this we reduced the SA/HA generally by 25%. Functionally this reduces their chances of doing any serious damage to any combat unit, but can still hurt a unit loaded in trucks. Historically, recon units rarely were 'massed' for conventional combat, instead spending most of their time dispersed over a large area to conduct reconnaissance - thus the SA/HA reflects the difficulty of massing the entire unit's firepower. You'll notice an increase in the Initiative, Ground Defense, Air Defense, and Close Defense. This is to represent that most recon units avoided contact, and thus were harder to engage and destroy - thus this also helps enable the recon class to survive while conducting deep recon behind enemy lines. They have less ammo, which should reduce their use for softening attacks or draining ammo from artillery. Another effect was to make recon units much more expensive - so to be abused for softening duties much less, and historically recon units represented small combined arms formations of veterans (if not elites). The Air (Tactical Bomber class) recons have 4-spotting range abilities. All the ground (Recon Class) recons have 3-range. You will pay a much higher price for these recons when compared to most other equipment files. Equipping and training recon units was much more difficult because of the stealth tactics and combined arms coordination found at battalion and company (instead of at battalion and brigade level as normal combat units). Hopefully the combined effects will encourage more historical use of recon units. Those that abuse and lose them will be very sorry as they lose the ability to see deep behind the enemy's front lines or spend a lot more prestige than they'd like to keep up the recon abuse." Guevremont

This is all very correct and completely in line with my thoughts.
Moreover, we should divide the Recons into two virulent parts: the actual individual small Recons units for individual reconnaissance - they remain in the Recons class, and the wheeled vehicles used en masse as cheap tanks - they should be moved to tanks.

"Artillery:

Only divisional guns (with only a few exceptions) will fire defensive support fire. All Corps, Army, and Front controlled guns (this distinction is in the unit name) will not fire defensive support fire (because their focus was counter-battery and other deep strike mission - thus the ammo and availability to fire when needed / thus not available for support by request.) All rocket units will also not fire defensive support fire as their function and focus was to produce massed fires for offensive actions." Guevremont

There are as many arguments for such a decision as there are arguments against it.
Soviet coastal batteries at Sevastopol provided cover for the defending forces. The fire of the Baltic Fleet's half-sunken ships enabled the Oranienbaum bridgehead to be defended in 1941-44. The Katyushas were often used precisely as defensive artillery on call. Everything is very complicated.
I had thoughts of moving some of the large caliber artillery to the AT class... But I still haven't decided if it should be done.

"Tanks".
The Tank class is based on a norm of 60 combat vehicles in a unit. Units with more than 60 had partial increases in SA,HA, GD, AD and cost but not in the holistic sense like IN or Move." Guevremont

Everything I've read on the subject of World War II ground combat has made me almost firmly convinced that a tank battalion is a very powerful force. Too powerful to be displayed on the same scale as an infantry battalion. Even if you tweak the HA and SA parameters a lot, you still don't get any even approximate real scale ratio of tank battalion vs infantry battalion. That is, for the battalion scale of the game you have to operate with the concept of "tank company". Everything here is very subjective, there are no comparative estimates from historians, nor specific information from army orders. But when I imagine an attack with 60 Pz.III-VI or T-34 or another medium tanks against an infantry battalion, i.e. one tank against ten infantrymen, I somehow have a completely virtual-fantasy feeling that these infantrymen would quickly turn into dust.
I would be most interested in hearing criticism of my point of view.
How many hedgehogs equal one squirrel, how many elephants equal one whale... is a very difficult question.
But for now, I think we should stick to the following more or less comparable ground units on a battalion scale:
Infantry battalion (300-500-700 men)
A tank company (8-10-12 tanks)
Artillery division or something similar (2-3 batteries of 4 guns = 8-12 guns)
That looks more realistic than 60 tanks against 600 infantrymen...

If you accept this scale, then all the extensive theoretical work done by Guevremont on the complex parameters of a composite tank battalion could be displayed in the game in a much simpler way, in tank companies.

"Some tank formations (most notable are the USSR Tank Brigades) have large infantry formations as a part of their unit. This helps things like SA and CD, but also reduces IN. I hope this helps you understand whey some units with big tank icons don't have impressive stats." Guevremont

Tank battalion in Wehrmacht
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_he ... _battalion
Tank brigade in USSR
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0 ... 0%9A%D0%90

One motorized infantry battalion in a Soviet tank brigade is a reason to reduce INI of brigade? Not reduce but increase!
The crux of the problem here is that the Wehrmacht tank battalion from 1943 is a fire department. It arrives at that section of the front, where only infantry is defended and tanks perform their specialized role. Why would such a tank battalion also need a battalion of motorized infantry? To transport that infantry battalion from place to place and load railroad lines?
The tank brigade of the Red (Soviet) Army since August 1941 is a balanced troop unit, capable of performing its various tasks on one section of the front. No one chased tank brigades like firefighters for thousands of kilometers. It fights where it fights, and well.

Now the conclusions:

First:
The Equipment file is created by the Campaign designer for the selected map scale. Which should be clearly defined from the start to avoid subsequent chaos and possible misunderstanding of "why is it done here like this? It must be clearly defined what time represents a move. 2, 4 hours, half a day, a day?
MVT, Range, Fuel, AMMO depend on the geographic and time scale chosen.

"1) No matter what, one will have to define the dimensions of a typical hex and live with the consequences; ditto for the time interval represented by a "typical" turn.
4) Unit Movement Allowance, Spotting Range and Shooting Range stats must strictly conform to the fundamental specifications as per preceding point (1)." Hexcode
viewtopic.php?f=95&t=174&start=150#p9781

Second:
Complex units are very true in terms of displaying military history. But they have one huge disadvantage: they are extremely boring to play.

"I was aiming for that, yes. Maybe my approach wasn't as studious and detailed as Sapper Bill's work for PG2 but i am trying to account for this diversity of the different support sub-units and components of my battalions. I don't want to stray too far from the familiar SSI-style territory (my main motivation to start working on this was to try to recreate the "fun" feel of PG1 play under the constraints of the PGF's tedious AI) but i am aware that units aren't really single vehicles" Radoye
viewtopic.php?f=95&t=149#p9831

These words of Radoye fully reflect my opinion as well. There must be a compromise between "historical," "interesting," "educational," and "good game.

-- Special thanks to Hexcode for file send for investigation! --

Artillery

Soft attack

First part is here: viewtopic.php?f=95&t=467&start=50#p9652

HE rounds and Elevation

The higher the elevation of a gun, the more effective the HE projectile is for the same caliber of guns.

There are roughly three categories of guns divided by elevation:
Anti-tank gun - up to 20-25 degrees
ATY gun - up to 40-45 degrees.
Howitzers and Mortairs - up to 65-70 or more

The fragmentation effect of the HE projectile depends on the angle at which the projectile hits the target or the ground surface.

As an experiment so far the correction factors to SA of guns of the same caliber in the 75, 105, 120, 150 mm categories are roughly as follows:

Anti-tank gun - 0.2-0.3
ATY gun - 1.0
Howitzers and Mortairs - 1.5 or even 2.0

It's not just the caliber of the gun, different guns of the same caliber can be quite different one from another, for example in 75mm caliber you have guns with HE shells that weigh between 4.3 - 7.2 kg, that's a 40% difference (never mind the possible difference in the actual amount of explosive filling inside such shells). So that too should be factored in.

Some direct fire guns (AT class in PGF terms) had canister (Картечь) anti-personnel ammunition available. This would be more effective on a flat trajectory than on a high angled one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37_mm_gun_M3#Ammunition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_ ... Ammunition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_mm_ant ... Ammunition
etc.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-26 12:54, Wednesday It's not just the caliber of the gun, different guns of the same caliber can be quite different one from another, for example in 75mm caliber you have guns with HE shells that weigh between 4.3 - 7.2 kg, that's a 40% difference (never mind the possible difference in the actual amount of explosive filling inside such shells). So that too should be factored in.

Do you also want to consider the weight of the HE in the projectile? Perfect! I fully support it! But we have such a mess of artillery here so far that I haven't considered these nuances at all yet.
Things are so bad and unrealistic here with ATY that I'm currently trying to wade through this fog from SSI like a jungle, and there's no end in sight to this thicket...
Of course your true, shells of the same caliber had different amounts of High Explosives compared to other guns. I have so far determined the weight of High Explosive in a 75mm projectile to be 0.5-0.7 kg. Well, just as a rough parameter for the first step of the experiment. Indeed, if we dig deeper - and we will and already are digging - there is room for a correction factor...
Thanks for participation, Radoye!

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-26 14:28, Wednesday Some direct fire guns (AT class in PGF terms) had canister (Картечь) anti-personnel ammunition available. This would be more effective on a flat trajectory than on a high angled one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/37_mm_gun_M3#Ammunition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordnance_ ... Ammunition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_mm_ant ... Ammunition
etc.

Speaking of honest and intelligent Wikipedia...have you noticed that even in the Wikipedia articles, these projectiles are at the bottom of the list of projectiles used?
World War I theory versus World War II practice. These shells could do nothing if the infantry and their commanders had brains. Dugouts, fortified points... and no attacks by a thousand infantrymen in a row with commissars with machine guns behind them.
In addition, the use of these shells required the artillerymen to calculate the projectile charge in advance... All this is too complicated for a one-two minute battle. That's why they were quietly discarded.
Or...if you have serious arguments, of which I am not by my stupidity unaware - give convincing mass examples of the use of these canister(shrapnel-картечь) shells in 1942-1945. If there are no such examples - let's forget about this topic as one of the many theories of 1933-1939. If there are such examples - think and make a revolution in SA.

Mortars in an infantry battalion if one wants to model war on battalion scale, how can one ignore mortars with their 3-4 kilometer range?
How complicated things are at the battalion level... I don't deliberately climb to this level, for I realize how much complexity awaits a scenario designer who is brave and wants to see all the battalion collisions.

By 1943, however, mortars in divisions and battalions had been replaced by guns, which performed almost the same role of an almost vertically firing field howitzer.

It's complicated enough as it is... I want to stay at the divisional level. And even at that level, my head just explodes from the abundance of historical military data that is most relevant to the work done by Guevremont, and to reality in general... And don't think that going to the battalion level can simplify everything. As a rule, on the contrary - such a transition complicates the modeling of processes. Because battalion level - if you approach simulation honestly - has all the advantages and disadvantages of division level, but on top of that, it sometimes requires going almost real-time for several minutes per turn... I just can't handle it, and the game engine also protects me from such active attempts
Mortars, flamethrowers, field howitzers, snipers, MG-34/42... can I, as a primitive Soviet-American-French-English-Polish general of the 1938 model, operate with divisions?

Canister ammo was mainly used in defense at pretty much point blank range. It is not an offensive tool, lacking the necessary range.

US Marines used canister shot in their 37mm AT guns in the Pacific against Japanese mass infantry charges 1942-44, on Guadalcanal and elsewhere.

The UK 6pdr / US 57mm (essentially the same gun) received canister ammo in January 1945 after the experience in Operation Market Garden, these were mostly assigned to paratroop units (as they couldn't have heavy support for obvious reasons). Similar ammo was then developed for 57mm M18 recoilless and 75mm M20 recoilless (also used in para units) but this was not ready before the end of WW2 - but were used in Korea, once again in defense from mass infantry charges.

So it wasn't exactly an outdated concept.

Radoye wrote: ↑2021-05-27 03:15, Thursday Canister ammo was mainly used in defense at pretty much point blank range. It is not an offensive tool, lacking the necessary range.

US Marines used canister shot in their 37mm AT guns in the Pacific against Japanese mass infantry charges 1942-44, on Guadalcanal and elsewhere.

The UK 6pdr / US 57mm (essentially the same gun) received canister ammo in January 1945 after the experience in Operation Market Garden, these were mostly assigned to paratroop units (as they couldn't have heavy support for obvious reasons). Similar ammo was then developed for 57mm M18 recoilless and 75mm M20 recoilless (also used in para units) but this was not ready before the end of WW2 - but were used in Korea, once again in defense from mass infantry charges.

So it wasn't exactly an outdated concept.

A little bit was used. Somewhere. Sometimes. But not as a standard for mass usage. And definitely not in tank guns. Mortairs + machine guns are much more effective.

I read about recommendations to German tank crews on how to fire a HE projectile at an anti-tank gun. Aim not at the gun itself, but at a nearby bush or tree. The fragments fly horizontally sideways and destroy the gunners.

"The effectiveness of our Artillery against the enemy is greatly reduced in sand dunes, where neither ricochets nor impact fuzes produce the desired effect. (Fuehrer suggests use of AA explosive train fuzes)". Franz Halder, 31 May 1940, about battle around Dunkirk.

So it turns out that the ATY in the sandy desert can not have a high SA parameter.

More about the desert:
Sand in the desert damaged all mechanisms. This is known.
But the powerful ATY in the desert suddenly had another problem - a huge cloud of dust when fired, completely de-masking the ATY positions.

That is correct, canister was not much used in tank guns but rather in towed AT. Which makes sense, since tanks also have machine guns to defend from infantry and towed AT guns don't so they need some way to deal with those kinds of situations. Solid AT shot is not very useful, 37 - 57 mm HE shells are better but tend to be too small to be practical, so they gave them canister too.

The only tank gun that i'm aware of having a canister shot was the German short 75mm (as in early PzIV, StuGIII, SdKfz251/9, SdKfz234/3 and similar applications) although i found no information if and how often it was used.

HexCode wrote: ↑2021-05-17 22:26, Monday

Lettos wrote: ↑2021-05-17 10:12, MondayCan we create a new type of MVT by modifying an existing one?

Yes ! Absolutely ! However, the "new" type cannot be added. It can only serve as a substitute for an already existing type. In other words, PGF's engine cannot accommodate more than ELEVEN (11) Movement Type definitions.

NOW:

[EPH] The Next Evolutionary Step
viewtopic.php?f=95&t=174&start=100#p9719

Through some simple experiments it is very easy to figure out what the number groups 01 00 00 00, 02 00 00 00, 03 00 00 00, 04 00 00 00 in the PGF.exe lines 525696 - 527279 mean.

It is imperative that you read the MOVEMENT POINT EXPENDITURE TABLE by Hexcode to understand the subject:
viewtopic.php?f=100&t=551#p9044

"1", "2", "3", "4" are the denominator of the fraction. The unit's MVT value is divided by this denominator and then the fractional part is discarded. This is a very important point, that the resulting number is not rounded to the greater number, but only the integer part remains after discarding all the fractional part. As a result, we have the number of hexes a unit can move on a given terrain type.

Checked out how it works. Replaced the two by a three in one line - the unit moved slower. The file runs, no problems.

This allows us to create the characteristics of each type of movement that we want to see... wow!!!

Amphora of fine Samos wine to our wise friend Hexcode !!!

I made a table in Excel.
Rows 3-14 are what we now have in the movement types.
"9" - I have designated the value 9C FF FF FF FF.

Value "9C FF FF FF FF" connotes the expenditure of a unit's full Movement Allowance (MA) in support of terrain enterability. Hexcode

"8" I denote.

Value "38 FF FF FF FF" connotes terrain unenterability. Hexcode

Rows 16-27 are my version of reality emulated in PGF.

Below table are the comments for each cell color.

Since we are dealing with the denominator of a fraction, increasing the value of the movement means decreasing the denominator, and vice versa. That's why the words "increase" and "decrease" are in quotation marks.



Two notes are mentioned here.

*Note1 - I am going to make an Organic Transport species for infantry called... "Infantry. This is just mode to march for 4 hexes = 40 km. No combat is possible on such a march. But it is possible to move particularly trained units far and fast. For example, the Wehrmacht infantry units of the first and second mobilization waves, some infantry units of the USSR and Japan. As well as specialized units such as commandos, gebirgsjagers, etc.

**Note2 - I want to allow for ATY 75-120 mm and AT with calibers 25-100 mm to move two hexes (2*10 km) per day. But not always and not everywhere. Moreover, mountain artillery definitely had more mobility than towed artillery. Therefore I want to have Towed MVT=3 for mountain artillery.

And here the nuance becomes clear why replacing "9" with "3" is not only a degradation of the MVT parameter on a given landscape at Muddy or Snow. If you replace "9" with "8", no unit with a Towed movement type of "2" or "3" will be able to enter a hex with that terrain. I'm not talking about larger MVTs here, although they are possible on 1 hex = 1-2-3 km scale maps. Current table is based on the MVT parameters inherited from SSI and the PGF authors.
But if you replace it with "3", a unit that has Towed MVT=2 will only get an MVT value of 2/3 of a hex, 0.66, which is zero integer, and will not be able to move, and a unit with MVT=3 will be able to move by 3/3=1 hex.

In general, this drop of a fractional part becomes especially critical and noticeable for units with small MVT value.

It is clear that if you change the map scale in the scenarios, the specific changes in MVT types to meet the needs of some scenarios and campaigns will inevitably cause different and incompatible versions of the PGF file. I don't see anything technically difficult about playing individual campaigns with their specialized PGF.exe file. In 2100, this will be fixed, and there will be a separate file with MVT type parameters.

I suppose that even my first sketch of the updated movement types might be some first step in a creative discussion of "How should we make it even more correct?"

Huge thanks to Hexcode for such a useful insight into the PGF file!!!