Major Update: Armor 2.0

Armor 2.0

• Summary: Cottonbalers campaign was infantry focused so armor was given less love. Many changes for armor 2.0 in support of forthcoming DLC. Applies to Cottonbalers as well. While we aren’t Combat Mission or Steel Panthers yet in our armor modeling we think we now have a reasonable model ;:-) Let us know!

• no more annoying you take the first shot with your tank yet they end up firing first ! (Patrick, Luke) - Unlike small arms fire where you are working to be the first to build up sufficient Volume of Fire (i.e. win initiative) hard target combat is single shot. So if you fire first first, well you fire first! Simple!

• Non Turreted (SPGun and ATGuns etc):

  • Now have a very restricted 60 degree arcs of fire (vs old 180)

  • They cannot OpFire outside this arc! -or with a normal player directed fire for that matter. But, of course, you can pay order and change facing to then normal fire in a different arc.

• Turreted:

  • also have a 60 degree restricted arc of fire for opfire but can still opfire outside this arc but with a severe penalty - namely -60% chance to hit, added to the -30% already for firing at a, by definition, moving opfire target means net penalty -90% (before things like XP can kick in) to opfire at target moving outside forward 60 degree arc.

  • Minor (for now): Turreted normal fire (not opfire) now has 360 degree arc - instead of the former 180 degrees. Meaning no human rotation to fire shot required. So no order paid up front. Nonetheless I still auto rotate the tank (free as part of shoot cost) afterwards as heuristically what player would most likely want (face threat). This is all paving the way for armor 3.0 worrying about distinct turret vs hull facings. In that future you could turret fire outside of the front arc and not turn the hull if you wanted. But not yet!

• ALREADY TRUE in 1.0:

  • Turretless vehicles cannot return fire if attacker not in firing arc (Luke) -

  • Range does effect chance to hit for hard (Luke)

  • Opfire has the hard target moving-30% penalty intrinsically due to moving (Luke)

• Infantry and weapon teams still have 180 degrees firing arc for normal and opfire pretty flexible.

• Target acquired (Luke) - repeated shots at same target (without shifting targets) get an ‘acquired’ to hit bonus.

  • Acquisition is lost if you or your acquired target m moves (Luke) - keep this defensive tactic in mind for yourself!

• Hard Attacks also generate Suppression on ATGuns and other open guns (Luke) - i.e. AT guns and howitzers in the field get hit both by hard effects (likely destroy on hit) and soft. Not true yet against hard targets as there is no Suppression model for them right now.

• ATGuns easier to destroy: AT Guns now treated as hard targets when appropriate (Luke) - when attacked by a hard weapon system like a tank cannon. In other words they can now be physically destroyed by a hard shot. Same for field artillery. If such open guns are attack by soft weapon units like infantry they are still treated as soft target (suppression etc). Before this when ATGuns were simply soft targets they were hard to destroy even by repeated tank fire. This is more realistic as well as less frustrating. Think of such open guns as like a tank cannon but with no armor (well except for gun shield in some cases which