WW2Steel.com
page last modified 20Nov'08
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Combat Mission
Barbarossa to Berlin
Achtung!  Combat Mission is registered to Battlefront.com!
Game graphics used to illustrate this website are the property of Battlefront!
(Other graphics are the property of ME!)

Maintaining this website is costly (in ISP server fees) and gathering this data takes very long hours. 
I will continue to present more data as quickly as I can research it.
Rather than wait to complete a book and sell it I hope to present the data collected here as I collect it.
When the book is complete, I will sell hardcopies as well as downloadable versions.
Thanks!  Mike




CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW



ADVANCED 3RD VERSION OUT!!!
Emailed to you with a $19.99 donation that supports my website for a full month!
(The price is a code that ensures I send you the right file.)

*THIS PROGRAM RUNS IN AND REQUIRES MICROSOFT EXCEL!*

Where to start?  This epic project has taken such a long time, but I have enjoyed doing it.

What it does:  At a glance, you can tell how vulnerable a vehicle is to fire from an enemy gun.

How to use it:  Using the drop down boxes (not the ones above, it is a simple image, not the program itself!) you select an allied and axis vehicle, tank, or towed gun.  On the inner drop down boxes you select the ammunition type and date.  In the graphs above, you can read the vulnerability of each vehicle to the enemy ammunition. 

How to read the graphs:  These are 360° representations of the vehicle, the front is always at the top, the rear is always towards the bottom of the page.  Let's take the above "Upper Hull" graph with a grey background.  This represents the vulnerability of the upper hull of the Panther to the ammunition shown in the yellow strip below.  The graph shows performance out to 2000m.  The graph compares the gun's penetrative power referencing the ammunition used, at range, versus the armor plate selected.  Simply put, if a hypothetical gun can penetrate 105mm of armor at whatever range and is striking a 100mm plate, it has 105% the required power.  That does not necessarily mean a penetration or a kill, keep reading.
Red area:  The outer perimeter of the red area, working inwards, indicates >110% power.  Thousands of tests on many different vehicles determined that if the round has more than 110% power it will almost always penetrate.
Orange area:  Indicates 100 - 109% power, very good chance of penetration.
Yellow area:  90 - 99% power, fair chance of penetration.  Towards the bottom end of this there are many ricochets and "internal armor flaking".
Unshaded area:  Just beyond the yellow area there is less than a 90% chance of penetration.  The tanks in the game will not fire on their own, only if you specifically target them.



CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VIEW
(These are not images from the program,
just illustrations to explain how it works.)




In this "Upper Hull" graph, you can see that the Panther is vulnerable to enemy fire to beyond 2000m.  The IS-2 can penetrate some part of the Upper hull of the Panther if firing at 2000m, as long it is at least 40° from the front of the vehicle.  These charts show WHICHEVER PANEL IS MOST VULNERABLE.

Also consider:
  • Just because a vehicle is outside effective range does not mean it cannot eventually destroy a vehicle.  I once attacked a KV with a few PzII.  In the game roughly 1 in 20 rounds causes damage.  I surrounded the KV and ordered them all to open fire.  I lost some, but the hail of 2cm rounds, which had no chance of penetrating, ripped off the tracks and destroyed some component of the gun system.  The crew of the immobilized and nearly unarmed KV finally abandoned it.  (Remember that some MGs can still fire, be careful when assaulting with infantry.)
  • A penetration does not mean a kill.  A vehicle at a slight disadvantage in probability of penetration that is firing AP with a large explosive component can easily wipe out a vehicle that is firing a solid shot like APRC.
  • These charts do not show accuracy or rate of fire.  That is another chart which is a free download also listed on this page.  (I need to list an updated one, that one is years old!)

THE OTHER CHARTS SHOW THE INFORMATION FOR THE OVERALL VEHICLE, TURRET, UPPER AND LOWER HULL, FOR BOTH VEHICLES.

This tool is also great for comparing ammo.  For example you can switch between the Soviet AP and APBC ammunition... and find that it is much more lethal against the Panther.

Things I have corrected thus far, and now work correctly:
  • Vehicles without turrets, like the Jagdpanther, work correctly and simply do not display any possibility to penetrate the turret.
  • Vehicles with open, unarmored areas- like the Marder, show red from any angle which fire can enter that unarmored space.
Limitations I am correcting (with some help), but require tremendous work:
  • For the most part it includes all German and Soviet Guns, Vehicles, and Tanks.  I have included some equipment from other nations, but want to make it all inclusive.  As soon as I get to it in spite of all the other projects!  CMAK DATA IS NOW INCLUDED!!!!
A limitation that I will not correct (because it is not modelled in the game, and this calculator is built for the game)... and it'd be really, really hard to do!:
  • Items where the armored plate is not a simple box like a KV-2 or Jagdpanther are not completely correct.  Rounded turrets, like a BT-2 or Tiger, still show the obliquity angle even though the turret face is round.  The front of the IS-3 hull still shows like a traditional hull, and does not take into account the 'pike' nose.  Tests have shown that the game uses everything having rectangular turret and hull models.
Status:  The program is complete.  I am just entering all of my data which is taking a long time, but I am nearly done. 
Purchase price is $19.99, simply a donation to my website to help me loose less money on it!  ($20 pays for a month for me!)  I will email the file to you. 
CLICK THE DONATION BUTTON BELOW, AND ENTER $19.99, THAT'S MY CODE TO KNOW YOU WANT ME TO SEND THIS FILE TO YOU.
As new data gets entered I will send out new versions of the file as soon as they are complete.  I WILL SEND OUT REVISIONS FREE OF CHARGE!


(click pic for full size link)
Another chart showing a PzIVF firing HEAT ammo versus a Matilda II firing AP Shot.
HEAT ammo gives wierd charts like this on the right because it is not based upon projectile velocity.






Panther Data (free!):
(I have included a larger pic, just click the small pic below.  I suggest opening the link in another window to see the data better.)
Small Panther Data
This pic of part of one of my spreadsheets gives a ton of data I have collected on the Panther series of tanks.  The impact data (left chart) shows, from direct front, where the rounds strike the tank, this is from 1555 impacts, so it's pretty significant... and it took a long time.  I also tested to see if perhaps the percentage of the upper hull hits increased and lower hull hits decreased with range because of the higher trajectory of the rounds, it does not, even with slow rounds (top chart). 

Lastly (bottom chart) I show a somewhat statistically significant chart breaking down upper hull penetrations.  This data was the purpose for this entire exercise.  I placed the Panther tanks at 900m, the range that my new parabolic equations suggest that the UH armor of 100% quality will be right at the maximum yield of 100mm AP.  Sure enough, those that struck the early Ausf A almost never suffered any penetrations.  The "occasional flaws" of the late Ausf A allowed many more partial penetrations, including a few full penetrations.  "Frequent Flaws" in the G model glacis allowed frequent penetrations in this test model; 4 times as many full penetrations.  Now, I understand that 562 hits is hardly stat-sig, but it gives a clear view of how the Panther glacis plate is modeled in CM, and I think it is probably modeled very well.  I am impressed that they took the time to single out this problematic part and model it with (reasonable) historical accuracy!  I'll do the math to approximate the 'armor quality' percentage that was probably applied sometime soon.  I bet I can figure out Rexford's standard deviation / penetration percentage data to do this... but right now it's 4:30am and my brain's melted!

As a side project you can see in the data that I kept track of turret hits.  Though not totally stat-sig, I noticed that there were no "penetration at weak point" for the G, late turret, and wondered if these weak point penetrations were how CM handles the shot trap.


My first 'book' file to be released for download:
Book Preview
25 page color book of CMBB Hungarian Armor and Vehicles! (2.2mb)
(This took a long time to construct and compile, please )


The data I have compiled for my CMBB books as of 10Jul'08:
Book Data


I am working on a manual that will be an unofficial 'Ops Manual' for the vehicles of CMBB.  It takes forever to compile, but covers everything from speeds and immobilization % in all terrains, artillery vulnerability, vul. to air attack, vul. to relevant AT guns, win/loss graphs to other vehicles and AT guns in different scenarios, a listing of all of the changes done to the tank that are reflected by game graphics (and a list of some that are not) and probably much more I'm forgetting right now.  I'm a professional pilot and I thought it would be cool to come out with manuals similar to the completely exhaustive (and twice a year for our FAA tests - exhausting) aircraft manuals.


Here's a cool graph showing the shatter gap of the early ammo at 300m and what appears to be another slight one at 500m for the later ammo.
Interestingly, the M4s also take higher casualties with the later ammo, presumably because they are slightly more likely to continue to fight when becoming panicked instead of popping smoke.
Obviously the best effectiveness for the Panther will be at longer ranges, and where a shatter gap is present.
This graph complies 1665 tested vehicle pairs.


This chart is one of very many that will be going into my book.
This chart shows how the AI actually chooses the wrong ammo for the T-34 at close range.
When the AI has tungsten ammo available it fires it, (looking for the higher penetration only) even though the normal AP does better!
(Note the dashed blue line for 'no Tung' causes higher % Panther casualties!)
At medium ranges the tungsten is again advantageous as the solid line is higher.
It took 1,460 tank on tank battles to get a chart this accurate!
The book will of course tell you better how to read them!

Snow Tiger: (seconds from toasting my T-34/85M44).
Snow Tiger

My Combat Mission files:

My 232 mod (removes the frontal chin armor on late models):
My 232 Mod
(Click image above or click here to download!)

No Compass
This 10049.bmp removes the 'north' indicator (CMBB).

Panther Bunker
Panther Bunker
Panther Bunker Panther Bunker
This set of files changes the Panther D Early to a bunker (originals included for a backup).


Charts:

Accuracy/ Rate of Fire Table (Works)
Accuracy/ Rate of Fire Table (Excel conversion)
(I simply saved it as Excel, hopefully it will open correctly!)
(These are really old and I need to upload newer files!)

Scenarios:
KV-2 Roadblock Scenario v1.2
(A highly debated 'is this true' scenario based on real German reports.  Seems plausible enough to me. 
There are several similar stories involving KV tanks.  Contains the Vanguard/ Osprey books description.)

Close Combat Scenarios:
These scenarios are on original sized maps with original elevation.
I selected reinforcements based upon the correct number of CC3 points, calibrated to a CMBB scale- for Veteran difficulty games.
Reinforcements have a 90% chance of showing the specified day for attacker, 75% for defender.
CC3's artillery barrages are left up to aircraft, as that's the only way I could only get them there for 1 day only.

The first 9 ops, German and Russian Players (zipped)
or individually:
Blitzkrieg (Battle 1) - German Player v1.2
Blitzkrieg (Battle 1) - Russian Player v1.2
Moscow (Battles 2 & 3) - German Player v1.2
Moscow (Battles 2 & 3) - Russian Player v1.2
Kharkov I (Battles 4 & 5) - German Player v1.1
Kharkov I (Battles 4 & 5) - Russian Player v1.1
Stalingrad (Battles 5 & 6) German Player v1.1
Stalingrad (Battles 5 & 6) Russian Player v1.1
Kharkov II (Battles 8 & 9 - snow) - German Player v1.1
Kharkov II (Battles 8 & 9 - snow) - Russian Player v1.1
These were just made to play myself, so don't be too hard on me!


Please check out the rest of my website!