Ok, here we go:

1. Do the AI miss shots ? I mean are they "snipers" with their tank cannons or do they actually miss you sometimes ?

2. Do enemy tank rounds bounce off your tank sometimes ?

3. Can you supress enemy Infantry so they wont shoot a ATGM on you ?

4. How is the damage model ? I mean stuff like: ening failure, hydraulics failure, optics failure, driver killed or loader killed...

Thx for any answers

1. Yes, they do miss.

2. Yes.

3. I'm not so sure. IMO, they stay supressed to an extent , anyway.

4. I don't believe the systems will fail by themselves, but various systems and crewmen get damaged/injured depending on the hit. Hit effectiveness is realistically calculated based on hit location, armor angle and thickness, ammo type and so on.

Hope this helps

damage modelling is superb in the steel beasts series

#1 and #2 have been answered in full.

Suppression: It works on a macro level. The more men a squad has lost, the more reluctant the survivors are to actually fire their weapons. It doesn't really work in a convincing way to the extent that they will keep their heads down if lots of lead fills the air. Besides, they all dies too quickly anyway if caught in the open. Then again, that's realistic.

Damage model: Is detailed but not accurate, simplifies in some areas, but is totally overengineered for the intended purpose. Overall I think that most users are happy with what they got.
What I want to say with this is that discussions in the Steel Beasts user forums have arrived at a point where people start analysing statistical results of test cases like "If I shoot with ammo X at tank Y in the right turret front at range Z, the outcome of 20 shots is
... loader killed in x%
... radio damaged in y%
... gunner's sight damaged in z%
etc.

Personally I think that's bordering on insanity. I know better ways to spend my spare time. Then again, a simulation that sparks the interest of people so much that they're starting to do things like these can't be all that bad. Nobody would do this with Battlefield 2 because nobody would expect reasonable results in the first place.

Thx for info ssnake !

Btw regarding the damage model:

A friend of mine was a Leopard 2 gunner and he told me that once a Leo 2 hit another one with live amunition from front or side ( dont remember ) and that one of the guys inside the tank died of a broken neck of the round impact. The round didnt penetrated the hull btw.

I wouldn't be too concerned about the very specifics of the damage model. Really, the question is 'Do the results you get generally match up with what you would expect?'

By and large, they do.

NTM

Just a quick follow up question. I just ordered it as well, other than the automated reply to the sale, do they send a confirmation email to let you know your order has shipped so I know when to expect it? Since it goes regular postal with no tracking or insurance, I would like to keep my eyes out for it.


Thanx


Jrad

I don't buy that story. It's not uncommon that these urban (or military) legends circulate, but I don't think that an accident of that magnitude would not be widely published. You can't seriously expect to brush this under the carpet in an open society.
So, unless your friend is able to produce specific dates and other details on the incident it's probably just a bar story.

No. All shipments are sent the same or the next working day. It doesn't require a separate tracking.

We have yet to see a single package disappear.

I just ordered this in the USA. I didn't get a message telling me the order had shipped, but it didn't matter. I placed my order on Friday and it arrived the following Monday. So I never had time to worry about confirmation email or tracking.

...which is strength and weakness of our methodology. We can hope to make it match public expectations which are not always accurate, and rarely based on observed fact. We can hope to calibrate the damage model to meet results of past battles - provided that the necessary data are actually available in the required detail - so we can predict the past reliably. But that doesn't mean that we could predict the future.

Steel Beasts' damage model was not designed for this kind of crystal ball gazing, it doesn't hold up to quantitative statistical analysis. The model is supposed to support certain training goals, e.g. that a tank is usually easier to kill from the side than from the front, or that HEAT works better against semi-hard and light targets than large caliber sabot rounds do. Finally, it's better to err on the high side, that is, to make component damages rather more likely to occur than they do in reality so that the crews learn to deal with partial damages but go on fighting despite the handicap.
And that is, indeed, what Steel Beasts' damage model does reasonably well. There is room for improvement, there always is. But there's no gross issue that's giving me sleepless nights.

"I don't buy that story. It's not uncommon that these urban (or military) legends circulate, but I don't think that an accident of that magnitude would not be widely published. You can't seriously expect to brush this under the carpet in an open society."

You make it sound like guys don't die from various training mishaps in the Bundeswehr. When I was over there guys, German, US, Canadian, whatever got killed just like any other Army and life went on. Aren't they doing realistic training over there? Does every training death touch off a national scandal-investigation-hysteria into the perceived incompetence of the military that lingers in the papers for weeks or is it a small article on page 10 of the local paper that so in so's parachute failed to open on a jump or that a tank spun it's barrel around and crushed the head of the TC of the tank next to it?

Los

Not that I'm contradicting your point about it perhaps being an urban legend.

People do die in the Bundeswehr from training accidents and in deployments, no doubt about it. but it is hard to conceive a training accident with live ammunition hitting the front side of a friendly tank because it would require a combination of several serious violations of safety regulations, but is the only way how it could fail to penetrate. Or it did hit the side turret which would be more conceivable, but then it's hard to see how the round would have failed to penetrate.

Finally, the issue of impact impulse has been discussed several times and this example has never been brought up - not the least because the math doesn't work out. A 4.5kg APFSDS penetrator, decelerated from 1.6km/s to zero over a distance of .5m has an impulse that is the equivalent of a 55 ton tank at 4km/h. Granted, the shock wave duration is a milliseconds/high G event (well, not so outrageously high G actually - around 40 to 50, which is similar to what a downhill ski racer would experience in his ankle joints during many bumps). But since it is so short, body inertia as well as the flexibility and shock absorbing qualities of the human skeleton's joints helps a lot to mitigate the issue. I simply don't buy this story - too many things aren't plausible.

In addition, anecdotal evidence from Operation Desert Storm, as published in a 1992 or '93 issue of Österreichische Militärzeitschrift (don't remember the specific issue) tells us that an M1 crew, despite being hit in the side turret by a T-72 at 500m distance, managed to kill said T-72 before if managed to get off a second round. This doesn't indicate a shock of the proportions that it could break a gunner's neck.

SSnake it was on a shooting range somewhere in UK. Its also some years ago, when i see him again i will ask him some details

I could envision a scenario where someone on the range has a live round loaded by accident or for whatever reason and they fire it off. I'm sure it's happened before, that's why it's called an accident. It certainly happens with small arms and even crew served weapons. I saw a guy get a hole blown in his back by an M2 at the range once when they were loading it into the back of a truck. Crazy stuff.

The US Army publishes a monthly safety bulletin and there's an interesting section on accidents that that happened since the last issue. I think (Quarterly maybe?) they'll do a special just on armor. You see a lot of (A lot being 3-4) incidents of guys getting their heads crushed by watermelons either the driver for having it out when the turret rotates or a TC who gets caught by a swinging barrell of a nearby tank that crushes his head against the hatch, crazy stuff like that. then there's the usual IFV or tank that gets stuck in deep water or flips off an embankment into water or mud and some/all the crew drowns. Then there's the typical accidental discharges, then there's the typical live fire /maneuver range friendly fire incidents, etc..

Regarding the neck incident, maybe the guy was snoozing with his head against something who knows? It's not hard to envision. My friend injured serveral vertabrae just by having a Hmmwv hatch fall on his head, he's still in neck brace a year later...


Los

German tanks, shooting in UK? Well, you live and learn.

Accidents in the German army are actually quite common. During my trainee-time one of my platoon shot himself and another one from the SGA messed up his face with a MG3. My platton mate had received his ammo and while walking to his gunnery station he thumbed the safety off and pulled a shot through his foot (by accident). The machine-gunner didn't press the MG right in his shoulder and while firing a salvo the MG jumped and the butt hit him straight in the face.
It's not so nice to give first aid when you just did the training for it.

Btw, ordered my copy of SBPro yesterday.

Ordered mine a week ago. Gotta be here soon....yaarh!

There was a German Army firing range at Castlemartin in Wales for about 20 years. When they left they were kind enough to leave behind a Leopard1 as a gate guardian, and loan a Leopard2 to Bovington Tank museum for 6 months. I really missed that one when It left.

There's accidents, and then there's accidents. One tank shooting the other with live ammo would clearly fall into the second category. Yes, it's not fully inconceivable, but it would require many things to go wrong (again, that can happen), and on top of that it doesn't seem to match up with the impact mathematics as well as anecdotal evidence. That's a combination of many quite unlikely elements which undermines the credibility of the story - unless it can be backed up with irrefutable evidence or at least some strong indicators that it may hold truth despite the circumstances.

So why not just tell us how damage is calculated? Then people won't have to do all sorts of ridiculous black box testing to kind of maybe guess how it works inside the game?