Q: Anti-tank traps in 1.31? proof is here on the right side of the image.

RAFTER: Granik was tasked at replacing one of the few remaining 2D buildings (2D walls) for 1.31 and after looking at the footprint (the area each building occupies on the ground) he decided to replace it with a collection of new tank trap objects with a barbed wire fence surrounding them. Players and vehicles will collide with them so they are barriers in the game. The placement of them is a 1-for-1 swap of that old 2D building in the terrain. At this point, they cannot be placed by players or by a strat event. Maybe in the future we might find a way for players to set these up along with other objects like defensive positions or the like.

Q: Pz38t: From 1.30.3 allied ATR is unable to kill Pz38t through the rear hull. Several people tested it extensively on the training server. It is not possible to flame the tank or kill the driver. In 1.29 allied ATR was able to penetrate and kill gunner through the sides and rear of the turret, in 1.30 it was still possible to kill the driver and flame the tank though the rear hull. From 1.30.3 Pz38t is invulnerable to allied ATR which I believe is bug as it wasnt mentioned in the 1.30.3 Readme as an audited feature.

MOTORMOUTH: The PzKpfw 38(t) is one of the original models built for launch. During a recent audit of some of these earlier models, it was discovered that it was built with the incorrect rear hull value. It was updated to include the correct armor value in one line out of several thousands of code that create the model and went out with a large patch (1.30). When a patch is released, READ ME notes are included. These are put together from hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of tickets. Our policy is to report all changes made in production as part of each release READ ME. In this case, an item was overlooked in our rush to push out China-specific changes for their Beta. It was accidentally missed. Simple as that. No bias, no nerfing, no malice. We have a company policy that all changes are reported. It wasn't intentional but we are still sorry that it was not included in the READ ME's and we'll redouble our efforts to ensure the READ ME's are as specific as possible.

UPDATE: The data we gave is accurate. Unfortunately there is an undocumented bug in the Pz.38(t) rear armor that was just uncovered after some difficult head scratching and special testing effort to find the issue. This bug makes what players were saying in this case (about the difficulty in penetrating the rear hull of the Pz.38t) indeed correct. At the same time, however, we were also correct in claiming that it has the historic armour value data (15mm) on the rear hull that it should have. In summary, because of this previously undocumented bug, we actually could get 2 different results for the same event. This has now been fixed and will become effective with the next patch. Cross checking with other earlier tanks confirmed that this bug is isolated to the Pz.38t which was the first tank our original art department built.

Q: Aircraft Circles: How are they related to range? Why do they go from gray to read and what does that mean? Been playing for 5 years and I still don't know exactly what they mean...

DOC: The circles show up grey at long range to help them blend into the sky and not be as easy to spot as a colored circle, in addition to not revealing if they are friendly or enemy when they are at ranges where in real life you couldn’t tell this. As you get closer, when the aircraft is at a range where recognition would be likely to occur, we change the circle to a colour to reveal “friend or foe” in addition to identifying the general type of airframe it is, Spitfire, Bf109, whatever. You still don’t know precisely which version of that airframe it is until you are close enough to identify the features (paint job for most people) that set it apart from the other variants of that airframe. Once you are inside the range from the aircraft that the circle turns from a grey circle to a colored circle, the circumference of the circle shrinks the closer you get to it. This is to assist you in determining rate of closure between your plane and his plane. At point blank range the circle will have shrunk down to a small very short curved line. If the range between you and the target plane was to get larger again, that small curved line would grow back into a longer curved line and eventually a circle, finally changing to grey before disappearing altogether if you get far enough away from it. Finally you should be aware that there is a fade in function to aircraft icon in that should you lose sight of them as they pass under your wing, or below your plane, or because you look away, when you look back the icon will “fade in” to simulate your eyes in real life having to reacquire the target before it becomes clear and strong to your vision again.
 
Q: is there anyway to sort the enemies page like by date or time????

RAMP: Yes, we could add sorting to those pages.
We've had a CSR refresh on the medium term list for a while now, but other priorities have come up.
Thats pretty easy to do so I'll add it to the wanted list.

Q: Ricochet tracers: so i have been playing quite a bit of DCS black shark and ARMA2 latley - the ricochet tracers really add quite a bit to atmosphere. i know our rounds are modelled physics - wise for drop and ricochet, so why do i never see a tracer bounce? would it be hard to do? it looks dead sexeh.

DOC: The only way to include such things without serious impact on FPS performance (and we have to chose what effects we decide will impact performance very carefully as extremely worthy choices) … would be to have a “random ricochet” effect that doesn’t actually have any ballistic or calculated performance attributes. Since all ammunition was treated from this perspective when it was created, as a basic building block of the game … we never put any though towards fake ballistic effects for eye candy as far as bullets were concerned. It wouldn’t be hard to do; we just never concerned ourselves with adding that previously. Perhaps we’ll add it as an eye candy thing to improved hit effects somewhere down the line. They won’t be ballistically calculated and that’s why they don’t currently exist in the game right now.
 
Q: I would like to take the occasion to ask wether it could be done that along with the random sounds of wind, birds and dogs we might also hear the distant rumble sound of artillery fire. That would be awesome to give some good inmersion factor while on horizon watch with your glasses :)

RAFTER: We've always shied away from adding artificial sounds of battle because of the confusion it might cause to a player who hears "the distant rumble sound of artillery fire" coming from 'x' direction. Off he sets in search of said noise, never to be seen again.

Q: Max range on 20mm: Does anyone know what the maximum range on the 20mm Oerlikons is? As in the point when the shell will detonate on its own.

DOC: Maximum range before fuse time detonation of the Oerlikon 20mm HE round is 5 seconds. Its muzzle velocity is 820 m/sec (averaged) but this reduces over distance, so I guess the actual range is in the region of around 4,000m or so. That’s a guesstimate; there is no exact distance only an exact time, since each round varies a little in Mv they won’t all go the exact same distance before they explode. One might go 3,800m and another 4,100m … I’m estimating the range would average out over many rounds at around 4km. Naturally if you are shooting straight up the range would be shorter than if you were shooting at the horizon.
 
It’s less a matter of “what is the exact range” (because there isn’t one) and more a matter of “what’s the average performance I should expect and why is it like that” that will help you to do well in this game.
 
Q: CRS, is this how Dewilde is belted in our Hurricane/Spits? Found this on another forum I frequent. I was wondering if our belting is roughly the same? If not, what is the belting?
"It was at first in short supply, and the initial RAF fighter loading was three guns loaded with ball, two with AP, two with Mk IV incendiary tracer and one with Mk VI incendiary. Another source for the Battle of Britain armament gives four guns with ball, two with AP and two with incendiaries (presumably Mk VI) with four of the last 25 rounds being tracer (presumably Mk IV incendiary/tracer) to tell the pilot he was running out of ammunition. It is not clear why ball was used at all; presumably there was a shortage of the more effective loadings. (By 1942 the standard loading for fixed .303s was half loaded with AP and half with incendiary.)"

DOC: DeWilde incendiary ammunition in RAF .303 armed aircraft is based on the historical percentages we researched when we added incendiary ammunition.

Q: That updated 09 is bloody deadly. Every time I have come up against it... I lose. Usually only takes one hit from the 20's and I am done. Had my engine shot out three times tonight, or been damaged so badly that I had to run like hell. Also did the rats up the pilot armor on it? I did get behind a few and put a ton of rounds into the fuselage and pilot area only to have them break off and fight other targets.

[Updated reply - MM]

DOC: There has been a lot of conjecture about this. Here’s the real scoop: The Bf109F-4 was not changed at all. Neither were the earlier Bf109s in reality, it was the MGFF/M gun belt files that were what changed. Changing the guns is not changing the aircraft; the two are separate and independent of each other.
 
There was an error made due to the tracer round disappearing from the belt files (this was the HE-T round that the extra Mine round is replacing) … the AP rounds remaining to carry the tracer should have been allocated the attribute to render the tracer, but this instead appeared on the Mine round. In effect, you see 3 rounds out of every 5 as tracers, instead of 2 out of every 5. This only applies to MGFF/M guns. Nothing changed about the MG151/20 gun at all. We have corrected this tracer anomaly for the next patch but until then any MGFF/M gun is going to be rendering too many tracers. Rendering tracers has zero effect on ballistic or any other consideration of the rounds simulated performance, it is a render (visual effect) attribute only.

To be precise, the previous belting for the MGFF/M was:
 
HE / MINE / HE / MINE / AP (with the HE round carrying the tracer render attribute)
 
Since the recent change it now is:
 
MINE / AP / MINE / AP / MINE (with the MINE round carrying the tracer attribute)
 
We have since changed the tracer attribute to the AP round which is what it should have been but was somehow wrongly attributed in the last update. This will not appear until the next patch release. In addition, due to a misunderstanding between the original proposed change and the post testing phase change that actually went into the game (after testing verified how the change would best be done for all criteria under consideration) we actually reported the change made incorrectly at first. The initial proposal was an increase in MINE rounds to 4 out of 5; the final change was in fact an increase from 2 MINE rounds to 3 MINE rounds out of every five.