Tiger & Panther Gun Damage

[weapon2010]

Does anyone feel the frequency of main guns being knocked out happens at a higher percentage than reality? Or do you guys feel it is correct and they have it right?Were Tigers and Panthers overly suseptible to this damage?

[womble]

It's certainly an annoyingly high percentage of "kills" on those two hulls at least. Whether it's realistic or not, I couldn't say, but IIRC someone did some testing and found that if the gun is turned a few degrees away from the direction of fire, the frequency of "Weapon" hits drops dramatically. It seemed in that test like the end is bigger than the side aspect of the barrel. Wierd, anyway.

[Vanir Ausf B]

The problem is no one seems to know what "reality" is in this case.

[A Canadian Cat]

Man I wish I could get those kinds of results:) Tigers especially are tough to deal with but Panthers are too. I wish my guys could take out their guns regularly. Usually my Sermans just die.

Perhaps that is the issue Tigers and Panthers survive long enough to take other kinds of damage. Usually after 1 or 2 (or 3 on a good day) hits a Sherman is smoking. While a Panther hit from the front can shrug off 5, 6, 7 hits. Perhaps that is where the increased amount of gun damage comes from.

They take twice, or more, the number of hits.

[Redwolf]

Does anyone feel the frequency of main guns being knocked out happens at a higher percentage than reality? Or do you guys feel it is correct and they have it right?Were Tigers and Panthers overly suseptible to this damage?

Discussed many times. It is the mantlet modeling. But fear not, there is an easy solution.

[weapon2010]

Don't leave me hanging you cruel one.

[Redwolf]

Don't leave me hanging you cruel one.

Don't use Tigers and Panthers

[sburke]

Yeah don't. Really it is a terrible idea to bother using them against Shermans etc. You really should consider using something else. Why do I use them? Oh well to give you a better chance of course, that's all. Just looking out for you!

[CM1fan]

Man I wish I could get those kinds of results:) Tigers especially are tough to deal with but Panthers are too. I wish my guys could take out their guns regularly. Usually my Sermans just die.

Perhaps that is the issue Tigers and Panthers survive long enough to take other kinds of damage. Usually after 1 or 2 (or 3 on a good day) hits a Sherman is smoking. While a Panther hit from the front can shrug off 5, 6, 7 hits. Perhaps that is where the increased amount of gun damage comes from.

They take twice, or more, the number of hits.

I well remember my Marder getting a first round hull penetration hit on my opponent's Sherman and which then absorbed SIX more penetration hits before it finally started burning. My opponent told me the three survivors of Sherman's crew abandoned the tank after the second hit, but my Marder fired off a third of its AT rounds before it ceased fire. Two turns later, two other Sherman's sighted the Marder. Their first shot sailed overhead, but it was quickly followed by two turret penetration hits which killed the Marder's entire crew.

[c3k]

Vanir Ausf B has done some yoeman's work researching and testing this issue.

[Dietrich]

Note to self: Keep own Tigers/Panthers in turret-up position (i.e. with only hull exposed) to obviate main-gun damage.

[LongLeftFlank]

Note to self: Keep own Tigers/Panthers in turret-up position (i.e. with only hull exposed) to obviate main-gun damage.

Kind of like this nifty don't-try-this-at-home-lads move "Hellman of Hammer Force" used to cross an AT ditch...

Amazing, the stuff you can dredge up on the Interwebs....

[Amizaur]

Discussed many times. It is the mantlet modeling. But fear not, there is an easy solution.

Not really. The "weapon mount" hits don't cause gun damage. At least I didn't see that. The "weapon" hits do.

And the "weapon" hits SEEMS to happen when a shell hits the "muzzle brake" at the end of the barrel. I mean just the end of the barrel. This is where the hit animation is displayed, and also this is why the highest percentage of gun damaging "weapon" hits is against hull-down tanks which are aiming at the shooter (the muzzle brake is dorectly in the way of incoming shells, in the center of the spread pattern, close to aim point), and there are no "weapon" hits when the barrel is pointing elsewhere, even 10-20deg to the side or up (the muzzle brake is away from the path of incoming shells).

[Vanir Ausf B]

If you look at test #5 in my last thread you'll see that I got the highest proportion of gun hits when the tank was angled upwards.

[Redwolf]

Not really. The "weapon mount" hits don't cause gun damage. At least I didn't see that. The "weapon" hits do.

And the "weapon" hits SEEMS to happen when a shell hits the "muzzle brake" at the end of the barrel. I mean just the end of the barrel. This is where the hit animation is displayed, and also this is why the highest percentage of gun damaging "weapon" hits is against hull-down tanks which are aiming at the shooter (the muzzle brake is dorectly in the way of incoming shells, in the center of the spread pattern, close to aim point), and there are no "weapon" hits when the barrel is pointing elsewhere, even 10-20deg to the side or up (the muzzle brake is away from the path of incoming shells).

Please scan the previous discussions. The higher rate of Panthers and Tigers getting gun damage is a result of large mantlet, with the game apparently giving all mantlet hits a chance to knock out the gun. You might have collected some cases where the weapon was hit directly but I doubt you did that often enough to be statistically significant.

[chas_in_mlb]

There is a sequence in the Canadian doco "The Valor And The Horror" where a Canadian tanker talks about taking shots at the gun mantlet on purpose- he claimed that the German gun mantlets were so thick that if you hit it in the right place the shot would often ricochet downwards over the driver's position where the armour was nowhere nearly as thick and the tank would be immobilized. The interviewer looks dubious and says something like "Really??" the tanker goes on to say, "well, sometimes you have to take a chance".

By the by- I was playing the second scenario of "The Scottish Corridor" and one of my 6-lbers accounted for both Tigers. The first one- the first shot stunned him, on the second hit he reversed and showed a little side and the third one brewed him up. I was quite surprised.

On a side note- I'm wondering why there is no APDS modeled in the game....

[akd]

On a side note- I'm wondering why there is no APDS modeled in the game....

Well, there is...

[Redwolf]

There is a sequence in the Canadian doco "The Valor And The Horror" where a Canadian tanker talks about taking shots at the gun mantlet on purpose- he claimed that the German gun mantlets were so thick that if you hit it in the right place the shot would often ricochet downwards over the driver's position where the armour was nowhere nearly as thick and the tank would be immobilized. The interviewer looks dubious and says something like "Really??" the tanker goes on to say, "well, sometimes you have to take a chance".

This has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Early Panthers could bounce the hit into the driver area hull roof. It has nothing to do with knocking out the weapons. The flaw was later corrected by not making the lower part of the mantlet a circle.

[John Kettler]

weapon2010,

Welcome aboard!

If the only way you can get an F-Kill in the game is from end on, then I believe the modeling is flawed. There is a much higher chance of a gun tube hit when the barrel is perpendicular to the projectile, not pointing toward it. It's a simple presented area argument. The bigger the area that's hittable and can be damaged, the greater the likelihood of occurrence.

They're not quite sure what caused this, but this gun's clearly been had at from the side.

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/5981/n2qq7.jpg

Grant main gun is hit and breaks.

http://ww2today.com/29th-may-1942-british-tanks-attack-in-the-desert

F-Killed Panthers (probably from side ~1/3 way down page; tanks from same column!)

http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?769-Tank-porn-NSFW/page36

KV-2 hit from side

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?126915-Destroyed-tanks

KV-2 (holed gun tube)

http://www.panzerworld.net/tanksinworldwar2/pictures/sovietunion/kv2-04.jpg

KV-1 hit repeatedly in gun tube (and lots of other places).

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/329/kv1hitseveraltimes3wlxw7.jpg/

I believe these illustrate my point nicely!

Regards,

John Kettler

[womble]

Please scan the previous discussions. The higher rate of Panthers and Tigers getting gun damage is a result of large mantlet, with the game apparently giving all mantlet hits a chance to knock out the gun. You might have collected some cases where the weapon was hit directly but I doubt you did that often enough to be statistically significant.

In my testing, with 15 tanks, watching carefully, every single "Weapon" hit took out the gun. With 15 tanks shooting, there was approximately 1 "weapon" hit per minute of fire (at 2000, 1500 and 1000m), so about 1 in 75 rounds fired (I wasn't counting hits/misses). No tank's gun was destroyed by anything other than Weapon hits (unless it happened when the whole vehicle was KOed so I couldn't tell). "Weapon Mount" hits (much more common) only did accumulative damage to the optics, or destroyed the Coax MG. After all the Shermans had expended their 76mm AP, no surviving tank had anything better than a x for their optics. This was true for Panthers and Tigers.

I paid particular attention to Weapon and Weapon Mount hits, since I too thought Weapon Mount would eventually degrade the main gun.

[Amizaur]

Please scan the previous discussions. The higher rate of Panthers and Tigers getting gun damage is a result of large mantlet, with the game apparently giving all mantlet hits a chance to knock out the gun. You might have collected some cases where the weapon was hit directly but I doubt you did that often enough to be statistically significant.

How then would you explain two facts:

1. the animation of weapon hits is ussually positioned at the end of the barrel

2. the weapon hits almost stop happening when the barrel is rotated to the left or to the right. If it was about the mantlet hits, there would be almost no difference.

and

3. A weapon hit almost always means gun damage. On hundreds of hits I've seen maybe two weapon hits that didn't cause gun damage. And I'm even not 100% sure those about two. "Weapon mount" hits, which are probably mantlet hits, do not cause gun damage. I never seen gun damage caused by turret or weapon mount hits.

"You might have collected some cases where the weapon was hit directly but I doubt you did that often enough to be statistically significant."

I think few hundred shells is statistically significant. I've done tests very similar to those of Vanir Ausf B, on somewhat smaller scale I suppose. But after few hundred hits and experiments with gun positioning, the results seemed quite obvious.

Vanir Ausf B "If you look at test #5 in my last thread you'll see that I got the highest proportion of gun hits when the tank was angled upwards.

I was away for over a week so I didn't read that one. Will check. Do you have maybe a save with this setup, test #5 ?

Anyway, I was quite sure about what I saw. I didn't test much with gun looking upwards, but in one test when Tiger 2 was positioned a little upwards with it's gun pointing into the sky, there was NO gun hits in about 50 turret hits. Same when the gun was rotated 20deg to the left (that test included several tanks positioned this way). No gun hits. If I can, I'll try to replicate your test #5 and see.

edit:

Test 5


 Cromwell VII firing at Tiger I Late full hull down on reverse slope (2 meter berm with Tiger on reverse slope, as opposed to further back from the berm on level ground in other tests) range 500m


 648 hits


 * 364 -- 56% -- Weapon Mount (mantlet)

 362 no damage

 1 partial penetration

 1 penetration


 * 255 -- 39% -- Weapon (gun hit/disabled)


 * 27 -- 4% -- Front Turret

 22 no damage

 5 spalls


 * 2 Right Front Turret (rounded side visible)

 2 no damage


Comments: Placing the tank angled vertically increases the exposed area of the gun barrel and decreases the exposed area of the rest of the turret relative to the shooter so the direction of migration in hit location makes sense, although 39% of hits disabling the main gun does seem a bit excessive even in this situation (but I admittedly can't prove that  )

I would like to see that setup - how high the gun end was positioned. The result is strange - from my experience, and multiple tests with barrels positioned to the side or raised, the side area of the barrel is not simulated at all, the only detectable hitpoint is at it's end (call it muzzle brake). Maybe - somehow in this test - the Tiger's raised muzzle brake was still positioned accidentally in some dense part of the Crommwell gun spread pattern... No ideas really, what caused that, untill I see that setup and test it myself.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I was away for over a week so I didn't read that one. Will check. Do you have maybe a save with this setup, test #5 ?

http://www.2shared.com/file/fxyaOKWj/gunnery2000_cromwell_500_slope.html

[Amizaur]

Thanks for the file. I've run it and got many weapon hits.

Indeed the Tiger I seem to have more than one "hitpoint" for the barrel.

Not only at the end of it (the "muzzle brake") :

but also on the thick part of the tube close to the mantlet:

I did my tests tested initially with Tiger I, but with the barrel pointing at shooting tanks. Then changed the target tanks to Panther and Tiger 2 at the time I checked rotated barrels, and then I didn't notice those additional hitpoints. Probably every tank has little different number and positioning of barrel "hitpoints" or "hit areas".

With your setuop I got some hits at the "muzzle brake", every shell that was little too high and would normally go just over the roof of the turret, had good chance of hitting the "muzzle brake" if it was flying over center of the Tiger turret:

As you can see above, the shell after disabling the Tiger's gun, continued on it's path just above Tiger's turret roof and hit the ground far behing the target.

But most "wepon hits" were at the thick part of the Tiger I barrel, that is close to the mantlet:

So, at least against Tiger I, weapon disabling hits are also possible in that place.

I suppose that Panther don't have that hitpoint, as it's barrel don't have the thick part. Not sure about KT.

Anyway, gun disabling hits are "weapon" hits. There may be only difference in placement and number of "weapon hit areas" for every tank.