Anti tank rifle vs HTs in the game

[SlowMotion]

I have been watching effectiveness of Russian anti tank rifles vs German half tracks.

It seems that they are accurate, but don't cause that much damage.

 

Even though during a turn I may see several penetrations from ATR hits the HT does not reverse to safety like often happens when they are shot with smaller calibre weapons.

Especially when a soldier inside a HT dies.

Also despite several penetrations and the HT being full of soldiers in most cases nobody dies (no idea of any damage was caused to crew inside or the vehicle).

So I'm thinking: is this correctly modeled now?

 

I would assume hitting a HT full of soldiers would have pretty good chance of causing casualties to soldiers inside or the vehicle getting damaged, depending on the place of hit of course.

And why don't HTs react to 14,5mm hits at all like they do when hit with smaller or larger caliber weapons?

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Lots of empty space in there, so many penetrations will do relatively little.

 

With regard to reaction, my HT's get the wind up and back away big time when they come under ATR fire.

 

My opponents and I don't use any vehicle crew motivation higher than normal though, as we all agree that the higher level crews don't behave like real human beings.  

 

If your crews are highly motivated, they may not do much in the face of ATR fire, being supermen and all. 

[SlowMotion]

IMO if there are say 10 soldiers in the vehicle and you keep shooting through the vehicle's back part towards the driver it should be very likely that either one of the soldiers or the vehicle gets damaged.

Now you can hit 5-10 times (real counts from a battle, I have't done any articial tests) and the vehicle stays mobile and usually no soldiers die.

I have no idea what level crews my opponent's vehicles were, but I could shoot entire turn and usually the HT wouldn't move.

[JasonC]

My experience is that ATRs are entirely effective against SPWs and SPWs carried infantry.  Yes you want lots of them, and yes they need to fire for minute after minute.  But they have the ammo for that and they have the stealth, and the things should not be scarce on the ground.  2 ATRs firing for 3 minutes will put enough holes in the things that they will be abandoned.  One ATR will not take out several, as a heavy ATG could.

 

It does make a difference what angle you can hit them from.  The sides of the German SPWs (and later PSW models, as well) are considerably thinner than the angled front - 8mm flat is a lot thinner than 15mm angled.  Penetrations that overmatch the armor are more likely to have a behind armor effect than shots that just barely get in.

 

Just keep firing, is my advice.  The hits will add up; each doesn't need to be effective for the long run cumulative effect to be so.

[MikeyD]

The game, I think, tracks individual rounds' individual trajectories. If an ATR penetration doesn't hit anything vital that's because... well... because it didn't hit anything vital. There's minimal abstraction involved. Sometimes a round hits nothing at all. Sometimes a round goes through the hull, then through two bodies, the exits the vehicle and hits some sad sack standing nearby. C'est la guerre. 

[PhilM]

The game, I think, tracks individual rounds' individual trajectories. If an ATR penetration doesn't hit anything vital that's because... well... because it didn't hit anything vital. There's minimal abstraction involved. Sometimes a round hits nothing at all. Sometimes a round goes through the hull, then through two bodies, the exits the vehicle and hits some sad sack standing nearby. C'est la guerre. 

 

Using actual trajectories from weapon to target - and which aspect of the target is hit - is in the game AFAIK. But does this also apply to the extent of *internally*, within vehicles?

 

I know that we can see a representation of the internal structure and equipment: but are the internals - and the trajectories - modelled so precisely that it is determined if a round actually hits, say, the radio?

 

I thought, apart from determining if a round was or wasn't an "in and out" and emerges the other side of the initial target vehicle, the internals were all (?) abstracted ...

 

Is it not beyond the game at the moment to assess what happens to the (deflected?) path of every shell and fragment once the round has gone through some sort of armour layer? And then to know the internal location of all of the systems which can be damaged. Not to mention the crew and passengers: where exactly were they when the round entered?

 

I would like to think it's true, but it seems a stretch ...

[womble]

I'm pretty sure you're right that the effect on the vehicle itself is randomised on a table (or series of tables) which depend on where the vehicle was hit, and by what. I'd expect that lookup to have a possibility (depending on penetration energy/round type) of assigning crew and passenger casualty from behind-armour fragment/pyrotechnic/blast effects. But the passengers are separate entities and the actual path of the round looks to me like it's extrapolated without deflection once the effect on the first target has been determined (I take the multi-kill by "through-and-through" penetrations using AP rounds as fairly strong evidence of this) so it's entirely possible that the intersection of the trajectory with the pTruppen is also calculated as it would be if they were outside the track.

[Michael Emrys]

Now you can hit 5-10 times (real counts from a battle, I have't done any articial tests) and the vehicle stays mobile and usually no soldiers die.

 

Pfft. Over a year ago I saw a Kubelwagen take at least 100 hits before it was disabled. And the driver didn't get a scratch until he stepped out of the car. They made 'em tough in Wolfsburg back in those days.

 

Michael

[SlowMotion]

Pfft. Over a year ago I saw a Kubelwagen take at least 100 hits before it was disabled. And the driver didn't get a scratch until he stepped out of the car. They made 'em tough in Wolfsburg back in those days.

 

Michael

 

Ok, maybe so. But *halftracks* was the group of vehicles I wrote about.

HT crews seem to react to enemy smaller caliber firing quite quickly, but don't care much about 14,5mm hits.

Which should at least make quite a bang when hitting the vehicle.

 

Tank crews sometimes abandon their tank when it is seriously hit.

Infantry often hits the ground when enemy starts firing.

But HTs just wait in the same place despite several hits. I think this self-defensive behaviour  which is present in most units is missing from the ATR vs HT case.

[womble]

Ok, maybe so. But *halftracks* was the group of vehicles I wrote about.

HT crews seem to react to enemy smaller caliber firing quite quickly, but don't care much about 14,5mm hits.

Which should at least make quite a bang when hitting the vehicle.

I suspect there's a "quantity has a volume all of its own" facet to this: when a halfie comes under small arms fire, it's usually hailing in, either from a full squad of rifles, or some automatic weapon. By contrast an ATRifle has a low rate of fire, so perhaps the AI is a bit more sanguine about it. It might be ten times as nervous per round impacting, but 20 times as many rifle calibre rounds come in in the time it takes a 14.5mm to reload, so the track is twice as skittish.

[SlowMotion]

Maybe using some AI logic that makes sense, but IMO keeping the HT in same place when an ATR keeps hitting it several times a minute is Russian roulette.

It's just a matter of time when a penetrating bullet SHOULD damage something.

[Guest]

I'm pretty sure you're right that the effect on the vehicle itself is randomised on a table (or series of tables) which depend on where the vehicle was hit, and by what. I'd expect that lookup to have a possibility (depending on penetration energy/round type) of assigning crew and passenger casualty from behind-armour fragment/pyrotechnic/blast effects. But the passengers are separate entities and the actual path of the round looks to me like it's extrapolated without deflection once the effect on the first target has been determined (I take the multi-kill by "through-and-through" penetrations using AP rounds as fairly strong evidence of this) so it's entirely possible that the intersection of the trajectory with the pTruppen is also calculated as it would be if they were outside the track.

 

No lookup tables - trajectories are tracked post-penetration.

 

Using actual trajectories from weapon to target - and which aspect of the target is hit - is in the game AFAIK. But does this also apply to the extent of *internally*, within vehicles?

 

Yep.

 

I know that we can see a representation of the internal structure and equipment: but are the internals - and the trajectories - modelled so precisely that it is determined if a round actually hits, say, the radio?

 

Yep.

 

I thought, apart from determining if a round was or wasn't an "in and out" and emerges the other side of the initial target vehicle, the internals were all (?) abstracted ...

 

Is it not beyond the game at the moment to assess what happens to the (deflected?) path of every shell and fragment once the round has gone through some sort of armour layer? And then to know the internal location of all of the systems which can be damaged. Not to mention the crew and passengers: where exactly were they when the round entered?

 

I would like to think it's true, but it seems a stretch ...

 

 

It is not beyond the game.  That's (basically) how it works.  All rounds are tracked, equipment is modeled, if people or equipment are hit by deflected / post-penetration rounds they'll get hurt just as much as they'd get hurt by a round of X size going Y speed.  This is how you can have through-and-throughs, men getting killed by deflected shells, etc.  Ballistics are tracked for all rounds, from start to finish.

[Rokossovski]

 All rounds are tracked, equipment is modeled, if people or equipment are hit by deflected / post-penetration rounds they'll get hurt just as much as they'd get hurt by a round of X size going Y speed.  This is how you can have through-and-throughs, men getting killed by deflected shells, etc.  Ballistics are tracked for all rounds, from start to finish.

 

 

Wow!  Impressive.  This game is even more precise than I thought.  And I already thought it was pretty darn precise.

 

Given the system you have described, I would expect that with shrapnel or similar complications it would not always be necessary to score a *direct* hit to cause casualties or damage to crew members or internal systems.  The effect (I would imagine) would vary based on what sort object is exploding/bouncing around the vehicle interior.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Rokossovski

[Reiter]

What do you think. in computer buy, is there little too less atr purchased?