When is a tank considered knocked out?

[rocketman]

This might seem like a stupid question with the obvious answer, that there is a big red cross when it is knocked out. But here is what I'm thinking - you can have the engine destroyed, tracks thrown, main gun out of order or weapons controls destroyed, crew members killed or even bail out and the tank is still not knocked out. If it is on fire and brews up, then it is obviously knocked out, but if not - what does it take to be knocked out exactly? Poblem is (for a battlefield forensic grog) that you can't check system damage for a knocked out tank. Does it take several "vital" systems? Or what? Can anyone shed light on this?

[Currahee150]

For the game itself, I'm not entirely sure. I've always figured that the bright red cross meant 'knocked out' and it could be repaired at some point down the road (beyond the games scope, of course) ; and the dark red cross meant it was done for. I've never been entirely sure though. Maybe experience levels may have something to do with it as well - a rookie crew would be more likely to bail out after a thunder bolt whams the turret; more experienced crews would be more confident in their tracks.

I'm sure the resident tankers on this thread will explain this thoroughly, but this is what I understand on how it works in real life. There can be several different levels of 'knocked out'. Maintenance shops crews classify tank casualties in different levels - 'A' could be an hour back at the company maintenance shop (track blown off, engine malfunction); 'B' could be back at battalion (more extensive repairs, like engine overhaul maybe?), and so on and so forth. The more serious the damage, the higher it has to go. Gun tube bent? probably brigade (just a guess). Tank caught on fire and burned so hot it melted the road wheels? Back to Anniston Army Depot stateside. Tanks - at least M1 Abrams - can be hard to permanently 'kill'. Even the ones that got blasted in Iraq with 2000lbs IEDs were eventually sent back home for 'extensive repairs'. In WWII, the even the M4 Sherman continually came back from the dead.  For the tank to written off it usually has to have died in a catastrophic manner - like the turret has left the tank, or the ammo went off so catastrophically that there is no longer proof that a tank was here. 

Edited August 12, 2016 by Currahee150

[niall78]

It was very important in a lot of books I've read to control the battlefield at the end of a battle. You can then haul off all your 'knocked out' tanks to repair them. The Germans were always loath to leave tanks on the field while their recovery and maintenance units were always ad-hoc - the usual supply nightmares as well. The Americans had salvage refined to a tee with specialist teams with proper standardised recovery vehicles. The 'replaceable parts' innovation that was at the core of American tanks helped immeasurably. It's much easier to put a new engine in a mass produced Sherman than a semi-bespoke Tiger.

Many of the Tiger tank memoirs spend as much time talking about recovering other damaged Tiger tanks as straight combat. All though the war controlling the wreckage after a battle was vital business.

In real life a tank is very rarely rendered completely useless. In CM I view them as knocked out when they are combat ineffective and immobile. I view them as destroyed when they burn.

Maybe I'm weird but in many games I've set knocked out or abandoned tanks burning with further fire to ensure their destruction. Kind of a role-play decision rather than a hard-nosed tactical decision.

Edited August 12, 2016 by niall78

[MG TOW]

Also how does this carry on in campaigns if a tank is a core unit? In keeping with the Op question as well what is knocked out in that regard. Tank is damaged crew is OK, crew is killed tank is minor damaged. Do we see the unit carry on in a camp?

[Erwin]

In the CM2 campaign game, one can get tanks "return" in terms of the number of tanks a unit make have for the next mission.  But, since the game also features "replacement" variables that can be set by the designer am unsure if it's actually the "same" tank.

[Michael Emrys]

7 hours ago, Currahee150 said:

Maybe experience levels may have something to do with it as well - a rookie crew would be more likely to bail out after a thunder bolt whams the turret; more experienced crews would be more confident in their tracks.

Alternatively it could go the other way. A green crew might sit there for vital seconds trying to decide what to do next, whereas an experienced crew would say to themselves, "We've just been hit by something that has our range. The tank doesn't move and we can't even get the turret to turn. We're outta here!"

Michael

[George MC]

I'm not sure the CM campaign engine has this independent granularity. If tanks suffer minor damage or loss of a crewman or crewmen it will carry onto the next mission; if the vehicle is disabled (crew still with vehicle) or immobilised it may or may not make an appearance in it's next mission depending on the campaign script factors (repair vehicle) set by the designer. Mind a campaign can cover several hours. a day, weeks or years. It really is down to the designer to factor in possible and imagined resupply issues.

For example you could set the vehicle repair to a high value e.g. 100% if the player wins the mission or 0% if they lose. That would represent immobilised vehicles being recovered. For longer timeframes you could add in a minor increase for 'refit' to represent vehicles being repaired after being KOd in action. Although in this case although vehicles could be repaired at rear area work stations some had to be sent back to the factory for more complicated or involved repairs - hence you might not see them again in your campaign timeframe so they are, as far as the players concerned KOd.

 

[user1000]

In real life:

It's all up to the commander, he decides to flee a sitting duck or stay. 

A moving turret would mean that it is still operational.

A jammed turret could still be brought around by moving the tracks of course, but if the elevation is off a sitting duck.

 

Dunno how the game decides.

Edited August 12, 2016 by user1000

[John Kettler]

rocketman,

British tank doctrine in the Western Desert was simple: You fired until the tank caught fire or exploded before shifting to the next target. Naturally, seeing the crew leaving the vehicle was great and gave the bow MG and coax something to do, but you had to be sure that tank wasn't coming back for a long time, if ever. In tank vulnerability studies using live fire, you had three main categories: F-Kill, M-Kill and K-Kill, with the first two expressed as percentages. Here's how it's done for real.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a085713.pdf

Regards,

John Kettler

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

Generally the "kills" are considered

Mobility Kill: For whatever reason the tank isn't going anywhere.  Tank can still shoot back

Firepower Kill: The tank cannot use its main weapons.  This can be less narrowly defined, it might mean that the weapon works but cannot be trained effectively enough to shoot, or that the weapon "works" but poorly enough to be of marginal use

Catastrophic Kill: The tank is dead.  It's burning or visibly exploded.  

It was never taught at armor school, but there was also the:

Crew Kill: Maybe the tank still works, but enough of the crew is killed/wounded to make the tank no longer an effective machine.

Mission Kill: The tank may still move and shoot, but enough is broken to make it a liability.  This I would contend applies to most world war two definitions of knocked out, the gun may work, the vehicle may move, but collectively enough is broken that the tank is now too dangerous to occupy.  

[user1000]

Getting back to OP. I think ai gets stunned/panicked and then bails on fear, regardless of a damaged system.

Edited August 13, 2016 by user1000

[DasMorbo]

There is just one clean case of a tank being knocked out: fire.

The German repair companies in WWII considered every tank that burned a total loss - the main reason was that the fire degraded the armour plate. So even if the tank was theoretically still repairable it's armour would have lost its protective properties. Seems like the British saw it the same way, because when they left Villers-Bocage after the disatrous battle there, a Sargent set all Tigers on fire which lay abandoned but not entirely destroyed in the streets to make sure they would not be repaired.

Every other damage might be repairable, depending on the specific damage and battlefield circumstances. I have seen photos of Soviet tanks with plates welded over clean armour penetrations.

 

[MikeyD]

There's several things that can go wrong in a tank's interior that would make you want to get the hell out and not come back. The smell of raw gas flooding beneath your feet from a ruptured fuel tank for instance. You're not exactly going to wait til it ignites. A burst hydraulic line. Yikes! What's the psi of a Sherman hydraulic turret drive? In the game we see penetrations, system damage, crew getting killed or engine killed, and still its not considered a KO. There seems to be a threshold beyond which its "Yup, lets get the hell out of here. This thing is toast".

[user1000]

Also imagine what thet sound will do to your ears? Even a ricochet can turn a tank into a living drum and damage your ears. sometimes you can't get out fast. the shell hit and shockwave from the blast is so powerful if it doesn't kill on the impact it will knock you out and you will die in the flames. I can see this happening in the game because they don't all exit out and once. sometimes I see guys still jumping out long after it was hit, they probably regained consciousness. The game does a god job on that.

Edited August 14, 2016 by user1000

[MikeyD]

I recall a humorous(?) anecdote from a unit history. A Churchill was rolling forward in 'walking pace' gear (don't need to depress the accelerator) when they heard a big BANG against the turret side, The crew immediately bailed. Then they were treated to the spectacle of their undamaged tank continuing to roll forward without them. The driver was so abashed that he took off after the tank, climbed back aboard while under fire, and drove it back to safety.

[Artemis258]

I had a sherman take a panzershreck to the .50 above the commander's tank and the crew bailed with 'tank destroyed' despite no other damage to the tank... 

Also, it's worth remembering that the crew -can- bail from a tank that isn't destroyed (something that should have happened in my case above tbh) - I believe this is dependent on crew experience? 

[MOS:96B2P]

2 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

I had a sherman take a panzershreck to the .50 above the commander's tank and the crew bailed with 'tank destroyed' despite no other damage to the tank.. <Snip>  

That surprises me.  You looked at the vehicle sub-system status field in the UI and the .50 MG was the only system with a red dot to the right?  If so, I don't understand why the tank was knocked out. 

2 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

<Snip> Also, it's worth remembering that the crew -can- bail from a tank that isn't destroyed (something that should have happened in my case above tbh) - I believe this is dependent on crew experience? 

I think the assigned unit motivation (+2, +1, blank, -1, -2) and the current unit morale state ( Panic, Rattled, Shaken etc.) have a big influence on a crew bailing from an operational tank.  An elite crew or a green crew that panics may both bail from an operational tank.  I guess the argument could be made that an elite crew is less likely to get itself into a position where panic might result however we are the ones plotting the waypoints for the tank ......................

[panzersaurkrautwerfer]

3 hours ago, Artemis258 said:

I had a sherman take a panzershreck to the .50 above the commander's tank and the crew bailed with 'tank destroyed' despite no other damage to the tank... 

Also, it's worth remembering that the crew -can- bail from a tank that isn't destroyed (something that should have happened in my case above tbh) - I believe this is dependent on crew experience? 

It could be the tank just became a convertible though.  

It's hard to tell in CM sometimes.  I once killed a BMP-2 in CMSF with 40 MM grenade fire, and all it actually destroyed was the radio (I was playing on recruit, I was still pretty new to the game).  I've had plenty of tanks with virtually no functional systems defiantly spray coaxial fire into the enemy, while others will be utterly destroyed with a weapons controls disabled.  

I think you have to accept somewhat the limitations of the game, we're missing a lot of massive holes, major deformations, whatever because there's no "big giant hole in frontal slope" damage tick box, or "I can see sky through the front of the turret" either.  

[MikeyD]

In the game if the crew can't tell where the fire is coming from they tend to freak. If they can locate the source of the fire they're much less likely to bail from a still operational tank.

[rocketman]

9 minutes ago, MikeyD said:

In the game if the crew can't tell where the fire is coming from they tend to freak. If they can locate the source of the fire they're much less likely to bail from a still operational tank.

It is cool that the game simulates such a thing. 

[Artemis258]

8 hours ago, panzersaurkrautwerfer said:

It could be the tank just became a convertible though.  

 

I re-watched the battle again this morning and discovered I was mistaken - that hole had actually come from an earlier incident and the kill shot in question was hidden behind some other bits on the front turret ring! Though you're right, there is a layer of abstraction that goes on, though much much less than many other games! 

[user1000]

On 8/14/2016 at 1:35 PM, MikeyD said:

In the game if the crew can't tell where the fire is coming from they tend to freak. If they can locate the source of the fire they're much less likely to bail from a still operational tank.

Interesting reply and that makes total sense. Now is that based on if the crew are green horns or vets? Say for instant vets wouldn't be as likely to bail if they can't figure out which direction shots are coming from? Act more confidently etc?

Edited August 15, 2016 by user1000

[Michael Emrys]

5 hours ago, user1000 said:

Interesting reply and that makes total sense. Now is that based on if the crew are green horns or vets? Say for instant vets wouldn't be as likely to bail if they can't figure out which direction shots are coming from? Act more confidently etc?

I'd guess that the deciding factor is whether or not they feel they have a fighting chance to nail their attacker before it nails them. And that decision has so many possible elements feeding into it that you couldn't give just a simple up or down answer from where we sit. In other words, it might look pretty random from our point of view.

Michael

[Bulletpoint]

On 14/8/2016 at 7:35 PM, MikeyD said:

In the game if the crew can't tell where the fire is coming from they tend to freak. If they can locate the source of the fire they're much less likely to bail from a still operational tank.

That's really interesting. Is it based on whether the crew have current direct visual contact to the shooter, or if they have a contact marker on the shoter's position? If the latter, then it means sharing spotting info with your tanks is even more important.

[user1000]

4 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

If the latter, then it means sharing spotting info with your tanks is even more important.

That's exactly what ran across my mind as well. No recon to spot adding to the fog of war.