Crew shock taken into account?

[Gyrene]

Do you think that the effects of a non-fatal hit on a tank's crew has been taken into account?

What I mean is that even if a round has hit a tank, but not done any damage, the crew inside has to be more than a bit shaken up (literally) by the impact.

There are many accounts of how tank crews at the battle of Hue in Vietnam (As an example) had to be rotated, as after literally dozens of hits from B40 rockets the M48 crews were just too punch drunk to keep going, individual tanks often would go through 5 or 6 crews a day this way.

I have not noticed if non-fatal hits have the slowing down effect on the crew as it should have.

Any comments?

Gyrene

[Ex Bellator]

Here's an example - I had a great TCP game at the weekend against a buddy who had bought a Panther. After the RAF had a couple of near misses against the beast it confronted a Churchill and pinged two shots off it's armour. The Churchill took aim and pinged a shot off the Panther's turret in return.

I then typed lot's of LOL's as the Veteran Panther crew bailed out after receiving the one bounced hit on the turret :eek:. After the hilarity subsided, my opponent confirmed that the hit had caused 'internal armour flaking' and had injured one of the crew. As the Panther was in perfect working order it must have been the probably messily injured crewman who forced the bail out.

I thought it was reasonable that this could happen but my opponent thought otherwise. It's the first time I've seen this result in all my games but it confirms that non fatal tank hits in CMBO can KO a tank. Anyone else seen this and do you think it's reasonable that a crew injury could force a bail out from a fully functioning AFV?

[David Aitken]

I also recently lost a tank through armour flaking, a Challenger hit by a 50mm gun from a few hundred metres. The tank, however, had already lost its commander to an enemy marksman, so the flaking caused the second casualty out of five crewmen.

Armour flaking, in my understanding, is not just a bit of metal peeling off the inside of the hull – in effect it is like a minor penetration, because the shell stops outside the hull, but the force is translated into a large chunk of metal which is propelled through the interior. This could injure or kill crewmen and/or cause damage inside the tank.

I don't think it unreasonable that the crew should abandon, either through shock from what may as well have been a proper penetration, or fear of a subsequent penetration, or necessity through loss of vital crewmen or mechanical damage.

[zahl]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gyrene:

Do you think that the effects of a non-fatal hit on a tank's crew has been taken into account?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't think crew suppression is modelled. Heavy concussions do not seem to reduce their fighting ability or reaction times at all, assuming no casualties were taken. In Steel Panthers a few non-damaging hits from heavy guns can render the crew temporarily combat ineffective.

[PawBroon]

In Steel Panthers it was more of a moral issue.

You could reach that suppressive effect firing with almost anything actually.

I had crews bailed out because some guys popped 9mm of the armor.

IIRC there was a threshold which could be reach faster when confronted with potent assets but the cumulative effect of fire was also just the same.

I could be wrong though...

In CM there is no such thing as that "**** nobody love us" factor.

Your tanks could be fired upon by and large without even being vexed.

It's more a lethality threshold there.

HMG won't do much, gun fire will trigger a hasty withdrawal.

[boy_Recon]

I had a game where I was pinging a churchill on the front and causing internal armour flaking twice or thrice a turn for several turns. this seemed to have no impact on the crew whatsoever. i can only assume that an 'armour flaking' initial result on a shot then triggers a further percentage chance of injuring a crewman (which then might shock or force a bail-out) but that i was unlucky. just a point, but how can i see whats going on INSIDE an enemy tank 500m away?

[Gyrene]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I don't think crew suppression is modelled. Heavy concussions do not seem to reduce their fighting ability or reaction times at all, assuming no casualties were taken. In Steel Panthers a few non-damaging hits from heavy guns can render the crew temporarily combat ineffective. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Zahl, this is exactly what I mean, while internal armor flaking is a nice touch to the game, plain and simple concussions are not taken into effect.

In a recent game I had a 105mm Sherman hit an unbuttoned PzIV with HE on the turret front, in Real Life odds are good that the tank would have 50% less TC and that the crew would be at the very least groggy for a few minutes, but as it turned out the tank buttoned up with no casualties and promptly scored a kill on the Sherm less than 5 seconds later.

The lack of concussion effects negates some of the effectiveness of teams of smaller tanks acting against uber tanks.

Gyrene

[PawBroon]

You can't.

Basically when you choose to have Detailed Hits then there is no test and all results are displayed whether logical or not.

If you play Villers Bocage long enough, you'd see that sometimes you score Gun Hit against HTs.

For those who are not schooled in the way of VB, that is when you HIT a half track with a 88 gun from your Tiger and score a puny hit on a bloody MG...

How could a 88 simply jam a MG is also left to be explained.

So as a matter of principal and to avoid such nuisance, turn off Detailed Hits.

[Ben Galanti]

Err, detailed hits just shows the results to you or not. You can still get that gun damaged HT in VB with it off, you just won't know about it

Ben

[PawBroon]

That's the point Ben!

Unless the gun is corkscrewed, there is no way I should know.

I don't want it NOT to happen.

I just don't want to know...

I shouldn't be able to know most of the things I'm told anyway actually.

[CombinedArms]

Getting back to the original topic, I've seen crews of immobilized Panthers bail when under sustained artillery bombardment, particularly when it's VT arty. I not sure specifically how this is modelled, but it seems realistic to me. I know such things happened in real life--in fact probably more often than they do in CM.

[WWB]

I think that 88 would probably just rip of the gun (and gunner), but because the MG is so high up it probably would not disable the vehicle. You can drive a roofless car.

WWB

[Wolfe]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by CombinedArms:

Getting back to the original topic, I've seen crews of immobilized Panthers bail when under sustained artillery bombardment, particularly when it's VT arty. I not sure specifically how this is modelled, but it seems realistic to me. I know such things happened in real life--in fact probably more often than they do in CM.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

In order for a full crew to bail out of an immobilized vehicle, the gun has to be damaged at some point. If either gun is undamaged or the tank is still mobile, they'll always stick with the vehicle. I think it would be nice to see in CM2 some chance of bailing due solely to morale hit (crew gets severely spooked). Particularly for an immobile vehicle.

- Chris

[Agua]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rex_Bellator:

It's the first time I've seen this result in all my games but it confirms that non fatal tank hits in CMBO can KO a tank. Anyone else seen this and do you think it's reasonable that a crew injury could force a bail out from a fully functioning AFV?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I've got a weirder one than that, though, not necessarily unrealistic. I was playing a tcp/ip several weeks ago. My opponent had utterly crushed both my flanks and his armour was rolling forward in the middle. I had two vanilla shermans with green crews. One sherman was approximately 80 meters in front of the other. The forward sherm was taken out by a PzIV. The second sherm saw this and also saw my opponent's armour rolling towards it in a wave of two PzIV's, and several psw something or others. The yellow lines from the advancing German armour all pointed towards the Sherm. I can't remember of a shot was fired or not, but there were no hits on the sherm. The crew just bailed and ran for the rear, with a perfectly good sherman left abandoned on the field. Top that.

[Ex Bellator]

Nice story Agua, it still amazes me how this game keeps coming up with different rare events and think some of the s**t happens aspect of conflict is present in CMBO. I think David summed up the internal armour flaking issue excellently and I have no problem with it being sufficient to force a bail out - mind you it wasn't my tank!

I would also like to see concussion type results in CM as suggested Gyrene. I would imagine that a huge explosion a few feet away from your head with only a couple of inches of steel in the way would leave you stunned for a while at the very least. Hope it makes it into CM2.

[Stalin's Organ]

If anyone has acess to the Journal of Strategic Studies, I remember in the early 90's reading an article about German tanks "KO'ed" by airpower in Normandy - the survey was done at the time of course.

The conclusion that I recall mst vividly is that many tanks were abandoned in perfect working order with plenty of gas in het tanks with nothing to show why/how except craters somewhere withing a few hundred yards (far too far away to have actually done anything). This included Panthers and Tigers.

Apparently it's possible to feel that the tank itself is attracting the unwanted attention and you'd be better of outside it!