Question about CM's armor system

[traemyn]

I have only played the demo of this game and want to know some details about the tank armor system. I thought I noticed on the tank pictures on the bottom of the screen a sort of "health bar" for different parts of the tank. Is this simulating physical/structural armor decay as it goes down? Or am I looking at the wrong icon for tank damage?

Maybe someone could give me a summary of the armor/damage system, would be very helpful!

[Mike Summers]

If I understand your post correctly, what you are seeing is not a "health bar", but rather a relative indicator of armour thickness around the vehicle. Red is thinner, then yellow, and green is even thicker. Blue indicates very thick armour.

This game doesn't model cumulative damage, ie: so many "health points" per unit. The closest thing to that would be the crew's morale, but that as a whole different topic.

[traemyn]

ahh, ok thanks I see now

In your opinion (anyone else is welcome to speak theres too) does a cumulative damage model belong in these types of games as a sort of structural decay simulation? Or is it not an 'real war' issue?

[JasonC]

Tanks don't have "hit points", it does not belong in any realistic sim.

The round either has the oomph to get through the plate or it does not. Subsequent hits are extremely unlikely to hit the exact same point, and failures do little to a solid armor plate anyway.

The only cumulative damage is less than lethal hits can and do add up. Some hits can cause immobilization, others gun damage, or loss of a crew member and "shock", some "internal armor flaking" results will depress crew morale, same with large HE near misses and the like. If a vehicle is already immobilized any of these may persuade the crew to bail out.

It is vastly more realistic than any "health points" first person shooter nonsense, which is the stuff of comic books and role playing.

The only slight drawback in CM is that very small caliber rounds have no chance of causing non lethal damage, instead of a very small but positive chance. I've test fired 3000 rounds of ATR ammo at plain 1942-3 Panzers, for example, and they don't hurt them at all. That many should immobilize or gun damage some, reflecting hits to sighting gear, the barrel itself, the running gear and fuel cells, etc. Larger caliber AP will already do this, there is just a cut off level below which it does not happen, that is somewhat arbitrary.

[traemyn]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Tanks don't have "hit points", it does not belong in any realistic sim.

The round either has the oomph to get through the plate or it does not. Subsequent hits are extremely unlikely to hit the exact same point, and failures do little to a solid armor plate anyway.

The only cumulative damage is less than lethal hits can and do add up. Some hits can cause immobilization, others gun damage, or loss of a crew member and "shock", some "internal armor flaking" results will depress crew morale, same with large HE near misses and the like. If a vehicle is already immobilized any of these may persuade the crew to bail out.

It is vastly more realistic than any "health points" first person shooter nonsense, which is the stuff of comic books and role playing.

I ask b/c a game called Faces of War (sequal to Soldiers: Heroes of WW2) is coming out soon and they decided to implement such a model kinda over the top of the existing 'normal' penetration model that was in SHoWW2. And I suspected, as you pointed out, that they really took a step backwards in doing this and its too bad.

thank you for the reply

EDIT: oh one more thing, do you know of any good reading sources for information about armor penetration and the like?

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by traemyn:

[snips]

EDIT: oh one more thing, do you know of any good reading sources for information about armor penetration and the like?

There is to my knowledge no book in print giving reliable, complete and consistent armour-piercing performance data for all the gun/projectile combinations used in WW2.

I think the best published source for penetration figures of German weapons is Hoffschmidt & Tantum, 1968, and for British and American weapons, the works of Hunnicutt (I have "Sherman" and "Half track"), Playfair 1956 and Ellis et al 1962. I have yet to see any printed source of comparably high quality for the weapons of other nations, but Valera Potapov’s “Russian Battlefield” website (www.battlefield.ru) is by far the best source I have yet seen on Russian weapons. If it is preferred to take penetration figures based on calculation, rather than solely on historical documentation then the best printed source is Bird and Livingston’s “WW2 Ballistics: Armor and Gunnery” (Overmatch Press, Albany, NY, 2001), unfortunately now apparently unobtainable.

If you want a copy of my WW2 armour penetration document, a Word file which summarizes 130 sources I have inspected, e-mail me.

All the best,

John.

[ParaBellum]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

If you want a copy of my WW2 armour penetration document, a Word file which summarizes 130 sources I have inspected, e-mail me.

Hi John, I hope you're doing fine! Still sad I can't make it to the gaming session at Mark's place...

I would be very interested in this document, could you send it to me, too?

jo_baur AT yahoo.de

Danke schön,

Jochen