Chance of a Track or Gun hit?

[Aaron]

This has probably been answered several times before, but does anyone know the percentage chance of shots hitting a tank's track or gun? Is there a chart somewhere that shows the complete shot breakdown such as %15 lower hull, %20 upper hull, etc?

I couldn't find it in the Strategy Guide.

Aaron

[JasonC]

It seems to be around 1/12 for the track, 1/24 for the gun. Making 1/8 combined for one or the other. This has been my experience testing "hail fire" (disabling tanks with non-penetrating hits).

15 hits or so by decent caliber weapons will usually cause some damage, because of this - with some portion hitting the right areas, but doing no significant damage. Smaller calibers need many more because of a higher percentage of NSDs after hitting the right spot. A full platoon of shooters (or a pair of light AA) can readily rack up this number of hits in a minute or two.

Note also that after you've already immobilized a tank, additional "hail fire" is quite unlikely to find the gun. Some miss, most hit elsewhere, NSD can still happen, leaving only 1-2% chance of getting a further "gun damage".

Fortunately, already immobilized tanks are much more susceptible to crew abandonment if under continued fire, particularly near-penetrating power hits (that can cause internal flaking etc). But if the caliber is unlikely even to scare them out and the tank is already immobile, it is a waste of ammo to keep shooting hoping for gun damage (e.g. with ATRs).

As for the basic areas, with the full tank exposed it is something like 15% lower hull, 45% upper hull, 30% turret, the rest tracks and gun. The proportions of those are about right, anyway - half on the upper hull, the rest split roughly 2/3rds turret and 1/3rd lower.

When hull down, the turret is 2/3 to 3/4 and the upper hull is 1/4 to 1/3, i.e. turret hit 2-3 times more likely than upper hull hit, with lower hull and track impossible.

I hope this helps.

[ March 03, 2004, 01:28 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]