tanks: penetration=kill?

[lewallen]

I think there was a thread on this a while back, but I couldn't find it in the Search, so here's the question: are tanks in real life usually knocked out by a single penetration? In CM it seems that virtually every penetration is a kill, even rounds that must have only barely penetrated (i.e. armor penetration of the shell is only slightly higher than armor value of the plate it hit), or penetrations by small rounds (37mm and 2lb mostly). I played Steel Panthers again a couple of months ago (which reminded me of why I switched to CM ), and noticed that a large number of my hits would penetrate but not kill the targeted AFV. Is this realistic, or is CM's modelling more realistic?

IIRC the 2lb cannon, for instance, used only solid shot with no explosive filler, so I would expect that you might get several penetrations on, say, a self-propelled gun (with a big, lightly armored superstructure) that would not knock it out. And since individual crew positions are not modelled in CM (i.e. you cannot immobilize a tank by getting a hull hit which kills the driver, but does not damage the turret or gun), it seems that just damaging a tank, rather than killing it outright every time, is harder in CM than it should be.

Anyway, can someone enlighten me?

~Sam

[tools4fools]

No-kill penetration do happen in CM. Wait until your tank hits that Panther in its side, get a penetration but no kill, and the Panther then shoots your tank into pieces...

You will love it.

[Sidewinder]

In a TCP game tonight, i had a PZIV completely surprise (i verified if i had surprise with my opponant) a sherman from approx 100m, with a beauty flank shot.

it shoots and gets a "hull penetration, no damage", and is then KO'd by his sherman on the first shot. The PZIV was in a hull down position too...luckily a schreck got in range and tore the sherman a new one.

[lcm1947]

You know I have been thinking the same thing ever since I got the game over 1 1/2 years ago. I am somewhat disappointed in this one aspect of the game meaning how tanks are so extremely deadly. I mean the combat life span of a tank once located is so short it seems unrealistic to me. So I wonder also if this was true or just has to be modelled this way. I am aware that there are plenty of times that you get a hit without actually knocking the tank out because I do see these pretty often but still seems like tanks are too accurate in the game. I also feel German tanks are over modelled in this way. I mean damm they are extremely accurate compared to a sherman - but maybe in real life they were also. Who knows? Good question lewallen.

[zukkov]

not all kills are actually kills. by that i mean a penetration sometimes just forces the crew to abandon the tank. click on the knocked out tank. some times it says knocked out, but often it says abandoned. theoretically these tanks aren't destroyed, but the crew bailed out. think about it. if you were in said tank when a round just punched a hole, maybe killing 1 or 2 of the guys, would you want to stay in it and keep fighting? or would you assume the next round had your name on it and get the hell out of there? actually, i think that what's not modeled is tanks firing at an already knocked out tank. in real life, if you fire and ko a tank, but it doesn't brew, chances are you would fire more shots into it. this would especially be true for kills at range when it would be harder to tell if the tank were actually destroyed...

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by lewallen:

I think there was a thread on this a while back, but I couldn't find it in the Search, so here's the question: are tanks in real life usually knocked out by a single penetration?

Here, let me re-post my "weight of flying metal" table. This is an estimate of the amount of metal shot into a tank by penetration of 3-inch (75mm) armour, taken from PRO document WO 185/178, "Tank armament versus armour".

Weapon_____Amn nature_____Mass of metal

88mm_______APCBCHE_____11.9 Kg

17-pdr________APC________9.5 Kg

75mm_______APCBCHE_____8.2 Kg

6-pdr________APCBC_______4.3 Kg

75mm PaK 41__APCNR______1.25 Kg

95mm________HEAT_______0.45 Kg

Originally posted by lewallen:

IIRC the 2lb cannon,

Mr. Picky says that's 2-pdr or 2-pr, but not 2-lb or 2-lber.

Originally posted by lewallen:

for instance, used only solid shot with no explosive filler, so I would expect that you might get several penetrations on, say, a self-propelled gun (with a big, lightly armored superstructure) that would not knock it out.

Indeed; but I suspect that the same would probably be true of small-calibre APHE. I don't know how much difference adding the HE burster charge makes to the efficiency of fragmentation, nor how reliable the fuze functioning was, but British ATk weapons abandoned APHE entirely after the 3-pdr, and if the tank-killing performance of subsequent designs suffered as a result I have never found any evidence of it.

All the best,

John.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by lcm1947:

You know I have been thinking the same thing ever since I got the game over 1 1/2 years ago. I am somewhat disappointed in this one aspect of the game meaning how tanks are so extremely deadly. I mean the combat life span of a tank once located is so short it seems unrealistic to me. So I wonder also if this was true or just has to be modelled this way. I am aware that there are plenty of times that you get a hit without actually knocking the tank out because I do see these pretty often but still seems like tanks are too accurate in the game. I also feel German tanks are over modelled in this way. I mean damm they are extremely accurate compared to a sherman - but maybe in real life they were also. Who knows? Good question lewallen.

I think the secret to accuracy is crew experience level.

Have you ever played a CMBO game will ALL tanks and AFV's as GREEN. Thats right play ALL green troops and then watch the accuracy and see what happens.

All green tank battles are REAL nail biters as it is just like rolling dice again (for the old timers here) and hopeing for Snake-eyes or Box-cars to get a hit.

IMHO I think the accuracy model is JUST right now, it was tweaked up in a few patches because more than a few folks here (including my self) lobbied hard for better accuracy based on target test range firing and accuracy data (especially for the german tanks) that was presented to suggest the tanks in the game were originally lacking in accuracy that many here thought they should have been more correctly, (read: historically) afforded.

-tom w

[ June 27, 2002, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: aka_tom_w ]

[YankeeDog]

I just finished a PBEM game where I got a lot of US 37mm (on Stuarts and Greyhound) vs. Stug III and PzIV matchups. I also got a lot of kills with my 37mms. All the kills were at very close range (under 200m, a couple under 100m) and most of them were side penetrations, so the projectile would have entered the vehicle's interior with a fair amount of kinetic energy remaining.

When I read this post, I went back and counted how many non-killing penetrations I got vs. how many killing penetrations. The ratio was 3 non-penetrating kills (some of which caused at least some damage like track or gun damage) to 5 killing penetrations. Hardly a scientific study, but at least in my game, non-killing penetrations were not all that uncommon with the 37mm.

In most of these kills, the "Killed" vehicle was "Abandoned", not "Knocked Out", which as I understand it is supposed to reflect a vehicle that has been abandoned due to crew casualties or vehicle damage that is less than catastrophic, but still seriously impairs it's combat functionality.

I'm no Tank expert, but these numbers don't 'feel' too far off the mark. I'd be curious to hear what the Tank Grogs think of these results.

Cheers,

YD

[JasonC]

I think the CM knock out models (behind armor effect stuff) are reasonably accurate for the larger caliber guns, 75mm and up. I think they are on the "too deadly" side below that. The lower you go, the more extreme the mismatch, in my opinion.

Evidence from dead tanks shows the average number of hits in the 2-5 range when large caliber weapons are involved, with the upper end of that only for types we know could not be penetrated by some common enemy weapons. "Penetrable" tanks typically show averages more like 2. And some of that may be overkill hits (at the same time e.g.) or "making sure" hits. So the lethality of single rounds 75mm and above probably deserves to be 67-75%. The CM impression "if you penetrate, you'll KO" is not seriously misleading for that type of gun.

But down at the 20mm end, you get KOs more easily than you probably should. The Germans measured the effect of light cannon on vehicles especially for AA purposes. Many of these guns were mounted on and fired at aircraft. Their studies of the number of rounds needed to KO a heavy bomber showed in took about 20 20mm hits or around 5 30mm hits. 1 50mm hit would do the same. If you look at the energy of the rounds, you'll see that 1-2 million joules is about the right energy range. And that is what the bigger guns get from single shells.

The issue will matter more in CMBB, with ATRs, light guns on many of the tanks (20mm, 37mm, 45mm, 50mm) for the first year or two of the war in the east.

With the 37-50 range guns ("medium-light" calibers), ideally you'd have KO chances on the order of 40-50%, but with most other hits causing immobilization, gun damage, or a crew casualty and "shock". With only 10-15% chance of no significant damage. That will lead to tanks absorbing 1-3 hits, but few surviving more than that.

But smaller stuff - 20mm and ATRs - should feel like pinpricks. Low knock-out chance, modest chance of immobilization or gun damage, reasonable chance of a crew casualty, 50-67% chance of no significant damage. Then multiple penetrating hits will still generally wreck a vehicle. But single ones rarely will.

[Redwolf]

In CMBO, be sure to make a difference between "knocked out" and "abanonded". The first is the equipment actually broken, the second is the crew hurt and running away.

If you only considered "knocked out", the ratio is pretty small. The "abanoned" ratio depends on crew quality, which is not modeled in many other games, or does not influence the chance of abanonding the equipment. The regular quality troops most of us drive around in CMBO are very likely to abadon the vehicle (or gun) on one casulty. An elite crew is less likely to do so. However, vehicles will always abanonded on the second casulty, no matter what quality (but guns do not). That is an important aspect of shocked tanks, BTW, and one of the reasons why I have buttoned tanks more often than other players. If a tank is shocked, it will for sure be abanonded on one additional crew casulty due to penetration or mines.

So far so good. I am not going to judge over a realistic level of how likely people are to remain in a vehicle with a dead comrade. From gut feeling (means: randomly absorbed literature) I would say that the easily abanonded tanks in CMBO are rather more than less realistic than other games.

However, there are seveal things where CMBO could be improved, IMHO:

- the nature of shell doesn't seem to be influential. HC/HE may be deadlier in CMBO, but certainly the amount of energy left after penetration of an AP shell is not taken into account

- the chance to hit a crew member seems to be equal on all penetrations. The side of a M3 halftrack penetrated by a 20mm AP shell should have a much smaller chance to hurt a crewmember (not passenger) than a 150mm Hummel HC charge hitting the side of a Sherman turret (ouch!)

- the chance of knocking out seems to be similar, e.g. non-differentiated

- from said gut feeling I would say immobilization should be more common on penetration on full tanks

- gun damage seems to happen too often considering that the coax MG is killed as well. That's a little over the top for my taste

In addition, the issue of victory points comes into play. The easily abanonded tanks may be fine from a realism point, but the current scheme hurts armor players victory-point wise. If you lose 5 120 points tanks with an average of 2 crewmembers lost, you have 660 points handed to the opponent. And the remaining crews are pretty useless. If you have 5 120 points platoon badly shot up, you typically have 2/3 casulties = 400 points, and units which are still useful for anything but assaulting. That would all be OK if we were talking about tanks really shot up completely and the hard way. But there is a break in the logic, if we have very easily abanonded tanks that shouldn't be the same thing as catastrophic losses as the infantry takes. At the very least the victory point penelity for the tank plus the crew should equal the puchase price, that means the 120 point tank brings 90 victory points for the tank and 30 for the crew, not 120 + 30. And I would like to have abanonded tanks be worth half or 2/3 the

victory points of KOed tanks.

In have US army tables from the 60ties listing knockout probablities on penetration. They have large probablities like 70-80% for SABOT and around 90% for HEAT. But modern ammunition is more deadly and the equipment more complex. If anyone interested I could quote more.

[Visom]

Originally posted by zukkov:

actually, i think that what's not modeled is tanks firing at an already knocked out tank. in real life, if you fire and ko a tank, but it doesn't brew, chances are you would fire more shots into it. this would especially be true for kills at range when it would be harder to tell if the tank were actually destroyed...

True also for short range. Americans were really good at recovering knocked out tanks and bring them back in service as long as they didn't brew up. Therefore, even though it could be confirmed that the tank got severe damages the germans put another round in it to try set it on fire and make it impossible to reuse it.

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by redwolf:

In CMBO, be sure to make a difference between "knocked out" and "abanonded". The first is the equipment actually broken, the second is the crew hurt and running away.

If you only considered "knocked out", the ratio is pretty small. The "abanoned" ratio depends on crew quality, which is not modeled in many other games, or does not influence the chance of abanonding the equipment. The regular quality troops most of us drive around in CMBO are very likely to abadon the vehicle (or gun) on one casulty. An elite crew is less likely to do so. However, vehicles will always abanonded on the second casulty, no matter what quality (but guns do not). That is an important aspect of shocked tanks, BTW, and one of the reasons why I have buttoned tanks more often than other players. If a tank is shocked, it will for sure be abanonded on one additional crew casulty due to penetration or mines.

So far so good. I am not going to judge over a realistic level of how likely people are to remain in a vehicle with a dead comrade. From gut feeling (means: randomly absorbed literature) I would say that the easily abanonded tanks in CMBO are rather more than less realistic than other games.

However, there are seveal things where CMBO could be improved, IMHO:

- the nature of shell doesn't seem to be influential. HC/HE may be deadlier in CMBO, but certainly the amount of energy left after penetration of an AP shell is not taken into account

- the chance to hit a crew member seems to be equal on all penetrations. The side of a M3 halftrack penetrated by a 20mm AP shell should have a much smaller chance to hurt a crewmember (not passenger) than a 150mm Hummel HC charge hitting the side of a Sherman turret (ouch!)

- the chance of knocking out seems to be similar, e.g. non-differentiated

- from said gut feeling I would say immobilization should be more common on penetration on full tanks

- gun damage seems to happen too often considering that the coax MG is killed as well. That's a little over the top for my taste

In addition, the issue of victory points comes into play. The easily abanonded tanks may be fine from a realism point, but the current scheme hurts armor players victory-point wise. If you lose 5 120 points tanks with an average of 2 crewmembers lost, you have 660 points handed to the opponent. And the remaining crews are pretty useless. If you have 5 120 points platoon badly shot up, you typically have 2/3 casulties = 400 points, and units which are still useful for anything but assaulting. That would all be OK if we were talking about tanks really shot up completely and the hard way. But there is a break in the logic, if we have very easily abanonded tanks that shouldn't be the same thing as catastrophic losses as the infantry takes. At the very least the victory point penelity for the tank plus the crew should equal the puchase price, that means the 120 point tank brings 90 victory points for the tank and 30 for the crew, not 120 + 30. And I would like to have abanonded tanks be worth half or 2/3 the

victory points of KOed tanks.

In have US army tables from the 60ties listing knockout probablities on penetration. They have large probablities like 70-80% for SABOT and around 90% for HEAT. But modern ammunition is more deadly and the equipment more complex. If anyone interested I could quote more.

GREAT post!

I agree this point for sure:

"In addition, the issue of victory points comes into play. The easily abanonded tanks may be fine from a realism point, but the current scheme hurts armor players victory-point wise. If you lose 5 120 points tanks with an average of 2 crewmembers lost, you have 660 points handed to the opponent. And the remaining crews are pretty useless. If you have 5 120 points platoon badly shot up, you typically have 2/3 casulties = 400 points, and units which are still useful for anything but assaulting. That would all be OK if we were talking about tanks really shot up completely and the hard way. But there is a break in the logic, if we have very easily abanonded tanks that shouldn't be the same thing as catastrophic losses as the infantry takes. At the very least the victory point penelity for the tank plus the crew should equal the puchase price, that means the 120 point tank brings 90 victory points for the tank and 30 for the crew, not 120 + 30. And I would like to have abanonded tanks be worth half or 2/3 the victory points of KOed tanks."

Very interesting suggestion and very sound logic IMHO!

-tom w

[lewallen]

Originally posted by tools4fools:

No-kill penetration do happen in CM. Wait until your tank hits that Panther in its side, get a penetration but no kill, and the Panther then shoots your tank into pieces...

You will love it.

I know non-killing penetrations are modeled, they just don't seem to happen (to me) very often.

I hadn't thought too much about the 'knocked out' vs 'abandoned', and now that I do, I recall that I usually have more abandoned vehicles than knocked out, so it does make sense that these vehicles have been non-catastrophically damaged. When I was playing Steel Panthers, I must say that I was pretty surprised by the tank crews' hardiness; they'd stick around even after the tank had been penetrated two or three times (or sometimes more), so it sounds like CM models the tendancy of a crew to bail after a non-catastrophic penetration more realistically.

I recall reading that Brit tank crews in North Africa would preemtively bail out of their tanks if they saw an 88mm shell impact nearby, as they knew from hard experience that the next incoming 88 would likely brew them up.

And I definately agree on the points issue raised by redwolf.

Thanks for all the comments!

~Sam

[tar]

Well, another thing that would tend to make CM battles more bloody is that players often tend to use their armored assets more recklessly than their historical counterparts.

[Pacestick]

Hello Zukkov

From the tone of your post it is not clear if you are aware that you can target abandoned tanks and knock them out in the game the same as you would do on a real battlefield. I play a lot of Ops and have made it a habit to expend any unused anti tank gun ammo on abandoned tanks during the last couple of turns for two reasons. Firstly to ensure the vehicle is not remanned and available to my opponent next battle and secondly,you improve the chances of getting a T round in the resupply the greater the number of round replenished

[ June 27, 2002, 06:31 PM: Message edited by: Pacestick ]

[zukkov]

Originally posted by Pacestick:

Hello Zukkov

From the tone of your post it is not clear if you are aware that you can target abandoned tanks and knock them out in the game the same as you would do on a real battlefield. I play a lot of Ops and have made it a habit to expend any unused anti tank gun ammo on abandoned tanks during the last couple of turns for two reasons. Firstly to ensure the vehicle is not remanned and available to my opponent next battle and secondly,you improve the chances of getting a T round in the resupply the greater the number of round replenished

you're right, i didn't know that. that's a very good idea. i'm in an op right now and i have 3 or 4 abandoned tanks from the first battle(we're currently on battle 3). so far they haven't been returned to me for use. it's a 6 battle op though, so hopefully i'll get some of them back before it's over. but what i really need is for the medics to patch up my infantry casualties, which have been very high, and send them back to me post haste! lol...

[Pacestick]

Hello Zukkov

I know how that feels

AT and inf guns also can reman between battles. I think the chances of equipment being remanned depends on the crews being in good shape and in close proximity to the hardware at the end of the battle and on what the Op designer has set the recovery chance to.

[Gen-x87H]

One thing I would like to see in CMBB is not knowing when you have whacked a tank. In real life I would imagine unless the thing was on fire\crew bailing the tank would continue to hit the other tank until they knew for sure it was dead. Not just get a single penetration and move on.

It would add a bit of realism to the game. And make for a better enviornment IMO.

Gen

[zukkov]

Originally posted by Gen-x87H:

One thing I would like to see in CMBB is not knowing when you have whacked a tank. In real life I would imagine unless the thing was on fire\crew bailing the tank would continue to hit the other tank until they knew for sure it was dead. Not just get a single penetration and move on.

It would add a bit of realism to the game. And make for a better enviornment IMO.

Gen

exactly. that was the purpose of my first post. i think tanks often fired multiple shots at dead tanks because they weren't sure it was destroyed. also, as noted by pacestick, they would shoot even at known dead tanks to keep them from being repaired for use later on...

[foamy]

In a PBEM I am playing right now, my Bazooka had a clean shot from a house at 20 yards into the rear of a Tiger that was stationary. Got a penetration but ZERO damage. The Tiger backed away, then next turn came in with guns blazing - I was as "Sick-as-a-Parrot"!!!!!!!

[Paul Lakowski]

As a rule post war studies of relation between penetration and kill are disturbing. The fact is that you need to overmatch the targets effective resistance by atleast 1.7 times to get a 75% kill chance per shot and overmatch by 2:1 to get 80% kill.The breakdown looks as follows...

2:1= 80%

1.75= 75%

1.5= 67%

1.34= 50%

1.2 = 30%

1.15 = 20%

1:1 = 10%

0.85 = 1%

So if the penetration of the round equals armor resistance you only have a 10% chance of a kill.

So what this means if you have a 200mm penetration at a given range and the target armor is 100mm you only have a 67% chance of a kill per shot. If that same target had 200mm of armor your kill chance would be only 10%

With modern studies the situation is worse. In one case studied when the penetration was twice the armor resistance level, the kill probablity was ~ 50% and if the overmatch was 3:1 the kill chance was 60%.

Modern liners can dramtically reduce these kill % [by ~ 20% or 1/2 , which ever is higher].

Most wargames don't model this aspect of combat accurately.

Its true in some circumstances kill% can appear to be 80% , but these targets usually have fatal flaws like carring exposed ammo in the turret ....like ever russian tank up to the present day!

[sOURCE: Applied Operations Research pp59 & Int.J.Impact Engng Vol 26 , pp 21-32.

[ June 27, 2002, 10:15 PM: Message edited by: Paul Lakowski ]

[YankeeDog]

One issue that muddies the water here with some of the light guns is that with a few of them one 'shot' in CM is actually a burst of Autocannon fire, so you have the chance of a 'penetration' being more than one shell.

I think this is especially important when looking at kills of things like Halftracks by something 20mm FlaK. A single 20mm AP round, especially if penetrating from the side, would have a good chance of hitting *nothing* important in the vehicle. When you consider that that shot is maybe 4-5 shells, the likihood of a 'kill' gets much higher.

As noted, though, once we get into CMBB, we will see ATRs and small ATGs in the vicinity of 20mm calibre firing single 'shots', so the reduced liklihood of a 'kills' with small projectiles like these becomes important.

S others have already brought up. I would also like to see tank and ATG crews fire another shot or two at at a tank that has been KOed, but has not 'brewed up', of their own accord (i.e., without further orders). Mostly because I think often the tank crew wouldn't be sure if the first hit had KOed the tank in many situations, and would fire another round just to be sure.

[lewallen]

One of the things that was concerning me was the AT rifles; it doesn't seem like they'd have much knockout power in terms of catastrophic hits, and I wonder how lethal their rounds are to the tank crew. It'll be interesting to see how this is modelled in CM:BB, esp. in light of Paul Lakowski's post.

Also, the idea proposed by Gen-x87H about not having your tanks know exactly when an enemy tank is dead would, I think, add a lot of realism to the game.

~Sam

[John Kettler]

Paul Lakowski makes an excellent point about overmatching the armor, as applied to lethality, but more needs to be said about the lethality difference between AP shell and AP shot.

As previously noted in John D. Salt's table, the volume of armor displaced by a given projectile penetration varies based on projectile type and size. What it fails to address, though, is a conclusion reached by the British in the Western Desert about German AP shell: that a penetration even halfway into the fighting compartment was sufficient to enable effective detonation of the burster charge, generally trashing the crew and often wrecking the tank. By contrast, AP shot damage was more restricted in location and extent of damage to the tank and far "kinder" to the crew.

Tanks hit by AP shell were frequently writeoffs, often with their crews, while those hit by AP shot tended to receive limited, repairable damage, and crew casualties were relatively light. I believe this is discussed in the HMSO volumes on North Africa. I know I've discussed the basic issue before on this board. I believe G.B. Jarrett was also involved in the tank damage assessments cited, but it's late and my brain's fuzzy.

Interestingly, the British opted to maximize penetration and sacrifice lethality by converting U.S. supplied AP shell to improvised AP shot for their Shermans and other tanks with the same 75mm gun. This was apparently done to squeeze as much penetration performance as possible from a relatively weak gun facing thick German armor.

Tanks can be hit and penetrated, even by 88s, without disabling the tank or inflicting any physical damage on the crew. Tankbooks.com (www.tankbooks.com) has quite a few accounts of what it's like to be in a tank that's hit (see particularly TANKS FOR THE MEMORIES), but I remember one in the interviews on the site, I think, in which a Stuart came round the bend in a road and took a through and through 88 in ambush shot in the turret side. The instant portholes caused enormous excitement and a world record reversal by the driver. Sometimes it's good to have thin armor. Even better when the AP shell fails to fuze! See also Robert Crisp's BRAZEN CHARIOTS and many other books, including quite a few from the German side.

Tanks can also be hit in weird places and defeat an otherwise certain penetration. For example, all those external brackets can cause hollow charge projectiles to fuze early, can divert shot and cause premature fuzing or even overstress the projectile body for AP, HE and HC shells, causing them to break up. This list is by no means exhaustive.

It would be grand if the game and its progeny incorporated detailed shotline modeling (following the projectile and fragments through the various tank components and crew until no damage potential remains) as the government studies do, but it is important to remember even though this approach is too complex and expensive for the game that there are void areas in a tank, and that there are components whose loss won't be felt immediately, but will eventually take out the tank.

This is reflected in the way the U.S. government assesses live fire trials on simulated threat arrays using either actual OPFOR vehicles or U.S. surrogates. In A-10 tests, the target tank is either K-killed (destroyed outright OR 100% in each M and F categories), M-killed (mobility kill to tracks, engine, roadwheels, sprockets, etc.) or F-killed (gun, optics, traverse and elevation controls, etc.), with the latter two categories being assigned percentages. Dummies in the vehicle also figure into these assessments, depending upon the desired damage criteria and the scenario.

A unit assaulting needs less stringent criteria than are needed for, say, interdiction. A bomblet entering an open hatch, detonating and disabling or killing the TC and gunner while doing nothing else suffices to put the tank out of business (100% F-kill) in an assault, but if the object of the game is to permanently kill the tank, then much more must be done, like using a Maverick (KE even if dud ~ = 16" shell)to basically slag the tank and crew. Similarly, knocking a track off will put a tank out of business in an assault, but merely keeps the repair crews busy in an expanded timeframe. Even knocking off radio antennas can cause big, albeit temporary, problems.

Since someone mentioned ATRs, I saw a Tiger company's Kursk after action report on the Net (foolishly not saved) which detailed the havoc ATRs had caused by smashing cupola vision blocks (used up unit's supply of spares, sidelining many tanks for days), injuring TCs' eyes, and injuring one TC so badly that he required weeks of hospitalization.

Though CMBO does not model many aspects of tank damage in detail, I hope this provides those interested with some perspectives on the range of possible outcomes when a projectile hits, even solidly at times. It may be frustrating, but a penetration with no damage is possible. In the real world, tanks are also hit, suffer no damage, and retreat in terror. An Egytian tank unit ran into an Israeli recon jeep unit in a city. The Israeli recon troops hosed the tanks with .50 cal. MG fire, doing no damage, and beat feet in panic. The tankers figured that if they were already taking .50 cal. fire, then something really deadly was next, so they split too. Both fled!

Regards,

John Kettler

[ June 28, 2002, 03:14 PM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[Tero]

Originally posted by lewallen:

Also, the idea proposed by Gen-x87H about not having your tanks know exactly when an enemy tank is dead would, I think, add a lot of realism to the game.

Yes. And for campaigns the distinction between different level of KO'd would be good. That way the realistic and historically accurate practice of shooting them until they burn and are assuredly out of the loop would reward you but just leaving them standing there abandoned would mean they can return to haunt you later in the game if you do not control the battlefield at the end of the game.

By the same token any repairable vehicles could be captured and taken into use in subsequent games to supplement your force and/or replace losses (provided you have tankers in your force who can operate them).