Panther has 80mm hull front? Right...

[Bioseed]

Redwolf, I do realize that the Panther has more turret armor.

I have watched many shots on the Panthers to see where they hit, and I can confirm that the only Soviet weapons that can regularly penetrate the Panther front hull are the 122mm and 100mm and even those can't always do it under all conditions.

Smaller weapons like the 85mm will bounce off of the Panther's hull unless the tank is on an significant downward slope, in which case it might be possible to penetrate more easily (only saw this once) I haven't tested the British/American weapons on the Panther yet but I would expect similar results.

[Redwolf]

Still waiting for a 1C word.

I find it hard to believe that there is angle data for the plates and/or data how ammo behaves at angles that is just not displayed to the users.

[you1]

I read that tiger crews where instructed to turn 5 to 10 degrees. or where given detailed Mealtime manuals to show the crews where a foes shell would hit at the most direct angle this would give them the ideal angle then to face the foe this would increase the front armour by 30mm (angle) thus making the foe come closer thus making him more easy to kill as post early is this in the engine,if so Is this why tanks always slighty turn to face the foe in game, unlike other games where the tank turns face on.

Good gaming

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by you1:

I read that tiger crews where instructed to turn 5 to 10 degrees. or where given detailed Mealtime manuals to show the crews where a foes shell would hit at the most direct angle this would give them the ideal angle then to face the foe this would increase the front armour by 30mm (angle) thus making the foe come closer thus making him more easy to kill as post early is this in the engine,if so Is this why tanks always slighty turn to face the foe in game, unlike other games where the tank turns face on.

If that isn in ToW that is still the vertical position angle and doesn't mean the horizontal plate angle is taken into account.

Also "by 30mm" is of course nonsense as the effective increase depends on the kind of ammo hitting.

[you1]

The crews must of noticed a difference in combat conditions for the crew manuals to advise that changing your facing angle by 5 to 10 degrees you make the need of the foe to come closer, the closer you come the easier it is to nock him out

Weather it’s 30mm or 10mm AP or APC the fact the foe comes closer the better, It is interesting that the German Big cats are always portrayed as a long range killing machine yet a crew manual is advising ways to bring the foe closer, this was taken from a 1943 manual when allied tanks didn’t have large cannons so a tank may well come in close without causing to much concern, but with the allied 17pd Russian 122mm Is1 front armour one thinks this page from the manual was replace.

I accept it depends on the kind of ammo hitting , I’ve played for fun with 4 PzIIIJ’s with the long 50L taking on a KV2 even altered the ammo they had ,The German crews must have had a shock when there found that giant.

Since this post was about the panthers front armour has anyone noticed how easy it is for a panther to be disabled by the main gun being hit or the front of the turret? I know that the Panther D had a shot trap, but if the panther can be that easy to disable it’s no wonder that it’s first outing at Kursk was a disaster If it this issue has well as the breakdown and engine fire issue, or is the game engine data over shot on this.

The more modern Pc games become the legends of old start having holes shot in them, It’s a pity! the game graphics can reproduce the camouflage schemes but the LOS issue can’t be reproduced to the same degree, After all it’s a game.

Good gaming

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by you1:

The crews must of noticed a difference in combat conditions for the crew manuals to advise that changing your facing angle by 5 to 10 degrees you make the need of the foe to come closer, the closer you come the easier it is to nock him out

You didn't get the point. The above only indicates that the vertical positional angle is in. It doesn't say anything about the armor plate mounting angle. The above tactics would improve survivability even if the armor plate mounting angle is ignored.

[Bioseed]

Redwolf, just out of curiosity, what have you personally seen in this game that leads you to believe that the mounting angle is not included?

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Bioseed:

Redwolf, just out of curiosity, what have you personally seen in this game that leads you to believe that the mounting angle is not included?

I remember clearly that when the first screenshots of ToW were posted, with those ridiculous pre-BFC values for armor, penentration and hit chances, there was an official word that the angles (the ones of the plates, that doesn't necessarily mean positional angles are out, too) are not taken into account. That was a direct reply to a question why there are no angles given alongside the armor plate thickness.

Now I see plain thickness armor plate values with no angle given in the game, and quite honestly I think it is not very likely that they are in the vehicle database and just not displayed "to not confuse the player". I'm not buying it, quite honestly, and in particular not given the lack of any form of official confirmation either way by publisher or developer.

[Jeff Duquette]

Can you set-up a simple scenario to test this theory? I know nothing about the game aside from I was thinking about buying it cause the graphics look kewl.

But if there is a scenario making tool in the game, put a Sherman with a 75mm at a range of about 250-meters from the front of a Panther. A 75mm firing M72 AP or M61 APC ought to be able perforate 80mm of vertical RHA at that range -- most of the time. On the other hand, if the game engine is modeling slope effects, neither projectile stands much of a chance against the glacis of a Panther at that range.

[Bioseed]

Originally posted by Jeff Duquette:

Can you set-up a simple scenario to test this theory? I know nothing about the game aside from I was thinking about buying it cause the graphics look kewl.

But if there is a scenario making tool in the game, put a Sherman with a 75mm at a range of about 250-meters from the front of a Panther. A 75mm firing M72 AP or M61 APC ought to be able perforate 80mm of vertical RHA at that range -- most of the time. On the other hand, if the game engine is modeling slope effects, neither projectile stands much of a chance against the glacis of a Panther at that range.

Good idea, I just tried this with the mission editor:

1 Panther vs 1 M4A1 at 271meters (had to guess range in the editor) Panther is under my control with regular crew and no ammo, M4A1 has regular crew and M61 ammo. Tanks are placed facing each other frontally with no sides visible.

So I load up and let the Sherman start shooting my Panther:

hit 1: glacis - no effect

hit 2: turret front - no effect

hit 3: turret front - no effect

hit 4: track - immobilization

hit 5: glacis - no effect

hit 6: lower hull front - no effect

hit 7: glacis - no effect

hit 8: turret front- no effect

hit 9: glacis - no effect

hit 10: glacis - no effect

hit 11: glacis - crew panics and leaves tank

Second trial

hit 1: turret - no effect

hit 2: glacis - no effect

hit 3: glacis - no effect

hit 4: glacis - no effect

hit 5: glacis - Panther knocked out

So out of 10 total glacis hits by M61 to the Panther at 271m, 8 have no effect, 1 causes the crew to leave, and one destroyed the tank for reasons unknown (perhaps a cumulative damage effect)

[Jeff Duquette]

Sounds like from your trials that the game engine does employ some sort of slope effects.

The one trial where the Panther was destroyed from a glacis hit could have been a MG-ball hit -- or I think the early Panther models had a driver’s periscope and visor built into the glacis. I'm sure one of the local spring-butts can jabber on about the glacis accoutrements better than I. But in essence it sounds like a lucky hit on a weak zone.

If there were no slope effects built into the games algorithms, than 75mm M61 APC @ 271meters range ought to be perforating 80mm of vertical plate the vast majority of the time.

[SoaN]

To shred some light in this topic.

The issues that are calculated in the game:

- armor thickness

- hit angle

- ricochet angle

- shell normalization angle, if normalization is supported by type of ammo

- in the moment of normalization there is calculated a chance of destruction of shell

- type of ammo. For example if APHE penetrates armor there will occur explosion inside the tank causing some extra fragmental damage.

Any questions???

[Thomm]

It would be mega-cool, if the program created a protocol text file that list all 'events' like shells hitting a tank (with all relevant data) so that people who are in doubt can check post-mortem what killed their tanks, and why. Sorta debug information.

Guess that would not hurt performance, either.

Of course, it would give insight into the ballistic calculations, and the devs have to deside whether they want us to 'look into their cards'. But it would be a cool feature for the grogs.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Thomm]

Originally posted by SoaN:

Any questions???

Yes: What is a 'spring-butt'???!?

Best regards,

Thomm

[dizee]

Originally posted by SoaN:

To shred some light in this topic.

The issues that are calculated in the game:

- armor thickness

- hit angle

- ricochet angle

- shell normalization angle, if normalization is supported by type of ammo

- in the moment of normalization there is calculated a chance of destruction of shell

- type of ammo. For example if APHE penetrates armor there will occur explosion inside the tank causing some extra fragmental damage.

Any questions???

thank you very much. i think we all can hang back now, and keep enjoying our tank duels.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by SoaN:

To shred some light in this topic.

The issues that are calculated in the game:

- armor thickness

- hit angle

- ricochet angle

- shell normalization angle, if normalization is supported by type of ammo

- in the moment of normalization there is calculated a chance of destruction of shell

- type of ammo. For example if APHE penetrates armor there will occur explosion inside the tank causing some extra fragmental damage.

Any questions???

The "ricochet angle" is where the round goes when it bounces, right? So it doesn't have anything to do with deciding whether the round penetrates or not.

I have no idea what a "shell normalization angle" angle is supposed to be, it is the first time I ever hear that in the context of an armor penetration model. Since the ammo type is involved I assume this reflects this particular ammunition's tendency to bounce off with increasing angle?

So does "hit angle" include the mounting angle of the armor plate or not? From the sound of it this only uses the positional angle from the vehicle positions (and that would be in line with what was said way before the release).

If that is the case, that the plate angle is not talen into account, that wouldn't be a problem, but you would have to make an approximate conversion from the plate thickness and base angle to a base thickness.

[Thomm]

I would bet that hit angle is the angle relative to the plate surface.

I mean, why would they bother with complicated calculations and with painting a hit mark on the tank it they did not take into account this most basic geometric property?!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Moon]

Redwolf, as far as I understand, "shell normalization" refers to ammo with ballistic caps. Why I know? Because I am going to post the "Damage model and ballistics" thread in a minute to the Tactics forum, with some more details about how things work in the game. (not exhaustive by any means, though)

Martin

[SoaN]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

The "ricochet angle" is where the round goes when it bounces, right? So it doesn't have anything to do with deciding whether the round penetrates or not.

It doesn’t. Normalization angle does.

Originally posted by Redwolf:

I have no idea what a "shell normalization angle" angle is supposed to be, it is the first time I ever hear that in the context of an armor penetration model. Since the ammo type is involved I assume this reflects this particular ammunition's tendency to bounce off with increasing angle?

My pardon. As you could understand English is not my native language, so mb sometimes I don’t explain correctly.

Shell normalization angle means that: when hitting the target with certain types of ammo (APCR) shell is kind of trying to make it more perpendicular (normalize). I hope thet is more understandable.

Originally posted by Redwolf:

So does "hit angle" include the mounting angle of the armor plate or not? From the sound of it this only uses the positional angle from the vehicle positions (and that would be in line with what was said way before the release).

If that is the case, that the plate angle is not talen into account, that wouldn't be a problem, but you would have to make an approximate conversion from the plate thickness and base angle to a base thickness.

Hit angle means angle relative to the hit surface. So plate angle is taken into account.

[Moon]

Ballistics article posted in the Tactics section of the forum (with pictures)

Martin

[RMC]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

Yes: What is a 'spring-butt'???!?

The guy who always has the question in class. Or in this case, the answer.

To be the spring butt for the Panther glacis, the Ausf D and A had driver vision blocks in the glacis. There was an armor plate that could be lowered to cover the block. The driver also had two fixed periscopes. One looked directly to the front and the other angled to the side. The Ausf G eliminated the vision block and two periscopes and replaced them with a single rotating periscope.

[ChrisND]

The "Normal" angle is a physics / engineering term that generally refers to a 90 degree angle.. so if you hear this term it has something to do that, like shell "normalization" (In jargon "becoming 90 degrees) as SoaN mentioned above.

EDIT: Holy crap I actually remembered something from General Physics.

[ May 03, 2007, 07:42 AM: Message edited by: Normal Dude ]

[Redwolf]

All right, there is a lot of additional information thrown around that doesn't address the core question.

Let me ask in the most simple way:

Does the game have a database (which contents are not displayed to the user) with the angles of the individual plates?

a) yes

no

Example: when the Panther upper hull front is hit the game engine pull the information that this plate is at 55 degrees vertical out of the database and uses it for penetration calculation. Is there such a database that has the 55 degree angle for this plate?

Please don't just repeat mixed other angle glibberish. We already know that some other angles are taken into account, but we don't know the answer to the above question.

%%

Thanks for threads in the tactics forum, Martin. You do, however, give an example that does not address the question above. We already know that the positional angle (from vehicle positions) is taken into account. The drawings you posted only show an angle without saying where that angle in the drawings comes from, hence we don't know the answer to the above question.

%%

Now, let me repeat that if the answer to the above question is "no", that is not a big problem. For the purpose and audience of the game you can just convert thickness and angle into one effective thickness. Not great but really good enough. Even TacOps does it. But you do have to make that conversion if the answer is "no".

[Thomm]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

Does the game have a database (which contents are not displayed to the user) with the angles of the individual plates?

In an ideal world, this would be the polygon data of the 3D model!

A more specific answer from the devs would certainly be interesting!

Best regards,

Thomm

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by Rollstoy:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by SoaN:

Any questions???

Yes: What is a 'spring-butt'???!?

Best regards,

Thomm </font>