Armor: What seperates TOW from other games?

[Paulverisor64]

Theatre of War Africa and Theatre of War Kursk have a very realistic feel to them but I can't put my finger on what seperates this game from other games out there.

For instance when I play Company of Heroes I know that hitting a tank from the rear will produce better results than a head to head battle. What difference is there in damage modeling from TOW? I have noticed differences but not directly tied to the armor damage modeling. If I'm not mistaken damage in Company of Heroes is tied to hit points; how does this differ from TOW?

I personally don't believe the game Men of War has a realistic feel to it. I pointed out to a friend that TOW models armor penetration better than Men of War. His reply was that Men of War models armor penetration. Somewhere online I read that TOW models damage better than Men of War; if so in what way would that be?

In real life you would have factors which influence how much damage armor could take. I've seen instances in this game where the slope of armor reflects away the damage. Otherwise what makes TOW more real to life in the way determinations are made to whether the armor survives the hit?

[Nokturnal]

MoW does indeed model armor penetration, however it doesn't seem as accurately done as ToW in my opinion. Though i believe they may of made it less realistic to make it more entertaining.

If you want an example of how ToW differs from the others, set up a battle in the generator giving yourself 1(or 2..) Tiger tank(s) and put it up against 5-10 weak and useless tanks that wouldn't of been able to defeat a Tiger in real life.

In a game like CoH you will eventually lose your tank(s) due to the hitpoints dropping, as you say a shot to the rear is more effective, but even multiple shots to the front of a heavily armored tank in CoH will result in it eventually being destroyed.

In MoW, it seems that even the weaker tanks can get in a lucky shot on a heavily armored vehicle, i've lost tanks when i don't think i should of, but they have done a decent job with the angles and such.

In ToW, they've followed history well and a tank that should survive, will survive. I've done something similar before on the flat open desert map that somebody put up in the repository, 4 Tigers against about 20-30 Stuart tanks. I don't think i lost a single tank, but they all were destroyed fairly quickly.

Well that's what i've discovered anyway, there are folks from the 1C team that post here so they should be able to explain how MoW differs from ToW.

In Kursk it will be alot easier to tell how they've modelled the penetration, because of that handy F4 button.

[freeeman]

One thing for feel is the way the penetrations appear, sometime you seemingly cannot even see the damage, but look closely and there is a holem,and dead systems or crew inside..

One thing I keep looking for is the dreaded "tip your hat to the tiger" t34 getting a rip off of the turret, NEVER seen that in tow, but in reality the t34 would brew up and lose there heads.. jus tsomething I want to see.. not a show stopper to this fine game

[Paulverisor64]

MoW does indeed model armor penetration, however it doesn't seem as accurately done as ToW in my opinion. Though i believe they may of made it less realistic to make it more entertaining.

If you want an example of how ToW differs from the others, set up a battle in the generator giving yourself 1(or 2..) Tiger tank(s) and put it up against 5-10 weak and useless tanks that wouldn't of been able to defeat a Tiger in real life.

In a game like CoH you will eventually lose your tank(s) due to the hitpoints dropping, as you say a shot to the rear is more effective, but even multiple shots to the front of a heavily armored tank in CoH will result in it eventually being destroyed.

In MoW, it seems that even the weaker tanks can get in a lucky shot on a heavily armored vehicle, i've lost tanks when i don't think i should of, but they have done a decent job with the angles and such.

In ToW, they've followed history well and a tank that should survive, will survive. I've done something similar before on the flat open desert map that somebody put up in the repository, 4 Tigers against about 20-30 Stuart tanks. I don't think i lost a single tank, but they all were destroyed fairly quickly.

Well that's what i've discovered anyway, there are folks from the 1C team that post here so they should be able to explain how MoW differs from ToW.

In Kursk it will be alot easier to tell how they've modelled the penetration, because of that handy F4 button.

It does appear you've put a lot of study into the strength of the Tiger tank in this game vs. other Soviet tanks. I'm sure there are times when a lucky shot will take out a Tiger but more likely it would just take out a track without a critical hit. That is pretty much what I've witnessed in the demo.

Hopefully at some point someone will put together a guide which shows the strength of all the tanks and their firepower, such as was done in Combat Mission. (Perhaps that data would be very close to what is modeled in this game).

Thank you for pointing out that F4 is the hotkey for viewing tank damage. There are many times when I've been curious about what went wrong.

[Sneaksie]

I don't know exactly how damage is modeled in MOW, but the most apparent difference between MOW and TOW is that the weapon ranges in MOW are scaled.

In ToW penetrations should occur in the same cases as in real life. If you have any questions about why the certain hit did or did not penetrate the armor, post the screeenshot showing the impact vector (with F4 mode turned on) and i'll try to explain.

[Paulverisor64]

In the game forum in which I frequent the most I've been attempting to get people to try out Theatre of War; as I personally really enjoy it.

For what ever reason this is a hard sale. That is why I have asked the question in the 1st place. This game feels more realistic than any other WWII game I've played but I just can't place why that is in the comparison between Men of War. I'd like to have people just try it out.

As far as hesitance to try it people have cited how bad TOW 1 was in their experience. Armchair General's review points out how TOW 2 Kursk has matured since the early title. Another person cited their displeasure with Combat Mission Shock Force in how clunky the interface was.

If there are any hard facts about this upcoming game I'd like to share them.