Err,...."Unproductive" Penetration (?)

[Bemused]

Just got done playing Barkmann's corner as German. A couple of things of interest that were also present in the Demo. As others have noted I am surprised how accurate fire is from tanks on the move but there are other things that perplex me more.

1st my elite Panther had a hard time getting the first shot off even when staring down the road at an oncoming Sherman - the American often fired first despite the fact that the Panther had spotted it earlier. 2nd penetrating shots often didn't result in a kill - on my experience at least 2 seem necessary. I had one case of a Sherman 76W that took two Panther hits, reversed, took a Shrek (at 200m!) and was only finally killed when it moved forward again a while later! Actually Shreks seem pitiful at one shot kills. 3rd Main gun on the Panther seems very easy to disable. Only got the game and no rigorous testing but can be very frustrating.

Anyone got any thoughts on this?

Cheers.

[Rocky Balboa]

I'm still finishing up Closing the Pocket in the demo but my results vary quiet a bit with yours. My M10's must have hit a Panther 7-8 times (range ~800m) with at least 2 of those hits where penetrations and it still kept moving forward and firing. Eventually a 75MM Sherman hit it from ~350M away with an oblique shot (right front hit with penetration) and that stopped it.

With my M10's burning from the exchange I held my breath waiting for the hatches to open and see the crew bail but instead it started to back up. Thinking to myself, that thing still can't be battle worthy, the start of the next turn the Panther fired and put a round through the Sherman's turret .... Huge explosion and no crew got out alive ...

[SNAFU]

Well--having played the demo quite a bit and the full game for just a couple battles, I've seen what you're talking about. On the other hand--I've also seen plenty of 1 shot kills. It seems to me that there is enough variability that I never really know what to expect. And I'm really beginning to like that aspect of the game. Kind of like playing squad leader--rolling snake eyes to hit and box cars for the result. This kind of variability equals better replay value IMHO.

Which all means that I'm not complaining (yet).

[mhaya clinton]

Sometimes being unproductive is frustrating. However, as we look into our daily lives, we need to ask ourselves how much time we actually spend being completely unproductive. Don't feel bad about being productive. It's all part of the work-life balance, with an emphasis on balance. These techniques for [url removed]can be cheap, or even free.

[Sublime]

Great. Now the forum's getting spammed. can someone ban this idiot above me

[Rocky Balboa]

And please don't click on his link ... thats what he's phishing for.

[YankeeDog]

J

1st my elite Panther had a hard time getting the first shot off even when staring down the road at an oncoming Sherman - the American often fired first despite the fact that the Panther had spotted it earlier.

Hard to say without full details of the exact situation. Factors like buttoned or unbuttoned, whether either side is hull down, etc. can make a big difference. But all other factors being equal, *Usually* a stationary tank will spot and fire on a moving tank before the moving tank will spot and fire on the stationary tank. However, there is also a lot of random chance involved, so sometimes the moving tank will just get lucky.

2nd penetrating shots often didn't result in a kill - on my experience at least 2 seem necessary. I had one case of a Sherman 76W that took two Panther hits, reversed, took a Shrek (at 200m!) and was only finally killed when it moved forward again a while later! Actually Shreks seem pitiful at one shot kills.

Yep. 76(W) Shermans have significantly better damage control than many other models of Sherman, so the chances of a non-killing penetration are higher. Still, IME, a 75mm round from a Panther will *usually* kill a 76(W) Sherman in one hit. If you're unlucky, though, it can take two or more. The game does also model kill uncertainty -- if the Sherman doesn't "brew up" on the killing hit, the Panther crew may not necessarily "know" that the Sherman is KO'ed, and put another round or two into the Sherman just to "make him sure."

As for Panzershrecks, their behind armor effect is not all that great. They're much better than the bazooka in this area, definitely inferior to some other weapons, such as the Panzerfaust, which has a very large warhead and therefore is a very likely kill on almost any AFV. A Panzershreck warhead will usually penetrate a Sherman's armor and cause at least some damage, but you definitely can't count on a one-hit kill.

3rd Main gun on the Panther seems very easy to disable.

There has been a lot of discussion about this here on the forums. Tank main guns can certainly be vulnerable to damage on non-penetrating hits. Whether the Panther or any other designs are overly vulnerable to this type of damage in-game is very hard to say.

Only got the game and no rigorous testing but can be very frustrating.

Yep. But "frustrating" and "realistic" are not mutually exclusive. And in fact, if the game were not at least occasionally frustrating, it would probably be pretty boring.

[Seedorf81]

Well, this "mhaya clinton" figure made me find some bliss (see his irritant post, nr 4) the moment I saw he was banned!

Don't know if that's exactly what he hoped for, though..

Glad he's so swiftly gone.

[BLSTK]

mhaya, we barely knew ye...

[Baneman]

I've had a Panther KO'd by a "Partial Penetration" while the Sherman it got a simultaneous "Penetration" on wasn't. ( I'd love to know what was so important that was destroyed by a Partial Penetration, but there you go )

So it goes both ways.

In my AAR, there's an example of a Stuart surviving 3 (!) Panzerschreck penetrations :eek:

[Seedorf81]

A colleague of mine once told me he had got a partial penetration.

He wasn't very happy with the result.

His girlfriend wasn't knocked-out, but knocked-up..

[Vanir Ausf B]

1st my elite Panther had a hard time getting the first shot off even when staring down the road at an oncoming Sherman - the American often fired first despite the fact that the Panther had spotted it earlier.

I suspect you were just unlucky, however this would not be an unrealistic result. Shermans could generally open fire faster after spotting a target due to differences in the gunner's sight.

[womble]

I suspect you were just unlucky, however this would not be an unrealistic result. Shermans could generally open fire faster after spotting a target due to differences in the gunner's sight.

And (if the target was off-axis) superior turret rotation speed.

[Lethaface]

Unfortunately one of my Shermans in a PBEM was K-killed by a partial penetration. Pz IV was the culprit. How a partial penetration can reach the ammo bin I'm not sure, but then I'm not an expert on this matter.

[YankeeDog]

Unfortunately one of my Shermans in a PBEM was K-killed by a partial penetration. Pz IV was the culprit. How a partial penetration can reach the ammo bin I'm not sure, but then I'm not an expert on this matter.

"Partial Penetration" means different things depending on whom you talk to, but generally it means that at least some of the actual projectile material made it through the armor. Whatever fragments of the projectile made it through the armor would also certainly be accompanied by pieces of armor flaked off from the reverse side of the armor near the penetration point -- spalling.

Fragments of the penerator and also the armor spall can be moving quite fast, and are also often very hot due to the inevitable friction of the penetration event. So even after a partial penetration, you could certainly have a substantial amount of hot metal flying around the fighting compartment of the tank.

Now... take a look at where the ammo is stored in a Sherman. Details vary some from model to model, but among other things, in most designs there is a main gun ready rack on the turret basket floor. These rounds are fairly exposed, and depending on hit location, it's pretty easy to imagine how a fragment from a partial penetration or armor spalling might hit one or more rounds and touch them off.

[Baneman]

"Partial Penetration" means different things depending on whom you talk to, but generally it means that at least some of the actual projectile material made it through the armor. Whatever fragments of the projectile made it through the armor would also certainly be accompanied by pieces of armor flaked off from the reverse side of the armor near the penetration point -- spalling.

...

Now... take a look at where the ammo is stored in a Sherman. Details vary some from model to model, but among other things, in most designs there is a main gun ready rack on the turret basket floor. These rounds are fairly exposed, and depending on hit location, it's pretty easy to imagine how a fragment from a partial penetration or armor spalling might hit one or more rounds and touch them off.

Fair enough, but in my Panther case, all 5 crew got out ok, so the ammo was definitely NOT cooking off. It was Partial-Penetration .. Red Base KO .. Crew exit.

I'm not complaining, I was just curious as to what could do that. My best guess is turret-ring jam.

[womble]

Fair enough, but in my Panther case, all 5 crew got out ok, so the ammo was definitely NOT cooking off. It was Partial-Penetration .. Red Base KO .. Crew exit.

I'm not complaining, I was just curious as to what could do that. My best guess is turret-ring jam.

Turret ring jam wouldn't mobility-kill the thing. I'd've thought that most Panther jockeys would prefer to leave the battlefield in a mission-dead, but still mobile vehicle than trust their tender epidermises to the open air... Their Division maintenance wallahs would applaud such an attitude too, I'm sure. Maybe an electrical system hit, killed the motor and the turret rotation secondary. Or a hydraulic hit that did for the steering and the rotation. Or some sort of smouldering fire that wasn't being dealt with by any extinguishing efforts and made the interior impossible to work in. Or just so much smoke and fumes the crew couldn't stay on station; maybe a piece of hot got into the box of grenades for the nachverdienenenenwatsit and set off a smoker, or just convinced the crew a banger was going to go off.

[YankeeDog]

Fair enough, but in my Panther case, all 5 crew got out ok, so the ammo was definitely NOT cooking off. It was Partial-Penetration .. Red Base KO .. Crew exit.

I'm not complaining, I was just curious as to what could do that. My best guess is turret-ring jam.

Could be any of a number of things. Depends a lot on hit location. For example, perforation of a hydraulic system could spray hot hydraulic oil all over the place, leading to a smoke condition inside the tank. Tank radios also usually had batteries in them so they could be used without the engine running. Don't know for sure if this was the case with the Panther, but probably. WWII-era batteries were big, bulky lead-acid things. Ever seen what happens when a lead-acid battery gets perforated? Noxious fumes everywhere. Not good inside an enclosed space like the inside of a tank.

Just a couple that occurred to me off the top of my head. There's lots of important stuff on the inside of a tank that could be damaged by a few bits of flying metal. Most obvious things are the crew and the ammunition, but they're definitely not the only things.

[Michael Emrys]

There's lots of important stuff on the inside of a tank that could be damaged by a few bits of flying metal. Most obvious things are the crew and the ammunition, but they're definitely not the only things.

Recently I had one of my tanks suffer a penetration that caused one casualty and the crew to bail out. But the tank wasn't killed and after a turn or two the crew was able to remount and continue fighting the tank, which had suffered only minor damage.

The point is, a very large amount of variability has been built into the system and we shouldn't be surprised that sometimes things that we consider unlikely nevertheless happen.

Michael

[Amizaur]

"Yep. 76(W) Shermans have significantly better damage control than many other models of Sherman, so the chances of a non-killing penetration are higher"

Anyway, single penetration from Panther's high velocity gun in Normandy enviroments (even without any serious damage and injuries, which is unlikely, but even with only pure light-and-sparks-and-sound-and-smoke type inside effects) - would cause MOST of crews to jump out of the tank - from psychological reasons. Single penetration means that someone has them in sight and the next penetrating round is just being loaded, and is going to arrive in seconds...

And - in Normandy enviroments - it would work the other way, too. A Panther getting a surprise penetration, from unseen enemy, in 80% of cases would the mean crew bailing out as fast as they can, and only then cooling down and wondering what was that. NOT staying in the tank and trying to figure out where the enemy is and who's shooting.

They may stay inside if they know the threat, think it's not that bad and they don't expect any further penetrations. Or if they are SO shocked by the explosion and gore effects (some beheaded crewmembers or something like that) that - even if uninjured - they are paralyzed and unable to act on their own, for some moments. That happened too. Or they are extremaly well motivated, that happened too... But even SS crews mostly bailed out if surprised. It's an instinct of self preservation.

Unfortunately, tank crews in CM seem to not have any self-preservation instinct. As long as the vehicle is working, and they are not panicked, they would stay and fight - very effectively. Just like nothing had happened. Many times I've seen them killing the threat that has penetrated their tanks few seconds before, but didn't manage to reload and penetrate it again, before the retaliation came.

Maybe tank crews should panic more easily.... They are a bit too "robotic" or terminator-like.

A tank that has spotted an enemy SHOULD NOT immediately start rotating the turret in that direction, aim and engage like a terminator....!!! There is a HUMAN MULTI-CREW inside, a team, that is unable to ALWAYS act optimally and in shortest possible time. It DOESN'T work like that in real life. Same for things like reaction times, spotting times, reload times, engage times, time to start moving - they should be a lot more random in my opinion.

Anyone who been there, or have read some war diaries, or watched some authentic documentary films, can notice that. Only very well trained and experienced crews in optimum conditions can be close to such "optimum" performance and act almost always as quickly as possible, almost like a robot. Most of the "human" or "soldier" performance is far from that.

Such semi-random variability is quite easy to code, so I hope we will see it someday in CM.

[sburke]

Unfortunately, tank crews in CM seem to not have any self-preservation instinct. As long as the vehicle is working, and they are not panicked, they would stay and fight - very effectively. Just like nothing had happened. Many times I've seen them killing the threat that has penetrated their tanks few seconds before, but didn't manage to reload and penetrate it again, before the retaliation came.

Maybe tank crews should panic more easily.... They are a bit too "robotic" or terminator-like.

I think Broadsword would strongly disagree with you there in our current battle. The Tank company at the point of the attack is getting increasingly hard to control. Granted the crews are not bailing but they are backing off at the first indication of opposition. A single HE round is enough to have them back pedaling now and this in turn is forcing the commitment of additional forces. Our suspicion is the unit has been degraded by losses in the company and the crews are now so rattled they are avoiding combat.

Actually you had mentioned panicked - I think currently the overall state of the unit is probably rattled and easily panicked. How quickly a unit panics or not has a lot of variables so isn't easily categorized here.

[Baneman]

I think Broadsword would strongly disagree with you there in our current battle. The Tank company at the point of the attack is getting increasingly hard to control. Granted the crews are not bailing but they are backing off at the first indication of opposition. A single HE round is enough to have them back pedaling now and this in turn is forcing the commitment of additional forces. Our suspicion is the unit has been degraded by losses in the company and the crews are now so rattled they are avoiding combat.

Actually you had mentioned panicked - I think currently the overall state of the unit is probably rattled and easily panicked. How quickly a unit panics or not has a lot of variables so isn't easily categorized here.

True, but that jittery behaviour is after combat degradation as you note.

However, a full penetration at any time should usually have the crew bailing and then looking to see if the tank survived - the few anecdotes I've read, when hit, the crews generally had no idea what had happened owing to smoke and so forth and just got the hell out.

At the very least you'd expect them to be slower on the uptake than the crew that had just fired the penetrating shot, owing to having to determine if they're on fire, if they're all there, if everything's still working etc.

[John Kettler]

Bemused,

This thread I recently posted (second link) will explain, and visually depict, what happens when projectile meets armor. Spall can not only be metal particles, but molten metal, capable of all sorts of tank ruining mischief. Partial penetration merely means your tank armor wasn't completely penetrated by the AP shell. In practice, there could be no portion of the projectile coming out the other side (spall from effects of compression wave) or spall from compression wave, projectile breakup and hyperplastic flow (metal melts under high velocity impact and behaves like a temporary fluid (think milk droplet, like this, but with near instantly resolidified metal)).

http://media.efluids.com/images/medium/626/626_scaled.jpg

The links on this thread will lay it all out for you. May I particularly recommend the Werner Mehl 1 million frames per second projectile impact video before essaying the written material?

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=110208

I, too, have played "Barkmann's Corner." I believe you may find my experience with it of interest.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105379&page=25

Regards,

John Kettler

[womble]

I'm pretty sure bailing would be a conditional thing. If they were crossing a wide open area, not under any kind of small arms fire and many seconds away from any defilade, bailing upon sudden pentrating assault seems sensible. If they're in congested terrain and come under penetrating fire having rounded a corner, backing off in the safety of their can seems like a better idea, especially if there is small arms fire around.

There's an anecdote from a sherman crew fighting at night coming across a tiger at night at literally bumper-to-bumper range. The tiger's first round gouged a furrow across the top of the turret (not a penetrating hit, sure, but they know the next one would be, so the comparison is at least somewhat apt) because of a height difference, and the crew just hammered it away in reverse, back into the gloom and (relative) safety. If they'd bailed, they could have landed in a nest of Landser backing the Tiger up (don't know if such an element was present, but neither did they, hence the running away to fight again).

[Baneman]

I'm pretty sure bailing would be a conditional thing. If they were crossing a wide open area, not under any kind of small arms fire and many seconds away from any defilade, bailing upon sudden pentrating assault seems sensible. If they're in congested terrain and come under penetrating fire having rounded a corner, backing off in the safety of their can seems like a better idea, especially if there is small arms fire around.

There's an anecdote from a sherman crew fighting at night coming across a tiger at night at literally bumper-to-bumper range. The tiger's first round gouged a furrow across the top of the turret (not a penetrating hit, sure, but they know the next one would be, so the comparison is at least somewhat apt) because of a height difference, and the crew just hammered it away in reverse, back into the gloom and (relative) safety. If they'd bailed, they could have landed in a nest of Landser backing the Tiger up (don't know if such an element was present, but neither did they, hence the running away to fight again).

Yes, any and all of these reactions are good and we do indeed get such behaviour ingame - the only one that really seems unrealistic is the insta-Terminator-like response shot.