Slitherine

JaM2013 wrote: so you have HA 4 for 37mm?

in my mod i take all the penetration value with standard ammo, usually ap-he early war and apcbc for late war (43+) at 500meters X 1.14

if you were referring to the KwK 37mmL45, then 40@500 x 1.14 = 4,56 or 5
20L55, 33@500 = HA 4

JaM2013 wrote:Thing is that 75mm gun was much more powerful than what PzIII used initially.. As i stated before, 50L42 is HA 9, 37L46 is HA 7, therefore 75L24 cannot be HA 6, it should be HA 8, because its performance was exactly in the middle of 50L42 and 37L46. And btw, StuGIIIB was actually first vehicle Michael Wittman served in 1941, and he was credited to destroy several T34 tanks in it. (technically speaking PzIV could at least destroy T34 with side hits, but 37mm equipped PzIII couldnt)

Overall, i see great unbalance with short 75mm gun, which was effective gun in 1939-1940 period.. It was capable penetrating French Souma S35 tank frontally at 500m through the turret, which was way too thick for 37mm tank gun (40-42mm armor, 75L24 penetrated 50mm at 500m and 46mm at 1000m; 37L46 did just 35mm at 500m) So meeting Souma, you would rather be in PzIV than PzIII... (Souma has small one-man turret, therefore its initiative would suffer greatly, which means PzIV would be able to get multiple shots on target without issues)
Front hull on Souma S35 was 47mm thick, where upper hull had 21 degrees, and lower hull was rounded. so technically, upper hull had 50mm RHAe, and lower hull 54mm RHAe. Which means PzIV could penetrate the upper hull at 500m, but not the lower hull except for point blank.

btw, PzIIIN got same gun in 1943, but better ammo (not just better HEAT, but also better APCBC (PzGr 39/2 with 55mm at 500m, and 50mm at 1000m. so penetration wise, this gun got on pair with 50L42)

from wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_IV
Despite increased production of the medium Panzer IIIs and IVs prior to the German invasion of France on 10 May 1940, the majority of German tanks were still light types. According to Heinz Guderian, the Wehrmacht invaded France with 523 Panzer Is, 955 Panzer IIs, 349 Panzer IIIs, 278 Panzer IVs, 106 Panzer 35(t)s and 228 Panzer 38(t)s.[72] Through the use of tactical radios[73] and superior tactics, the Germans were able to outmaneuver and defeat French and British armor.[74] However, Panzer IVs armed with the KwK 37 L/24 75-millimetre (2.95 in) tank gun found it difficult to engage French tanks such as Somua S35 and Char B1.[75] The Somua S35 had a maximum armor thickness of 55 mm (2.17 in),[76] while the KwK 37 L/24 could only penetrate 43 mm (1.69 in) at a range of 700 m (2,296.59 ft).[17] The British Matilda II was also heavily armored, with at least 70 mm (2.76 in) of steel on the front and turret, and a minimum of 65 mm on the sides.[77] but were few in number.

Although the Panzer IV was deployed to north Africa with the German Afrika Korps, until the longer gun variant began production, the tank was outperformed by the Panzer III with respect to armor penetration
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JaM2013 wrote: and regarding 122mm AP, i was using Soviet test resuts, not wikipedia. There is specifically mentioned 122mm AP is able to penetrate the Panther at long range (1500m and higher) because of big overmatch 122mm projectile had over 80mm plate. (ill try to find the report and post it here)

imho, it had to do with 3 things;
1- weak panther front armor ( some sources say late war panthers 50% of them had weak armor )
2- Sometimes the IS-2 was a on a higher ground, negating a little bit of the slope of the panther front armor, allowing penetration.
3- propaganda or special shells given to a few tanks ( maybe? )

wikipedia is not very reliable source of info.. for example armor of S35 was 47mm thick on hull (upper hull at 21 degree, lower hull rounded), and just 40mm thick on turret.. at the other side 43mm penetration is for 30 degree hit, not standard flat one. From sources i read, it was PzIII that struggled against S35, so PzIV had to be used against them, but losses were on both sides (both tanks could cnock each other)

Anyway, it still has no credence on PzIV having lower penetration in Panzer Corps than PzIIIF with 37mm gun, which was nowhere near as effective against armor as short 75L24

Plus, same wikipedia gives completely different penetration table for 75mm KwK 37: 90 degree hit at 750m there is 48mm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.5_cm_KwK_37

and here is the Somua data:

http://www.tbof.us/data/tanks/s35/somua_s35.htm


edit:

found another page regarding Somua tank, and it gives a bit different armor protection values:

http://www.littlewars.se/french1940/s35.html

Turret Front 56mm, Upper Hull 36mm/22 degrees, lower hull front 36mm rounded. So, in this case, 75mm L24 would not penetrate Turret front, but would penetrate the hull at 1000m with no issues. 37mm gun would not penetrate it frontally, so my argument stands, PzIV was superior tank to PzIII in 1940 when fighting French tanks. (mentioning Matilda II makes no sense, as no german tank could destroy it anyway)

best read i've had on the Somua S-35 on the internet was there:

https://forum.axishistory.com//viewtopic.php?t=126240

yeah, that's where i got my first armor values originally. anyway, the strangest thing to me is they keep mentioning how 47mm SA35 gun was superior to German guns, but its actual penetration was not that impressive, and 75mm L24 was better. But of course German PzIV had just 20-30mm armor where Somua had 40-50mm, so yeah, PzIV was vulnerable, but at least it was capable knocking it out, while PzIII was completely useless against it.

But of course, PzIV had chance to get improved, and E version would fare a lot better in France against those 47mm guns with the up-armored frontal armor. its quite strange Germans didnt see the weakness of PzIV armor after Poland campaign and didnt reinforce those tanks in time, considering E version upgrade was quite minor with just 20mm plates bolted over..

i gave the somua HA 5 and GD 9, the PzIVD HA 6 GD 6, PzIIIE HA 5 GD 7

how many ammo should we give to the M7 105mm considering it carried 69 during ww2 ? we talked previously of dividing per 5, that makes a lot. the towed 105mm get much less ammo. hmm.

For play balance the Priest should probably be about 2 less ammo than the towed version. Think Wespe vs towed 105mm - the Wespe is more useful but the lower ammo means that the towed 105 has an edge on defence, especially for protecting multiple units against swarms of Russian conscripts and infantry.

It can be hard to get the French tanks vs German tank figures right as you had well armoured French tanks mostly with feeble guns and some decent ones against poorly armoured german tanks with guns that ranged from useless to good. Add in the poor visibility and overworked commander in the French tanks and it's even more murky.

The lighter R35, R40, H35 and H39 etc were almost as bad against real tanks as Panzer 1 and 2 were, but with the drawback of terrible vision, busy commander and poor doctrine. When used well, smallish groups of S35s were effective and could drive off much greater numbers of German tanks, and the Char B1 which had the same 47mm as the S35 could destroy any german tank. That tells me that the 47 should be hitting at least as hard as the 2 pounder or maybe slightly better (HA8). If you swarm a Somua with HA8 with with four or five Panzer 1s and 2s, you will get beaten up but defeat it. Same with a Char B1 if you use Panzer 3s and 4s. If you take them on 1 on 1 you should expect to lose.

personally im trying to balance my mod using initiative, and getting the HA, GD, AMMO etc based on historical values.
i deducted that they have used most of the times those features in the game,
from real historical values;
ammo = ammo / 10 (tanks, tds)
ammo = ammo / 25 for AA units
fuel = range in kms x 2.5
movement = speed in km / 10 + 1
SA = +- gun caliber
HA = this one is not accurate all the times. it looks good for german units, but too high for allies in general. i use pen@500m x 1.14
AD = not sure, seems to go with the size of the vehicles

For AD you can go with Top armor thickness.. tanks with 25-40mm thickness would be quite resistant to any autocannon fire

Reg fuel, i think max theoretical range is not the best approach, as many tanks could have long theoretic range, but in reality they couldnt make those trips without breaking down.. Of course, its quite hard to "guess" these things, but i think some kind of a multiplier should be used for reliability in this.. so tanks with bad mechanical reliability should get x0.5 multiplier (Panthers, Tigers,T34/76 M40), while mechanically reliable tanks could get x1(definitely Shermans), and those between x0.75..

JaM2013 wrote:For AD you can go with Top armor thickness.. tanks with 25-40mm thickness would be quite resistant to any autocannon fire

Reg fuel, i think max theoretical range is not the best approach, as many tanks could have long theoretic range, but in reality they couldnt make those trips without breaking down.. Of course, its quite hard to "guess" these things, but i think some kind of a multiplier should be used for reliability in this.. so tanks with bad mechanical reliability should get x0.5 multiplier (Panthers, Tigers,T34/76 M40), while mechanically reliable tanks could get x1(definitely Shermans), and those between x0.75..

yes, for my mod i picked top armor mm for AD, i am not sure what *they* used in the game.

As for practical range, in a way what you say makes sense but i think it would prevent scripted scenarios to work properly. Tigers would become borderline useless with 0,5 times their actual range. Since t34/76s have already a huge range, it would not hamper them much. Then, there is the difficult time spent researching which tanks were reliable and reliable in what ways. LOTS of work.

Relating ammo, etc to real life stats makes good sense. It will be interesting to see how the stats work out.

Some properties are a bit more subjective. For example, initiative should probably be increased for good tank layout, appropriate crew numbers, good visibility and radio, although later it is probably more influenced by effective combat range (subject to the qualification that if effective range is much bigger than typical range it has limited benefit).

GD could reasonably be fine tuned by a point or two to recognise the details of construction, armour quality and design.
For example, I've heard arguments in favour of one-man turrets (smaller target and well armoured, though I'm not sure this is a worthwhile trade off against control of the tank), for speed and low profile (hard to spot or target - credible), against rivets (very credible), for face hardened armour (credible) and against variable steel quality and poor welding (late war german tanks - credible). Also, good all round armour vs heavy frontal armour also needs some thought - I think you have already covered this.

All very interesting.

Armor protection is very relative actually.. many thinks its just the hull + turret, but actual design of vehicle had quite an impact on things.. for example German Panzer IV (let say E model), everybody is saying turret was just 30mm, while hull was 30+30 sandwich. Yet, that is not entirely true. If you look at frontal profile, Turret size is just 1/4 of the frontal profile.. another 1/4 is the superstructure (30+30), and 1/2 is for the hull, which is again divided into two sections with different armor protection. Upper hull is just 20mm plate sloped at 72 degrees giving it 64mm LOS armor, while lower hull is 30+30 at 20 degrees (again 64mm LOS).

So technically 3/4 of the frontal profile for Panzer IVE is 60mm thick, only turret front is 30mm, (yet due to mantlet, parts of turret have slightly higher protection), so if you use standard 50% for hull and 50% for turret, you end up with innacurate representation for that tank.. In combat conditions, it could have quite impact actually, as hits would most likely not strike vehicle directly 90 degree but at some angle, which would increase the LOS thickness projectile meets.. so that 60-64mm armor on the hull could be good enough to stop let say soviet 76mm projectiles at distances over 750m (L-11 and F-34 guns firing APHEBC rounds)..

what is important is turning a tank armor into a meaningful number - GD - for a turn based tactical ww2 tank game. Like everything else almost, it is subjective and personal, for many reasons. Some of them you explained well. In the end we have to give a rating to armor units. If we have a tank that destroys his enemies all the times before they can retaliate - just hypothetical - and got 10mm of armor, what kind of GD can we assign to this unit, within the parameter of the game itself? I am writing this to point out that we have to use the parameters we have in the game, mainly 3 numbers, INI, HA and GD.

i think it would be best to create some sort of a ladder system, where protection rating and penetration rating would be paired together, so you could adjust vehicles based on that.
For HA i think we should always have some over-penetration, as projectiles are required to penetrate and get into crew compartment to do damage.. technically, even if you have a projectile with 51mm penetration, 50mm plate will most likely stop it from killing the crew, so i think penetration values should be actually reduced by 10-15% to get an reliable penetration values, that can be then used for HA value.

So personally, i think HA value should be a slightly behind the armor value, so get appropriate results (so HA for 37mm gun could be lower than GD of a vehicle, that projectile can penetrate in its effective range - for example, if 37mm HA is 5, then 30mm frontal armor could represent value 7, which would give 5/7=71% success rate. Similarly, 50mm L42 with value HA 8, vs T34 with armor 13 = 63% chance.

JaM2013 wrote:i think it would be best to create some sort of a ladder system, where protection rating and penetration rating would be paired together, so you could adjust vehicles based on that.(...)

could you make a concrete example?

what i meant is simple penetration vs armor rating, so for example with early war tanks, if you have a tank with 30mm armor, then guns that penetrate 30mm armor at normal combat range should have same value for HA, yet i think its not a good idea, as tanks are no simply flat armor boxes that are always hit straight on.. tactics plays a huge role, which should be taken into consideration too, as well as fact you also need to kill the crew behind the armor to destroy the tank.. therefore, some overpenetration is needed too..

And for tactics impact effect, lets just say that antitank guns were usually not deployed in straight lines, but were placed into positions where they could fire into sides of approaching tanks. so technically, their HA could see some boost because of it.

btw, whats your take on transport vehicles? i think base game has it way too simplistic, where you would just get the best transport possible for your infantry no matter what.. yet typical WW2 infantry would be lucky to have ordinary transport trucks, let alone halftracks.. so i think there should be some adjustment to transport costs at least.

Also, there was actually quite a difference between halftracks too, where German Sdkfz 251 had actually better protection(8-14.5mm) than American M3 (6-12mm), or British Bren Carrier (8-10mm). Yet American M3 carried M2 HMG with decent penetration against softly armored vehicles, while Germans used standard MG34 which was not effective against light armor.
Overall, i think these armored transports should be handled slightly better, they were practically first infantry fighting vehicles, and gave infantry useful fire support vehicle against other infantry.. Yet in game, usually these halftracks are getting murdered by everything... I think they should be not handled as "armored" targets, but as "soft" targets, same as infantry is. This way, tanks and other vehicles will not use HA attack but SA, which makes more sense, as firing APHE or APCBC ammo at them would be quite pointless due to very thin armor (projectiles would over-penetrate, and do damage only to those in path of projectile), and typically, tanks would fire HE rounds at them anyway ...
But because these usually carry infantry on them, their close defense should be also increased, at least to the same level as infantry has or higher (due to mounted machineguns, let say 2-3CD), which again would make them stand a chance in such combat. after all, in such situations infantry would disembark and try to fight the enemy, while vehicle would support them with machinegun fire, which would definitely increase their chances..

This way, these Halftracks would be relatively decent option how to fight enemy infantry in the open, and not a complete deathtrap in attacks against entrenched enemies.

At the same time, i think these vehicles should have much better spotting than currently have (1), as these were open top vehicles with plenty of men looking around, besides, it was not that unusual using these for recon duties...


So, with all these changes, i think all halftracks would then require price increase, which would make them a bit rare, as they should be.. Player should no have enough money to equip all his infantry units with halftracks anyway, (even German PanzerGrenadier battalions were mostly using standard trucks)

For me, 0.5" or 13.2mm HMG should be something like SA2 HA2 (in some cases 1/3 might be better) to make them a bit different from a typical 0.3" MG.

They were very good against soft targets but had less ammo and lower rate of fire than most tank mgs, but could do some damage against lightly armoured targets, and should be less effective than a 20mm cannon.

I have somewhere read that the Lorraine APC was not armed because it was recognised that it would then be used as a tankette, and this was not its job. So maybe that's a case for passive attack only unless there is clear evidence it was used as infantry support (eg M3 halftrack), and adjust price accordingly for ones with active attack.