The thing is angling your tank like you do in RO1 was pretty rare practice in typical conditions, considering you exposed bigger target of yourself, your side armour (which rarely was as strong as the glacis, of course in a retrospect you could argue this is dependant on period of the war and the vehicle itself, but that's just in a retrospect), your tracks and so on. Tight enviroment, shoot'n scoot or say narrow areas where "RO angle" had benefits for the sake of shooting (still doesn't magically make you invulnerable anyway) is another story, but it wasn't like "ZOMG ENEMY TANK ANGLE 11 O CLOCK NOW THEY CAN'T PENETRATE US!"
I wouldn't say you're invulnerable..... more often than not, I'll have a few shells deflect, but most will take out my tracks or damage my engine so that I can't move anywhere.... and when others angle, if I can't get a kill shot on them, then I do the same thing and aim for the tracks or near the back so that they're stuck and an easy target for the next tank on my team if I don't survive long enough to come around their side or front to finish them off.
And I'd rather sacrifice my tracks or bust my engine to the point i can't move, than blow up and die, plus the chance of deflection.....
In RO:CA, the IS2, T34 and Panther could all be invulnerable if angled right, no matter where you shot, and most could just stay in one spot the entire round without getting damaged..... in RO1, you last a little longer than most when angling, but you'll still die eventually.
From what I saw in RO2, you can damage more areas of a tank than you could before.... so while some shots will angle/deflect, most shots will blow your tracks, or smash something up real good on your tank.... but not completely kill you with one hit. But angled deflection will still exist and the previous diagram I provided would still be valid to a degree.... in that even if the angled area for deflection is still far more narrow than before, those angles and critical spots are located in the same spots.
As much as angling may have small benefit as that way you don't expose your armour at complete square it's something you do in a subtle manner, not in massive superninja-angletrickstuff where the gunner is yelling the driver to correct his angle by one degree and magically the armour is boosted +7000%
That's a bit exaggerated..... people who drove tanks and fought against tanks in WWII would have gained experience over time as well as come across new discoveries on these things, just as most players have.... if something is going to save their arse on the battlefield, chances are they, like any of us, would take advantage of it as much as possible.
Whether you call it some super-ninja magic trick or whatever, it works and I'm sorry, but if it works and it's in the game and it's been known as a legit tactic..... I'm going to use it. I'd rather hurt your feelings in-game by using a tactic you don't know how to counter, than sit in respawn for 20 seconds from spoon feeding you an easy one-shot kill.... no offense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_armour
"Sloping and curving armour can both increase its protection. Given a fixed thickness of armour plate, a projectile striking at an angle must penetrate more armour than one impacting perpendicularly. An angled surface also increases the chance of deflecting a projectile."
And rather than facing a shell straight on with a "Flat-Angle", if you angle your tank yet again so that you have two "Flat-Angles" on angles, you increase your chances of deflection yet again.... it's mere physics....
^ With a flat-on front angle of the tank, you have only one angle on one axis in 3D, thus a direct shell would probably smack into the tank much like it does in RO1.
When you angle your tank to the shell like some do in RO1, you end up with an angle in all three axis of dimension compared to the direction of shell, and on both sides of the corner of the tank as noted above.... the area where both the side and front of the tank meet is the strongest area of armor when you think about it.
Now if you're suggesting that this should be nerfed because people use common sense and thus, pull further away from realism, then I don't agree with you.
One thing I do agree with is that if you hit the tank lower than the areas noted on the tank, and hit the tracks near the front, than those should bust up real good.... other than that, you have to do some thinking. And of course on other tanks, such as the Panzers..... many of these angles don't really exist and are more prone to getting blown up from fewer shots, which is one of the reasons why the T34 was far more superior.
Depends on a tank, angle Tiger to 10:30 and it can deflect any shell save for very very very very accurate pixelhunt shot from IS-2, which is very rare to see in the first place. Angle Panther just below your "green" diagram and it is vulnerable for everything besides two areas that requires also pretty great pixelhunting. The list goes on.
I've hit a few and took them out on angles with mere T34's.... you just need to know where to hit them. It's not easy, but it's not supposed to be.
(Of course that is ignoring flank\rearshots but that's not the point.)
(And just so you know this isn't that much about sloped armour. This is about angling your tank to gain a "slope" and how in RO1 it goes to a ridiculous degree that you can deflect IS-2 shell with T-60 -- just for the sake of example, these are numerous -- as long as you angle it right, which is equivalent of a wet cardboard piece deflecting 12.7mm bullet if you just "angle" it right.)
Indeed.... if you angle it right, the force of the shell, as well as its cone shape can & will deflect... if there isn't enough area/force for it to impact directly and thus explode, but less resistence in another direction.... that force will move into that direction due to the path of lease resistence..... thus deflection.
......The angling in RO;ost gave you about 200% increase in armor protection which basically would make T34/76 invincible to a Tiger
. Should be 30-40% at most although I'm not an expert.
Ha ha..... even when I angled my T34 against a Tiger, the Tiger only had to shoot me one more time before I died than it'd normally have to. I was fine against Panzers and Stugs, but once a Panther or Tiger found me in my T34, I was no safer than a Panzer against an IS2.
Seems each person's experiences are different.
And I'm not laughing at what you said as if it is wrong or stupid.... it just doesn't match any of my experiences.
If the first penetrating shot can to a reasonable extent be relied upon to knock-out the enemy in a tank duel, that means that you are essentially able to win the duel and get out unharmed, whereas if every tank can take around 5 hits on average, the first penetration only means that you'll probably win the duel, but end up with a 80% damaged tank (meaning most of your crew members dead and machinery knocked out)
^ That sounds a lot like all the other FPS's I played that don't deal with real tank physics or locational damage, but just your lame hitpoints system..... if you both find each other at the same time, whoever get's the first shot off first wins..... to me, that's just lame..... because I may have hit them in the ammo or engine areas, but because they got the first shot off and even if they're constantly shooting my tracks, I still die.