All Modes--Tank Armor Bug Fixes

[Nikita]

Firstly, let me just say that I love tanking just as much as I hate the bugs. I've got the weak spots figured out, the interiors are beautiful, the armor system is far more complex than RO1's ever was... I also greatly appreciate the work Wilsonam put into the calculations (Rant on tanks, armor, etc...), even occasionally in his off time.

Now, don't get me wrong--I'm not one of those who claim that the Panzer IV is invincible. It is more than possible to kill a Panzer IV. From the side especially, they are quite weak. From the front, it's far more difficult, but the hull hitzones can be hit.

Anyway, to the point. I've been trying to get these questions answered for some time, bringing them up during Scorched Earth casts, here on the forums, and in-game (politely, I hope) with the devs:

Are penetrations supposed to do a little more... damage? Once, I could only see the Panzer IV's turret cupola (50mm armor), and began shooting at it, getting repeated penetrations. Didn't kill the commander, who I presume was sitting up there on his chair. Penetrations on my own tank, be it a PIV or T34, sometimes completely fail to injure anyone or damage anything. In his post, Wilsonam said that spalling was modeled. If so, perhaps it's not working completely properly?

T34's front armor plates might need to be looked at if a PTRS can "damage" the T34's mantlet, which according to Wilsonam is 50mm thick. In a head-to-head fight against the PIV, I often had my front glacis plate damaged and subsequently completely "destroyed" by the next round. See picture below, taken on Arad2, where my front armor is damaged--that occured with the first hit, allowing the second to kill my hull gunner and engine. The one below took place on Gumrak in vanilla RO2, playing against bots. Driver dead. Hull gunner dead. Front armor completely destroyed, engine damaged, right brake destroyed.





The Panzer IV's turret is unusually durable considering the fact that the front is just 50mm of cast armor and the sides are just 30mm thick--deflections are common even firing across Fallen Fighters (150-250m). See below-this was taken right before pressing the trigger. The shot deflected:



I also played as a T34 commander in the beta today on Fallen Fighters. Some interesting things happened.



See picture above. Here, my loader was killed along with the rest of my crew, and my surviving commander couldn't be bothered to move about a foot, grab a shell off the rack, and shove it into the breech. I don't see why a tank without a loader couldn't reload the main gun, obviously at a slower pace. This isn't a bug, but it is a suggestion--when the loader is killed, allowing reloading to still be possible would be excellent.



Third picture. Was this me getting hit by a Panzer IV? Unfortunately not. My turret front armor plate was destroyed... by a PTRS in German hands. AND my commander was killed.



Fourth picture. Seconds after I fell back to avoid getting blown up by said German anti-tank gunner in the third picture, he put another round through my turret...

...and destroyed my main gun.

I'm assuming this is a bug? I mean, the PTRS couldn't possibly have been intended to penetrate the T34's turret, killing the commander, wrecking the front turret mantlet, and somehow disabling the main gun? The PTRS/Pzb stats seem... a little buggy.

Now, just to reiterate, I really do appreciate the hard work that's been put into the armor system. It's a complicated task with tons of variables, and its inevitable that something doesn't work quite right here and there, but the hard work shows, and all this criticism is intended to be as constructive as possible. Thanks for taking the time to listen!

[Kashash]

A lonely tank commander that lost any of his crew would've abandoned its tank immediately in real life. There should be a system where after a tank is hit, the crew would have to bail out. I don't know how this would work since crew can't get out of tank but perhaps sort of after pressing a key they would spawn in a new tank as to simulate the "abandoned" tank.

[Mike_Nomad]

Press K to scuttle - was obvious.

[Nikita]

Originally Posted by Mike_Nomad

Press K to scuttle - was obvious.

Actually, I saved the tank, repaired it and got new crew members at the supply point, shelled the Univermag to high hell, and took out the Panzer IV when it unwisely drove right into my line of fire looking for me. Counter-intuitive, but that's another problem--tanks respawn so quickly that there's really no need to try and save the tank when you'll have a spanking new one in 30 seconds.

[Dr.Phibles]

very nice post nikita please look into this TWI!!! only thing letting this game down at the moment is the tanks and these fixes would go a long way to help correct that!

[defektive]

Originally Posted by Nikita

Actually, I saved the tank, repaired it and got new crew members at the supply point, shelled the Univermag to high hell, and took out the Panzer IV when it unwisely drove right into my line of fire looking for me.

Gah, McTank drive-thru insta-repair makes my skull itch. Embarrassingly poor design choice.

[MarioBava]

Originally Posted by defektive

Gah, McTank drive-thru insta-repair makes my skull itch. Embarrassingly poor design choice.

I think if we're going to have repairs at all, it should be limited and significant inconvenience to the tanker...like only available by returning to the spawn area and having to wait out the length of a respawn timer. And that's a big if. My gut feeling is that there should be no tank repairs at all. Only ammo resupply and crew replacement but only the latter on the actual respawn cycle.

[Catalavos]

Originally Posted by defektive

Gah, McTank drive-thru insta-repair makes my skull itch. Embarrassingly poor design choice.

I have to agree with this one. As an ex-M1 tanker I can say from personal experience that repairs take a very long time, even with a dedicated repair crew. I have no experience with changing out turrets, engines or final drives on a Pz IV but I'll bet it's a little more complicated than driving through the field repair depot.

Limping back to the original spawn is a reasonable comprimise though, I guess. In RO you could run back and grab another tank which is basically the same thing.

Originally Posted by Nikita

I mean, the PTRS couldn't possibly have been intended to penetrate the T34's turret, killing the commander, wrecking the front turret mantlet...

Why not? Judging from their previous game (RO I), I believe it was deliberately intended for the PTRS to penetrate said things with the very same overpowered capability that the RO I PTRD was capable of:

Red Orchestra NoWay#01 PTRD-41 on Arad - YouTube


Hedgehog's T60's 20 mm weapon is another example of deliberate overpowering.



.

[Nikita]

More armor headaches:



This is more of a map issue, but it's possible to accidentally get your T34 stuck while trying to repair it here on Pavlov's House. No amount of throttle manipulation or turning will get you unstuck. Quite annoying.



Yep. That's right--I just lost my driver, loader, and hull machine gunner, and had my turret's front armor destroyed... by the PTRS. At the range I was, with the angle I had to the building with the anti-tank gunner in it, there should be no way that the PTRS should do more than scratch my tank's armor.



I couldn't scuttle the tank, either, forcing me to wait until an enemy tank emerged. Unable to return fire because of the death of my loader, I simply hosed it down with my coaxial MG, watching the bullets bounce off its armor, until it finished me off.

[RiccardoTheBeAst]

It's discretely embarassing, i must say.

[Nikita]

Reviving this thread because one somewhat vexating issue remains... and I have a few comments that might be helpful.

The armor penetration fixes with the GOTY patch seem to work pretty well now... armor-wise, the tanks are behaving much more accurately, and the anti-tank rifles are now more limited in their abilities.

If your loader is killed, however, your tank remains completely and utterly helpless. Your gunner/commander simply will not swallow his pride and load the main gun himself... Why not just force the gunner out of the gunsight view during the reload and greatly slow the rate of main gun loading? Or something! 4x slower reloading would be a more than adequate penalty. This issue does not come up with every tank duel, but when it does, the system is extraordinarly frustrating.

Another emerging issue is that of tank respawns. Waiting even thirty seconds for another spawn is simply not long enough. On a map like Pavlov's House, with two tanks on a restrictive playing field, the resultant armored footprint becomes far too great. The battle literally sees a steady stream of tanks arriving on the tiny battlefield for twenty minutes.

Some system increasing the length of time required for tanks to respawn would be excellent. Such an addition would also mean that killing an enemy tank becomes a much bigger deal, since it removes the tank for a long period of time. Tankers begin playing more conservatively, even retreating to repair and recrew, and AT riflemen and Engineers start feeling like their efforts actually make a difference. Tanks should also cost more reinforcement points.

Thirdly, currently, crew inside a tank are knocked around and "suppressed" to a degree when an enemy shell hits and penetrates--but if the player is looking through any sort of optics, this effect does not occur. The screen desaturates slightly, but a player looking through optics is not "knocked around". Possible bug or oversight?

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Finally, here's a suggestion that would probably take a little more effort to implement, but it would solve that immersion-breaking explosion that occurs when you "scuttle" your tank.

--Replace "Tank Heavily Damaged--Press K to scuttle tank" with "Tank Heavily Damaged--Press K to abandon tank"
--Create a new animation where the tank's hatches open and smoke billows out of the tank.
--Enemy gunner recieves notification "Enemy Vehicle Abandoned! +5 Team Points"
--Abandonment of the tank results in only half the loss of reinforcement points that would have been lost had the tank been destroyed outright.

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Just food for thought. The tanks themselves work pretty well now, it's just a few bugs and a few incongruities with how they mesh with gameplay.

[Avtomat]

It would be nice to see more lethal rounds too. Sometimes tanks can take 3-4 or in rare cases even more penetrations before getting knocked out. This of course is completely unrealistic. IRL tanks were usually abandoned after 1-2 penetrations due to the massive effects on the crew.

Also, it would be cool to see some new destroyed /knocked out models.
Like the tank won't explode every time it gets knocked out, instead it would more often just stop and drop smoke or start burning out of one or two of the hatches.

[Proud_God]

Originally Posted by Nikita

Another emerging issue is that of tank respawns. Waiting even thirty seconds for another spawn is simply not long enough. On a map like Pavlov's House, with two tanks on a restrictive playing field, the resultant armored footprint becomes far too great. The battle literally sees a steady stream of tanks arriving on the tiny battlefield for twenty minutes.

Some system increasing the length of time required for tanks to respawn would be excellent. Such an addition would also mean that killing an enemy tank becomes a much bigger deal, since it removes the tank for a long period of time. Tankers begin playing more conservatively, even retreating to repair and recrew, and AT riflemen and Engineers start feeling like their efforts actually make a difference. Tanks should also cost more reinforcement points.

I definately agree that something must be done about tank respawn. Also see threads:

http://forums.tripwireinteractive.co...ad.php?t=79897

http://forums.tripwireinteractive.co...ad.php?t=80377

The other suggestions I can agree with as well.