MkH^ said:
I also have presented multiple questions regarding the ****ed up cumulative damage system, but nothing has been answered regarding that.
First off, the "takes x number of hits to destroy" concept currently used is completely faulty to begin with! Either the first shot penetrates and kills everyone or destroys the vehicle, or it doesn't, which is either caused by the gun not being capable of penetrating the armor, or the crew getting really lucky. There is no such thing as "overall armor" or "hitpoints".
Apart from those hits, the tank may be immobilized or otherwise made combat ineffective by the hit.
It's not as if the armor wears out a little after each hit, indicated by yellow or red status to the crew members, until there's just one thin strip of it left, and only then does the gun actually penetrate, nor does the enemy tank crew load each grenade with slightly more powerful propulsion charge until it penetrates.
It was not infrequent at all for World War II tanks to be penetrated multiple times without being knocked out. The rounds used during WWII were generally solid AP shot. That is steel literally pushing through steel with the hope that if it makes it through to the other side, something vital will be hit. These were not HEAT rounds that send a jet of molten, superheated metal into the interior of the vehicle, nor are they modern SABOT round that strike with incredible amounts of energy, producing very nasty back side effects.
That every tank in the game "explodes" before it is destroyed is in itself a fallacy. It did not take detonation of the ammo load to knock out a tank. Often, just the shock of a penetrating shot would be enough to cause the crew to bail, leaving a perfectly serviceable tank empty on the battlefield (and causing tankers to put extra shells into any "dead" tanks they passed, just in case).
Mutiple penetrations without catastrophic damage were not at all unlikely. Usually the crew was the weakest point in the equation, either being prone to wounding from spalling (bit of metal flying around in the interior), to the trauma of seeing another crew member violently killed or to just succumbing to the shock and fear of being brutally hit repeatedly.
A large number, if not the majority, of knocked out tanks could be recovered and repaired.
The frequency of catastrophic damage in this game is not at all realistic, but is in keeping with the need for satisfying FPS "FX" and the avoidance of frustration for not being awarded ainstant visual gratification for your successful shots.
That being said, there is not a lot of motivation for a crew to bail from a tank in game (as already pointed out, even fire has no effect on crew functionality), so this does skew the observed results more to the unrealistic side, and there is certainly the framework in place for a more realistic system. Anything that moves the game towards invalidating the need for a tank "health" indicator would be good. All damage should be apparent through feedback given to the player. If tank looses a track, the driver will know. If the engine is knocked out, it will no longer function. If the tank burns, it should start to fill with smoke and injure the crew, etc.
I would reference Combat Mission and WWIIOnline for accurate penetration and damage modelling. In both, tanks are often knocked out without catastrophic damage.
25 kg armour-piercing BR-471 (Russian БР-471) projectile with muzzle velocity 800 m/s. It was able to penetrate the armour of all German World War II AFVs with rare exception (only JagdPanzers, JagdTiger, and Elefant were strong enough to resist BR-471). But BR-471 had high kinetic energy and it often damaged heavily armoured German vehicles without armour penetration by mechanical shock, causing engine or gearbox failures.
