Posted it elsewhere, but this thread is really the better place:
Tank armor, penetration and damage models have to be remodelled completly, if they are to be realistic.
Currently no real armor and penetration values are used, they started as close to real (armour rating in mm divided by ten) but they are increased or decreased for "balance". For example the front armor of the IS-2 is just ridiculous... if the late model, IS-2M is modelled, as the 3D model looks, it had front hull armor 120mm thick and angled at 60deg, impenetrable for ANY WW2 gun, including Tiger 2. Maybe Jagdtiger would damage it, but not penetrate. Front turret armor was much weaker, 100mm rounded. In RO seems to be the other way and front hull is the most vunerable point to aim. It's rated to something like 140mm vertical in RO... same as Tiger which is much too strong (and that's because T-34/85 gun is much too strong...). The KV-1 armour is all around worse than in T-34/76.... ect ect.
Also I'm not sure if there are even separate armor ratings for the hull and the turret :-/ Maybe turret is same like hull, just rounded so shells ricoshets more often... not sure... maybe there are separate turret stats somwhere... Many tanks has VERY different turet and hull armors (one or other stronger), the example for much stronger hull is Panther and IS-2, however more examples of the opposite (turret stronger than hull) could be found.
The same armor calculations for the turret as for the hull, would also explain why the turret is also harder to penetrate, when the hull alone is angled and the turret is still pointing at the target... this is my feeling after some play, but it may be wrong. Maybe only armor rating is shared, but the angle of the turret is used when the turret is hit.
Penetration of tank guns is not correctly modelled too. Starting from the penetration tables. Similar like the armor ratings, they probably started their life as real values, later changed for "balance" or (some kind of) playability....
The PTRD from close range have penetration potential equal to 80mm of armour, so it can kill a Tiger by one close side shot, hitting the "ammo" hitbox. Just a 76mm gun in-a-can... :-O The T-34/85 gun is way too powerfull and probably that's why tiger's armor was inreased...
I'm sorry but this is not the way to go if the word "realism" means something for you... :-( There are other methods to "balance" a game. Not by "balancing" it's weapons and armor. Of course it will give OK results in some cases (and then comment's like "The current system works all right") but in other cases the results are WAY off... Going for realism and modeling the things as they were is better way and works wery well in games like CM and SPWaW.
Consider this - the scoped rifle is much better in game than just a rifle, in almost every way. Do you "balance" it by making it shoot 3x slower or by reducing it's damage or something ?? No. You just allow one sniper rifle for a map. Why don't you make the same with tanks ? Let the balancing for map designer...
You "balance" PTRD by giving it 80mm penetration at point blank - where it had IIRC 35mm at point blank and no chance to do more than a scratch to Panthers or Tigers side armor... but it could damage PzIV or Stug from very close. Make it penetration real, instead make it useful at other things like destroing tank's periscopes. Blind tank is dead anyway. If you want to give good AT weapon for Russians, give them LL bazookas, but don't make a PTRD a portable 76mm cannon... :-( capable of side one-hit kills of a Tiger...
Returning to armor and penetration... The effect of angle on round deflection is overmodelled greatly. This single thing causes many wrong things in the game...
In real life, no one would angle his tank at 45deg or even close to it. Tanks with weak sides would turn front towards enemy, because with Panthers side plates even ricosheting hit could be fatal. Tanks with strong all-around armor like Tiger would angle slightly if there were no other tactical reasons not to do this. The best angle for Tiger (theoretically, taking into account armor protection) would be when it's front armour and side armour give equal protection. For Tiger this would be about 40deg, but the Tiger is an exeption rather than a rule. For other tanks the best angle wouldn't exceed 25-30deg to not exceed 60deg angle for side armour.
The rounds deflect much too easy in RO, and calculations of ricoshets doesn't take into account the T/D (armour thickness to projectile diameter) ratio. Yes, 76 or 85mm rounds can ricoshet from 50deg angled 80mm armour, but same round usually wouldn't do the same hitting 45mm angled armour.
The front plate of T-34 tank is angled at 60deg and historically 88mm or 75mm shells from Tigers and Panthers didn't have any problems with it at ranges under 1000-1500m. On the other hand, less sloped 80mm front armor plate of Panther sloped at 5deg less (55deg) was almost inpenetrable for similar calliber AT rounds, if the shell didn't hit weak point or there was flaw in the plate, you had to use something like 100mm or 122mm shell to pierce it . And hits which didn't penetrate, would be called ricoshets of course.
Another example - the front T-34 plate, 45mm at 60deg. Easily penetrable for Tiger, Panther guns (and even PzIV 75L48 gun at close ranges). The side superstructure - 45mm at 45deg. Now Let's angle the T-34 at 45deg. What is the combined angle that the side plate is angled against a shell ? It's of course not 45+45deg=90deg
but arccos(cos 45deg * cos 45deg) and it's... 60deg . So SAME as frontal plate with no side angle. So why isn't is EASILY penetrated by german tank guns ?
The angle at which ricoshets happen seems to be too low, and as was said don't take D/T ratio into account. And when a shell is determined as ricoshet, it don't make any damage to even thin armor.
Better and simpler would be to make penetration calculations, including basic penetration value, T/D ratio and hit angle and if the round didn't penetrate, call it a ricoshet. Of course it's difficult with current armor calculating system, because only single value (armor rating) is passed from vehicle to calculations, and single value (basic penetration) from projectile to calculations. No vertical armor angle, no projectile diameter...
Better system should be designed if it is to be realistic, passing to calculations both plate thickness and vertical angle and both basic penetration and round calliber. Then excellent armor modeling could be done.
With current model, only realistic armor ratings, calculated against most typical projectile, realistic shell penetration curves, and good angled armor formula (like pen = basic penetration * cos (horizontal angle)^1.4...1.6 - we can't adjust for T/D ratio because we don't have it... but it gives good enaugh results, much better than what is currently.
Don't know what formula is used for angled armor PENETRATION currently in the game, I didn't dig it out yet. If same was used to calculate armor rating, it's a simple cosine... but maybe if it's better formula like one given above, currently IT DOESN'T MATTER because the ricoshets are much too easy and penetration calculations are not even called... Same for hitting rounded surfaces - only very small surface is free of ricoshets, smaller than should.
In situation when penetration would easily occur, like 45deg angled T-34... Side armor is like 45mm/60deg which gives 110-120mm equivalent. Front armor is 45mm at 70deg and here ricoshets are likely, equivalent armor thickness can reach 200mm, maybe less if T/D is accounted... but you have much larger side armor footprint to aim for already. The best angle for T-34s hull, considering armor effectivenes, would be at 35deg with armor rating about 35% greater than from the front. And not any more. Angling the tank more, front armor becomes more resistant but side armor falls rapidly.
(side lower hull at that angles would be not very good place to aim, because it's covered by wheels. There is thinner armor and not sloped, but from that angle you'd have to penetrate 2 or 3 wheels to get to the armor itsels... (more on Tiger and Panther) Directly from the side situation is different, only one wheel to pierce (again Tiger and Panther with overlaping wheels, you have to pierce 2-3 even directly from the side, but they were less solid than full - width wheels). Piercing even 2-3 wheels itself wouldn't have to mean immobilising, they work quite good even holed, and loss of one wheel doesn't mean much for mobility. On the other hand, when firing at front, the most important leading wheel is exposed. If you hit and damage or remove this one, the track will fall off. Don't know about T-34 tracks, but piercing holes in Tiger's tracks didn't always broke them, there were cases of Tigers running with several wheels shot off and tracks pierced. There is chance but not sure. From the side, hitting the track directly is rather hard, and hitting the wheels rarely caused immobilisation. Probably HE round from the side would have greater chance of breaking the track than AP. Of course sometimes tracks drop or break without any hit... but sometimes they worked even if hit directly and perforated by AP, at least Tiger tracks, T-34 IIRC had much thinner and more fragile tracks)
Now for tank damage. Currently penetration that don't hit engine or "ammo" hitboxes, does only overal damage. 10-15kg of AP shell and armor fragments fly through crew compartement, with possibly HE charge inside the shell detonating inside of the tank (like small FRAG grenade) and no one crewmen dies, no one is wounded, OR EVEN SHOCKED by this fact !!!!! ?????
The foot soldier is affecfed if there is near explosion, but tank crewman don't bother that AP round just passed through tank ?????????
How this should be fixed IMO... First, the ammo hitboxes should be corrected to realistic places and sizes. In T-34 this would be entire floor of fighting compartement, rather hard to hit but fatal. Shells were stored on both sides of fighting compartement, easy to hit from the side but not from the front. In T-34/85 also the rear of the turret and some of turret sides. More smaller hitboxes rather than one big, easy to hit from both front and side...
Next thing is fuel tanks. If they are under armor, the penetration of them (possibly with HE charge detonating) is fatal, sometimes more fatal than ignition of one main gun rounds. Add hitpoints for fuel tanks. They are big and cover the engine hitbox partially.
Hit in the engine itself, would most likely set it on fire. This don't blow up the tank... instantly. But the crew can't stay inside anyway. Hit in fuel tanks means either fuel detonation (diesel too, T-34 fuel tanks exploded frequently when hit from Tiger or Panther in the side towards the rear) or set tank on fire.
Next crew hitboxes would be nice. Hit in one causes crewman death. Optional for the game... but would be very realistic.
And at last, even if a round passes through a tank not hitting ammo, engine, fuel or crewmans... there is still great chance that one or more persons inside would be killed or wounded by shrapnels. There is chance that nobody find itself hurt (especially if the hit was in thin side armor and round went clean through both sides) but anyway the crew would be most likely shocked for a moment (if not panicked and bailing out). They can't return fire immediately.
So in RO - correction of ammo hitboxes, adding fuel tanks and maybe crew hitboxes, when engine is set on fire it immobilises the tank and causes it to blow after some time (so the crew have maybe a minute to go out, can't stay), even if the hit doesn't hit any hitboxes but penetrates inside crew compartement, crew is shocked for a moment, there is high chance of wounds and moderate chance of death from shrapnels.
The Combat Mission (CMBB and CMAK) had very good after-penetration damage model. Tank could blow instanlty, knocked out with surviving crew bailing out (we don't have that in RO), even without knock-out one or more crewmans could be killed, anyway always crew was shocked for some time. It could also be immobilised or lost a gun (covering gun damage, turret ring damage, gunner incapacited). But in CM all this effects were random. In RO they can be based on where the round hit, with some effects randomised (shrapnel wounds are more or less random anyway).
Now two more thing is desperately needed in tanks. The separate gunner and commander stations !!! Of course in tanks that had them, so T-34/76 stays like it is now.
It can be as simple, as locking the gunner in scope view, and commander in cupola and unbuttoned/binoculars views, but than they both could work in one tank. Currently all the tanks are like T-34/76 - when the gun has to be fired, the comander loses the sight of the battle and can't see that for example another tank is flanking them, so they should break and engage the highest threat.
Of course better would be if gunner had separete outside view and could ride unbttoned enchaning spotting abilities, but it isn't most important and it requires more work (graphics, coding) to make.
So just allowing 4th crew member to join a tank and splitting already available views to gunner (sights view) and commander (cupola and outiside view) would be enaugh. The commander could still have ability to control turret traverse, so it could turn the barrel facing the target it wants gunner to engage.
The stations of gunner and commander could be switched fast and would be no problem if only 1 or 2 perosons used the tank (driver & gunner) , the stations would change as easy as views before, so one person still could be gunner&commander at once if it preferred or if there was not enaugh players. I don't see any problem here. Just change stations to get the other views.
But tank witf full crew would have big advantage, in some cases greater than 2 crew tank over single player tank (you rarely shoot and drive at the same time, but you have to keep situation awarness and command IN THE SAME TIME when the tank shoots).
Second and maybe most annoying thing are reload times. Just pitifull.... Only the IS-2 should be left as is, as 20s it's about right (in fact probably best they can do). The rest of in game tanks...
Even if the game simulated the practical rate of fire, including aiming, the ROF are too low. But the aiming is done by gunner, the only thing that reloading time is going to simulate is... just reloading time. And they could be QUICK if they had to in stationary tank. For example a Panther could fire at a rate up to 20 rounds per minute to stationary target. After few shells they had to break because the gun recoil system was overloaded. But for a moment with fast loader they could pump a round every 3 seconds on the target. Some other allied report from investigating captured Panther, mentions that the crew managed to fire 17 rounds in one minute.
The round of the Panther weighted 14.3kg, that of the Tiger only slightly more, about 15kgs. But loader in the Tiger had much more room (it was big tank with plenty of room for the crew). It could reload about same fast. T-34/85 - I asked some tankers that served on T-55s with 100mm gun, they said that if using ammo from the hull, about 7 seconds, if from the turret racks - even 4 seconds. They were in T-34 and think that they could load in 4 seconds if they took ammo from turret racks.
I don't require RO to give me 20 RPM in a T-34 or a Panther. But current reload rate is several times too low anyway. It has it's tactical importance - if you fire at someones side and miss or don't kill him right away, in real world he wouldn't have a chance to spot you, turn the turret and kill you, because next shots would be sent after the first after 4-5 seconds, not 10-15 seconds as in RO !! Also in RO even if you penetrate an enemy, but don't kill him yet, he can turn to you and engage you because he's not affected in any way by the fact that he was penetrated (killed, wounded, shocked)...
Even if we used practical rate of fire - using rounds from hull we would get 5-7 seconds reload time in Tiger and Panther, less in PzIV, little longer for T-34s as they didn't had turret floor and the loader had problems with removing ammo from boxes on the floor, with rotating turret and used cases laying everywhere. But most tank battles in RO are not long enaugh to use the all ready-to-use ammo on the racks in turret and hull. Reload times should be reduced. As I said, max possible rate for Panther was a shot every 3 seconds. 5 seconds average reload time when stationary would be OK I think. Similar for the Tiger, round wasn't much heavier or longer, there was more room. Little longer for T-34/85 - round a little heavier, less room, only few rounds available in the turret racks and later it had to reach for ammo to the hull. For PzIV reload time little less than for Panther. For T-34/76... probably same like T-34/85, even though round much lighter, there was much less room and IIRC no ready to use rounds in the turret. For IS-2 20-25seconds. It had very low rate of fire comparing with other tanks, but the shot was very powerfull and can kill any German tank with one hit usually on RO combat ranges. But if you miss... better back up untill reloaded. If you don't trust mine or your estimates, make them similar as in CM with at least veteran crews... BUT here we have pure reloading time, and in CM they cover rather practical ROF with time for aiming, adjusting a gun ect so they are longer than pure reloading times, but anyway they are much shorther than what is currently in RO.
Fortunately fire rates seems very easy to change, so minimal modification (does it call mutator?) is possible to fix this detail.
Now of course the loading times were MUCH higher, if the tank wasn's stationary !!!!! I don't know if that's possible in RO. If it is, please do it. Reload time would double (at least) if tank was moving. If not possible... well the engenmaments in RO are rather stationary, I mean you have to stop to fire. Reducing the overal average reload time to take moving into account would affect 90% of typical engenaments were tanks are stationary or only hide behind a cover (and it takes longer than reload anyway, and maybe you woun't hide if you had realistic reload time too...). If you are starting to run somewhere, you are not going to fire at the same time, so the fact that the gun would be reloaded faster than it (when moving) should, would have low importance probably... If there isn't possible in RO engine to make different reload times for moving and stationary tanks, the stationary fire rate (maybe slightly increased...) should be used. Maybe just not maximum stationary ROF.
For the end, about using a tank by single persen... does we allow it, or prefer team tanking ?
If we allow single person tanking, then why not make it easier ? The driver uses just 4 keys to steer a tank. He doesn't start the engine, shift gears or do anything more than left, right, ahead and back.
Just make 4 additional keybindings for tank commander to steer a tank from his station. It could work with 1 second delay to be more realistic. Why not ? Current 0.1 second position changing is equally not realistic but less efficient. Driving a tank by keys from commander position worked in Steel Beasts (there were no separate driver station) and worked very good.
If we don't like single person being able to man a tank... then just make time of position changing from driver to commander and vice versa realistic, something like 5-10 seconds. One person could still use a tank, but not more efficiently than in real life... like a moveable pillbox.
And one last nice thing - when a commander leaves out a tank, it could be spawned not at the ground, but at the turret or behind a turret. Currently getting there is rather difficult from the ground :-/ and standing on the turret with binoculars gives higher and great view from behind an obstacle...
(I thought about placing additional tanker with binoculars behind a turret, as a substitute of a commander controlling the fight whern gunner fights, but this position is hard to get to, very exposed and what's worst without communication with the rest of the crew (vehicle chat wouldn't work, don't know how about local chat...).
(I will not cover few others realism shortcomings, like ammo number shared for both AP and HE or what worse APCR rounds, because they seem hard to fix from what I learned about how the game works and in fact I can live with them... at least as long as other more important things are solved
I would be happy to cover some other areas, as the tracers for example (why tank rounds looks like the flaming deathsculls from DOOM, and not haver just tracer at the center, and why infantry mahinegun fire has tracers visible for the enemy, if the tracer is in the rear of the round...) as someone pointed, tracer was introduced to see the fire from the position of the gunner, for sure NOT from the position of the target... tank smoke grenades would be nice too... but I'll try to do this in another thread
Regards
Amizaur
