Getting rid of AT rifles

[Lone Rebel]

Don't take my word for it, but if i remember right, penetration on best conditions at 100 mts range was about 22mm and on longer ranges about 16 mm (even up to 1000 mts, which i really doubt)

Can't really quote any source though, just stuff i read on sleepless nights (like this one )

 

[PhoenixDragon]

Don't take my word for it, but if i remember right, penetration on best conditions at 100 mts range was about 22mm and on longer ranges about 16 mm (even up to 1000 mts, which i really doubt)

The commonly-cited figures for the PTRS and PRTD appear to be 35-40mm penetration (40mm being tungsten ammo) at 100m and 0-degrees off perpendicular. So even with realistic numbers they should be capable of penetrating 30mm armor, such as the Panzer's sides.

Though as pointed out many times, the ATRs are intentionally made to perform better than they do in reality due to the unrealistically high frequency of tanks in the game.

 

[Nikita]

Though as pointed out many times, the ATRs are intentionally made to perform better than they do in reality due to the unrealistically high frequency of tanks in the game.

I say that tanks should just be on a separate, longer respawn timer. It's almost unproductive to play as AT or Engineer because you're stalking the same tank for three minutes, finally kill it, and within 30 seconds its back in the exact same spot. Tanks are more valuable and effective than infantry. If you lose one, you should logically have to wait longer to reenter the fight.

No need to give AT rifles any powers they didn't physically possess in life--reduce the frequency of tank spawns, increase the amount of reinforcements they cost (5-10 points imo), and increase how many points you get for killing one, and it will be far more worthwhile to crawl 50m on your belly for that perfect shot at a vulnerable angle.

 

[Field Marshal Rommel]

Shouldn't the PTRS should go through 30mm of armor at close range?

Of course it should. I just got confused when you stated that it "can penetrate the Panzer IV's side armor with great luck, at the right angle, at under 100m" but later you stated "the Panzer III will be highly vulnerable from the sides". In reality, both these tanks have identical side thicknesses of 30mm at similar angles and so are identically vulnerable, not one worse than the other.

 

[Avtomat]

They can penetrate the Panzer IV's side armor with great luck, at the right angle, at under 100m.

The T34's side armor is sloped, but thin, and is likely more vulnerable to PTRS fire.

T34's side armor is 40mm at 40

 

[MarioBava]

I say that tanks should just be on a separate, longer respawn timer. It's almost unproductive to play as AT or Engineer because you're stalking the same tank for three minutes, finally kill it, and within 30 seconds its back in the exact same spot. Tanks are more valuable and effective than infantry. If you lose one, you should logically have to wait longer to reenter the fight.

No need to give AT rifles any powers they didn't physically possess in life--reduce the frequency of tank spawns, increase the amount of reinforcements they cost (5-10 points imo), and increase how many points you get for killing one, and it will be far more worthwhile to crawl 50m on your belly for that perfect shot at a vulnerable angle.

I liked this post. I've been wanting the AT class to get some team point love for a while, and would add to your list of suggestions the idea of assist points for AT rifleman who damage tanks that wind up dead, just like if you shoot someone in the foot and two minutes later they die from someone else's shot, you get an assist.

I guess the potential downside with longer respawn timer for tanks is you risk making the game boring for tank players, depending on how long you make it. A somewhat radical idea might be a longer respawn timer with the option to play as another class while that ticks down. At the respawn timer end, a dialog allows you to spawn back into the tank if you wish.

Limited tank reinforcements for combined arms maps is another idea.

As for tank killing with the ATR, I love to play the class but it is a struggle sometimes. Someone mentioned penetration with the armor already damaged, I thought this might've been the case too but don't know if it is possible with the way the tank damage system is modeled. All the numbers about penetration will assume the metal is at full strength and not distorted or damaged in any way. Metal gets weaker when stressed, but I don't know if, in real life, the AT rounds, not able to penetrate, were able to distort/weaken the metal. Just saying this because it felt like anecdotaly sometimes I can only kill through the turret after many shots in short succession to the same small area (it usually happens when I get desperate because I am being fired upon or have been seen, so I just unload as quickly as I can). Whether this is a case of the armor plates getting damaged in the same area until they can be penetrated? I don't know, but the thought passed through. Maybe it is just a case of many "misses" with one lucky "hit" instead of damaged armor.

 

[Nikita]

T34's side armor is 40mm at 40

 

[how2skate_com]

If you crawl through the dirt for 2 minutes to blow a tank, you should get more than a 20 second respite from the enemy tanks. It's almost not worth the trouble to kill a tank.

I agree.

Also, if you're a tank driver, and you manage to kill an enemy tank, he will be back 20 seconds later, so you keep exchanging rounds with enemy tanks, while not doing much to support your infantry.

Killing a tank should have a big impact.

 

[PhoenixDragon]

I say that tanks should just be on a separate, longer respawn timer. It's almost unproductive to play as AT or Engineer because you're stalking the same tank for three minutes, finally kill it, and within 30 seconds its back in the exact same spot. Tanks are more valuable and effective than infantry. If you lose one, you should logically have to wait longer to reenter the fight.

Absolutely. Taking out a tank currently has a reward much too low for the amount of effort it takes the infantry to do it. It makes tanks excessively powerful, in a tactical sense. Your suggestions (Increased respawn delay and reinforcement loss for a tank) are right along the lines of what I would suggest, myself.

I might go a little more extreme than that, though. Tanks were rare compared to in-game. Even with those tweaks, you'd still need to increase the infantry's ability to deal with them above what they had in real-life, because the tanks are still more common than they were in real-life. These tweaks would still result in many tanks per battle. The real battle of Stalingrad saw 1 tank for every ~1,000 soldiers, with peaks up to 1 tank per every ~500 soldiers. Even assuming the battles we see in-game are a concentration of power with a disproportionate amount of armor, we're already seeing a rather large commitment of armor even without the tanks respawning. I would suggest a very limited number of tanks per side; either a very low tank-reinforcement number, or no respawning of tanks at all.

64-soldier battles are simply far too small to have realistic combined-arms tactics of this scale. I would honestly rather see no tanks at all than have them the way they're implemented now.

 

[[Mad_Murdock]]

I would honestly rather see no tanks at all than have them the way they're implemented now.

Grudgingly as it is, I support this.

 

[PeteAtomic]

Absolutely. Taking out a tank currently has a reward much too low for the amount of effort it takes the infantry to do it. It makes tanks excessively powerful, in a tactical sense. Your suggestions (Increased respawn delay and reinforcement loss for a tank) are right along the lines of what I would suggest, myself.

I might go a little more extreme than that, though. Tanks were rare compared to in-game. Even with those tweaks, you'd still need to increase the infantry's ability to deal with them above what they had in real-life, because the tanks are still more common than they were in real-life. These tweaks would still result in many tanks per battle. The real battle of Stalingrad saw 1 tank for every ~1,000 soldiers, with peaks up to 1 tank per every ~500 soldiers. Even assuming the battles we see in-game are a concentration of power with a disproportionate amount of armor, we're already seeing a rather large commitment of armor even without the tanks respawning. I would suggest a very limited number of tanks per side; either a very low tank-reinforcement number, or no respawning of tanks at all.

64-soldier battles are simply far too small to have realistic combined-arms tactics of this scale. I would honestly rather see no tanks at all than have them the way they're implemented now.

Great point about the tank/infantry ratio.
+1 post

 

[slavek]

Should the PTRS be able to penetrate the T34 Turret frontally? Sorry I'm not a armor/tank guru but I feel its pretty irritating to play in a T34 when German AT rifles can reliably 1 shot your gunner/loader in 1 hit from the front.

 

[Mekhazzio]

Should the PTRS be able to penetrate the T34 Turret frontally?

Realistically, no, but the AT rifles in RO are intentionally cranked up, just like the grenades and artillery are intentionally cranked down, so the realistic penetration values are essentially irrelevant.

64-soldier battles are simply far too small to have realistic combined-arms tactics of this scale. I would honestly rather see no tanks at all than have them the way they're implemented now.

I agree completely. There's just no way to realistically implement tanks at the scale that RO takes place and have it come out in a playable state. Keeping with a historical ratio would have a single tank spawning once out of every 5 games, and with historical armor durability it would be the next best thing to completely invulnerable to infantry in a Stalingrad scenario. So some random person gets god mode once in a while...why bother?

Even if you're willing to accept a wildly unrealistic density of armor, you run into the utter impossibility of designing maps that play well for both troops and armor. Infantry need densely built up maps to make their ~100m engagement ranges interesting, and armor needs large maps with plenty of room to maneuver to make their ~1km engagement ranges interesting. Large AND dense, at the current FPS tech level, is not only a level designer's worst nightmare but also a sure-fire recipe for crippling game performance.

It's heresy to say it, but IMO, Tripwire would have been better off focusing purely on infantry.

 

[Mike_Nomad]

----- snip ----

It's heresy to say it, but IMO, Tripwire would have been better off focusing purely on infantry.

And Heresy it is to those of us who enjoy Armored Combat.

 

[Mekhazzio]

And Heresy it is to those of us who enjoy Armored Combat.

I spent several years playing and working on a modern tank sim. It's not about enjoying or not enjoying armored combat, it's about realizing that what passes for it in RO is just a pale shadow of what it should be, and by extension, that the combined arms simply cannot work particularly well.

 

[Mike_Nomad]

I spent several years playing and working on a modern tank sim. It's not about enjoying or not enjoying armored combat, it's about realizing that what passes for it in RO is just a pale shadow of what it should be, and by extension, that the combined arms simply cannot work particularly well.

What has all that to do with whether or not my friends and I enjoy Tanking in RO2?

Back on topic; AT rifles belong in the game just as much as the other weapons.

 

[The_Cook]

I say that tanks should just be on a separate, longer respawn timer. It's almost unproductive to play as AT or Engineer because you're stalking the same tank for three minutes, finally kill it, and within 30 seconds its back in the exact same spot. Tanks are more valuable and effective than infantry. If you lose one, you should logically have to wait longer to reenter the fight.

No need to give AT rifles any powers they didn't physically possess in life--reduce the frequency of tank spawns, increase the amount of reinforcements they cost (5-10 points imo), and increase how many points you get for killing one, and it will be far more worthwhile to crawl 50m on your belly for that perfect shot at a vulnerable angle.

Yep I like your separate respawn thingy.

 

[The_Cook]

Realistically, no, but the AT rifles in RO are intentionally cranked up, just like the grenades and artillery are intentionally cranked down, so the realistic penetration values are essentially irrelevant.
I agree completely. There's just no way to realistically implement tanks at the scale that RO takes place and have it come out in a playable state. Keeping with a historical ratio would have a single tank spawning once out of every 5 games, and with historical armor durability it would be the next best thing to completely invulnerable to infantry in a Stalingrad scenario. So some random person gets god mode once in a while...why bother?

Even if you're willing to accept a wildly unrealistic density of armor, you run into the utter impossibility of designing maps that play well for both troops and armor. Infantry need densely built up maps to make their ~100m engagement ranges interesting, and armor needs large maps with plenty of room to maneuver to make their ~1km engagement ranges interesting. Large AND dense, at the current FPS tech level, is not only a level designer's worst nightmare but also a sure-fire recipe for crippling game performance.

It's heresy to say it, but IMO, Tripwire would have been better off focusing purely on infantry.

They struck a decent balance between the two. Tank not being the primary concern of the game, they made it more than passable enough in RO1 to give us great maps and great games. I agree tanks spawn way to fast. Problem is is the player spawns in the tank. While in RO1 tanks spawned separately from the player and sometimes you did have to wait around for 5mins until someone's tank died and spawned for you. Which balanced everything out. Unlike now where it's a constant blitz with aimbot machine gunners.

 

[Mikeedude]

I was going to mention making tanks cost more in reinforcements to make them more valuable,but beaten to it.
The other option is to have a seperate tank reinforcement pool and for each tank allowed on the map have 5-10 spawns for each.

As for AT rifles I can sometmes shoot 20 rounds into a place and nothing happens, next day same place and 2 shots blows it up.
I certainly wouldn't miss them if they got rid of the at rifles and gave a mosin and an extra AT grenade...

 

[Golf33]

The other day on Red October Factory, I stuck my head around a corner and immediately took a round from the PzB deployed about three metres away. The guy behind me obviously had dismemberment turned on, because I've immediately heard "wow Golf, that was messy!" over team voice chat.

Keep them in, if only for anti-infantry duty.