errr...armor ratings of 14-16000!!!..indestructable BA-64

[Kenny Goodman]

Ugly indestructable T-43 pops over hill three hexes from an 88. 88 hits said T-43 for the familiar sounding "tink"..so this time I pay attention to my message, three more tinks with armor ratings all over 14,000. Hmmm dont care what the slope/armor/range is 42 feet of effective armor is a bit much. Also had a stationary tiger fire on a BA-64 (wheeled scout) at three hexes. First shot, penetrates, third shot ricochets!!, third shot penetrates...next turn BA-64 retreats. I tried to arty my Tiger after that. Please someone smack me upside the head and tell me its because its version 2.1 and when I update to 2.3 it wont do this???...please?...
I do like the game though.

[Paul Vebber]

THe T-43 is a matter of bad luck hitting a thick and well sloped surface at a very shallow angle so the armor thickness is effectively the length of the tank. This is usually a "ricochet" situation, but the "weird" armor vlaue is still displayed.

THe big round richocets off the dinky armor problem has been improved in version three. We extended the T/D table down further so these shots will tend to ricochet less. BUt if they penetrate, well if you are in you car and you get shot, the armor tends to just get a hole in one side and another hole on the other side...

In the damage routine there is a chance that each system gets damaged upon penetration. Thus there is a chance that nothing happens... The fortunes of war!

[Graf Speer]

Just a most brief follow-up:

Last night while playing a custom generated German 'delay' vs never ending Russian hordes . . . I noticed that while scanning the enemy units, some of the basic T-34 tanks (not T-34/85, etc.) were reading as "T-43's" . . . but when in combat, they reverted back to T-34's.

Now, I wasn't going to bring up this extemelely "low-level anomaly" as I viewed this to be, but now I see that Kenny referred to those Russian tanks as T-43's.

I am clearly exposing my novice skills here (hey, I am just a lowly architek ) as a WWII historian, but did the Russians really have T-43's or is this just what I thought it was all along: just a real low-level plot by the cunning Matrix team to get back at us with a little fun and sport of their own?

Albert


[This message has been edited by Graf Speer (edited August 02, 2000).]

[sven]

The T43 was real.... really an experimental tank. It was never fielded in extreme numbers and was seen as a dead end weapons system due to a decided lack of upgradability. Do a search for "Russian Armor" and there will be a Moscow Museum with a rather lengthy article on it.

regards,
sven

Originally posted by Graf Speer:
Just a most brief follow-up:

Last night while playing a custom generated German 'delay' vs never ending Russian hordes . . . I noticed that while scanning the enemy units, some of the basic T-34 tanks (not T-34/85, etc.) were reading as "T-43's" . . . but when in combat, they reverted back to T-34's.

Now, I wasn't going to bring up this extemelely "low-level anomaly" as I viewed this to be, but now I see that Kenny referred to those Russian tanks as T-43's.

I am clearly exposing my novice skills here (hey, I am just a lowly architek ) as a WWII historian, but did the Russians really have T-43's or is this just what I thought it was all along: just a real low-level plot by the cunning Matrix team to get back at us with a little fun and sport of their own?

Albert


[This message has been edited by Graf Speer (edited August 02, 2000).]

------------------
Give all you can all you can give....

[Drake666]

I think Pual will fix the T-43 in version 3 so that it will be more expensive and not show up much or at all in campaign games.

The T-34/85 made the T-43 out dated before it could go to production, so only a few test models ever seen action.

[Graf Speer]

Thanks, guys. The 'curious' thing seemed to me to be that these few T-43's would read as "T-34's" when in combat but when being scanned by the cursor they showed up as T-43's. Kinda odd, I thougth.

But for me, that you confirmed T-43's to be real was news to me.

And I was just about ready to say that the Fab Four Matrix team 'apparently' didn't get the T-43 into the SP "Encyclopedia" but here I just found it after trying again tonight - for the second time - stuck in way down the list near the end.

Albert

[kao16]

Originally posted by Kenny Goodman:
Ugly indestructable T-43 pops over hill three hexes from an 88. 88 hits said T-43 for the familiar sounding "tink"..so this time I pay attention to my message, three more tinks with armor ratings all over 14,000. ...

You think you've got problems.
Firing Centurion Mk3s with 20pdr at Maus one level higher at 3 hex range with little effect (armour ratings in the >10,000mm level). Mind you, an Archer (17pdr sp) firing from the same level at 16 hexes managed to knock it out (the Maus - although by then I'd lost both Centurions).

Is there something in the maths of shooting uphill that increases the apparant armour angle?

[jerrek]

i don't about the code but if i imagine that some parts would be at a smaller angle if it from down below - for instance the upper part of the hull. but the lower part of the hull would be at a worse angle and easier to penetrate (thinking of a panther here). this is similiar to the post sometime about firing down onto a tank and getting ricoshets. If you were a few meters above a tank and hit the upper deck the angle would be so acute that you would get a bouncer (like stones in water) even though the armour is thin.

[Kenny Goodman]

Thanks for the info Paul. I do really enjoy the game just a bit frustrated by the hordes of T-43 that are impossible to kill. Been playing the long campaighn and three scenarios of them is driving me nuts. You know you guys could include a limiter on armor effectivness based on the original factor. Say even with all the best angle, range etc. the thickness would never be more then double or even triple the original ammount?

[orc4hire]

That's nothing... I saw some armor ring up over 40,000 once....

Since only 2 T-43 prototypes were ever built, and I don't think either actually saw action, my solution was to increase the point cost (they're underpriced and a year early, too) and not make them available till December of '49....

[Paul Vebber]

The T-43s have gone away in the new OOBs - and the "right" T-44 is there now. THe JS-4 was added for post war - long war scenarios

On the angles - yes the angle code acounts of the angle shooting up and dowm from hills and if you are 3 hexes away or less it can be a substantial effect.

If you move then and are at least 5 degrees higher than an enemy there is a chance that your "bottom" armor can be hit.

We had a debate about leaving the "x mm pen vs yy mm armor message in - originally it was for debugging only. We thought it might confuse people to see these weird values, but we decided to leave them in and try to help educate folks in what is going on. THe model is not "high end" but better than what was there before. We have tweaked a bit in each new version and have continued to do so.

There were some cases with things like 88s vs armored cars where the T/D ratio was not taken down low enough and ricochets were too common - but that has been correctedin version 3.

You will still occasionally see "weird" results, but those are cases where teh round is impacting near parallel to the armor so the "length of the tank" becomes the "armor thickness". These "flesh wounds" may actually "penetrate" and cause a gash in the armor, but are unlikely to cause any more damage than an otherwise "non-penetrating" hit can cause.

[Nikademus]

Paul;

any chance of getting in that seperate delay length setting for the AFV hits? I'm still having a heck of a time trying to read all of the hit info before it goes away.

Inreasing the overall msg delay makes the game turns drag out too long (especially for infantry heavy battles)

also, will the 'floating msg' feature ever be fixed? that too might help in reading the msgs better

[Paul Vebber]

We are working on some improvements in that area...We'll see!

[U235]

"Last night while playing a custom generated German 'delay' vs never ending Russian hordes . . . I noticed that while scanning the enemy units, some of the basic T-34 tanks (not T-34/85, etc.) were reading as "T-43's" . . . but when in combat, they reverted back to T-34's."

Graf,

Sometimes when multiple units are stacked in the same hex, it can be hard to get the cursor on the proper vehicle. Maybe this is what happened.

[jsaurman]

Originally posted by Nikademus:
Paul;

any chance of getting in that seperate delay length setting for the AFV hits? I'm still having a heck of a time trying to read all of the hit info before it goes away.

Inreasing the overall msg delay makes the game turns drag out too long (especially for infantry heavy battles)

also, will the 'floating msg' feature ever be fixed? that too might help in reading the msgs better

I agree with Nick, we need variable message delays for different types of messages, or at least the ability to not have certain messages displayed. For instance, I really DO want to see armor hits, but I don't care anything about auto-rally messages telling me who's suppression was reduced. In a perfect world (maybe version 9.0?) we would have check boxes in the preferences to indicate what type of messages we would like to see, and we could check on or off combat, or rally or retreating messages, and we also would have a time box for each type so we could set how long that type of message would be displayed once it is "turned on".

I also dislike the popup box that is displaying the info. It would be better if it was displayed in a thin window, only one line high, placed against the upper edge of the screen, like a very thin chat window. That way the messages would appear and then scroll off the top of the window, and if you needed to, you could scroll back to get something you missed, like which of the enemy tanks had it's main gun destroyed or which are immobilized.

I am very happy with the progress has been made so far, and hope you will take these suggestions into account when working on ver. 3.1 or 3.2, ok?

JIM