Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: cameron88

Panther:
120mm Front Turret armor
80mm Front Hull armor (55°) **More angling then the T-34**

Ingame armor: 122mm

T-34:
45 to 53mm Front Turret armor.
45mm Front Hull Armor (61°) **Less angling then the Panther** and significantly less quality metal aswell since you brought that up.

Ingame armor: 89mm

I'm pretty sure you have the relative slopes backwards-- based on the diagrams I've seen, those angles are from the vertical, so the T34 is actually more sloped than the Panther.

I look at playability of the game.
To me historical realism has little relevance if then other 'historical realism' detail come short or less.

The angling of armour is 'micro' detail - and presently the game has 'macro' problems.

Gibson up there has my same experience - a Panzer Division loses 0-5 panzers against a Fortified Zone even! I've lost even 20-30 attacking a Soviet Infantry Division in clear (With level 1 or 2 fort, that I do not remember). - That is 10-20% of the initial allocation of your average Panzer Division!
The game screams 'Your Panzer sucks so you may as well not use them'.

And then yes, they 'close pockets'. They are out of air umbrella, and the ever dominant VVS bombs them.

Now how much to alter the 'armour protection levels' will alter 'how many Panzers will get obliterated per fight' - that is another tale.

In my current game against the AI playing Germany, the date is Jan 44. I have a mix of tanks in Panzer Divisions, everything from 72 PzIII Ls left in 2nd Pz Div, to Panther As, and everything in-between. The most common tanks are the Pz IVH, then the Panther A, then the D. I have noticed my Armor "seems" to be taking less loses in combat than they did earlier in the war....it seems that way. It also seems I am killing more Russian tanks in combat. BUT, I have also learned to not use these Mechanized Units hardly at all, as they are glass hammers. Most sit on depots in the rear on forever refit. (I say forever refit as they don't seem to get many replacement tanks each turn, if any.

I have also been watching loses by the latest tanks, Tiger I and Panther and it seems most have been "operational" loses not combat loses, which is historical.

Not sure if this helps or hurts the above discussion. Just throwing out my own observations.

I do think fatigue build up is a little too high in the game at large. Particularly as it seems to also be a reflection to a degree of unit moral in the military sense, not game National Moral sense.

ORIGINAL: GibsonPete

I was a grunt not a tanker. I do agree the Panzer divisions are a glass hammer. Why? I do not know. Am I using them wrong? I have resorted to using their MP's to secure deep positions and prey the Soviets do not focus air or ground attacks on them. ...

there was a patch to #1 that embedded the idea of the invincible panzer, rout them - no losses, retreat via zoc - no losses.

Now this protection fortunately was after the code split so its not in WiTE2. Equally WiTE2 has the basic WiTW rules for movement attrition.

In effect the game is probably designed to produce the late 41 situation of, as AlbertN says, a motorised division with a few tanks attached.

I don't want to set off another game balance thread, not least as I think we all acknowledge there is something wrong. The issue, to me, is not that the Pzr divisions degrade over 1941, its that the Soviets can deliver structured attacks, wreck them and retreat away. So I'm pretty much hiding my Pzrs behind the infantry.

I'm prepared to be convinced there are various reasons but I think Soviet assault fronts in 1941 sits at the heart of the problem. As I've mentioned, it wasn't until late testing that some Soviet players started to use them early and up that stage the games were mostly working out more or less fine.

That simply gives the Soviets too much, ability to regenerate, to concentrate command, to avoid command penalties, better cv and MP

I agree with loki100. There are some issues and given time solutions will be found and implemented. Hiding panzers is not a long term solution. Allowing the Soviet palyer capabilities they perhaps should not have needs to be examined.

I also agree 100% with loki. The soviet mech corps were a failure in summer'41, but the assault rules enable whole tank armies to be formed from what should be disorganized fronts. Those two or three tank armies with assault status are wrecking balls as early as mid july.

ORIGINAL: AlbertN

I look at playability of the game.
To me historical realism has little relevance if then other 'historical realism' detail come short or less.

The angling of armour is 'micro' detail - and presently the game has 'macro' problems.

Gibson up there has my same experience - a Panzer Division loses 0-5 panzers against a Fortified Zone even! I've lost even 20-30 attacking a Soviet Infantry Division in clear (With level 1 or 2 fort, that I do not remember). - That is 10-20% of the initial allocation of your average Panzer Division!
The game screams 'Your Panzer sucks so you may as well not use them'.

And then yes, they 'close pockets'. They are out of air umbrella, and the ever dominant VVS bombs them.

Now how much to alter the 'armour protection levels' will alter 'how many Panzers will get obliterated per fight' - that is another tale.

Oh, I completely agree that the fragility of panzers is a much broader topic than just armor values. I haven't really played the germans much yet, so I can't really comment on the topic as a whole. I just wanted to correct an inaccuracy with cameron88's argument.

On that note, for the T34, 45mms at 60 degrees from vertical gives a horizontal thickness of 90, if I've got my trig right. Given that other parts of the front are less well protected, an 'averaged' value of 80 feels about right.

There is no inaccuracy with what i said, it should not be 89mm of front armor, because the tank is not just the hull, as this game does not have seperate values, and adds both the hull and the turret together. Because of this, the T-34 should be like every other German tank and add the turret armor into the final front armor value, which the T-34 in reality had an effective thickness of 45-50mm of armor in the turret, so this is why i said 60-65mm of front armor value would be much better then what they have currently in the game.

ORIGINAL: cameron88

There is no inaccuracy with what i said, it should not be 89mm of front armor, because the tank is not just the hull, as this game does not have seperate values, and adds both the hull and the turret together. Because of this, the T-34 should be like every other German tank and add the turret armor into the final front armor value, which the T-34 in reality had an effective thickness of 45-50mm of armor in the turret, so this is why i said 60-65mm of front armor value would be much better then what they have currently in the game.

89mm is the value for the 1943 model-- I can't find armor specs for that specifically (please share if you have year-specific data on them). the 1940 and 41 models (I'm working from a model 1940 diagram) have an in-game value of 80.
as i already noted, the upper hull has a horizontal thickness of 90. the lower hull, 45mm at 53 degrees, gives a horizontal value of 75. the turret has varying thicknesses of 40-45mm but the turret itself is rounded giving a boost, though i have no idea how to calculate a specific value for that.

A simple average of these three values (75, 90, 40) gives a value of 68mm. Given that I didn't account for relative surface area, nor the angle(s) of the turret, this is a massive underestimation of a cumulative front armor value, and yet it is already higher than the value you propose. Presumably, the later models saw progressive armor improvements, given the moderate increase between models.

for another example, I looked at the M4A2 Sherman. I calculated a value of 94mm for the upper and lower hull, 88mm for the turret, and it has a rounded mantlet 76mm thick. In game, it has a value of 86. I don't see how this could turned into a value less than 70, as you suggested.

ORIGINAL: cameron88

There is no inaccuracy with what i said, it should not be 89mm of front armor, because the tank is not just the hull, as this game does not have seperate values, and adds both the hull and the turret together. Because of this, the T-34 should be like every other German tank and add the turret armor into the final front armor value, which the T-34 in reality had an effective thickness of 45-50mm of armor in the turret, so this is why i said 60-65mm of front armor value would be much better then what they have currently in the game.

there is a sub-section of the tech support area that is set up for suggestions about the game database. I suggest put this sort of stuff there where people like Trey are more likely to see it - and you might get an informed response as to why some design decisions were made.

as far as I know, a lot of the detail stuff came from Steel Panzers and the early work on Steel Tigers.

How the armor values are calculated in War in the East 2:

Depending on the particular vehicle, the armor ratings are calculated by first determining the slope adjusted thickness of the particular armor facing (upper front hull for example) and averaging that adjusted value with other aspects of that particular area (lower front hull for example) to arrive at at the slope adjusted value for that area. Continuing our example, the same procedure is applied to the front turret armor. Then these hull and turret values are averaged together. For turreted or open-top AFVs, the adjusted hull armor is doubled weighted. For non-turreted, closed-top AFVs, the hull and "turret" (superstructure) values are simply averaged together. The difference in treatment is to reflect that fact that the aiming point of an attacking unit is generally the upper hull/superstructure and not the turret.

The same procedure is applied to side armor for the same reason, it's the bigger target area.

I've been working on the issue of how best to represent the armor strength of an AFV since War in the East 1 and the above method seems to give the best overall approximation.

As for the actual armor thicknesses. these values come from many sources and are unfortunately often contradictory. If someone finds a particular vehicle egregiously in error, please point it out to me and cite your source for disagreeing. I am always open to incorporating better data into the game.

Jim Wirth
Research & Development

Thank you for that.