Inefficiency of the 75mm/L48

[Butcher]

This seems to apply to ALL Shermans. I was driving around on Vossenack yesterday to test it out. Someone hit my M4A1 frotnally with a Pak, about 100 metres and i took 60% damage. I then pumped a HE shot into the poor player who had layed a perfect ambush and could basically count on killling me. Something has to be changed. This is really annoying.

If we go with the penetration of 500 metres the 75/L48 could even penetrate the Shermans turret ring, yet it doesn´t even do that.

[DLFReporter]

nagnagnag....

[Strat_84]

When I read all this I'm suddenly eager that we have some France 1940 maps.

You're bitching about German guns not being effective enough on the round parts of Shermans ? You've seen nothing.
Wait to face a R35 or a S35 with guns that can barely penetrate their armor thickness + all the cast round parts, you'll just whine to death. 

[Butcher]

Read the comments ... I´m not the only one who noticed this. And if constructive critic is considered nagging, I don´t know why the hell there is a General Discussion section on this forum.

Tank combat has - in my opinion - suffered from the patch. Roles have skipped, and dedicated anti infantry tanks beat tanks that mount a gun that could effectively counter them. This is not a small issue, but gamebreaking - we are talking about the standart tanks/guns that are on every 44/45 map that involves tanks.

[sn00x]

whatever makes tanking last longer, and give you that feeling that your round didnt go through and are now scared of getting a penetrating shell back, is a Good change.

[LuckyOne]

A shot to the track doesn't disable a tank in this game, which is clearly more unrealistic IMO than a Panther surviving a hit to the side from 6 pdr APCBC round (are you sure? It took me one hit to light up the engine compartment).

You're right, let's bring back mobility kill! (No matter how buggy it is... )

[Oberst]

I have seen a lot of people complaining about this issue. But yet there is no reliable data and statistics about this available and might never will be. The only references people can give, are their personal experiences. And these experiences contain mostly situations, in which they felt, that the armor combat system didnt work right. While situations, where everything went as expected, are mostly forgotten and do not contribute to the mentioned "negative" experiences.

So it might be, that such strange situations only happen in 1 of 5 shots or something, which isnt to much, but might appear to high. I dont think the biggest problem is the tanks, but might be feedback. Thats the main problem.

I am sure some of the mentioned situations can be explained by damages caused by the angle mod. The angle mod leads to more random outcome of tank combat. There is always the possibility, that you can hit an angled part of your target causing only minor damage, while your enemy get lucky and kills you in one shot. Ofcourse the tank models need to be cleaned of to any angled parts, which cause to strange damages.

This adds a kind of "randomness" to tank combat (not exactly randomness, but I dont have a better word for it), which may even grow and range, as aiming only a half pixel to the left or right, might not cause any or even more sufficient damage on target.

I like this system, as now a tank battle can still be over in one shot, or can last for several minutes. Even flanking gets more and more valueable. The systems still needs some more tweaking and adjusting on damage.
 But I need more playtime with this patch, to get a more detailed view on it. But time is, what I dont have to much, so people with more playtime should talk about this.

Just my two Pfennig.

[LuckyOne]

^ Yes, you're right this might be caused by the angle mod... But still it happens just too often...

Example... Took 3 enemy shots to kill my Crusader Mk III from Marder... Isn't that a bit strange, I mean Crusader wasn't exactly famous for its thick impenetrable armor?

[Strat_84]

Yes, but the Crusader's armor is slopped almost everywhere. If you don't aim carefully the shell comes with a bad angle.
And this is supposed to happen IRL as well. Imagine that a shell lands somewhat on its "flat" part instead of just on the sharp end, it will just be deflected without damage (unless of course it's a high caliber shell and a thin armor).

[VonMudra]

When I read all this I'm suddenly eager that we have some France 1940 maps.

You're bitching about German guns not being effective enough on the round parts of Shermans ? You've seen nothing.
Wait to face a R35 or a S35 with guns that can barely penetrate their armor thickness + all the cast round parts, you'll just whine to death. 

Yes, but then the German tank guns are 2 MG13s, a 20mm, a 37mm, and an extremely low velocity 75mm.  None are famous for killing tanks, and we all know that they didn't penetrate the French tanks easily, and not to the front.

However here, we have German tanks with tank killing cannon being unable to knock out tanks they historically knocked out.  Also, @theta, the combat distance for FH2, as you WELL know, is about 200-400m.  The distance for tank penetration calculation is 500m.  At 500m, a Panzer IV's gun has NO problem penetrating the front:



This shows penetration at over 500m.  Turret is even more deadly, with penetration at over 1000m:



Pak40 is much superior too, penetrating hull at over 1000m:



And turret is even more so:

[Strat_84]

Yes, but then the German tank guns are 2 MG13s, a 20mm, a 37mm, and an extremely low velocity 75mm.  None are famous for killing tanks, and we all know that they didn't penetrate the French tanks easily, and not to the front

That's why I talked about R35s and S35s, and not about R40s and B1s. 

About your graphs, they are nice but they are only theorical calculations based on some hypothesis. With a very important one: it doesn't take round parts into account.
And read carefully the chart, it says "penetration likely", not penetration certain. It's a best case scenario, but it depends on the aiming as well.

[VonMudra]

Actually, it is taking rounding and angles into account.  Also, they are using the actual penetrations against armour.  Also, "penetration likely" means yes, it will, and if it doesn't, it's going to go so far in that it will spall the armour and kill the crew anyways.

Point is, it is IDIOTIC to have a Panzer IV or a Pak40 that can't kill a fucking Sherman.

[THeTA0123]

But Mudra, as Kev said, it is a "just just" situation and therefor a sherman M4A3 should be able to survive the shot, just like german tanks do aswel. I gave some examples already

[Strat_84]

Actually, it is taking rounding and angles into account.

It is supposed to take angles into account when the trajectory crosses the center of the chart (i.e. perfect aiming case). If the trajectory is offset, the resulting worse angles just do not exist with that simulation.

Also about round parts, nothing is taken into account:

A note on accuracy and interpretation:

The subject of projectiles verses tank armour is extremely complex and it would be impossible to simulate every variable with 100% degree of accuracy. While attempts have been made to make the charts as realistic as possible there are many variables which are not included, for example quality issues - every projectile and piece of armour will behave differently and in some instances where armour or projectile quality is extremely poor the effects can be significiant - for example a flawed plate on a Tiger tank captured in North Africa resisted like 64mm of armour instead of the 80mm expected.

Another important area that has not been included is edge effects, a projectile striking an armour plate close to edges or holes in the armour has a higher probability of penetrating. A good example of this is the glacis on some Shermans , a 51mm plate sloped at 55 degrees should in theory resist German 75mm projectiles at most ranges. However in early Shermans the glacis considered of several different plates so any hits near the edges of these plates would have a greater probability of penetrating thus the plate could be defeated at greater ranges. Areas around vision blocks, holes for optics and machine guns would be more easily defeated.

Rounded mantlets - Currently the calculator does not take the effect of a rounded manlet into consideration as hits may occur at very favorable angles (0) or very unfavourable angles (60+), it is planned to allow users to input a favorable or unfavourable hits at some point.

And all this is derailing actually. The 75mm L48 does penetrate ingame, the initial complain is about the need of more than one shot to kill the target. 

[AdamPA1006]

I agree with this thread, tank combat as a whole got way worse. It was more tactical before with more 1hit kills and slower reload time. German 75mm gun is shit now. On Mareth I hit a sherman THREE times with a marder (got 3 red hit notifications), and it took until the 4th shot to kill it. Come on now.