where the gameplay of FH2.45, although more fun
Tanks performing nothing like you expect them to is fun? Landing a perfect ambush shot on a Sherman from a Marder or on a Panther's sides from an M10 at range and getting killed as reward is fun?
Tank guns have become so unreliable in 2.45 that you can't trust any tank to fulfill its role correctly.
Light armoured TDs are doomed, and tanks that rely on long range shooting suffered greatly.
Why would range even affect shell damage after penetration is beyond me. If it penetrates, it penetrates, and that's all that should count. Now larger tanks with better crew protection (Churchill or Tiger for example) should have a chance at surviving a penetrating shot, and low caliber guns should maybe not always 1s1k the average tank (a PzIII surviving a single 37mm shot to the side seems fine).
But a PzIV surviving a penetrating shot from a 75mm M3 gun or a Sherman surviving a penetrating shot from a 75/L48 is insane.
Again, your opinion is purely derived from your experience in playing FH2's Western European maps.
I asked this again: are you into helping or just trying to hog popularity by keep preaching about tired late-war tanks? Try North Africa sometimes! I think somehow everybody keeps their German bias to their own, but some guys just don't. They love the late war tank wars, because they feel great for taking the in-game Panther and Tiger tanks, also the Jagdpanzers and dress like Wittman or Carius.
Help to fix the fucking problem by talking about the subject: what cause the seemingly random penetration problems? How it happens (see the gameplay videos)? Etc.
It is clear from the beginning that the devs really know what cannons punch through which armour. And Shitmaker has been helping by doing real stuff instead of posting the obvious penetration tables. And I think Butcher has a good opinion here:
Which despite the slope should still be an easy one-shot-kill by any gun of the time...
A penetration should be portryed as kill ingame. Wet storage etc. might help some crew members to get out of the vehicle, but you aren´t seriously telling me that Sherman crews continued fighting when being hit by a high calibre gun with 75mm diameter. The Sherman is very likely to be waste and you can be rather sure that the crew is unable to operate the tank, because some are dead, or badly injured, not to mention confusion, concussion, disorientation and panic and fire (even with the wet storage). The tank can´t be used at that point - maybe it can be recovered later, but a Sherman when being hit wasn´t the resistant super tank it´s in 2.45. And all hits on 500 metres were penetrations on Shermans. Crew survivability has nothing to do with the tank being knocked out and Shermans were easy to knock out, unlike ingame.
Well, but then to "kill" a tank, you have to kill the crew in-game despite their survivability chance in the real situation. So to be fair, we have to agree with Mudra once more: Since BF2 is such a limited game engine when it comes to simulating realistic tank warfare, then we have to resort to the simplest system: penetration = kill, forgetting the tank interior layout design. If you want to play real WW2 tank simulator, you certainly can't do that in BF2.