Anyone using Medium and Heavy Tanks?

[boomboomf22]

I am always willing to go as far into the weeds as I can, as I have demonstrated earlier in the thread. However I think the basic point several of us are making (and yes this has gone way off topic of the original thread) is that the disadvantage of HV guns seems too severe in comparisons to the advantages of howitzers (which imho don't seem to have that bad of an hard attack). Please people speak up if I am just projecting my opinion onto others.

As for the original topic of this thread let me say that I find myself using Light tanks for most work, and heavies for smashing armored formations, but haven't seen much use for the other types of tank (Md, TD, Ass) and have yet to have a game reach the point I can make monitor tanks. That said I have used GR Cataphracts (Monitors) to huge effect. Had a game where 2 units of them + militia systematically smashed the forces of a Major power, and only had to stop because the ran into a 6 hex wide mountain range.

[gmsitton]

Suspending disbelief, since it's just a sci-fi game, I interpret howitzer to mean infantry support/close support, and HV to mean anti-tank, as a rule-of-thumb.

[lloydster4]

Cmon guys, this is like watching two drunk history majors arm-wrestle over the last slice of pizza.

Here's what we've established so far:

-AI doesn't field enough Hard Targets
-There is interest in an "all-purpose tank"
-Light Tanks are still the king

Point #2 seems to have the most enthusiasm, so let's think about it:

If you change Tanks to be effective against all targets, then how do you balance them?

Edit: If anyone mentions ww2 they get half-rations for a week.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: lloydster4

Cmon guys, this is like watching two drunk history majors arm-wrestle over the last slice of pizza.

...

Edit: If anyone mentions ww2 they get half-rations for a week.

[:D]

ORIGINAL: lloydster4

Here's what we've established so far:

-AI doesn't field enough Hard Targets
-There is interest in an "all-purpose tank"
-Light Tanks are still the king

Point #2 seems to have the most enthusiasm, so let's think about it:

If you change Tanks to be effective against all targets, then how do you balance them?

You balance them with the weapons and armor--the access and use of different weapons and armor.

The idea of light, medium, and heavy tanks is a useless level of complexity. It causes all kinds of issues--a combinatorial explosion. See also the curse of dimensionality.

This curse impacts OOBs, UI report filtering, AI model selection and use, etc.

It's a pox.

My recommendation is that the model discovery is Tank. Period.

Military research (and applied engineering) opens new weapons and armor.

After discovery and research, you build a new tank model using better subsystems. Rinse and repeat.

That said, the developer may not want to do that for other reasons. Chiefly among those reasons is that the model tree is weak. In other words, not much effort has been done to include futuristic models. That will likely change when/if air/sea is added--if those don't become separate trees. [;)]

A caveat to "my way" of thinking. I don't think showing the player full research and technology tress is a good design decision. I know players like it. They want to follow a path that makes the game easier. I think it defeats the purpose of discovery. IMO, it is better to only show the next possible nodes in the tree as ideas--including some that don't work at all--false paths and dead ends. Like logistics, however, many players chafe when confronted with serious multi-domain decision making systems (full mini-games). Many want to push counters with some nice easy facades bolted on for setting.

[Saros]

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

The PK III is ok I guess. [X(] [:D]

As I said, I tend to look at how well the weapon reached a state of self-actualization, regardless of overall raw firepower, etc.

I'm sure the Killer works very well too.

Thanks for sharing.

Turtle is underselling the real winner in his lineup, the absurdly tough APC.



Of course they are going up against some nifty units of mine.


Tank murderer.


Cheap & cheerful APC popper.

It's a savage war this one, I think the most brutal i've ever been involved in. My problem is Turtle has more pop, two other major/player capitals and a 3-4x bigger army.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Saros

...snip...

It's a savage war this one, I think the most brutal i've ever been involved in. My problem is Turtle has more pop, two other major/player capitals and a 3-4x bigger army.

All I can think looking at those death machines is, "crash research liquid armor".

[DTurtle]

ORIGINAL: Saros

It's a savage war this one, I think the most brutal i've ever been involved in. My problem is Turtle has more pop, two other major/player capitals and a 3-4x bigger army.

Well, you've done a stupendously good job of messing with my logistics, so I only had one real turn with close to full fuel and ammo/energy to attack with.

Of course, in that turn I did kill 700 tanks and 100 walkers.

It is really, really nice to see how important the logistics are in this game. You only notice it against a human player willing to take advantage of that.

[demiare]

ORIGINAL: lloydster4

If you change Tanks to be effective against all targets, then how do you balance them?

RPG in masses like happened in reality (+ aircraft, but it was temporary solution IRL and in SE we don't have aircraft yet).

Currently RPG in SE are very very under-performing + we don't have them in most of formation. Same happened in *CENSORED* age [:D] and tanks are really shine then.

[boomboomf22]

Plus maybe make At guns more practical to use. So like intigrate them into some formations, and give us the ability to make independent motorized AT formations as a cheaper squishier alternative to TDs

[soldat411]

Probably because I have been playing against normal ai, I have been building heavy tanks, and some assault guns. I have one medium tank corps as well.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

A gun can be designed as AT gun, and still fire a lot of HE shells. It is not like putting explosives into a shell is a special secret.
The 88 was designed as a Anti-Air gun and still fired a lot of AT shells. And HE shells.

I'll just add, it's not just bore, there are many other forces and factors at work too. As a simplification, you are correct, but you know we can't just put any like-sized caliber round into just any same bored weapon. Putting explosives into a shell is no secret, but putting the correct amount of propellant, explosives, etc. inside for the weapon and mission is important.

My point was that something can be designed as a AT gun, but still have explosive shells. And even fire mostly explosive shells in practical use.
The existence of HE shells does not mean weapons are "Universal" today, anymore then they were the last milennium.
HE shells are simply the reason designated AT guns have any damage vs soft targets.

To answer the Tread Topic Question (I think I forgot that):
- I use light tanks to carry howitzers. It does not take a lot of armor or a lot of a callibre to win the Callibre Calculation against Infantry
- I use heavy tanks - in a pinch medium ones - to carry my AT guns. With those Callibre does mater. Quite a lot even. At 180mm Gun, 200mm Armor a heavy can easily match the highest callibre guns with it's armor.
But then I hardly met any Hard Targets from the AI so far. I heard it used to be very differently.

[DeltaV112]

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

A gun can be designed as AT gun, and still fire a lot of HE shells. It is not like putting explosives into a shell is a special secret.
The 88 was designed as a Anti-Air gun and still fired a lot of AT shells. And HE shells.

I'll just add, it's not just bore, there are many other forces and factors at work too. As a simplification, you are correct, but you know we can't just put any like-sized caliber round into just any same bored weapon. Putting explosives into a shell is no secret, but putting the correct amount of propellant, explosives, etc. inside for the weapon and mission is important.

Like my above comments about machine guns, I could have written two more paragraphs about range to target as an evaluation criteria for making MG selection decisions. It's just too damn boring for games unless you want a simulator--which I don't. There are too many factors involved. It makes discussing engineering details really just pointless fun.

Crews don't care about the history of the stug-iii. Fighting the vehicle is muscle memory. Your brain is working on all the important things instead.

That all said, I have no knowledge of how any WW2 powers standardized their rounds or if cannons were designed for standardized rounds. I have no interest in the history of tools and equipment (military or otherwise) as a personal hobby.




How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

Honestly this whole thread really is just demonstrating how much meaningless waffle you can generate to obscure a real issue. That a HV gun ingame comes with 75% attack reduction versus "soft" targets is extremely weird and results in a choice between infantry support and better anti-armor capability that has no real-life basis. Howitzer-armed tanks existed in a limited fashion during WW2 and the interwar period, but only as a limited component of tank armament. Once you had tanks capable of mounting 3"/75mm high velocity guns, these simply replaced the 3" howitzer and the AT-focused vehicles. Larger howitzers like the 105mm/122mm/152mm held on for a little longer but were similarly replaced as the larger 90mm and eventually 100mm/105mm guns became common. Even during WWII the 122mm howitzer on Soviet assault guns was replaced with a high-velocity 122mm gun.

Postwar the howitzer basically dissapears as a tank armament. There's no need for a bigger HE shell than can be carried by a tank for direct-fire purposes, existing tank guns can defeat any practical battlefield fortification. The 152mm gun-launcher was high caliber primarily for the ATGM, the USA never seriously contemplated a pure 152mm gun for its HE-throwing potential(consider the M8 as a successor light tank to the M551 which was designed for the 105mm gun). One important point that you're missing in all this talk about guns lacking good HE ammo is that this was much more an issue with NATO tanks. Soviet tanks were issued large amounts of dedicated HE-frag rounds and this made up the majority of their ammunition load. They also got advances in shell fusing much more than NATO did, with fusing designed for partial barrier penetration, fusing off of extremely light obstacles, and even laser rangefinding combined with programmable time fusing at the end of the Cold War.

Talk about how the main gun wouldn't be used against individual infantry in the open is misunderstanding the abstractions at play. The categories of "soft" and "hard" are extremely broad, infantry is always "soft" even when it's highly fortified, towed guns are "soft", neither of these things would be engaged purely with the MG yet they are soft ingame. If we consider a "105mm Howitzer" ingame to represent more like a 152mm gun that has a similar mounting weight to a 105mm HV gun, I think that a 50-75% soft attack value compared to the howitzer makes sense but the 25% value we have ingame is way too low. The way attack calculations work does result in diminishing returns but I think that tank anti-soft values should likely be higher in general to make them kick in sooner.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: DeltaV112

ORIGINAL: Malevolence

ORIGINAL: zgrssd

A gun can be designed as AT gun, and still fire a lot of HE shells. It is not like putting explosives into a shell is a special secret.
The 88 was designed as a Anti-Air gun and still fired a lot of AT shells. And HE shells.

I'll just add, it's not just bore, there are many other forces and factors at work too. As a simplification, you are correct, but you know we can't just put any like-sized caliber round into just any same bored weapon. Putting explosives into a shell is no secret, but putting the correct amount of propellant, explosives, etc. inside for the weapon and mission is important.

Like my above comments about machine guns, I could have written two more paragraphs about range to target as an evaluation criteria for making MG selection decisions. It's just too damn boring for games unless you want a simulator--which I don't. There are too many factors involved. It makes discussing engineering details really just pointless fun.

Crews don't care about the history of the stug-iii. Fighting the vehicle is muscle memory. Your brain is working on all the important things instead.

That all said, I have no knowledge of how any WW2 powers standardized their rounds or if cannons were designed for standardized rounds. I have no interest in the history of tools and equipment (military or otherwise) as a personal hobby.




How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

Honestly this whole thread really is just demonstrating how much meaningless waffle you can generate to obscure a real issue. That a HV gun ingame comes with 75% attack reduction versus "soft" targets is extremely weird and results in a choice between infantry support and better anti-armor capability that has no real-life basis.

So you are telling me that the guns of IFV's perform as well vs Vehicles as a Main Battle Tanks main gun?
That we could not make a gun better at killing infantry, if we could get rid of the AT needs for a gun?
Because that would be utter nonsense!

[demiare]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
So you are telling me that the guns of IFV's perform as well vs Vehicles as a Main Battle Tanks main gun?
That we could not make a gun better at killing infantry, if we could get rid of the AT needs for a gun?
Because that would be utter nonsense!

What guns on IFV?
30-57mm is capable to deal with tanks only attacking them in flanks (and usually NATO only as they're have huge problems both with quantity and quality of armor) but fully capable to deal with equal IFV.
100mm guns on existing IFV are have poor ballistic (they're more like mortar then cannon) and unable to use APDS ammunition so it's simply unsuited to deal with hard targets at all - they will not perform better then 45-57mm. But they're obsolete and new designs of IFV are no longer using them.

He's trying to say that we can't create a 122-125mm gun that will be notably better against infantry then existing tank guns. Tank guns are close to perfection, they have only two major flaws: very difficult to manufacture (so expensive) and unsuited for long-ranged precise indirect fire.

[DeltaV112]

ORIGINAL: zgrssd
So you are telling me that the guns of IFV's perform as well vs Vehicles as a Main Battle Tanks main gun?
That we could not make a gun better at killing infantry, if we could get rid of the AT needs for a gun?
Because that would be utter nonsense!

You could probably shed some weight if you abandoned the anti-vehicle role but I would actually say that you can't really do that much better than a 100-125mm shell in the direct-fire gun role. You'll note that absolutely nobody is going around building 152mm gunned vehicles for the direct-fire role. There are some vehicles using low velocity guns in this range, the Soviet BMP-3 and Nona SPG come to mind, but the gains versus a medium to high velocity gun are fairly minimal- compare something like the AMX-10RCR which uses a 105mm that can handle most non-MBT vehicles.

The comparison against an IFV's autocannon is completely specious because the IFV faces serious internal space and weight considerations around the requirement for dismounts and transportability/river fording that make a large gun of any sort impossible.

[demiare]

ORIGINAL: DeltaV112
You'll note that absolutely nobody is going around building 152mm gunned vehicles for the direct-fire role.

You're partially wrong here Several models of experimental tanks were build and tested (for example Rheinmetal is trying to design 130mm nowadays) - with a result that currently 152mm is a huge overkill, enemy tanks are not armored enough to make it viable and reduced amount of ammo will hurt overall performance. Still next generation of russian tanks (T-14) is already designed with an option to upgrade main gun up to ~150mm.

[DeltaV112]

ORIGINAL: demiare
You're partially wrong here Several models of experimental tanks were build and tested (for example Rheinmetal is trying to design 130mm nowadays) - with a result that currently 152mm is a huge overkill, enemy tanks are not armored enough to make it viable and reduced amount of ammo will hurt overall performance. Still next generation of russian tanks (T-14) is already designed with an option to upgrade main gun up to ~150mm.

In the context of anti-tank yes there have been studies of bigger guns to improve performance. Nobody has as of yet actually built production vehicles that carry bigger guns, I doubt 152mm Armata actually exists off of a drawing board or that it is a simple modification. There's certainly no drive for a bigger gun out of a desire for a bigger HE round.

[demiare]

ORIGINAL: DeltaV112
Nobody has as of yet actually built production vehicles that carry bigger guns, I doubt 152mm Armata actually exists off of a drawing board or that it is a simple modification. There's certainly no drive for a bigger gun out of a desire for a bigger HE round.

Yes, nothing in mass-production currently. No it not a simple modification of course, but it's already planned one. There is no info on which stage of development they're currently but there is no surprise here as secrecy in last decade is overwhelming. Most of "leaks" are semi-official, lol.

No, you're wrong here, bigger tank gun = longer shells = longer kinetic penetrator = better armor penetration. Bigger HE is much less important instead as 122-125mm (direct fire!) already more then enough for any "soft" target on modern battlefield, howitzers are using large calibers mostly because of indirect fire mode - they need to penetrate roofs to maximize damage to buildings (well, in case of Soviet/Russian army also for tactical nuke shells that planned to be use in mass). Monsters like 200-300 mortars are especially good for that, being capable to obliterate whole building (or large section of it in case of huge apartment building) with a single guided hit.
It's surprising for civilians but bigger caliber of HE shells =//= better efficiency and larger area of effect, especially if we're speaking about whole unit firing and not a single gun in virtual reality. We need to keep amount of fragments low but in same time keeping their size&weight values in a specific area so they will have high piercing power and it's not a simple task in case of huge shells. And slow RoF is death sentence on modern battlefield.

[DeltaV112]

ORIGINAL: demiare
No, you're wrong here, bigger tank gun = longer shells = longer kinetic penetrator = better armor penetration. Bigger HE is much less important instead as 122-125mm (direct fire!) already more then enough for any "soft" target on modern battlefield, howitzers are using large calibers mostly because of indirect fire mode - they need to penetrate roofs to maximize damage to buildings (well, in case of Soviet/Russian army also for tactical nuke shells that planned to be use in mass). Monsters like 200-300 mortars are especially good for that, being capable to obliterate whole building (or large section of it in case of huge apartment building) with a single guided hit.
It's surprising for civilians but bigger caliber of HE shells =//= better efficiency and larger area of effect, especially if we're speaking about whole unit firing and not a single gun in virtual reality. We need to keep amount of fragments low but in same time keeping their size&weight values in a specific area so they will have high piercing power and it's not a simple task in case of huge shells. And slow RoF is death sentence on modern battlefield.

Not sure what you're getting at here, I'm well aware of how armor penetration and gun performance works in terms of reasons for bigger gun against armor, and I pretty much agree with you on bigger direct fire gun not being necessary against soft targets. Indirect fire is outside the scope of this discussion, tanks are AFAIK always presumed to use direct fire ingame.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: DeltaV112

Honestly this whole thread really is just demonstrating how much meaningless waffle you can generate to obscure a real issue.

Are you addressing me directly with this first sentence?