The problem is that german tanks like tiger and panther can't be damage by 'merican sherman with his 75mm weak gun... In multiplayer this will be a big problem
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
By the way you guys mentioning Men of War, try check out the upcoming Gates of Hell, made on the same engine, and look at the armour penetration system that is being developed for it, it's pretty fascinating what you can do these days.
I'll suffer it though. Looking forward to playing the US and Germany equally.
US will have 76mm, which is fine. British will have Firefly which is fine. It'll be fine. No one planning to play the allies is execting to have an easy time vs. Panzer Lehr but Sherman Master Race isn't completely defenseless either.
Shermans also came with the 76mm. Or they can damage them from the flanks. Or use TD's like M18 and M36. You also have to take into account that combat ranges in Normandy were extremely short, 50% of tank-on-tank combat was within 600m, where the penetration is much higher, and the long range accuracy of German tanks isn't as much of a deal.
In the end we are talking about a tank that went into production in 42 and was designed with no combat experience, facing a tank that went into production in 43 and was designed with plenty of combat experience gained in Poland, France and USSR. And even then not every German tank was a Panther or a Tiger. Pz. IV's and StuG III's were much more common. Overall I don't expect it to be a massive issue, just as it wasn't IRL.
What I would do is simply take the rough framework of armour and AP stats from Wargame: Red Dragon and rework it a bit for Steel Division; we already know the armour and AP values for basically any unit that we will see in game, not need for Sekrit documents and worrying about different types of armour being more effective against one kind of penetrator versus another. For example, for every ten or so mm of effective armour, a unit gets 1 AV, same goes for AP and effective penetration (and tell the Wehraboos to screw off when they complain that an Easy 8 Sherman has almost the same frontal armour of a Tiger I). What might need some reworking though is the damage formula, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. One thing that would need to be discussed is steel quality; is this something that we want to simulate in game, or will it simply be too difficult to manage?
Sherman was the best tank of the war in its weight class, the problem is when people try to claim it's crap by comparing it to tanks that literally out-class it. It's like comparing a Pz IV to an IS-2, which no one does.
There's a great presentation by Nicholas Moran dispelling some of the major myths about the Sherman.
Some of you from Red Dragon might recognize him as the guy I repeatedly cited when campaigning for Chieftain buffs. Take a bit out of your day to watch this; it's very informative.
Some of you from Red Dragon might recognize him as the guy I repeatedly cited when campaigning for Chieftain buffs. Take a bit out of your day to watch this; it's very informative.
Precisely. It did somewhat suffer from being a -42 design in a -44 battlefield, but it was nowhere near being a worthless death trap as some seem to believe. It was plenty good enough against the abundant Pz. III's and IV's and StuG III's. It had plenty enough armor for a medium tank, the 75mm was an all-around good gun for both infantry support and facing enemy mediums, the mobility was OK by the standards of the time. But most importantly it was easily repairable and spare parts were abundant.
It was the right tank to deal with the problems US faced, chiefly, logistical ones, and it dealt with them admirably well.
I plan to use TDs as interceptors for enemy breakthroughs because of this video. We'll see if the real world tactic translates well into the game.
I dont think we will see that many Tiger Is and IIs in a single 1v1 fight maybe with the downvetted version and the maximum amount we will see maybe 4-6 Tiger Is and maybe 2-4 IIs. And with stuff like surrendering you wont be able to just drive your tank through the front lines. Also they will be expensive as hell and probably in Phase B if not even C
I have no problem with the wargame method of determining tank armor. All the values for every unit are actually known, so we can have a reliable system that gives us 9mm proof all the way on up to Tiger II.
Men of War's system is appropriate for Men of War, but wargame can literally be two orders of magnitude larger.
Men of War's system is appropriate for Men of War, but wargame can literally be two orders of magnitude larger.
Armor mechanics should be simplified, comparing to wargame. It was overcomplicated and not shown in tutorial or anywhere else except nerdy threads on forum. I think one should be able to get it without couple of excel tables.
People do it with lots of things to try to prove a point but it only shows they don't actually understand the subject.
An example is the tornado f3 wasn't as agile as an f16 answer its an interceptor its not meant to be.
The screenshots that we have already show 76mm Shermans and M10 Wolverines. So yeah, no turkey shoot.
There were multiple Sherman variants and they were pretty average in everything, not exactly outshining other vehicles in anything until 76mm Sherman. Even then 76mm Sherman was more or less comparable to T-34-85. Pershing was a better deal destined to replace Shermans anyway.
This and Call to Arms have done fascinating things with that game engine.
So what will the best Allied tanks in theatre be for Normandy? TD wise, was the M18 Hellcat there? I assume the M36 wasn't, and of course Perishing wasn't.
Firefly will probably be the only one to threaten a big cat at normal ranges frontally, I'd assume. Or well the 76mm could against certain areas, but Firefly more reliably.
Last edited:
Well they were medium tanks - the whole point is to be average enough to handle most problems, but cheap and simple enough to facilitate mass-production. The T-34 was nothing special either (and the early ones were actually rather abysmal), it was just good enough most of the time, and easy to produce.
Indeed. It's main competitors were the Pz IV and the T-34. The Pz IV was a fine medium tank (which held up astonishingly well for being a 1930s design, much like the Bf 109) but the Sherman's versatility and adaptability outstriped it. As for the T-34, the early ones didn't even have a commander's periscope let alone a dedicated commanders' role, resulting in very poor situational awareness, along with the ergonomics in general being terrible. The 85's closed the gap a bit. Sherman vs. these two, we're not talking M1 Abrams vs. Asad Babil differences, but it was markedly better.