Health Bars are not very realistic.
People are complaining about bridge building being too abstract while this sort of silliness exists.
People are complaining about bridge building being too abstract while this sort of silliness exists.
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I put it too you, that health bars in some cases are more realistic then the penetration/armour table madness that a lot of games subscribe to.
Case in point, 500 75mm AT rounds hitting the same tank on the same side would obliterate it, doesn't matter if it's a Maus of a Panzer 1, it would simply deteriorate. A health bar aptly takes into account that any vehicle can be destroyed with enough firepower, even if there the round wouldn't "penetrate" the armour according to a sheet. While games like men of war AS2 (great game btw) have it so that if you are 1mm in penetration below the armour of a target you could fire 5 million AT shells into the front of some tank, and it would be 100% okay not 1 hp lost.
So that isn't very realistic either.
I think it's a very hard thing to get right.
Case in point, 500 75mm AT rounds hitting the same tank on the same side would obliterate it, doesn't matter if it's a Maus of a Panzer 1, it would simply deteriorate. A health bar aptly takes into account that any vehicle can be destroyed with enough firepower, even if there the round wouldn't "penetrate" the armour according to a sheet. While games like men of war AS2 (great game btw) have it so that if you are 1mm in penetration below the armour of a target you could fire 5 million AT shells into the front of some tank, and it would be 100% okay not 1 hp lost.
So that isn't very realistic either.
I think it's a very hard thing to get right.
Yeah, IRL there are no health bars, but it doesn't bother me to have them in. Some abstractions for the sake of gameplay are good, even if it isn't totally realistic (I usually argue in favor of realism by the way).
@Hawk. With regard to tank battles. Shots either penetrate and then do damage or not. 99% of the time a penetration means death to the tank and death to some of the crew. That does not apply in red dragon. Instead you must slowly bang away at the armour cumulatively (does not matter what side) if your weapons are powerful enough until the health bar is gone and then it is magically considered penetrated and the enemy dies.
I think what Hawk is trying to get across is that each "hit" will damage the tank somehow. Whether it be shedding the armor ever so slightly or deafening the crew inside.
Crew can recover from being deafened. In WRG they do not recover health.
Besides crew attitude is already covered well and implimented well with the crew attitude system. Panick, worried, stunned etc.
That has nothing to do with critical hits penetrating the hull and instantly destroying the tank or bouncing off the armour.
Bouncing off the armour needs to be shown and is a temp thing, not a permanent 50% armour degredation somehow....
Besides crew attitude is already covered well and implimented well with the crew attitude system. Panick, worried, stunned etc.
That has nothing to do with critical hits penetrating the hull and instantly destroying the tank or bouncing off the armour.
Bouncing off the armour needs to be shown and is a temp thing, not a permanent 50% armour degredation somehow....
if anything the HP system should be more realistic here than in Red Dragon, owing to German use of face-hardened armour and its continuing deterioration in quality. There are plenty of pictures online of German tanks with cracked and shattered sections of armour.
Not that HEAT shells, the only type that deals guaranteed damage in Wargame, are likely to be common in this game. So I don't see the problem.
Not that HEAT shells, the only type that deals guaranteed damage in Wargame, are likely to be common in this game. So I don't see the problem.
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Nande the point is that shells half penetrate or knock off bits of the armour but this does no damage to the tank. Only a penetration will.
It's not like you can hit the same part of the tank miltiple times to go through already create partial penetrations or divots to dig a hole.
That is what the armour system of health bars does. It acts like you are digging a hole in the armour gradually. You are not.
It's not like you can hit the same part of the tank miltiple times to go through already create partial penetrations or divots to dig a hole.
That is what the armour system of health bars does. It acts like you are digging a hole in the armour gradually. You are not.
I don't. Spalling is spalling. I mentioned it above as tiny divots or digging a hole. It barely affected things. It for the most part just meant chunks of armour scraped off by incoming shells. It did not mean penetration or even close in the way WRG health bars do.
Besides as I said you would have to hit the same tiny place time and again to penetrate that way.
Besides as I said you would have to hit the same tiny place time and again to penetrate that way.
"tiny divots or digging a hole"?
Spalling as I understand it denotes small pieces of the inside of the tank breaking away at high speed, even in the event of a non-penetration, and being most common with brittle armour such as that of late German production.
Spalling as I understand it denotes small pieces of the inside of the tank breaking away at high speed, even in the event of a non-penetration, and being most common with brittle armour such as that of late German production.
Oh. I thought it was simply small pieces of armour breaking off, cracking or divoting on the outside obviously due to transfer of energy. But could occur on the inside due to a shock wave. But once again that would not consitute a health bar style degradation but rather a degradation in tank performance if some crew was lost or a whole tank kill if all crew was lost.
No you are right. It is primarily inside and I stand corrected nande.. however it does not change my statement above here.
"If the round penetrated, spalling will be reduced.
Basically, spalling occurs because the energy from the impacting round is transferred to the armour plate. This sends a shockwave through the armour plate, displacing the metal until the other side of the wall is reached by the shockwave. Since the armour plate can't transfer the energy to anything else, fragments are ripped loose from the inside of the armour plate, and are slung into the fighting compartment at very high velocity. Very hard armour will generally give more spalling, because it is less elastic. Theoretically, there is no energy loss between the impact energy of the shell and the energy at the other side of the armour plate.
It is therefore also unwise to lean against the armour plate (just like bunkers will have warnings against leaning up against outer walls dring bombardments) - if a shell hits, and you are touching the armour plate, the energy is transferred to you (which, as you can imagine, isn't particularly healthy)."
No you are right. It is primarily inside and I stand corrected nande.. however it does not change my statement above here.
"If the round penetrated, spalling will be reduced.
Basically, spalling occurs because the energy from the impacting round is transferred to the armour plate. This sends a shockwave through the armour plate, displacing the metal until the other side of the wall is reached by the shockwave. Since the armour plate can't transfer the energy to anything else, fragments are ripped loose from the inside of the armour plate, and are slung into the fighting compartment at very high velocity. Very hard armour will generally give more spalling, because it is less elastic. Theoretically, there is no energy loss between the impact energy of the shell and the energy at the other side of the armour plate.
It is therefore also unwise to lean against the armour plate (just like bunkers will have warnings against leaning up against outer walls dring bombardments) - if a shell hits, and you are touching the armour plate, the energy is transferred to you (which, as you can imagine, isn't particularly healthy)."
So using the Red Dragon, model, there is a threshhold below which a round cannot penetrate the tank at all and the KE weapon will not fire on the target. Once the penetration exceeds the threshold the gun can fire causing crits and adding aggregate damage to the target'e health bar. This can represent partial penetrations, spalling or things falling off the inside of the tank. Range, weather, angle of impact, intermediate barriers, barrel wear and faults in the construction of the projectile or armour call all lead to variations in the penetration capabilities of a round. Having a health bar that reflects that it took 1 hit or 10 hits to finally kill the tank is quite reasonable, especially with all 10 hits having the potential of causing crits.
So basically no, the health bar is a great idea and is fine as is. In the interest of keeping the system specs down I would be happy with a repeat of the Red Dragon damage model.
I think Eugen should use health bars more as a variable unit stat than making everyone 10hp.
Rabidnid what about the penetrations which would have been most penetrations, that kill the tank outright first time? That could be any vehicle with the capability to penetrate doing so and killing with the first penetration. That I would say is how most tanks died. A lot of misses and deflections and then finally the first penetration would kill.
How does the health bar represent that?
How does the health bar represent that?
Really? What happens when a shell penetrates a tank? Goes in one side and out the other. Knocks the head off the gunner. Shatters the transmission and scalds the driver and radio operator with boiling oil. Penetrations are not instantly fatal in all circumstances. There is a reason that the Germans and Russians used APHE.
According to anecdotal evidence in Normandy the Shermans burned in 3 to 5 seconds after a penetration, while the Churchill took more than 10 seconds to burn after a penetration. Panthers also burned fast, while T-34s exploded from their ammunition catching fire. Were all tanks instantly lost in all circumstances? Of course not. It required lucky or accurate shot placement to destroy the tank with a single hit. We don't know how many times there tanks were being hit to cause them to burn so quickly.
The mechanic in Red Dragon is that a gun has a base maximum range, base accuracy at maximum range and base penetration at maximum range. There is a spreadsheet of all this somewhere but basically, if the penetration of a gun is 18 higher than the facing armour value the target will be destroyed in a single hit. If it is less but a high value the tank will lose health, the crew will panic, the vehicle will suffer criticals and may be stunned -which means it cannot move, accept new orders or fight.
A gun with an accuracy of 50%, 15 penetration and a range of 13 units (in Red Dragon 2,275 metres) fires at a target 3 units away it will instead have a penetration of 25 and an accuracy of 70% and a 30% increase in the chance of a critical. If the target has an armour of 7 or less it will be destroyed instantly.
The system is fine, it is up to Eugen to set the correct armour and penetration values for the various weapons and vehicles.
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So you are saying that penetrations that are not fatal would generally disable the tank rather than lowering a health bar? Where other times they simply killed the tank outright.
I would say that where a penetration is not fatal that whatever internal damage the tank took affected it in that way. Rather than just lowering the health of the tank.
The tank should not be fully functional if damaged or any of the crew hurt.
I would say that where a penetration is not fatal that whatever internal damage the tank took affected it in that way. Rather than just lowering the health of the tank.
The tank should not be fully functional if damaged or any of the crew hurt.
Yup, there is no particular reason to have 10 HP. It just depends on the penetration model they end up using for Steel Division. Give Shermans, T-34s and all German tanks 3 HP and things like the KV and Churchill 5 to reflect their much tougher and better subdivided designs.
