Hallo,
here are some tank stats:
M18 16/12/2/5/2/1
M4/76 16/12/2/5/9/3
Cromwell 8/10/1/6/10/3
M4/75 8/12/2/5/8/2
Tiger 1 12/28/1/6/10/3
Panther 13/101/6/13/4
Jg.Pz 4/70 13/10/1/6/12/4
Pz.IV/h 11/10/1/5/7/2
Thoughts ?
I have some thoughts but want to hear your opinions first :)
A lot of ink has been spilled on the subject, I think most TOAW players are reasonably satisfied with the AFV ratings, but I'm sure there's always room for improvement, and now that we can edit these....
But since the tanks are rated in six areas, and as you've given several examples, don't make us guess what you're thinking.
Aren't they last months lottery numbers??? ;)
Look like, don't they? For those who haven't noticed, there's a nice equipment file on the new TOAW III CD, it's called "equipment list", and it's in the folder, "Manuals".
M18 16/12/2/5/2/1
M4/76 16/12/2/5/9/3
Cromwell 8/10/1/6/10/3
M4/75 8/12/2/5/8/2
a) US 76mm (3inch) gun is not as good in HE shells as 75mm gun
So 75mm Sherman should have higher anti personal ratings or those
using the 76mm should have lower ratings.
Tiger 1 12/28/1/6/10/3
Panther 13/101/6/13/4
Jg.Pz 4/70 13/10/1/6/12/4
Pz.IV/h 11/10/1/5/7/2
b) Tiger 1 has 88mm gun, which is better than US 76mm, but this gun is rated 16 in anti armor while the german 88mm is rated 12 (!?!)
c) Panther/Jg.Pz 4/70 have 75mm/L70 gun which is better (some say even better than short 88mm in Tiger1) than US 76mm. But this gun has 13, US gun has 16 (!?!)
d) 75mm/L48 used in PzIV/h (or Marder, STug etc.) has roughly the same or slightly worse AP than 76mm US. But this gun is rated 11 and US gun is rated 16 (!)
e) Tiger1 armor is much better than Cromwell, Sherman, PzIV/h etc. but has only rating of 10 (!). Cromwell has also 10....
f) Tiger1 anti personal rating is 28. A bit too high i think.
Even if you say that tanks speed is rated as armor somehow in the game system (Tiger1 slow) than the US M18 should have much higher armor value than 2, cause it was one of the fastest vehicles on tracks.
Another topic is the M3 Grant/Lee. It only has a anti armor rating of 3. Seems the designers only took into acount the 37mm in the turret and completly forgot about the 75mm short in the bow. Granted this was not of so good use cause the whole vehicle must aim at the target, but it had AP shells and even gave the Axis tanks quitew troubles as it appeared first. So the advantage that the allies in the desert had whith the first Lee/Grants appearing is not int he game at all. M3 has the same anti armor rating as PzIIIe or Stuart light tanks!
I think you have made some good points. I'm not sure where your last number in the ratings comes from; I'm only finding five ratings for each tank. But I do think some of these things can be partially explained.
First, I don't believe the speed of the vehicle enters into the gun rating; but the rate of fire, and efficiency of the fire control system, do. Norm explained this to me some years back. This would include the speed of turret traverse. This would partially explain the ratings of the Sherman and the M18. But the M18 has a low armor rating, because of the open turret. So it combines excellent fire control and a modern, effective gun designed to defeat armor, with lack of protection for the crew!
I do think the Cromwell was well armored, I'd have to compare it to the Tiger to respond to that point; but generally, armor is rated higher if it's sloped.
I agree that the M-3 Grant/Lee should have a slightly higher AT rating, and probably also a lower defense rating, because of its high silhouette.
If I were designing an African scenario with the M-3 present, I'd consider fixing it.
Finally, one thing TOAW III can't really account for, is the difficulty of getting really heavy afv's over rivers and through rubble, as well as their inordinate fuel usage. And there are other imponderables; a gamer would always prefer to have all heavy, main battle tanks, because of course, they have the highest ratings; that raises the question of why nations would even build medium and light tanks. The answer, I think, is that a light tank is a wonderful thing, if it's somewhere a heavy tank can't get to. We do get an anomalous result in TOAW if a unit with all lights goes up agains a unit with all heavies; in reality, and under competent management, we would think the lights would avoid the heavies, or at least avoid giving them a clear shot. So I really think a lot of the defense ratings of the light tanks should be increased (ie, not being seen at all, is even better than low silhouette and sloped armor!). But you have to be careful there, because the lights and mediums get to fire in combat, so they can't really be invisible. Altho, you could make them invisible, and then give them only an anti-personnel rating, on the theory that they'd be employed principally against soft targets.
A lot of this works out ok, if the OB's are realistic; it's rare to have Stuarts matched up against Tigers; although, it could happen.
I wonder if a factor in the effectiveness of a tank's armament and armour is its reliability in TOAW? Only the heavy German tanks such as some versions of the Panther were prone to break down at certain periods during their service, has this been abstracted into Anti Tank and armour ratings?
I think reliability falls into the same category as fuel consumption, weight, and general immobility: it's not taken directly into account, so the designer needs to stick to reasonably historical OOB's. The reliability issue is interesting, and there are possibly other ways to deal with it; for example, as the Panther was notoriously unreliable in its first major engagement (Kursk), if a designer includes the actual number of Panthers in the German OOB, he needs to do something to compensate, to take account of the fact that most of them were in repair, most of the time. You wouldn't want to do something that would affect all units (such as lower force supply levels); but you could lower the proficienty or the supply proficiency of just those units with large numbers of panthers. This is the kind of fine tuning the game system makes possible, but you rarely see it in most scenarios.
I assume the ratings are a measure of the vehicles effectiveness as a weapon platform not just the effectivenes of its main weapon;
For instance the high rating of the 76mm Sherman probably takes into account gyro stabilisation, mobility, ROF etc and its higher AP rating vis the 75mm Sherman will be accounted for by the .50cal pintlemount etc.
Read the manual, "Operational" is defined IIRC as the scale above which the effectivenes of individual weapons has relevance.
or something similar :whis:
fluidwill Wrote:Read the manual, "Operational" is defined IIRC as the scale above which the effectivenes of individual weapons has relevance.
or something similar :whis:
Well then they should have left out individual weapons etc. at all...:)