"What are your favorite Tank on Tank Rules?" Topic

ts a very interesting simulation more for sort of "role playing" or in the real world terms a tank training simulator.

How and what can a crew do and how do they do it? It should have interesting results. How much better will the hit rate be with the commander open topped to allow faster aquisition of targets outside the gunners sight.

On thing thay may make an actual run of the game difficult is getting a realistic battle field. It may be the case that you want to try it out with big (1/35 or bigger trabnks outside) so you get a"big traget" to use, to obtaing a good assessment of the actual situation, compared to the card.

It has interesting avenues to explore. Can you, using these sound basics reproduce the standard adage that typicaly only 1/3 of shots hit below 1m. It looks like your analysis could show this on the basis of dispertion for ground that undulates only sightly. Shooting at the centre of mass with even only 1 ft of the tank hidden by ground would significantly alter the hits below 1m.

Clearly as some vehicals like a 38t tank detroyer would be easier to hide and be harder as it is a small target.

As to helpiny you are way beyond help (;-)). Clearly your understanding is well past any I have and as such I can't help. I did read a book many years ago where the commander warned the crews aboat canted trunnion errors as they were about to fight in complex terrain. Your system could help to quntify such issues in a way that is easily understandable and numerate.

Please keep posting.

Ushcha,
Most of what I've written is from the WWII Ballistics book by Lorrin and Bird. That's the book to study. Also information from various websites, AAR's and reference books. Mobius and John Salt have some very good specific information. I'm just trying to recreate what happens to a round after it is fired. The target basically "gets in the way" of the round when it gets to the range so is hit or it misses. That's how I look at it. It's not a chance thing like the roll of the dice.

It does have a role playing aspect to it but unlike some games I don't have each crew member checking to see how successful they are. I guess you could if you wanted. The crews do have a rating and I believe that more experienced and trained crews can do more in the same time period (like estimate range, load, fire, etc) than less experienced and trained crews. This I have not figured out how to implement but I'm working on a few different areas.

Mobius can tell you all about canted trunnions. I haven't gone that far down into the rabbit hole to get realism. Under certain circumstances it can matter a great deal. Especially on long range follow up shots when you need to make an adjustment. It's the same reason you don't cant your rifle at the qualifying range.

The 1/35 scale tanks could work but trying to put the transparent targeting overlay on a 3D object would be tough.

Regarding hitting below 1m. As you can see in the vehicle diagram in Photobucket there is a vertical ruler in .1m increments on the left side of the target. A target can have a hull down rating from .1m on up. If it's hull down rating is .4m above the ground and the round aimed at Center Mass goes low and ends up at .3m above the ground it impacts the hull down cover, not the vehicle. I did a chart for various random undulations on ground types but I have not shown it to anyone. Yes, hitting something that is just 1m high like the turret of a hull down tank or an emplaced AT gun can be very hard indeed. In my system to have a 50% chance of hitting a 1m high target you'd need an accuracy letter rating of E or F or about .6 mil accuracy (I think that's about right). The lower you aim on a target the better chance of the round going low enough to hit an obstacle of the ground. Aiming at Center Mass of a Sherman with the round going 1m high will impact the turret. If the aim point was the middle of the turret it would miss just going over the top of the turret. This is the kind of stuff I like and find interesting. You can't simulate that visually in a typical game.

The problem with all of this is like everything else. The reference material, formulas and numbers you use are hard to get people to agree on. Even test firings can be unreliable in the bigger picture of things as they were not very scientifically carried out with no control group and generally only 1-2 vehicles to test on. I've tried to get mine to give somewhat historical results if you use the same methods as they did in WWII.

Thanks,
Wolfhag

Wolfhag you might be interested in the content of these pages.
link

link

Wolfhag,
not sure I got across what I meant (my bad). Assuming that you aim at the centre of visible mass (say 300mm above ideal center of mass due to obscuration caused by to small undulations and the shots are normaly distibuted, it would be interesting to see what percentage would hit at 1m or below. Obviously hull down there is not much centre of mass to aim at so the miss rate for hull down would be much higher.

UshCha,
I'm not sure I'm following you. If a target was moving and went into a slight depression or rose up slightly because of an undulation in the ground and it happened AFTER the aiming and shot it would have the effect of moving the aim point up or down the amount of the depression or undulation in the ground. You can move the aim point anywhere on the target with the system I'm using. So if it is moved and something gets in the way it gets hit. If it's an obstruction then it does not hit the target. I hope that's what you were referring to.

Wolfhag

For an experiment I changed my standard tank target to reflect that there is a gap between the lower hull and the ground. It changes the overall hit percentage of a hullup target by about 4% at 1000m.

Then I compared the hull up percentage to the hulldown percentage. At 500m it reduced the percentage 40-50% but at 1500m it reduced it 60-70%. I guess the primary reason is that dispersion kicks in at longer ranges.

Blimey

Mobius,
Yes, there are so many variables and nuances with all vehicles being a little different. One hit location chart cannot handle all of them.

Hull down targets vary a lot too. Especially the difference between assault guns and turreted tanks. According to my calculations a hull down German JGPZ IV assault gun has 60% more target area than a hull down T-34. A hull down assault gun has it's superstructure extend all of the way across the hull. A typical turreted tank the turret will extend about 60%-70% the width of the hull. So how do you give hull down to hit modifiers to that? Who would have thought it would be easier to hit a hull down assault gun than a hull down turreted tank. But is it really? Since both the assault gun superstructure and tank turret are about the same height and the lateral dispersion is normally going to be less than 1m at most normal engagement ranges then it may not really matter, unless the gunners aim is off laterally then the assault gun is a better target. Complicated? Yes.

Regarding dispersion. If you aim at a targets turret the longer the range the larger the dispersion can lead to a miss. Take aiming at the middle of a T-34 turret. If the round goes high by .5 meter (not unusual at 1000m or longer) or more it will most likely be a miss. Aiming center mass it could go up to about 1.1m high and still be a hit. Big difference again. Luck can enter in here. Aim center mass when you can.

The space between the ground and hull bottom takes up about 15% of the total height of a T-34 according to my estimates.

The only way I could figure out a way to portray these differences to different hit locations was to use a transparent targeting overlay/cross hairs on a graphic of the target that are moved from the aim point according to the horizontal and lateral dispersion result of the round. Where the cross hairs are moved to is where the round impacts or misses. No need to roll for hit location either.
Link: tinyurl.com/qgsoryo

Wolfhag

…are moved from the aim point according to the horizontal and lateral dispersion result of the round
Where the cross hairs are moved to is where the round impacts or misses. No need to roll for hit location either.

? And if dispersion results are not determined by dice rolls then what? A card deck?

Mobius,
I use a stack of 50 cards that have a horizontal and vertical dispersion values and direction based on the accuracy letter that moves the aim point. The base accuracy takes into account the main error budget factors like a 20% range error, aiming error and inherent accuracy of the gun. These are assigned a mil value and then run through a spreadsheet formula for each 100m range increment.

Here is an over explanation: tinyurl.com/n9zmvt6
This is another example: tinyurl.com/m54rxxg

Using the cards I've eliminated charts for dispersion distance and direction for the error budget types. It's not 100% accurate but a lot easier to use. The charts are an older version so there have been changes. It's a WIP and will continue to be for some time. I'm not going to get into discussing the dispersion values at this point.

When firing the player decides to use a ranging shot and bracketing or battle sight and burst on target. Ranging and bracketing takes longer but is more accurate and can be used at any range. Battle Sight and Burst on Target is generally is limited to 1.5 seconds time of flight range but fires a little quicker than ranging and is a little less accurate. There are tradeoffs and advantages to both. Once the target has been hit you can use the aimed fire row which is the most accurate as once you hit you've solved most of the gunnery errors and should have a good chance to continue hitting.

I've probably left some things out but I hope you get the general idea. It's a much different approach to having a magic to hit # with die roll modifiers. There is one more chart that has some modifiers for crew training, target concealment, battlefield haze, tank commander status and environmental factors. No size or aspect modifiers needed as those are handled by the scaled target graphic.

Wolfhag

I don't know if I posted this link before because it does address some ranging and obscuration issues.
link

Mobius,
I was aware of some of the problems the allied tanks had with spotting their shots but not sure of the details. I've seen pictures of emplaced AT guns with a spotter off to the side. I guess allied tanks could do that too but not in the middle of a hot fight. I was looking at ways to simulate not being able to sense the tracer so not get the bracketing advantage on the next shot. I've seen pictures of a Tiger I being filmed from the loaders hatch firing on the open plain in Russia. I was surprised at how little flash and smoke there was. A TC unbuttoned would have not trouble sensing the tracer.

Wolfhag

And this is why "88's" were "scary" They had a guy with a rangefinder calling out the exact range.