Best Heavy tank

[KnightFandragon]

Gun penetration in this game fubar......Sometimes you have a green circle and a penetration number that exceeds the enemy armor and you cant kill your target w/ 3490 rounds...then there is the red circle, massivly under the target's armor and it dies in a few shots. Also, In this game, it doesnt matter the angle you hit the Panther's side....pop the side, its game over....for the Panther. Also, as for the guns themselves, all American/British weapons are better.......Only in this Men of War game though. The Russian guns, mostly the 85's on thier T34/85 and KV85 are pretty good but they lack the pin point accurate, shoot on the move thing the Brit and American 76's and 90's have. The 88 is quite the sad gun...people say they dumbed the Germans down for playbalance. If it was for playbalance then the 88 would be atleast equal to the M3 90L on the Slugger in punch and accuracy, also it would load faster then it does. As is right now all the 88s aside from the KwK43 on the King Tiger and Ferdi are slow, inaccurate and dont kill anything. The 43' is slow but more accurate so atleast it can hit something from range in less rounds then half the ammo bin in the tank.

Then we have the British stuff.....IDK why but the British stuff I fear it...in campaign mode anyway, dont face much British stuff in MP. Anywho, the reason that 2nd mission gives people such hell is b/c the British stuff is entirely way better then it should be. That 40....its not that great, it wont be 1 shotting Pzr 4's on thier front anyway. Then we have the Crusader...I looked up its armor for ingame, its like 30 on the front hull I think it was, yet this tank is the one that gives everyone hell, you fire and miss and fire and bounce and fire and miss and miss and miss and bounce. It then fires like 3 times and kills 2 tanks. Then there is the M3 Grant. I played this missions w/ my dad twice and both times those grants proved to be pretty impenetrable to most our guns and they took a pounding. The Brits may have had good armor on thier tanks and the Germans didnt have 88 KWK43s and such out yet but the 75 on the Pzr G could do the number on those brit tanks in less rounds then it takes currently. IDK how many Crusaders have just fubar'd my world. In fact I have less trouble w/ Churchills and Centurions then I do Crusaders.......The Crusader is a light tank and the Pzr III cant stand up to it at all, where they have you defending the flood plain on Op: Crusader I lined the ridges w/ Pzr IIIs in hopes of holding them off that way...yeah it was a joke. I fired, they fired and when the dust settled there was like none of me and pretty much all of them left + reinforcements

[Crni vuk]

I can understand the intention to downsize the effect of penetration and shells for gameplay sake. But yeah ... it still should be a lot more powerfull. You see way to many richochets and shoot without any effect at all particularly while engaging medium / light armor with heavy guns and tanks.

The Nashorn is litealy useless in battles cause it seems never to do much more then a Stug. And Before I spend points on a tank that has virtualy no armor (hey it dies 99% of the time in the first shoot) you save the points for the Jagdpanther or Jagdpanzer IV. If the Nashorn would at least get the penetration of its gun. To many times you shoot the side of some vehicle to see nothing happen ... or even its front. A t34 or similar vehicles should be toast. As simple as that. The IS2 and pershing. Thats a different story. I agree here to achieve penetration on highest distance. Should be difficoult of course. But not for the flank. It should almost always grant you success. I would like to use and see more Nashorns in battle. But it seems no one is choosing it for obvious reasons. If you dont get the first hit. you're dead.

This is what I mean though when I am talking about side shoots to the Panther. And this happend so many times ... its not funny anymore. And yeah it happens virtualy with all weapons and different tanks. Bee it shooting the Pershing side with the Tiger I, or Tiger II with the SU100 etc. ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6iqMJ0v2rI

[Zeke Wolff]

The Brittish 2 pounder could penetrate 56~57.5mm of armor at a range of 500 yards, (it was the best light antitank gun at that time) which is more armor than the Pz4E-G had as front armor (they had 30-50mm thick armor plates, depending on which version). So this gun, just as it is in the game, were perfectly capable of knocking out Pz4´s frontal in real life.

Same thing with the 6 pounder: it could punch thru armor plating as thick as 81-83mm at a range of 500 yards. This gun can do it in the game, and in real life as well.

Both guns did suffer from one drawback though: neither one of them could use HE shells, these guns were firing antitank shells and nothing else, which is why tanks with these guns faired very poorly against German antitank guns.

The American tanks had gyrostabilized main guns starting with the M3 Lee/Grant. All tanks produced thereafter, had gyrostabilized guns which allowed them to be used whilst moving with good accuracy. The British designed tanks did not have it, until the Centurion arrived (but that tank is a non-WW2 tank really). Although in the case of the Americans, most tank crews choosed to not use the gyrostabilizing system since they thought it to be not much of use, and thus prefered the old method of stop-targeting-fire-move.

German tanks didnt have gyrostabilized guns, but of course these tanks could fire on the move as well, but by doing so, they lost all accuracy.

The Panther had 40-50mm (depending on which version, (Ausf D,A or G) we are talking about) and most, if not all guns of WW2 could knock it out by a flank shot. German crews were taught to always face the enemy with their thick frontal armor and by doing so, protect their tanks weaker sides. In other words, the Panther is just as vulnerable to flank shots in the game, as it was in WW2.

The accuracy, penetration, reloading time, etc of German guns is another thing: These has been nerfed down for the sake of balance in the game, and personally, I don´t like that kind of balance...

Also, guns in the vanilla version of MoW have two different settings: one for MP which tends to be more realistic, and another for SP which is highly unrealistic (boosted penetration etc).

~Zeke.

Ps.
I can´t belive that you´ve such problems with the Grant and/or Crusaders: usually they went up in flames as soon as I see them in the game... you must have some exceptional unluck when going up against these things...

[Crni vuk]

Originally Posted by Zeke Wolff

The Brittish 2 pounder could penetrate 56~57.5mm of armor at a range of 500 yards, (it was the best light antitank gun at that time) which is more armor than the Pz4E-G had as front armor (they had 30-50mm thick armor plates, depending on which version). So this gun, just as it is in the game, were perfectly capable of knocking out Pz4´s frontal in real life.

Same thing with the 6 pounder: it could punch thru armor plating as thick as 81-83mm at a range of 500 yards. This gun can do it in the game, and in real life as well.

Just as a question out of curiosity, does this penetration also takes eventual failing or shattering (shatter gap) of rounds in to acount ? This was a serious issue with guns that had to deal with armor that was just thick enough to alow eventual (theoretical) penetration. Like the Panzer IV H which had at least 80mm of front armor. This increased with the quality of armor which was in general excelent for German vehicles and less likely to crack, splinter or deform.

As you say depending on which Panzer IV we are talking about the penetration with the 2QF might be successfull or not. From what I can read it seems the Panzer IV G got some 80 mm of front armor with its base of 50mm + 30mm face-hardened appliqué welded and later bolted to the glacis. So at least the Panzer IV G (or the F2 which got the luck to receive the aditional armor) should prove to be a very hard target for the 2QF at any range. The front that is.

I am not that used with the 6QF, but the gun in use with the Cromwell for example wasnt the same kind of gun like the anti tank gun used by the infantry. For example the Cromwell never received any APDS or APCR amunition for its 75mm which had more or less the same penetration quality compared to the 75mm of the Sherman (if I am not completely wrong they even shared the same HE shells) So again penetrations to the front would be against the Panzer IV in its late/mid war variants not always be succesfull and the Sherman with its 75mm could only hope for a shoot to the turret. I have no clue how much issues the 6QF had with shattering shells or if that was even a issue at all for the gun. But I know that this was a reality for the Firefly with its 17Pounder which sometimes failed to penetrate either the Tiger I or Panther. Particularly with APDS shells and they had as well terrible accuracy and would often loose their fins in flight and thus hit nothing. It was really not much more accurate then maybe 400 or 500m. The Panther proved in tests to see a lot of richochets against the usual 17Pf Ap for example. It seems that tests have shown changes in quality of used armor as well ranging from very good to good and bad. Where high quality armor showed no sign of stress even after several shoots to the same spot and the bad armor cracked with the first shoot.

But the armor of the early/mid war Tiger was extremly well made and proved to be a issue for almost any anti tank gun of that time even to the famous and powerfull 17pf. So any gun which would shoot a high velocity shell at it like the Sherman with its 75mm HVAP would face eventualy a shattering of its shell on the front.

This is from what I can read a 17pf which got stuck in the front armor of a Tiger I

militaryalbum.com

Originally Posted by Zeke Wolff

The Panther had 40-50mm (depending on which version, (Ausf D,A or G) we are talking about) and most, if not all guns of WW2 could knock it out by a flank shot. German crews were taught to always face the enemy with their thick frontal armor and by doing so, protect their tanks weaker sides. In other words, the Panther is just as vulnerable to flank shots in the game, as it was in WW2.

It is "vulnerable" to the side but just simply not enough from what I can tell. Particularly to guns like the soviet 85mm or the Shermans 76w which could penetrate the side of the panther up to much more then 1000m. I think up to 1500m even. In game you often enough strugle with it already on pretty small distances ...

Usualy one doctrine was to always use the Panther in combination with the Panzer IV as protection for the flank.

[FM_Von_Manstein]

Panzer IV Ausf F2/G had 50mm armor, H had 80. The 2 Pounder was perfectly capable of taking it out. But it rarely got the chance. The 2 Pounder saw most of its action in NA. Rommel never allowed his tanks to charge head on, his Panzer IV Ausf Es would always lob 75mm HE shells at the British guns before advancing. But the 2 Pounder still could destroy most German tanks of the time with ease if they were under 500m.

Both guns did suffer from one drawback though: neither one of them could use HE shells, these guns were firing antitank shells and nothing else, which is why tanks with these guns faired very poorly against German antitank guns.

Few British guns and tanks could fire HE. The Crusader was the 1st British tank to be armed with HE, until then only the 25 Pounders were equipped with it. All later tanks usually had it.

[Zeke Wolff]

The game doesnt care if a 2 pounder round in real life, could shatter against the armor or not. It either penetrates or don´t, thats all.

The Crusader I and II were armed with 2 pounders, the Crusader III were armed with a 6 pounder (and so were the early Churchills). These guns weren´t designed to fire HE shells either. The first multipurpose gun the British got (ie capable of firing both AP and HE shells) were when they were supplied with American made M3 Lee/Grants. Some British tanks had a 94mm howitzer instead of the usual 2-/6-pounder guns, which could fire HE shells, but their main purpose were to fire smoke rounds. A typical load for these tanks were 24~28 smoke rounds and only 4~8 HE rounds.

The Pz.Kpfw. IV Ausf. F2 had 50mm of frontal armor, and so did the early and middle variants of the Ausf. G. Then when the late version Ausf. G started to see the light, the frontal armor was upgraded with 30mm thick extra armor plates, something that even the Ausf. H had at the beginning, before getting a single 80mm thick frontal armor plate.

~Zeke.

[Crni vuk]

Originally Posted by FM_Von_Manstein

Panzer IV Ausf F2/G had 50mm armor, H had 80. The 2 Pounder was perfectly capable of taking it out. But it rarely got the chance. The 2 Pounder saw most of its action in NA. Rommel never allowed his tanks to charge head on, his Panzer IV Ausf Es would always lob 75mm HE shells at the British guns before advancing. But the 2 Pounder still could destroy most German tanks of the time with ease if they were under 500m.

Some sources say 50% of the Panzer IV G versions got some aditional 30mm aplique armor wielded on it.

Like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_IV
During its production run from May 1942 to June 1943, the Panzer IV Ausf. G went through further modifications, including another armor upgrade. Given that the tank was reaching its viable limit, to avoid a corresponding weight increase, the appliqué 20-millimetre (0.79 in) steel plates were removed from its side armor, which instead had its base thickness increased to 30 millimetres (1.18 in). The weight saved was transferred to the front, which saw a 30-millimetre (1.18 in) face-hardened appliqué steel plate welded (later bolted) to the glacis—in total, frontal armor was now 80 mm (3.15 in) thick.[27] This decision to increase frontal armor was favorably received according to troop reports on November 8, 1942, despite technical problems of driving system due to added weight. At this point, it was decided that 50% of Panzer IV productions would be fitted with 30 mm thick additional armor plates. Subsequently on January 5, 1943, Hitler decided to make all Panzer IV to have 80 mm frontal armor.

I cant tell how accurate Wiki is though. So everything should be considered with care.


Panzerkampfwagen IV
The during the production in June of 1943, the front armor was increased from 50mm with additional 30mm plate to basic 80mm on the front hull and superstructure.

It doesnt mention explicit the Ausf G. Just that around 1943 the Panzers received aditional 30mm armor to their 50mm base armor. I only "asume" here that this might as well have been done to any F2 or G variations that havnt received a update to the H. Probably done most of the time in the field.


Panzerkampfwagen IV Ausf G
From June 1942 an extra 30mm of armour was added to the front of the superstructure and hull of sixteen tanks per month, and from December 1942 that extra protection was installed on half of the total protection.

It mentions again that not all Panzer G received aditional armor.

[KnightFandragon]

dang, the T34 was produced like 1000 tanks per month and the end line of the post was like 16 tanks per month haha....shows how muhc slower German production was then allieds

[Zeke Wolff]

Crni Vuk: I don´t use Wikipedia as a source at all; I flip thru my books in my library instead... got quite a collection after 25 years of studying German WW2 tanks...

But what you say about roughly 50% of all Ausf. G getting 30mm extra of armor is just about the same as I wrote, since roughly half of the total numbers of the Ausf. G production, were late variants Ausf. G´s, which had 50+30mm of frontal armor.

~Zeke.

[Crni vuk]

Originally Posted by Zeke Wolff

The game doesnt care if a 2 pounder round in real life, could shatter against the armor or not. It either penetrates or don´t, thats all.

~Zeke.

Sad it doesnt

Question is what kind of penetration they use as well. Usual AP shell or the "best possible condition", meaning APDS or APCR shells and such.