vonB
Posts: 132
Joined: 3/7/2007
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Yes, interesting comments, and on the whole I agree, though not in every particular. I would choose a Tiger I over a Panther, as general survivability seems to be better in my own experience. In real life, the angled front armour of the Panther could give better AP shot deflection than the vertical plate of the Tiger I, but the Tiger did have superior steel quality. Where the Panther is particularly vulnerable is side and rear. As to the relative merits of the 88 and the 75, looking at the ballistics for each weapon, the 75 had a higher muzzle velocity but a lighter projectile. This translates to a slightly better penetration power for the 75 at shorter ranges, but the 88 will be more effective at longer ranges.
I totally agree about the 20mm cannon. If I want to decimate infantry, then it's the best (though tank flame throwers are just wicked!). On the whole, I find the infantry killing power of armour too strong. It's not the fact that a big gun and 2 MG's are not potent, but I would question the accuracy. This should translate into suppression rather than obliteration.
On the whole, I think the real life modelling isn't too bad, and the psych model is excellent. There are some glaring exceptions though.
I wouldn't take on an IS2 H2H with a Panther. The only advantage I can see is the higher rate of fire of the Panther, but front to front, I would bet on the IS2 winning.
Vehicle orientation can be a bit of a pain. When they complete a manouvre, they can finish at a different orientation to the direction in which they were travelling. All you can do is make sure you keep tabs on them and adust as necessary, but in the heat of battle it can be easy to miss... until it's too late ;) However this is much better in CC5.
As to survivability against infantry, the Soviets were much inferior to the Germans, and more so as the war went on. Drive a troop of German tanks into Russian infantry and the chances of survival are quite good. Try and do that with a troop of Russian tanks against German infantry and see whether you come out as well (if at all).
The SU-152 as far as I know is primarily an infantry support weapon using HE. It wasn't designed as a tank killer as such, though it is devastatingly effective as one if you can survive long enough to compensate for the low rate of fire. I guess it's not too unrealistic to expect them to have HE by default at the start of an engagement, but even a direct hit with a 152mm HE round on anything is going to make it very sore...
A long time ago, I remember doing some mucking about. I wanted to see how different tanks measured up against each other. On an open terrain, with 15 Tiger II's and 15 IS2's, the IS2' s would invariably dominate. The 122 having that bit more ko power than the 88 against the heavy armour on both sides. Even with 15 Jadgtigers, the result still favoured the IS2's, with the very poor rate of fire of the Jagdtiger. But I think most of this is quite accurate.
Where I think the modelling is not so good is in how cannon perform against armour. This is not done using tables of weapon capabilities (i.e. real life physics), so you can get what I think are absurd results. I would not put much odds on a 50mm taking out a KV, even at close'ish ranges, but they can do so even at longer ranges, though bear in mind that the area of a Close Combat battle is quite close on the whole, and the 'philosophy' of Close Combat is to present just that. It was never designed as a Tank Sim, but as a Platoon level combat simulator with supporting heavy weapons. Playing infantry only engagements delivers a more realistic combat simulation. As far as I know, there is still nothing better out there...
Your comments have prompted me to do a bit more mucking about, though after playing the game for over 10 years, I wonder how much more mucking about I can do ;) I am interested to see if I can replicate some of your experiences, as some of them do not seem to tally with my own, but memory can be unreliable sometimes, my own especially ;)
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