Paul Vebber
Posts: 11430
Joined: 3/29/2000
From: Portsmouth RI
Status: offline
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Scenario designers unfortunately never know the exact composition of the "real forces" involved in any action. Sources that contradict one another on any battle can be found. The cool thing about being a scenario designer is a certain artistic liscence to try to get the "feel" of the battle in game terms right. As any scenario designer will tell you the worst thing you can do is often to blindly follow a purported TO&E and let the play balance fall where it may.
Scenario design is not just about "the facts , Ma'am, just the facts", but interpreting them wihtin the distortion of the game you are using to portray the battle.
Often this means including some troops or vehicles that might or could have been there, or whose presence was in doubt, in order to craft a "Fun game". Pure realism is NO FUN...and nobody plays a scenario that is no fun.
As to the front turret on the IS_3 I just looked up 4 differnet sources and got numbers ranging from 200-230mm, to 160mm, to 110mm (the latter being the thickness listed on the armor diagram on the site youreffered to which has the statment that:
quote:
Moreover, the turret's good internal layout minimized its dimensions while allowing its armor protection to be increased to 250 mm
Not indicating that the 250 was on the front (more likely being the thicker base of the cast turret "clamshell" - not the front. Cast armor is also only 85% as efective as RHA so the value of 160 * .85 = 136 for some reason I rounded down to 135 in the new OOBs (unless one fo the oob reviewers changed it on me  .
The mantle is round and an average incidence angle of 40 degrees is used which means the effective thickness is going to be significantly greater tha 135, this is over rated in itself becasue like the panthers round mantle, shots that strike the lower area of it will tend to ricochet throught the roof, something that is accounted for by the fact that a "non-penetrating" turret ring hit can knock the tank out.
A careful review of the literature on armor penetration efects will revela that there si a LOT more to modeling a tanks vulnerability than looking up "thickness" and "armor penetration" values in a book! we have only scratched the surface of the problem in SP:WaW and will dig a lot deeper (not still well short of what finite element modeling on a supercomputer can do! And even that disagrees sometimes significantly form experimental result.
[This message has been edited by Paul Vebber (edited February 04, 2001).]
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Printable Version
IS-3s never saw action in Europe! - 
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). I met one Mr Tony Latisserie (sp) a Berlin resident historian who has written a few books on Seelowe Heights and the Battle of Berlin.
When I asked him about this issue, he replied that the Soviets rushed a number of them (how many he didn't recall) to the front for combat testing.
On the German side, there were ancedotal reports but no intelligence summary -as record keeping was chaotic at best in April/May '45.
His view was, it was PLAUSIBLE that they were at Seelowe Heights and LIKELY they were in the battle of Berlin
Such is life!!
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Mike Amos
Meine Ehre Heisst Treue
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A sorte protege os audazes
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