Mad Russian
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Joined: 3/16/2008
From: Texas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: dieseltaylor
Tsk tsk lads. As though I am not familiar with power to weight! I feel insulted : )
ROFL!!!! I had to stop reading your post for a second when I saw that.....
It's not that we don't think that you're not familiar with P/W ratios, it's that we wanted to let you know that the game mechanics are concerned with the very same thing you are bringing up.
quote:
Power to weight is way too simplistic to reflect terrain performance. Track pressure - that is psi. is also highly important. But not totally as most of us will know the MkIV lang was terribly nose heavy. Its average weight was irrelevant as was BHP given the very high ground pressure at the nose. Incidentally the cannon length is also a problem though I doubt that has been yet modelled for any game!.
The biggest offender was Guderian's Duck.
There are several things that go into the maneuverability of a vehicle. Power to weight is important, but so are ground pressure, weight distribution and the terrain slope itself. A little known fact for stopping tanks is a simple 90 degree obstacle that is 2/3 of the track height. A tank can't go over it. What most do is crush that obstacle down. Or hit it hard enough that the tank get more of it's track on the obstacle and pulls itself over. The reason for mentioning that is that tanks are fairly restricted in how they move and where they go. Put a tank on a slope and make it turn. If you can do that there is a good chance you can make it throw a track the further back in time we go the more fragile tanks are at movement through terrain. (WWI, WWII, Cold War, Current.)
As an example; the verticle obstacle height clearance for a Sherman was 24 inches, for a Churchill it was 30 inches.
quote:
The Churchill was good because it was as long as a Tiger and the tracks were equally long as the tank. Designed for crossing trenches and going over embankments. I cannot recall another tank with those attributes. Also it had a very large number of rollers to keep the tracks to the ground - which did also mean it could have several shot away and still be mobile.
Which also makes it the modder's worst case nightmare.....
"The Churchill heavy tank of WWII as a bit of a throwback to WWI tactical thinking (and looked it). It was a long, slow tank designed to cross very rough, uneven ground and trenches. For higher speeds, such as those required for "breakout" operations (cruiser tanks in British speak) something rather different was required.
The independent suspension developed by J Walter Christie in the 1920's had conspicuous success on cruiser type tanks in the 1930's and throughout WWII, though it was largely dispensed with post-war. The large, independently coil sprung road wheels offered a relatively smooth ride over rough terrain and low ground pressure for good mobility at high speed. This system was most famously employed on the Soviet T-34 and the British cruisers up to and including the Centuar, Cromwell and Comet.
By 1941 the Soviets had discovered that an independent torsion bar suspension offered advantages over the Christie type and were ready to produce a new T-34 derivative, the T-34M incorporating this type of suspension when the German invasion of June 1941 killed those plans.
During 1942 the U.S. developed the T-20 series of medium tanks as replacements for the M4 Sherman. Numerous prototypes were trialed using various suspension types from the Sherman's proven Vertical Volute Suspension double-bogie type with three pairs of wheels on each side sprung together to an improved Horizontal Volute Suspension with wider track to a fully independent torsion bar suspension. The torsion bar system proved to offer a much better ride and more importantly, 20% lower ground pressure and better weight distribution.
Torsion bar suspensions appeared late in the war on the extremely fast M18 Hellcat tank destroyer, the M24 Chaffee light tank and the M26 Heavy tank. It has been used on every American tank since and is pretty much the standard still used on most tanks today.
Bogie wheel size is connected to gear ratio, just as overall tire diameter is connected to gear ratio on a car. You can't make blanket statements about it without considering the entire drive train. "
Put that all together and you have the Churchill being a tank that is very much the exception to the rule. It was designed to fight the Last War, with a 10 foot trench crossing capability. That in turn produced a tank that was stable in most environments. Breakthrough tanks were designed more for speed. The agility of the Churchill ensured it would get there. The 8mph ensured when it did get there it would in most instances be last.
Good Hunting.
MR
< Message edited by Mad Russian -- 4/19/2011 3:39:13 PM >
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The most expensive thing in the world is free time.
Founder of HSG scenario design group for Combat Mission.
Panzer Command Ostfront Development Team.
Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm Development Team.
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