Taking out armor, do I have my bases covered?

[White Eagle]

Upon having my first tank vs tank exchanges I was expecting the battles to go very fast, 1 or 2 rounds fired and a kill but I have found that in Red Victory that some exchanges can go back and forth with each tank firing 6-12 rounds. I am guessing some manuver or something else is abstracted into the combat results tables that is lessening the "to hit" odds.

So I have come up with my own personal list of things to do to maximize my chances of a hit, please let me know if I am missing anything.

-Use AP ammo
-Fire at 1/2 the max range or less
-Avoid front armor shots, armor is 150% value right?
-Vehicles dont recover status, but effectiveness is figured in right? The higer the status the better for me to score a hit.

I had poor luck with Panzerfaust's, but I use the same principle and have gotten a few kills.

-Fire at range of 1 instead of max range of 2
-Assaults with Panzerfausts don't work for me, the whole team gets wiped out or hurt pretty bad, so I stay at range of 1 when attacking.
-I try to keep my team free of any "pinned" or other states
- Try to use against side or rear armor.
-Does the "ground" mode affect Panzerfausts hits?

Ok, so that's what I am doing but I am still finding myself sometimes going through 12 shots of a panserfaust to get a kill. From my list is there anything I am missing?

Thanks for looking it over, any veteran tips/help is appreciated!
John

[cazart!]

-Fire at range of 1 instead of max range of 2
-Assaults with Panzerfausts don't work for me, the whole team gets wiped out or hurt pretty bad, so I stay at range of 1 when attacking.
-I try to keep my team free of any "pinned" or other states
- Try to use against side or rear armor.
-Does the "ground" mode affect Panzerfausts hits?

Ground Mode does not affect your firing of a Pzfaust. (But it gives you a benefit during any defensive fire.)

Your methods are solid. The target has a lot to do with it tactics vs a Pz III are a lot different than against a Pz V.

[TheBigRedOne]

-Fire at range of 1 instead of max range of 2
-Assaults with Panzerfausts don't work for me, the whole team gets wiped out or hurt pretty bad, so I stay at range of 1 when attacking.
-I try to keep my team free of any "pinned" or other states
- Try to use against side or rear armor.
-Does the "ground" mode affect Panzerfausts hits?

Ground Mode does not affect your firing of a Pzfaust. (But it gives you a benefit during any defensive fire.)

Your methods are solid.

Everything but assaulting a tank, though.

You can take out soft vehicles, an armored car, maybe even a light tank with an assault, but going after a big boy will get your squad nothing but dead. Best to keep your distance from heavier armor. I do not believe you can kill one by assaulting it.

[White Eagle]

Thanks guys!

[jomni]

So no "opening the hatch and dropping a grenade"?

[TheBigRedOne]

So no "opening the hatch and dropping a grenade"?

In short, no, probably for a lot of reasons.

The way SB is modeled doesn't get down to individuals, only squads, for one. Most tankers are going to keep their tanks bottled up if enemy infantry is within striking distance of the vehicle, like in an urban environment.

If there's mutually supporting infantry around, imagine trying to run across 40M of open terrain to try to drop a grenade into the tank. Chances are good that you're not gonna get there. Think of the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the infantry are climbing on the German tank, only to get hosed off by a heavy caliber weapon they didn't see. Not pretty.

[Riley D. Smith]

[/quote]
Everything but assaulting a tank, though.

You can take out soft vehicles, an armored car, maybe even a light tank with an assault, but going after a big boy will get your squad nothing but dead. Best to keep your distance from heavier armor. I do not believe you can kill one by assaulting it.
[/quote]

I've tried. I've died.

---

-Fire at range of 1 instead of max range of 2
-Assaults with Panzerfausts don't work for me, the whole team gets wiped out or hurt pretty bad, so I stay at range of 1 when attacking.
-I try to keep my team free of any "pinned" or other states
- Try to use against side or rear armor.
-Does the "ground" mode affect Panzerfausts hits?

Ground Mode does not affect your firing of a Pzfaust. (But it gives you a benefit during any defensive fire.)

Your methods are solid.

Everything but assaulting a tank, though.

You can take out soft vehicles, an armored car, maybe even a light tank with an assault, but going after a big boy will get your squad nothing but dead. Best to keep your distance from heavier armor. I do not believe you can kill one by assaulting it.

I have tried the very same. I died gloriously under the tracks of German steel.

[Rabbit]

JZ has a good article that walks you through the math involved when firing against armored vehicles:

http://sites.google.com/site/jzs-place/j...g-vehicles

[TheBigRedOne]

JZ has a good article that walks you through the math involved when firing against armored vehicles:

http://sites.google.com/site/jzs-place/j...g-vehicles

I thought for vehicles that the PEN value of the weapon, with the armor rating of the vehicle, were the data that determined the outcome, not the lethality. His article goes back and forth between the two.

Am I just confused?

[Rabbit]

Yes, you are confused, but you definitely are in the vast majority when it comes to vehicle combat resolution! The simple answer to your question is that the lethality does indeed affect the outcome.

Vehicle combat resolution is surprisingly hard to understand, but isn't quite so bad once you finally get your head around it. In re-reading both the User Guide and JZ's page, it sounds to me like the combat resolution for vehicles is actually quite similar to the combat resolution for infantry.

For both, a "Fire Value" is calculated using the Lethality, Strength, and Effectiveness of the firing units (see the section called "Lethality and Fire Values" in the User Guide).

For both, a "Penetration Value" is also calculated (see the section called "Vehicle Penetration" in the User Guide). The Penetration Value is essentially the ratio of the firing unit compared to the target unit, but the Penetration Value has various limiting factors that limit it to between 0-1 against infantry and 0-1.5 against vehicles.

The Fire Value gets multiplied by the Penetration Value to yield an adjusted Fire Value. And finally, a combat results calculation is performed using the adjusted Fire Value (see the section called "Combat Results" in the User Guide). If a nonzero combat loss occurs for a vehicle, it results in a kill for the vehicle.

There are lots of other factors involved in all the above, but I've ignored them for to keep things simplified. But the bottom line is that lethality actually does play a significant role.

Another thing to note about this - especially with vehicles, is that no damage can be done if the Penetration Value equals zero, since the fire value (no matter what it is) multiplied by zero will equal zero.

Hth,
Bill