Tank of World War2 stats not very exact ?

[Currahee]

I think you have made some good points. I'm not sure where your last number in the ratings comes from; I'm only finding five ratings for each tank. But I do think some of these things can be partially explained.

First, I don't believe the speed of the vehicle enters into the gun rating; but the rate of fire, and efficiency of the fire control system, do. Norm explained this to me some years back. This would include the speed of turret traverse. This would partially explain the ratings of the Sherman and the M18. But the M18 has a low armor rating, because of the open turret. So it combines excellent fire control and a modern, effective gun designed to defeat armor, with lack of protection for the crew!

I do think the Cromwell was well armored, I'd have to compare it to the Tiger to respond to that point; but generally, armor is rated higher if it's sloped.

I agree that the M-3 Grant/Lee should have a slightly higher AT rating, and probably also a lower defense rating, because of its high silhouette.
If I were designing an African scenario with the M-3 present, I'd consider fixing it.

Finally, one thing TOAW III can't really account for, is the difficulty of getting really heavy afv's over rivers and through rubble, as well as their inordinate fuel usage. And there are other imponderables; a gamer would always prefer to have all heavy, main battle tanks, because of course, they have the highest ratings; that raises the question of why nations would even build medium and light tanks. The answer, I think, is that a light tank is a wonderful thing, if it's somewhere a heavy tank can't get to. We do get an anomalous result in TOAW if a unit with all lights goes up agains a unit with all heavies; in reality, and under competent management, we would think the lights would avoid the heavies, or at least avoid giving them a clear shot. So I really think a lot of the defense ratings of the light tanks should be increased (ie, not being seen at all, is even better than low silhouette and sloped armor!). But you have to be careful there, because the lights and mediums get to fire in combat, so they can't really be invisible. Altho, you could make them invisible, and then give them only an anti-personnel rating, on the theory that they'd be employed principally against soft targets.

A lot of this works out ok, if the OB's are realistic; it's rare to have Stuarts matched up against Tigers; although, it could happen.