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could the earliest gen of abrams pierce the armor on the newest one?
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Dec 10, 2018 02:43
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Koramei posted:could the earliest gen of abrams pierce the armor on the newest one? The OG M1 with the 105mm vs. an M1A2? The 105 HEAT can definitely get through the back and maybe the sides, but the newer version has better sensors and gun, so good luck sneaking up behind one, and avoiding the three 9kg lawn darts coming your way at a mile (1.6km) per loving second when his buddies see him blow up (and the crew safely bail out, blowout panels in the ammo lockers and all that) and swing their guns around, because tanks travel in groups. From the front, the 105mm HEAT would just give the A2 crew headaches and piss them off. And then you have four of those tungsten lawn darts coming at you, one for each crewman, before your loader can slam another 105 shell into the breech, because the Rheinmetall 120s were already loaded. The A1+ versions are, like the last battleships, not proof against their own gun, though -- there have been a few oopsies in the fog of war* and rather more intentional destructions of tanks that were mobility-killed by an IED or similar. *I remember one story from Gulf War 1 where an M1A1 took a DU "silver bullet" through the front, they hosed out what was left of the driver, replaced him, and kept fighting for two weeks before the tank got sent to depot-level maintenance to have all the radioactive dust scrubbed out and the hole patched. Hope those guys didn't want kids. Edit: in trying to look up the source of that, it appears it's fallen off the internet, and all I could find via  was my own post of the same story in the original (?) version of this thread, circa 2011.
Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 03:28
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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Chillbro Baggins posted:*I remember one story from Gulf War 1 where an M1A1 took a DU "silver bullet" through the front, they hosed out what was left of the driver, replaced him, and kept fighting for two weeks before the tank got sent to depot-level maintenance to have all the radioactive dust scrubbed out and the hole patched. Hope those guys didn't want kids. The debris from a DU penetrator is noise compared to all the other toxic and carcinogenic poo poo that's floating around a battlefield filled with burning vehicles and other things.
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Dec 10, 2018 03:39
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Phanatic posted:The debris from a DU penetrator is noise compared to all the other toxic and carcinogenic poo poo that's floating around a battlefield filled with burning vehicles and other things. Good point, those burning artesian oil wells weren't doing any favors to anybody's health. On the other hand, the Abrams is NBC-sealed, so as long as they keep it buttoned up they're safe from the external pollutants, happily breathing the DU dust that's coating the interior of the vehicle. (But they never button up unless steel rain is falling on them, the commander needs to see. Whatever the case, sucked slightly more for that tank crew than the ones that didn't get own-goaled.)
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Dec 10, 2018 03:45
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Yeah the depleted uranium is the somewhat less radioactive than plain uranium ore stuff that ends up left over when you're trying to pull out the more radioactive stuff for various purposes. The more serious issue is that like most other heavy metals, uranium is toxic outside of the radioactivity. Think of it basically like getting a lot of lead exposure.
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Dec 10, 2018 03:48
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fishmech posted:Yeah the depleted uranium is the somewhat less radioactive than plain uranium ore stuff that ends up left over when you're trying to pull out the more radioactive stuff for various purposes. The more serious issue is that like most other heavy metals, uranium is toxic outside of the radioactivity. Think of it basically like getting a lot of lead exposure. Yeah, that. Also, my hot take on 73 Easting from 2011: I posted:the APC results were pretty funny -- drat near every shell hole in a Bradley (and there were quite a few Bradleys hit) was small and "slightly radioactive," which means depleted uranium penetrator, which means it came from an M1. The report does not say whether they were targeted or just drove between an M1 and a T72. Whatever the case, it turns out an APFSDS lawn dart doesn't do much to a lightly-armored APC, it just goes through and leaves a tiny hole and the crew barely notices. The only friendly-fire hard kill was one Bradley putting a TOW missile into another. IDK what the Iraqi T-72s were firing, but I'm pretty sure only M1A1s had DU bullets at the time. Oops. Chillbro Baggins fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 03:51
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OneTruePecos posted:Lack of resources doesn't explain the east-west difference within the union, though. Was the South even more evangelical (or at least abstemious) than the North in the mid-1800s? New York and the Northwest Territories were the big hotbed for the Second Great Awakening, and I was under the impression that revivalism was discouraged in the South given the fact that many revivalist sects included abolitionist sentiments and African American congregations were seen as a potential avenue for organizing slave uprisings.
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Dec 10, 2018 04:07
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Valtonen posted:The m1 lower hull side drawing there is forgetting the skirt- if you aim below skirtline you’re hardly hitting anything except the torsion bars themselves and the skirt is another 30-40mm of standoff armor.  . Here's another: 65mm looks about right to me. There's some debate as to whether it's some sort of thin composite layer but honestly you're not fitting much special armour inside that. The overall thickness of the side above the wheels (I'm not doing analysis on the wheels because there's nothing to hit behind them) is therefore 30+65+air = 95mm and some sort of extra factor for the air that's hard to work out and going to be slightly different for every projectile. Like I said, eyeballing it most of the high penetration WW2 stuff should do okay against it in perfect conditions which is what we're assuming anyway. quote:M1 turret ammo is sealed behind a blast door so unless the crew is not following SOP, or the door is broken, or loader is just then putting a round in a hit on the turret ammo stowage causes an explosion in the storage that blows off the blow-out panel at the top, directing the explosion away from the tank and crew. quote:Now a hit on the engine bay from any side would very likely mobility kill the tank then and there, and it would require a totally new engine block- which if there are replacements in store can be changed in a matter of hours. (Propaganda claims it’s “less than an hour” but a 88mm going into the block will undoubtedly complicate opening the rear grille and bend some stuff jamming the engine in place) quote:So yes, any end-tier ww2 AT gun can temporarily take out any modern MBT in one or two shots given a free selection for angle of attack, less than 500m range and a minute to freely keep shooting. bewbies posted:First, following one of the SEP upgrades (I think #1 but I'm not sure) American Abrams have composite or heavy armor on every targetable surface, and even heavier stuff on most of the key surfaces. In other words, this assumption is incorrect. FYI, the majority of the SEP upgrades to protection were putting advanced heavy armor on the exact areas you're discussing.  M1A2 SEP V3 http://www.williammaloney.com/Aviation/PattonMuseum/M1A1Abrams/images/07M1A1AbramsRear.jpg M1A1 (image won't attach properly sorry) Note the thickness of the louvers in particular, they haven't been redesigned, they can't be moved backwards because they're attached to the engine exhausts and they protrude by the same amount on both tanks. Composite armour needs to be hundreds of millimetres thick to work properly and there's nowhere to put it. https://www.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/431298.pdf page 12 has stuff on M1A2SA (same as SEP) talking about improved frontal and turret side armour.  SEP V3 prototype, showing steel plates welded on to represent armour increases. Plates on the hull front and the turret front, no plates on the side. quote:Second, I'm unsure how old that Soviet/Russian document is, but if you're posting on the internet, and it claims to be for an A1, then it is at least 25 years old, and probably closer to 30. In other words, it isn't discussing a modern MBT. You can't really draw any conclusions about a post-2014 American Abrams from it, in any case...that's like looking a a blueprint for an IS-2 and trying to apply it to a T-72. quote:Third, I've no idea what that picture is, but there's next to no way it is a modern American Abrams hull, because taking that picture would be illegal, and posting it on the internet wouldn't be a great idea. It is either very old, or a monkey model.  Koramei posted:could the earliest gen of abrams pierce the armor on the newest one?
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Dec 10, 2018 04:16
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There’s no good feasible way to armor out the sides and rear that doesn’t cost you a ton of weight, especially going all the way to something like the 88. Chemical warheads can be defeated differently but a good old fashioned 9cm piece of steel going 900m/s just isn’t something you can reliably armor against without weighing 80 tons. I guess you can go with something like the IS-6 design but you lose an awful lot in the process.
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Dec 10, 2018 04:32
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FrangibleCover posted:. There is definitely none on the rear: the ONS that wound up being the main driver of the funding for the enhancement packages was driven by tanks getting cornholed by low rent RPGs in Iraq... they figured out pretty easily, as you have, that the vanilla A2s were really vulnerable at that spot. I've been on the factory floor watching them retrofitting armor enhancements right in the spot you're talking about. quote:Composite armour needs to be hundreds of millimetres thick to work properly and there's nowhere to put it. Maybe the stuff from the 80s was? I don't really know much about armor from back then. There are modern composites that are a couple of millimeters thick, and they are good. that said the reality of this answer probably depends on how you define composite armor. as a sidenote it looks like the Chinese have developed a brand-new allegedly good razor thin composite material derived from from the 99A tank turret upgrade that they are now trying to market to the armored car segment. I find this amusing. quote:https://www.army.mil/e2/c/downloads/431298.pdf page 12 has stuff on M1A2SA (same as SEP) talking about improved frontal and turret side armour. I swear to god I'm not trying to be a dick but I wrote several sections of that thing. Full disclosure: it was the ones on IFPC and AIAMD and LRPF and GMLRS so nothing about tanks.
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Dec 10, 2018 04:42
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fishmech posted:Yeah the depleted uranium is the somewhat less radioactive than plain uranium ore stuff that ends up left over when you're trying to pull out the more radioactive stuff for various purposes. The more serious issue is that like most other heavy metals, uranium is toxic outside of the radioactivity. Think of it basically like getting a lot of lead exposure. Uranium ions mimic estrogen
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Dec 10, 2018 07:19
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This is probably unrelated to discussions that have been going on here, but I have a question, it might be small, but like a lot of history stuff the answer is probably more complicated and less snappy than one would like, still I'll ask it. It's about the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria, and in particular about its quality and reputation I guess. The reason is that I've heard some conflicting information on it, first I've seen it mentioned as being an elite and prestigious (seems to come up in argumentens/discussions of Atomic bombings vs Soviet declaration of war and invasion), second I've also seen it mentioned, I think when reading about the Battle of Khalkin-Gol that it kind of served as a sort of dumping ground for troublesome officers, I also think I've read of it containing a high proportion of forcibly conscripted Chinese and Korean soldiers who for a myriad reasons I would imagine would be less reliable (and regarded as such by the Japanese). So, yeah essentially what I'm wondering is if someone has any actual facts on this matter, as I'm curious. e: Also might be interest in knowing what its state was at the time of the Soviet invasion, in terms of supply and equipment. Now I am not at all surprised that it crumbled under Soviet attack due to the Japanese inferiority in heavy weapons, especially anti-tank, among other areas. Still was it in a better state than Japanese forces elsewhere? Had it been deprioritized in contrast to Japanese forces in China and the Pacific, I imagine that there might be some supply difficulties when it comes to equipment and such at play here (don't know how much they could produce locally, also I imagine that Japanese inter-service rivalry could really mean that whether or not they received priority may not really be decided based on strategically rational metrics). Randarkman fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 09:14
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Chump Farts posted:Does anyone have good sources detailing what actually happened during pike blocks making contact (Landknecht through pike and shot era)? I'm not really satisfied with any videos or cursory information on the topic, and my university's research page isn't coming up with anything. is there anything specific that you want to know HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 09:42
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HEY GUNS posted:imagine stabbing, but it's 15 feet long. Did early modern pikemen charge? I imagine they would thrust with their pikes, but having read some about Macedonian and Hellenistic phalanxes those were far less static and defensive than it seems popular culture (especially video games) seems to portray. Descriptions seem to indicate that the entire formation would essentially charge into opponents at like a fast walk or however fast they could manage and if it worked out properly it was just utterly devastating (other times such as the battle of Pydna vs the Romans it kind of turned into a disaster though Romans present say that seeing the phalanx charging against them still was utterly horrifying even though it ended up failing terribly).
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Dec 10, 2018 09:46
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Randarkman posted:Did early modern pikemen charge? I imagine they would thrust with their pikes, but having read some about Macedonian and Hellenistic phalanxes those were far less static and defensive than it seems popular culture (especially video games) seems to portray. Descriptions seem to indicate that the entire formation would essentially charge into opponents at like a fast walk or however fast they could manage and if it worked out properly it was just utterly devastating (other times such as the battle of Pydna vs the Romans it kind of turned into a disaster though Romans present say that seeing the phalanx charging against them still was utterly horrifying even though it ended up failing terribly). in fact pikemen were preferred for charges because they tended to be the more experienced soldiers, so they knew what they were doing and had more guts
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Dec 10, 2018 10:20
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Terrifying Effigies posted:Was the South even more evangelical (or at least abstemious) than the North in the mid-1800s?
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Dec 10, 2018 10:30
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HEY GUNS posted:according to southern honor they were less abstemious because being able to withstand the levels of destruction that heavy drinking does to your body was considered brave My limited experience of the modern South is that a) teetotalism is way more common there than many other places But b) it's mostly driven by women and/or old people. Plenty of drinking happens, just not in front of grandma or the pastor. Projecting this backward and then considering armies are mostly young men on their own? I doubt evangelicalism would make much difference.
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Dec 10, 2018 10:48
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If we're still talking about THE LAST TIGER for Battlefield V, I was surprised at how they did a decent job of it without glorifying the Nazis. Yes, you're in a Tiger tank. Yes, we kill dozens of Shermans and mow down hundreds of American troops. How would it be any different? Is there any Call of Duty/Battlefield game in which you don't play as Arnold Schwarzenegger? The previous mission in Norway had us play as a teenage girl killing machine who is utterly unstoppable while recreating a military operation that had as far as I know, no German casualties. Basically the failure was "cliche WW2 FPS gameplay" which I don't think any WW2 FPS has solved yet. The campaigns usually end with some heroic British/American soldier murdering their way through hundreds of zergrushing Nazis who somehow manage to get the upper hand on you even in the closing days of the war, yet it is your objective to HOLD THE _______ until whatever Deus Ex Machina air support comes in and plays the triumphal music. Gameplay-wise, The Last Tiger isn't much different. I wouldn't say it glorified the Wehrmacht, though, beyond the "one-man-army" which is literally every FPS ever. You play as a Tiger crew, made up of: Grizzled Commander Guy: He makes a metaphor 30 seconds into the mission in which he says "I am guilty of horrible Nazi things", but I imagine it went over a lot of heads. Driver: The sardonic wise-rear end. Loader: The young coward who doesn't know what he is doing. Gunner: The fanatical Nazi youngster. In the course of the mission, you drive around a destroyed German city (is it... Cologne?) while fighting the Americans. Almost all of your NPC allies get wiped out in typical WW2 FPS action to make you seem like a badass, or to put a burning halftrack in place to block the street. In this it is at least done in a way that makes it seem like your army is crumbling. The Tiger is basically as invincible as every Sherman or T-34 I have driven around - it can shrug off direct hits and wipe out enemies easily, just like all videogame tanks ever. At the end, it even breaks down without any Allied intervention! During the course of the mission you drive around and see German soldiers strung up on lamp-posts, executed for cowardice. Your own new-guy goes missing and gets executed himself. At the end of the mission you are aiming to evacuate across a bridge, but your own army blows it up before you get there. They lie to you over the radio about you being a rear-guard but instead you are left to die. The crew argues about deserting or surrendering to the Americans. The sarcastic guy attempts to surrender and is shot to death by the Nazi punk. The commander mourns him for awhile, throws away his own medals, and goes to surrender to the Americans. Nazi punk aims a gun at him and fades to black - you are left unaware if the Americans blasted the Nazi punk before he could kill the commander. I think it did a decent job at what it attempted. It let you play as the Germans. You lose. You see a different variety of German perspectives (The Scared Conscript, The Professional Officer, The Fanatical Killer, The Grizzled Veteran). You see the Germans committing war-crimes but do not do them yourself (would it have been better to allow the player to murder some POWS or Jews? I think they did what they could with war-crimes). You can see how morally bankrupt the Nazi government is as it lies to and executes its own troops so they can fight a bit longer for a bunch of bigwigs that just don't give a gently caress. I imagine for the person who is rather ignorant of the war it is quite educational, and it isn't really aimed at people who know intricate details of WW2 history. I find the anti-wehraboo people just as annoying as wehraboos. We get it, Nazi stuff wasn't WUNDERWAFFE that could've won the war if they only had 100 more MAUS tanks. It also doesn't mean someone saying "The Tiger was a pretty powerful tank" requires a screed about WEHRABOO. This reminds me of newly-born atheists who end up as worse than the holy rollers they oppose.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:02
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Wow. If that's true, DICE almost completely plagiarized a Garth Ennis comic. It's about a Tiger crew where the commander is trying to get his tank to the Americans to surrender but has every intention of getting himself killed because of atrocities he's done, and he's the only one who ends up surviving. They have to dodge Gestapo looking for deserters, too. Then at the end, he suicidally rushes what he thinks is a Russian company (after his crew save his life and die in doing so) only to find it's Americans who nonchalantly take him prisoner and deny him the death he sought. Here's the title: https://www.amazon.com/War-Story-Johanns-Tiger-One-Shot/dp/B005G96OF0 BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 11:07
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That doesn't sound similar at all.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:12
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Mr. Grapes! posted:If we're still talking about THE LAST TIGER for Battlefield V, I was surprised at how they did a decent job of it without glorifying the Nazis. Nice meltdown.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:13
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*standing next to a tiger, looking at the transmission*Schadenboner posted:Nice meltdown.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:17
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Schadenboner posted:Nice meltdown. Sorry my bad. I forgot the protocol. TIGER NO GOOD. VIDEOGAME NO GOOD.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:32
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Fangz posted:That doesn't sound similar at all. Really that type of story seems like pretty well trod ground for portrayal of German soldiers late in the war. It's not too far removed from that old movie, die Brücke (the Bridge, from 1959), though there all the leads are these extremely young true believers who really are so young as to not understand what the hell is really going on, until they start dying. Alot of the adults are portrayed as more worn down and beaten, and it also has people being rounded up and executed for cowardice going in both in the background and as a major plot point.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:34
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More than a proper German campaign I would like to play some WW2 FPS that doesn't make you some invincible super-soldier - something closer to the old Operation Flashpoint. As far as I recall in that game you could only eat a bullet or two and then it was all over, with no glowing healthpacks to make it all better. We have a lot of arty walking-simulator games that aren't Traditional Fun, so it'd be interesting to see them pull it off. Despite the boring BLOW UP ALL THE TANKS gameplay I thought the Last Tiger did a good job of making it seem like you're in a terrible situation that is not going to end well.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:41
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Cessna posted:a hypothetical WWIII/Fulda Gap scenario SKREEEE!! LatwPIAT posted:Basically, the 1980s are one big "eeeeeeeeeeeh *shrug*". Stepping back from groggy armorchat for a moment and moving back to galaxy brain cold war talk: the Soviets go through a big ol' modernization round in the 1970s where the T-55s and -62s get swapped for T-64s in forward Tank Divisions. They are now the proverbial 1000 pound gorilla team B liked to big-up all the time. NATO still has to make do with their mostly underarmored and undergunned 1960s designs. Other great features of Western Armies during this timeframe are drug use and long hair. USSR stronk and Brezhnev smiles benevolently while he lords over his seventeen course dinner. The Soviets again cycle through a whole generation of armor during the 80s, mostly moving the1970s tanks to motor rifle and category B formations while the forward tank divisions get all nice new T-64 and T-80 variants with the 'splodey blocks and barrel fired missiles. By that time NATO has more than caught up qualitatively though and the USSR breaks up, among other things, because they spend too much on guns instead of plowshares. The moral of this story is: in a Cold War, eat into your capital for half a modernization round and the other side will bankrupt itself.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:45
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Mr. Grapes! posted:More than a proper German campaign I would like to play some WW2 FPS that doesn't make you some invincible super-soldier - something closer to the old Operation Flashpoint. As far as I recall in that game you could only eat a bullet or two and then it was all over, with no glowing healthpacks to make it all better. I mean would that even work? I mean I remember playing the first Call of Duty back when it came out and beating it on the highest difficulty which made most rifles a 1 or 2 hit kill and severely limited (or removed all together, can't quite remember) health packs. And mostly I was still just killing hundreds of Germans. At its core what you are after is something that is not an FPS, but probably more of an RPG type of game with maybe a couple of FPS segments in them. Or I dunno you make a roguelike thing and you are put in as a German soldier for example defending against the Soviets in 1945, and you are given the objective "survive", the game ends when you die.
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Dec 10, 2018 11:48
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I suppose an interesting way to try it would be something like Battlefield 1's intro, in which you die and respawn as another faceless grunt. It would throw the futility of it at you, at least. "Winning" the battle would involve doing it while not taking a certain percentage of losses. Even in Call of Duty on hard-mode you still get thrown into a hundred contrived situations where you have to sit in a turret as the enemy zerg-rushes at you. I suppose I'd like some game where it was "exciting" to get through a battle with just a handful of kills, rather than hundreds. A scenario in which I need to skirmish through some hedgerows against a squad of ambushing Germans to flank one Tiger with my bazooka because that is what the situation demands, rather than the game. Every anti-tank spot in these games has you conveniently next to a box of unlimited Panzerfausts. I recall a mission in Op: Flashpoint in which the whole objective was just to retreat and survive as your forces collapse around you, and I found it more riveting than fighting waves of Nazis again and again. I figure this would make them have to cut down on my invincible NPC allies with famous voice actors, but nothing kills my immersion more than Sgt. WhatsHisName eating 40 bullets but not dying until the plot decides he is in a tragic moment. I cared far more about my generic NPC buddies in Medal of Honor Allied Assault because they would get killed when shot, and I'd feel some sort of accomplishment from getting through the mission while "Saving Private Jenkins".
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Dec 10, 2018 11:57
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Mr. Grapes! posted:More than a proper German campaign I would like to play some WW2 FPS that doesn't make you some invincible super-soldier - something closer to the old Operation Flashpoint. As far as I recall in that game you could only eat a bullet or two and then it was all over, with no glowing healthpacks to make it all better. Good news! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Front:_Liberation_1944 Which is based on the ARMA series, which was made by the Operation Flashpoint guys. Yes, you still die at the drop of a hat. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 12:11 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 12:04
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Mr. Grapes! posted:At the end, it even breaks down without any Allied intervention! Well at least some parts of the game are historically accurate.
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Dec 10, 2018 12:25
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Randarkman posted:This is probably unrelated to discussions that have been going on here, but I have a question, it might be small, but like a lot of history stuff the answer is probably more complicated and less snappy than one would like, still I'll ask it. It's about the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria, and in particular about its quality and reputation I guess. The reason is that I've heard some conflicting information on it, first I've seen it mentioned as being an elite and prestigious (seems to come up in argumentens/discussions of Atomic bombings vs Soviet declaration of war and invasion), second I've also seen it mentioned, I think when reading about the Battle of Khalkin-Gol that it kind of served as a sort of dumping ground for troublesome officers, I also think I've read of it containing a high proportion of forcibly conscripted Chinese and Korean soldiers who for a myriad reasons I would imagine would be less reliable (and regarded as such by the Japanese). So, yeah essentially what I'm wondering is if someone has any actual facts on this matter, as I'm curious. I don't have a source for you, but I think the conflicting accounts you have are probably due to comparing the Army in 1939 vs in 1944. Over those 5 years the cream was siphoned off to various other fronts that needed it more. At the time of the Soviet invasion it was mid-redeployment from the frontier to a more defensible line. They definitely wouldn't have been able to resist anyway, but a lot of units were caught on the march and the logistics system was in chaos - basically the worst possible position to be in.
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Dec 10, 2018 12:34
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Phanatic posted:It's not. The chassis is steel, sure, but even on the original M1 a lot of what you're talking about up there is composite. I don't think there's hardly anything on the M1A1 that's just plain steel armor. Pretty much every tank from the Cold War was built with a rolled or cast homogenous armour frame, and the M1 does not appear to have been an exception. Many second-half Cold War designs incorporated composite and ceramic materials, but when it comes to loadbearing elements that need to be exposed to a lot of stress, you don't have very many options other than steel and aluminium. I don't know what mad science has been wrought on basic tank design since circa 1995, but "thin, flat structural elements are made of rolled homogenous steel" is one of the safest assumptions to make about a Cold War tank. Now, Frangible didn't specify the thin, structural elements, but the discussion was about shooting the thin rear and sides. Cessna posted:As with the comparison between Tiger tanks and their Allied contemporaries above, maybe this is the case "on paper," where you're comparing raw statistics like armor thickness and gun caliber. However, in the "soft" factors like ergonomics and ease of operations I'd give an advantage to the Western AFVs. I don't think they were "better enough" to offset their disadvantage in numbers in a hypothetical WWIII/Fulda Gap scenario, but I wouldn't write them off entirely either. Certainly. If I were to be a tanker I'd probably want to be inside a reliable, ergonomic tank that's easy to maintain and operate. (That, or a Type 74 because the Type 74 is just so cool and it's supposed to be a real smooth ride because of the suspension) But I think the differences are far less significant on Cold War tanks than on WWII tanks, so you're not going to have tanks are constantly unusable because the transmission breaks down all the time. Unless you are the Swiss. (It also helps that with "design" it's easy to lavish praise on the T-64/T-80 and not concern ourselves with things like the T-72 entering service with a fire control system from the early 50s and being stuck with a 70s not-that-good fire-control system until 1990.) (The Centurion was also a nightmare to maintain. It would take over 100 hours to replace a Rolls Royce Meteor engine.)
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Dec 10, 2018 12:35
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If anyone's interested, there's a nice movie-fied depiction of the 1561 Battle of Kawanakajima between Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen in the movie "Heaven and Earth," and someone put up the battle scenes on youtube. No subtitles though. About 7 minutes in you see two pike blocks come into contact, and it looks like a pretty bad place to be in. Also of interest are the very prominent firearms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxuhmeDLTiI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc42G36JmE8
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Dec 10, 2018 13:20
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heaven and earth and ran were my favorite war movies in high school
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Dec 10, 2018 13:32
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From watching the cinematic, Last Tiger is at least enjoyable to watch and probably as best as you are going to get from a AAA publisher and would've been fine on its own merits in a cultural vacuum circa 2006. It's only the knowledge of alt right chuds furiously doing unmentionable things while playing it and shooting Americans that makes it bad plus some amount of semi-uninformed overhyping of the tiger in the opening cutscene. I think the scenario would be even better in an alternative historical context; fighting in a narrative of a losing war can be oddly compelling; and I think it could be further improved by adding roguelike scavenging elements for your tank; maybe a steampunk setting where you have Not!Germans so you can still have them speaking German but not literally be the Nazi's? It's interesting to think about what a riskier version would be with a AAA budget. I was amused that they had the fuel to keep driving as long as they did and nothing ever broke down. For a WWII game from a major publisher I really want more exploration of other fronts. Unexplored parts of the Eastern front, Manchuria, China, Burma, spy stuff in Shanghai, the Spanish Civil War, Poland in 1939, and so on. Or more alternative history Wolfenstein stuff, adapting like Harry Turtledove stuff. Speaking of, so regarding the question as to whether "Can a WWII tank gun defeat modern armor" in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, I think the numbers were about roughly 3:1 Tigers & Panthers to knock out a Space Lizard tank, and five to one Shermans and usually through side hits or hits under the glacis? Would these be based on 1991 M1's or would they be something else? Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 14:13 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 13:58
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Video games are a medium that requires having fun* and I don't think that works at all for depicting the crimes of Nazi Germany, if the player is on the side doing the awful things. The necessity of making the game fun is always going to destroy (or at least reduce the effect of) the message that what they did was bad and they should have felt bad. * Technically possible to (deliberately) create un-fun games but only if you don't have a production budget you need to recoup and are fine with each person playing once for 5 minutes
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Dec 10, 2018 14:24
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GotLag posted:Video games are a medium that requires having fun* and I don't think that works at all for depicting the crimes of Nazi Germany, if the player is on the side doing the awful things. The necessity of making the game fun is always going to destroy (or at least reduce the effect of) the message that what they did was bad and they should have felt bad. You're referring to the paradox of "Can there truly be an anti-war movie?" which does have similar or a greater degree of problematic issues with respect to games; however games as an artistic medium aren't without good examples such as Spec Ops the Line which depicts your character committing war crimes and generally does a good job at making the player feel awful about it. But there is something not quite correct with what you're saying, games are not necessarily about fun; there is also engagement and an engaging immersive experience will generally have a longer, long lasting impression on its audience than a "fun" game however that is defined. See Dark Souls which people tend to say is difficult enough to be on the "unfun" side of things but is so compelling an experience that people grit their teeth and get better at it and clear the content because there's something about the lore, aesthetics, and rush of adrenaline when you defeat a boss or difficult encounter that leaves its audience returning for more punishment. Like I'm sure a lot of people probably note Dwarf Fortress as probably not being all that fun, but the stories and LPs like Boatmurdered certainly demand your attention. Edit to add: I'd go as far as saying you could probably "fix" the issues of a German WWII campaign by making it mechanically difficult and "unfun" while still being "engaging" enough to not scare away your audience; weapons that don't quite work right, tanks that constantly run out of fuel or breakdown necessitating scavenging for parts, arguing with superiors with dumb orders, droll assignments, american artillery, soviet rocket barrages, snipers, mud, limited supplies and ammo, ambushes that are difficult to fight your way out of way, dying in your sleep to assassins. No win scenarios like being Heydrich's bodyguard on the day he dies, or trying to kill Hitler as part of the July Plot where you gun down other Germans? There's lot of ways to attempt to thread that needle. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Dec 10, 2018 |
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Dec 10, 2018 14:37
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Raenir Salazar posted:Speaking of, so regarding the question as to whether "Can a WWII tank gun defeat modern armor" in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series, I think the numbers were about roughly 3:1 Tigers & Panthers to knock out a Space Lizard tank, and five to one Shermans and usually through side hits or hits under the glacis? quote:I think the scenario would be even better in an alternative historical context; fighting in a narrative of a losing war can be oddly compelling; and I think it could be further improved by adding roguelike scavenging elements for your tank; maybe a steampunk setting where you have Not!Germans so you can still have them speaking German but not literally be the Nazi's? It's interesting to think about what a riskier version would be with a AAA budget.
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Dec 10, 2018 14:43
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i keep saying, the only way to avoid ludonarrative dissonance is to make a flora sandes or adrian carton de wiart simulator
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Dec 10, 2018 14:46
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 10:29 |
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The way I would have approached the campaign would have been to tell the story in flashback form and reveal slowly that the "oh yeah I took out fifty shermans on my own" story is a fabrication, and the main character actually got their medals for having murdered all the other heroic player characters from the other campaigns when they were POWs.
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Dec 10, 2018 14:59
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