How do you handle vehicular combat?

[Milano]

Hello all! I watched Fury while playing GT Mius Front the other day. And I was thinking, how do you all handle Armored combat and damage? I work off and on with my own version of rules that are simple and effective. I am going to admit that I have only been in tanks twice, and APCs occasionally, and I will admit to never been shot at in either. So, my experience is limited to movies and what I've read. So could I get some ideas on what you all do?

I see that ricochets could be fairly common with AP type of rounds. I would think that hitting an APC with a main gun from a tank is disastrous either way. And Twilights armor ratings are applicable to a 90 degree shot, which is rare. But what about Tank vs Tank or IFV vs IFV combat? How would you all handle ricochets? Subsystem damage with HEAT vs Sabot? What about Spalling? Is that even applicable to vehicles designed since say the 60's?

[CDAT]

Originally Posted by Milano

Hello all! I watched Fury while playing GT Mius Front the other day. And I was thinking, how do you all handle Armored combat and damage? I work off and on with my own version of rules that are simple and effective. I am going to admit that I have only been in tanks twice, and APCs occasionally, and I will admit to never been shot at in either. So, my experience is limited to movies and what I've read. So could I get some ideas on what you all do?

I see that ricochets could be fairly common with AP type of rounds. I would think that hitting an APC with a main gun from a tank is disastrous either way. And Twilights armor ratings are applicable to a 90 degree shot, which is rare. But what about Tank vs Tank or IFV vs IFV combat? How would you all handle ricochets? Subsystem damage with HEAT vs Sabot? What about Spalling? Is that even applicable to vehicles designed since say the 60's?

My experience is with M1's, and a bit of looking at other vehicles that have been shoot (not in the when shoot). With the M1 (my guess is really any main battle tank, with the exception being the Merkava)) it is really all or nothing armor. If a round penetrates it will likely do so much damage that it will effectively destroy the tank and kill or seriously wound the entire crew in that location (turret with loader, gunner and commander, or body with driver). In real life any hit that takes the tank out of combat will have rendered the crew out of action as well, for game purposes to make it a bit less extreme I could see going with something like a turret side shot that takes the tank out only killing the crew on that side (facing the front of the M1's turret that is loader on the left, gunner and commander on the right) and injuring the other side, but saying that the main gun (that is a big hunk of metal in between them) blocking most damage.

As for lesser armored vehicles shot with anti-tank weapons, from my post battle damage assessments, if you are in it you are dead. Now when hit with weapons that are not designed to kill tanks, it will vary as what I was told and what I saw being very different. I have no first hand experience with any hostile vehicles being shot with less the the biggest gun we had, but did have the chance to do some extensive shooting of some old M113 hulls in training. My unit went after a British unit who was using up to the 30mm on a Warrior (We were using AP black tip, or green tip for 5.56, not sure what the British were using but know it was practice for the 30mm). After we shot at them and we used .50 BMG, M240, M249, and M16A4's as I said all with black tip except the M16 with green tip, we were able to go and look at the vehicles (No explosive were allowed on the range so no UXO hazard). First what I was told for years would happen, the 5.56 by the time we fired off a magazine in to a general area would penetrate, the 7.62Nato would go through it and bounce around in side, and the .50 would make Swiss cheese out of it.

Now what actually happened the 5.56 made small pockmarks in the aluminum armor and even our best shoots were not able to get a tight enough group to make a noticeable difference. The 7.62 NATO put bigger pockmarks and small gouges, the .50 left noticeable gouges with metal removed, and we could see were the 30mm TP had hit they left big (fist size) dents. It has been years sense I did this, but if I remember correctly each rifle (about 30 with about five per vehicle) got three or four magazines, each machine-gun(with two m249, and one each M240, and M2 per target vehicle) got two belts for the primary gunner, and one for the secondary. I do not know how long the vehicles had been out on the range, but even if we go on the assumption that we were the second unit to have shoot at them, having said this, nothing penetrated, and if it had on the new (up to date) versions you have anti-spalling armor inside that should catch a bit before it would injure/kill anyone inside (the exception being the driver on the M113, not sure but would guess other APC's have something like this, if not better).

Some other notes/thoughts, I did not look closely at the ones that I did not shoot at, so can not say with 100% that there were no penetrations on them, but based on the one that I did shoot at I am very confident that there were not. For the .50 we used black tip, not SLAP as I understand it SLAP is much better at penetrating armor so it might have, and I am fairly confident that anything larger than a machine-gun shooting war stock ammo would take it out in no time flat, things like the 20-25mm you might (and this is best guess) be able to take a few rounds before the anti-spalling armor fails, so if you are quick enough the troops could be getting out before rounds start bouncing around inside, but as I said this is just a guess.

TLDR - Anti-tank ammo either kill a tank or do really nothing, anything smaller kill it dead. Smaller weapons armor on light armored vehicles is better than I thought.

[Milano]

Thanks for the heads up. Any thoughts on ricochets? Any tankers here that have shot at old M48s and seen them? Are they likely with modern ammunition?

As an aside, why not the Meverka?

[CDAT]

Originally Posted by Milano

Thanks for the heads up. Any thoughts on ricochets? Any tankers here that have shot at old M48s and seen them? Are they likely with modern ammunition?

As an aside, why not the Meverka?

First, all tanks are built with the balanceing act of firepower, armor/survivablity, and mobility. The Meverka is built around crew survivability as number one, so you may take out the tank, but the crew will very likely survive, compared to the M1 we were always told that it was unlikely we would survive anything that takes out the tank.

As for ricochets are you talking main gun rounds or small arms? Small arms first, they will have expended most of there energy hitting the tank, and so not do much to anything armored, something not so armored (like a human) likely would be injured (possibly very badly) but even here I think you are likely looking at no more than 5-10ft hazard area (maybe even less for things like 9mm and such). We even had a request for the other tanks to shoot us, we would ask them to scratch our back, they would turn the 240 or .50 on us (mostly to get PBI off of us). If you are talking about main gun rounds first thing to remember is that they come in two types, chemical (HE, HEP, HESH, HEAT and the likes) and solid (AP, APDS, APFSDS and the like) for the chemical they will either go boom, or become a UXO, but ricocheting is not the main worry here, and for the most part can be ignored (if you want to deal with the UXO that is a different issue). For the solid shot, I have never seen what war stock looks like after hitting a hard target, but have seen the target practice rounds after they hit one. There is still a lot of metal to them, and it is still moving at a fair speed (nothing like what it was, but still has some speed to it), how ever at least the TP ones are very badly bent so not likely to fly with any predictable path, and not for very far. They would be a series concern for any dismounts around, but not likely to be a threat to any armored vehicle (DU rounds very well may be an exception to this, as they are shelf sharpening, so much more likely to still have a point and so may be straighter. One other thing about the DU rounds is that they burn, good when you penetrate a tank, not so good after it leaves said tank (target), or you miss, as they makes it more likely that to have a viable round going someplace.

[pmulcahy11b]

Well short answer: Normal-sized engagement, T2K 2.2 rules. large engagement, Last Battle. I used to have counters and AT stats for just about eny behicle or weapon I could think of at the time, but alas, the box they were in didn't make it back from Ft Bragg, my last duty station.