How different/better is anti-armor/tank-v-tank combat in 2.0/2.2?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

I'd like to adapt it to 1st edition, if possible.

[pmulcahy11b]

Vehicle combat in v1 is...crunchy, to put it mildly. It can take a whole night to fight a 10-minute battle if several vehicles are involved. Vehicle combat in 2.2 is oversimplified, but far easier to run.

Your biggest conversion problem will be the vehicle hit location tables. I used to spend hours figuring them out for each vehicle. Figuring them out will make you want to tear your hair out. Armor value conversions are a breeze by comparison.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Shame about it being oversimplified.

I don't mind the crunch, but there can be a case of too much...sounds like 2.0 overcorrected the other way!

[leonpoi]

I've played both and I reckon you could use v2/2.2 straight into v1. This is because the armour penetration and large calibre rules in v2/2.2 are on a different "system" and scale than small arms fire ; hence you could just pick them up and move them in.

I never liked V1 in practice, but I liked it a concept.

I liked v2.2 - I found it quick and also it gives (in my mind) interesting results.

In summary for v2/2.2 -
- weapons have a penetration number, that often varies with range for kinetic projectiles
- vehicles have an armour value, that depends on the vehicle facing, turret vs hull, reactive / spaced armour etc (vs HE / HEAT)
- these values can be as small as 3 or 4 for light APC, 30-40 for light tanks, 100-200+ for heavy vehicles
- if you score a hit on a vehicle, roll 2d6 add PEN subtract Armour - that's your damage
- then there are a series of tables you roll on and reference that depends on the penetrating damage
- depending on the penetrating damage, these tables will give different results and different number of results (minor and major) (e.g. crew hits, gun hits, fuel, engine etc etc, i.e. the same components in v1)
- then you determine the outcome of each hit

With PEN and Armour being compared with 2d6 rolled what this means in practice is that weapons that are closely matched to armour tend to be a combination of non-penetrations and minor damage (mostly crew hits) depending on the 2d6 value rolled. If PEN >> Armour then the 2d6 doesn't really matter and you're much more guaranteed to cause something serious to the target.

Beyond being quick, the things I like about it are that you can get multiple damage results very easy and it's fairly easy to imagine why it happened (e.g. multiple crew hits could be spalling, you can get multiple component damage etc)

[edit] the only thing you might need to think about is how to handle crew hits - in v1 the damage left in the projectile transfers to the crew member, in v2/2.2 (from memory) a crew member gets 1d6 hits of spall each doing 1d6 damage (it's not too dissimilar to a grenade fragmentation roll); it will be easy enough I think to make rules for it. One thing that's kind of cool in v2.2 is that there are instant death rolls for head and chest hits, so getting hit by fragments is actually very serious if you are not wearing flak / helmet (and even then the helmet only protects some of the time)

[swaghauler]

I took my cues from BattleTech. The reprint of 2300 AD also uses this system for ship combat now.

I divide a piece of paper into 3 columns with 20 lines in each column. The Left Column represents the vehicle's left side. The Center Column represents the front and back arcs. The Right Column represents the vehicle's right side arc. I number the lines from 1 to 20 and I then place components on that table using the V1 hit charts as a guide. When a hit occurs, you simply roll a 1D20 and look on the axis (left, right, front/rear) to see what specific item was hit. I do a sheet for both hull and turret.

As for DAMAGE, I already put up an abbreviated version of my system in CHICO's 25 years later thread. You can find it there. I will post my system in detail when I have more time for those of you who have PM'd me.