Soviet auto-loaders

[kevineduguay1]

Were they that good that they could out shoot weastern tanks?
It was noticed during the first Iraq War that it took a T-72 10 seconds to re-load between rounds. In a battle thats a long time. I dont have the exact quote but a US Tanker of the time said something like this, " I would hate to be a Iraqi tanker in a T-72. After the first round fired it was 1 mississipe, 2 mississipe, and all the way up to 10 mississipe before they could fire again because of their auto-loader. By then we had already returned fire."

Now seeing that most modern Russian/Soviet tanks also fire a ATGM out of the same tube as their sabot and HEAT ammo, why are some of their tanks ROF as high as 8?
This is a great advantage to the Russian tanks as fo the first six shots that they take they actually fire 12 projectiles.
On the other hand Weastern tanks with weapons of 90mm or better only have a ROF of 6?
The French Leclerc is the only exception. It also has a ROF of 8. Did the French sell the tech to Eastern block Countries?
Anyone have a reply that will help me?

[DRG]

Question, do you TEST any of these ideas in the game or just look at stats ? When you play are you actually seeing Iraqi T-72's out gunning Abrams shot for shot? Are you Abrams running out of shots before an Iraqi T-72 in a one to one tank battle?

No, they are not

If you take Iraqi RG T-72's circa mid 1990's with their normal country training and experience / moral modifiers on they have 3 shots per turn. If you take US Abrams they are split about 50/50 4 shots with a few per platoon 3. What would you like us to do... reduce the T-72's to 2 shots? Or boost the Abrams to 4 and 5 shots? Oh wouldn't that be a "fun" game. Why even bother to play? They already slice through the T-72's.

Guess what happens when you take those Iraqi tanks and reduce the ROF down to 5 ?? You'll know this because I'm sure you already tested your theory-------- the number of shots available to the secondary weapons drops 1 point. Still 3 shots on the main gun though !. Hmmmm what happens when I reduce that ROF to 4? Why not a thing. The same numbers come up for main armament and secondary weapons like TMG and CMG.

So, what have we learned? That reducing the ROF has a negligible effect on main gun armament ROF as the main determinator of that number is crew experience and moral and if we did reduce the number of shots available to the Russian built tanks to actually make a difference you could see in the game we all might as well just take up golf because only a complete masochist would waste his time playing with Russian equipment that has 2 shots give that would be the average after you dropped the number by one as you seem to want.

Oh , and one last thing. The code has small penalties built in that affect FC and accuracy when the tank crew is less than 4. So the Russian equipment with the added ROF because of the autoloader has penalties because it has 3 crew members

As for the your question about the French. No, they didn't sell the tech to the east block and if you'd spent even ten minutes testing some of this before pounding out questions on the keyboard you would have found the ONLY thing having 8 ROF does to the Leclerc is give it one extra shot for its CMG and AAMG. That's it. The sum total of 8 ROF vs 6 ROF in real game terms.

And finally, lets take the most expensive Russian tank in the inventory in August 2005. My OOB's have had the points adjusted so in these OOB's that would be a T-80UM1 Bars and throw it up against a M1A2 SEP Abrams. "Country training" is on so this is the way most people would fight these to vehicles. The T-80s are allowed , right down the line through two companies of tanks 3 shots from the main armament and ONE shot from the 9M119M2 Refleks.( and they LOSE that Refleks shot if they move ) Now lets look at the SEP. 4 shots from the main gun for the most part, sometimes 3 but that is, once again, mostly experience and moral that boosts that number upwards. So under normal game conditions the western tanks are already getting 1 extra shot and the code already has a small tweak to penalize the three man Russian crews. It would be as ridiculous to over all game play to reduce the Russian to 2 shots as it would to jack up the western tanks to 4 and 5 shot averages



Don

[Mobhack]

What Don said, really.

Too many folk seem to zoom into the OOB data and fixate on one particular number, without any understanding of the game system, and how things all intermesh. Often these "opinions" are not backed up by a simple reality check in a test scenario or similar.

Crew experience is the main factor here. Also the 3 man knock down on ROF for non MG/autocannon type weapons.

There is no "check box" for autoloader in the game - just an ROF.

The Soviet tanks with this extra point or so of "baseline" ROF need this to counter the kick back for 3 man crews really. They do not have "125mm machine guns", as a simple playtest of a T-72 will show. With the stats, they are usually even in actual main gun shots IN THE GAME ITSELF with western MBT, or perhaps 1 behind.

As to getting the "extra" ATGM - that is the way that the game mecahnism handles cannon-launched ATGM, same as with the Sheridan. The ATGM requires to have its own separate weapon slot, since as far as the game is concerned it is a separate weapon.

Andy

[Shadowcougar]

Mobhack said:


As to getting the "extra" ATGM - that is the way that the game mecahnism handles cannon-launched ATGM, same as with the Sheridan. The ATGM requires to have its own separate weapon slot, since as far as the game is concerned it is a separate weapon.

Andy

and the Sheridan works.
I do wonder if the T-80 and other tanks suffer the real problem with the 152 gun launcher. The shock of the gun screws up the electronics of the missile control system.

[kevineduguay1]

As with the Sheidan a Russian tank has to stop, or at least slow down to fire a ATGM out of the main gun tube.

The weapons system on the Sheridan also was rejected by the US because it could not fire fast enough. it was kept as a secondary weapons system, but in the end it was dead MEAT! Not enough armor and a slow gun.

Sort of like a Russian tank.

[PlasmaKrab]

I have to agree with what Don said, but I still think there is a minor incoherency in the ROF parametering: how come the ROFs on autoloading tanks depends so much on crew training, since one of the main advantages of the thing, faster than hand loading or not, is that you can give it away to less-trained crew without loader and have a decent ROF? The ROF determination should be mostly technical, either slower on Russian tanks (?) or faster for ither autoloaders (Strv-103, Type-90, Leclerc...).

I guess this point can be turned out by relating to the fact that the game "ROF" (i.e. shots-per-turn) takes many other factors into account and is no exact "gun reload delay" except for artillery. In that perspective the crew has a lot to do with it: what is the point of autoloading your gun in 4 sec when the (inexperienced) crew takes one more minute to zero in on the target?

Sigh, I guess I contradicted myself yet again...
Anyway, I hope I made some kind of point though!

Shadowcougar said:
I do wonder if the T-80 and other tanks suffer the real problem with the 152 gun launcher. The shock of the gun screws up the electronics of the missile control system.

Probably not, remember that the Sheridan was having these problems even with standard gun rounds because of the huge caliber/ propellant mass relating to the vehicle mass. Modern Russian tanks fire lighter missiles from their standard 125mm gun which they have no big problem firing in general cases. And I guess the amount of propellant charge used to fire the missiles isn't that huge, since the missile will be propelled on a further part of its trajectory, and you would risk smashing up the missile's electronics anyway...

[kevineduguay1]

Some very good replies!

Now can someone explaine why Unit #584 125mm2A45ATG in the Russian OOB only has a ROF of 5?

Also what about the JSIII and T-10 with the 122mm gun. Should they have the same ROF as any Weastern tank with a gun of 90mm or above? Now remember this is 2 part ammo vs 1 part ammo, and no auto loader.

[kevineduguay1]

Russian T-80, ROF of 7. South Korean T-80ROK, ROF of 8. Why?

[DRG]

"Now can someone explaine why Unit #584 125mm2A45ATG in the Russian OOB only has a ROF of 5?"

Did you bother to look at the other AT guns and their ROF.? The bigger the gun the lower the ROF for ATG. An 85mm is 7, a 100mm is 6, and a 125mm is 5. It's a perfectly logical progression and makes perfect sense to me for that weapon.




"Russian T-80, ROF of 7. South Korean T-80ROK, ROF of 8. Why? "

IDK whoever put it into the OOB probably though since it's "westernized" in South Korean hands so it MUST be better than the Russian version so it should have a higher ROF. Did YOU look at what effect that one ROF makes in the game? I doubt it, or you wouldn't have mentioned it. It make no difference to the main armament, none. A typical ROK tank company with 8 ROF for that tank averaged between 3,6,6,- and 4,6,6- and a company of the same tanks with a 7 ROF average 3,5,5,- and 4,6,6,- so the net sum total is an extra shot with the AAMG's for a few of the tanks.


"Also what about the JSIII and T-10 with the 122mm gun. Should they have the same ROF as any Weastern tank with a gun of 90mm or above? Now remember this is 2 part ammo vs 1 part ammo, and no auto loader. "

The explanation from the previous post didn't mean anything at all to your did it? Do you want them to be reduced to 2 shots? That's the only alternative here. Would it make you happy if the T10's ROF was reduced to 4? I would think it would given you seem to base your questions on the stats in the game rather than what happens in the game. If T-10's were 4 ROF would that seem "fair" that this big clumsy Russian tank with two part ammo now has a ROF number 2 points lower than a "western" tank? Did you run any experiments to see what that would do? It lowers the number of shots of the MG's. I could reduce it to ONE ROF and all that would happen is the secondary armament doesn't get as many shots.



Don

[MarkSheppard]

This is a very very good thread, for the information coming out concerning the ROF/FC/ etc interplay in the game; I'll definitely be condensing it for my "unit creation document"