Poll: morale and routing

[Arryn]

The odds of the 76mm M1A1 gun to penetrate Tiger II frontal armor at even point-blank range (far shorter than 500m) was virtually nil. True, the gun could kill at side or rear aspects, but you first had to survive to get such a shot, and that was problematic at best, given the lethality and range of the Tiger's gun. The Tiger II's main weakness (besides an appalling lack of mobility) is that you never found them in sufficient numbers that they couldn't (eventually and at great cost) be surrounded and thus expose their less-defendable aspects. The Germans, being no fools on the battlefield, understood this and tended to compensate by turning their tanks into semi-mobile pillboxes, forcing the allies to attack from the front. The allies typically responded by just pounding them flat from the air. The best way to get rid of any tank.

The M26 and M36 arrived too late in the war to be significant in any battles, same as for the soviet 'stalin' tanks (the design forerunner to all modern russian tanks).

The $ figures you cite for the German and Soviet war economy are meaningless, and ludicrous. They fail to account for real national production. Worse yet, the soviets were notorious for "cooking the books" to hide the true cost of their military. Also, the Germans extensively used slave labor, which lowered their costs significantly. A much better way to gauge economic strength is to measure the quantities of raw materials consumed into the production of armaments, or to simply measure the output (not in units, but in tons). The Germans did not even remotely match Soviet military production of small arms, artillery, and tanks. To claim that by the Germans spending as much as the Soviets (a dubious claim by itself) they had similar industrial capacities is absurd.

American submachineguns were markedly inferior to their German counterparts. So much so that GIs made a habit of picking up and using captured German weapons, despite having ample supplies of their own arms. The US bazooka was also distinctly inferior to the panzerfaust and panzerschrek. The only thing the bazooka was better than was the even crappier british PIAT. Of course, for the GI, a bazooka was better than having no bazooka at all, and trying to face a tank.

The Sherman (75mm models) were by no means superior to the Mark IV F-J models (and not even remorely close to the Panther), combatwise. The german tank had a far better gun and a lower profile, making it harder to hit. The Sherman's claim to fame (besides sheer numbers of them) was it's mechanical reliability compared to the german tanks, and it's superior mobility. Countering this was the Sherman's noted tendency to explode when hit, and the ease of hitting it.

The M26/M36 could defeat all German tanks, but that's meaningless because the same could be said about any German tank mounting a long 75mm or any 88mm gun versus any American tank. What mattered was how many tanks were available. It's that which heavily disfavored the Germans. Losing through being overwhelmed by sheer numbers. OTOH, the numerical superiority of the allies would not have mattered as much had just one of two things been different: had they not had total air supremacy, or had Hitler not been running the war. (In Dominions terms, it doesn't matter how good your units are if the player wielding them is a fool/idiot/moron.)

Can we please stop discussing WW2? It's irrelevent to Dominions, as Johan has already pointed out.

[Boron]

arryn : try steel panthers world at war .
they have every model included and used the REAL penetration values and armors of all tanks of ww 2 .

btw the "panzerschreck" and the "panzerfaust" were built AFTER the bazooka from the germans .
they developed them after captured bazookas from africa !

same with the panther . it was intended as a copy of the t34 tank .


the germans were good at target optics e.g.
and their cannons were a bit better than the american and soviet ones .
but not the british 17 pounder gun .
both the panther gun and the 17 pounder gun were 75mm / 76,2 mm so the same caliber .

until the firefly and the quite unsuccessful challenger the brits just couldn't build their 17 pounder gun into a tank .




ok lets stopp ww 2 discussion .
i just took it as a real life history example that in world war 2 every single soldier did his part for victory .

if you say that was world war 2 .
now in iraq some iraquis/terrorists who have old russian anti tank weapons etc. still defeat abrahams main battle tanks with special guerillia tactics .


in dominions 2 this would be the militia / light inf .
but in dominions 2 you can't make them a decent weapon in endgame no matter how hard you try .


the problem is just that a FOOL doesn't win against a experienced player in dominions .
but so he doesn't in CHESS OR STARCRAFT TOO .


in chess or starcraft though all units are useful during the whole game for something .
in dominions e.g. militia is always useless , most national troops are quick useless and lategame it is only who can field higher amounts of scs / battlemages .




heck dominions is great but i am more and more convinced that i have a point with my upkeep demanding .
hopefully johan or kristoffer will realize this and at least consider it for dominions 3

[Arryn]

Boron said:
arryn : try steel panthers world at war .
they have every model included and used the REAL penetration values and armors of all tanks of ww 2 .

I have this game already, but have not played it in several years. BTW, I cite historical behavior of arms, not game behavior. Even the best of games sometimes fail to get things right. Games use theoretical (ideal), or proving-ground data, not real-world (statistical) data. Even SPWAW. Real-world performance is never as good.

Boron said:
btw the "panzerschreck" and the "panzerfaust" were built AFTER the bazooka from the germans .
they developed them after captured bazookas from africa !

The panzerfaust predates the bazooka. They were developed independently by the two nations, with the Germans starting development several months ahead of the US. The Germans did, however, copy the bazooka to create the panzerschreck.

The issue with the brit 17pdr wasn't so much a case of not being able to build a tank around this good gun (which was, indeed, a problem due to its recoil), but more a question of the allies failing to see the need for a high-velocity cannon to counter the latest German tanks. Pretty much a case of the allies repeating the mistakes the Germans made a couple of years earlier in underestimating the Soviets.

[Reverend Zombie]

To all who have contributed to the WWII discussion here:

tank you very much!

[Thufir]

Reverend Zombie said:
tank you very much!

<groan>

[Arryn]

Thufir said:

<groan>

Actually, he's quite ingenious. The best way to end an undesired topic is to throw a monster pun into the gears. He's scored a mobility kill as we're too busy coughing, wheezing, and/or clutching our sides to drive on (continue posting).

[Gandalf Parker]

Not to kill an OT thread (really, its not a problem, there are so few) but if you REALLY want to discuss this there are some other game here at Shrapnel which make extensive use of tanks. The developers and players in those Groups have extensive researching/opinion backgrounds in that area. If you do a "search" in all forums for some of the units you feel familiar with you will get an idea of what forums will flock to the topic.

Just a thought. If not then please carry on.