There’s some amount of calculation happening here with what kind of round you’re firing and where it hits.
This HEAT round detonated against the outside edge of a track, so a lot of its energy went into making a pretty disco show in the gap between the track edge and the hull.
However, the central core of liquid metal went through the hull, through the gunner’s right leg and out the far side of the tank.
Does it do the same thing with kinetic rounds, show you what happens?
Yes - you can see penetration and exit, spalling, round fragmentation and route through the cabin, and any… carbon-based obstacles it meets along the way.
You also see a different behaviour from them outside the tank to the HE rounds - they won’t be deterred by hitting a track edge side on, but you do see skips on narrow angle contacts and you can hit a tank you’re not aiming at by having a round deflect off your target.
Here’s an APFSDS round that went through the driver’s viewport and fragmented over his shoulder, so none of the pieces hit him.
APFSDS penetrated the turret, but then lodged in the gun breech. However, fragments bounced off the gun breech and hit the gunner in the arm.
Smaller calibre rounds are also included. Here’s a .50 going in through the back of an armoured car, through both of the gunner’s lungs and then giving the driver a headache.
You don’t see this sort of thing as it happens. But at any point you can press “END” to instantly finish the battle and drop into AAR mode, that lets you track through every shot fired in the game and fly along its track from origin to endpoint.
This game will give new meaning to the term “exploded view”
Seems more like a ballistics/energy simulator than a game!
Figured as its SPI this might belong in here. Great channel. Sword and the Stars.
vyshka
7702
I never played that, but I loved AH’s Stellar Conquest. I remember later playing Reach for the Stars and thinking they just made Stellar Conquest into a computer game.
GHPC does that thing I like from Graviteam Tactics: Mius Front, where a tank doesn’t stop moving just because everyone inside is suddenly dead.
Oh I loved that in Graviteam!!! thats awesome! Game looks fun!
Brooski
7706
You know, just like Hitler and Stalin.
Heh, though sometimes those evil bozos did get into the nitty gritty, usually with disastrous results I think. Hardly the thing I’d want to model a game on, though…
Based on my reading I would argue that Hitler and Stalin’s personal interventions were on the whole better than the advice of their general staff.
Two main examples are Hitler’s stand fast order, which in my view saved the German army during the winter of 41 and Stalin’s insistence on applying pressure across the whole front to create weakness and not concentrating on just one (Mars /Saturn + later offensives).
Fascinating subject.
The problem is that for every time they got it right (like a broken clock I suppose) you have the constant meddling that caused untold problems. Hitler’s constant presence and interventions in German war production and R&D decisions contributed a lot to the overall failure of their war machine IMO. The worst of Stalin’s stuff might well have pre-dated the war, when he gutted the officer corps in the Purges, I don’t really know that much about his wartime decisions.
Overall I’m pretty sure that neither the Wehrmacht nor the Red Army benefitted much from their supreme leader’s fingers in the pie on balance, but as you note, a fascinating subject with a lot of different angles.
Well put! yeah their “eye for a gun” was pretty awful. A compare an contrast with Churchill (who was a meddler by nature) and Roosevelt who was not is also interesting.
rant mode on:
It burns my balls that the loathsome fascist Hirohito turned a blind eye to the war he started and avoided the death penalty he richly deserved by feigning ignorance of his war crimes. he always weasels out of accountability in this kind of examination. I just want to take a moment to figuratively spit on his grave as well as Hitler and Stalin’s :)
rant mode off:
Have you read Japan: 1941 by Eri Hotta? Fascinating look at how Japan got into a war that was (blindingly) obviously unwinnable. Hirohito doesn’t come out well, but neither does anyone else.
Ooh thank you I will! Sorry to go crazy there! I got triggered :)
I agree about Hirohito, who was all for the war when it appeared to raise Japan’s power and prestige, but I still think MacArthur did the right thing (I don’t say that often, I have little regard for MacArthur) keeping him in power. Postwar Japan would have turned out quite differently, imo, and not for the better, if not for that.
SamS
7714
The fact Hirohito was still Emperor during my lifetime is one of those historical facts that weirds me out. (See also - realising it’s been longer since I was born to now than from when I was born to WW2.)
