Author Topic: Why do tracked tanks "tip/list?" (Read 479 times)

brady · « **on:** September 24, 2002, 06:52:56 AM »

Seriously folks any clues as to why AH tanks do this, because I can not for the life of me see any resemblance to reality in this effect.

Pooh21 · « **Reply #1 on:** September 24, 2002, 06:59:16 AM »

the Hispanos deflate your tires of course!

I know how my first Tiger sortie will end, ungloriously from the 1st pass of a spitfire or Wildcat. Bring up the old damage list and find out Im am now sitting in a metal box that is smoking and most likely onfire. While various peices o tank lay scattered on the ground.

GRUNHERZ · « **Reply #2 on:** September 24, 2002, 07:51:37 AM »

This has been one of the worst AH GV modeling annoyances to me.

Amboss · « **Reply #3 on:** September 24, 2002, 08:50:26 AM »

Yeah, and it's among those things of why I am not particularly looking forward to the new tanks: all those Tigers being strafed to death with machine gun fire of various calibers...

-Amboss

AcId · « **Reply #4 on:** September 24, 2002, 10:30:31 AM »

My guess would be that HTC did this to give a visual que to the user that a track has been deemed inoperable to avoid a scenario in which the user assumes everything is still fine and attempst to maneuver only to discover something is amiss and likely checks the damage list and verifies the track has been disabled.

I agree it may not be realistic, but I would think it was done as a gameplay thing.

HFMudd · « **Reply #5 on:** September 24, 2002, 10:42:02 AM »

Quote

I know how my first Tiger sortie will end, ungloriously from the 1st pass of a spitfire or Wildcat.

Not via Ostwind?

I can hardly wait for the thread titled, "i lost my PERKED tiger 2 an ostie!"

Mudshark · « **Reply #6 on:** September 24, 2002, 10:58:20 AM »

Not to naysay anyone here....but....
I served on a m110 howitzer which is tracked, and I remember very well one occasion when our driver peeled a track. The howitzer did have a noticable list to it. The road wheels quite literally sank into the soft Indiana dirt (Camp Atterbury, anyone else been to that little piece?) What a job that was to get the track in place.

Just my 2 pfennigs on it.
Mudshark

Monk · « **Reply #7 on:** September 24, 2002, 11:07:06 AM »

We threw track alot of times on a M1, lists pretty good.

brady · « **Reply #8 on:** September 24, 2002, 11:34:48 AM »

Could be the diferance in suspenshion sys, I have never seen a picture of a tracked Vehical from WW2 that had a list, the torshion bars are still putting preshure on the ground wheather or not the track is conected or not, look above no list in that pick.

Monk · « **Reply #9 on:** September 24, 2002, 12:03:10 PM »

I guess the wieght would make a differance too. Track is thicker on modern Tanks also. More space to sag.

Amboss · « **Reply #10 on:** September 24, 2002, 12:41:15 PM »

Of course it will be an inch or two lower where the tracks are gone but that's not really the kind of list we experience in AH, and definetly not enough to flip your tank. We are talking 25+ tons on wheels here.

But I guess that's exactly the problem with tanks in AH. They have the same ground characteristics like airplanes, and if you loose one wheel on an airplane, you'd prolly list the way the tanks do when you loose a track. And it would explain the ease of flipping tanks over.

Oh and btw, my 25+ ton tank is not in the least bit impressed by a tree ramming me at 25mph (yes, I can drive, it's the trees that try to crash me!

)

-Amboss

Shiva · « **Reply #11 on:** September 24, 2002, 03:33:12 PM »

Quote

Could be the diferance in suspenshion sys, I have never seen a picture of a tracked Vehical from WW2 that had a list, the torshion bars are still putting preshure on the ground wheather or not the track is conected or not, look above no list in that pick.

A Tiger I has a ground pressure, with combat tracks 72.5cm wide and a footprint of 361cm, of 1.04 kg/cm^2. Remove the tracks, and all the weight is being borne on the 75mm road wheels. There were five 'lines' of road wheels, each line of which would have a ground contact of about 1/4 of the footprint. So, when a track comes off, the support area changes from 2.62 m^2 to 0.338 m^2 -- increasing the ground pressure by a factor of more than 7.7, to 8.04 kg/cm^2.

An advertisement for a tracked Bobcat skiploader describes how, with its ground pressure of only 3.8 lb/in^2, it will only sink 6-8 inches into mud that's 10-15 inches thick. The ground pressure of a Tiger 1 with combat tracks is four times that; the ground pressure of a de-tracked Tiger 1 is thirty times that.

If you look at the picture above, the Tiger is sitting on a metalled (i.e., concrete) road surface; this has many times the resistance to pressure that open ground would have, which is why you don't see the tank listing.

Of course, you could just come up snake-eyes on your luck roll, and wind up seriously tilted:

Seagoon · « **Reply #12 on:** September 24, 2002, 04:33:35 PM »

Brady, it is believed that the following picture was critical to the HT staff in modeling tipping due to track loss for the new Tiger....

brady · « **Reply #13 on:** September 24, 2002, 06:10:34 PM »

LOL:)

In the original Picture the tank is still on the tracks, if u look closely you can even see this:) Now when incombat and stoped and I get "tracked" how am i suposed to list when the road wheals are still on the track? or are those rounds riping that track clean out from under me...lol.

Now lets supose I am moving and i get "tracked" i keep moving untill the track passes the drive sproket, at which point I slew to one side since I have driven off the track, but i would asume that most of the tank would still be on the track just the front few road wheals would dig in and stop me. Of course if i wanted i could try and realy bugger things up and move the tank on the only track I had, but why on earth would i do that? O wait because in this freaky reality I have to to because to bring my gun to bear I half to spin my tank that has listed SO bad that i can not even shoot over the high side of my list....lol

So what we asume that AH has soft ground to help explane away this gamey aspect of GV damage modeling.

My point and goal is this, the curent "tracked" damage effect is a bit over done and I think it would realy help to bring a little more realism to the GV aspect of Ah to see it done away with or at the very least minimised in it's effect.

How abot we do away with the list, and keep the rest of the "tracked" effect's.

brady · « **Reply #14 on:** September 24, 2002, 06:15:57 PM »

Note: On the first pic of this thread.

The Tiger tank had two set's of tracks, one was for use when the tank was loaded on rail cars. the other for all normal operations. The normal width of the Tiger tracks was to wide for the German rail system, so they came up with a narworer set that was put on priour to transport, then they retracked the tank with the wider tracks when they off loaded the tanks from the flatcars.

I beleave the above picture shows the nearower tracks being put on, notice how the outer road wheals are laping the track, these would be removed as well, I beleave you can see the left sides removed wheals stacked on the engine deck of the Tiger.