aspqrz
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Mon 28 Dec 2020, 02:40

More importantly, though, this isn't really a tank game. Far more common are BTRs and battle-taxis -- which are likely shot full of .50 holes over and over, welded up, and still going -- and still for the most part a grave threat to any player.

Like, oh, the BTR-60s which had, IIRC, two gearboxes because Russian tech couldn't figure out how to get them to run on one ... and both gearboxes had to be changed into the appropriate gear for the vehicle to run. AND they were not all that much more reliable than the WW2 T-34 gearboxes, AIUI.

Wouldn't count on a lot of them being available. Maybe the -70's were different, dunno ... but I don't think that Russian APCs or IFVs were notably more reliable, maintenance wise and in general, than Russian MBTs.

AIUI even Cold War era Russian Trucks and Light Vehicles were far more unreliable than western equivalents requiring more frequent servicing and subject to more frequent breakdowns.

This really should be represented in the game, but, as it stands, the resemblance between the rules and reality seem tenuous at best,

Phil McGregor
 
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omnipus
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Mon 28 Dec 2020, 04:07

There are many interpretations of reality. If you have strongly-held beliefs that Eastern gear is so unreliable that it should be functionally rare compared to Western gear, in Poland immediately after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact -- that's your prerogative, of course, and you could certainly find some way to justify it, I suppose. How you justify more spare parts being available is a bit more of a leap, but I'm sure also could be done. (or maybe it's more interesting if it is not done.)

FWIW I don't know very many people who have ever been ecstatic about the reliability of a Humvee, or of basically any vehicle Britain ever made... so very broad assumptions also perhaps don't cut it. In any case, you could certainly very easily assign base reliability levels lower than A to all sorts of equipment, so the rules would very easily handle it. There's no problem between the rules and reality, however subjective or complex that might be.

The fact of the matter is that there are simply more APCs than tanks, everywhere, in any army. They're also less likely to be on the literal front-line than MBTs. Easier to produce. Suitable to a wider variety of roles. And to my earlier point: far more likely to be in the hands of PCs. Having an MBT, as a player, is a devil's bargain I'm not sure I'd want to accept. Rules-wise and reality-wise.
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG
 
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omnipus
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Mon 28 Dec 2020, 04:09

Oh, and the answer to your question is that BTR-80s were finally engineered to run off a single engine. These would have been common in the units most likely to sustain horrific casualties, same as any of the other ultra-modern gear. BTR-70s were notorious and few were made.

Given that probably half the militaries on earth, including many quite poor ones, have run BTR-60s and derivatives in some form for half a century, though, I'm again not inclined to believe they are actually particularly unreliable or troublesome. I have some sources I can ask on all of this, but I dunno -- it's not super germane to the game I'm running.
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG
 
welsh
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Mon 28 Dec 2020, 17:53

Any armoured vehicles in the game will be running on cannibalized spare parts. Any vehicle suffering a serious mechanical breakdown will be stripped for parts to keep the others rolling. Generally, any advancing force would have had higher echelon maintenance units collecting hulks and stripping them, because even before the nuclear exchange, logistics systems would have struggled to keep up with the pace of operations.

APCs and IFVs would be more common than tanks for obvious reasons. They'll not only have lots of patches, but also lots of addon armour (like WWII Shermans with track sections welded on), within the limits of what the suspension will bear.

One thing you would also see would be other armoured vehicles field-converted to become fighting vehicles. ARVs, engineer vehicles, etc. used as armoured machine gun and mortar platforms. Former SAM and ATGM launchers used as armoured cars. (And one thing I really like about the simplicity of the rules as they stand is that this is very easy to do.)
 
AEB
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Tue 29 Dec 2020, 06:25

Modern tanks are designed to allow for repairs to the armour.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-you-repair ... hat-matter

As Welsh mentioned canabalisation of damaged tanks to keep other tanks rolling would be common place. I can't find it at the moment but I have a photo from just after Kursk in 1943 showing a field covered with almost 300 panzer IIIs that were awaiting repairs, with many clearly being stripped down to provide parts.

The Israelis were able to bring a number of captured T-55s and T-62s into service after they were KOed on the battlefield.

Modern tanks have blow out panels and fire-suppression systems to make it unlikely that the vehicle will be a total loss, at least while haylon is available. A tank that suffers major hull damage will have its turret transplanted onto a hull with a wrecked turret. Immobile vehicles or just the turrets will be used as pillboxes.

AFVs not using composite armour can still be fixed by cutting and welding in armour patches.

Many vehicles will be Frankenstein mixtures created in field repair shops to adapt them to the conditions faced in WW3.
 
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omnipus
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Tue 29 Dec 2020, 21:21

One of my favorite things is looking at the bizarro contraptions that end up in a real desperate war zone. T-34s with Sherman turrets. Hilux trucks with BMP turrets. Aerial rocket pods on everything. This sort of thing should at least be a whole chapter of any vehicle sourcebook, if not a whole book!
Author, Central Poland Sourcebook -- now available on DriveThruRPG
 
CWGamer
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Fri 08 Jan 2021, 02:46

More importantly, though, this isn't really a tank game. Far more common are BTRs and battle-taxis -- which are likely shot full of .50 holes over and over, welded up, and still going -- and still for the most part a grave threat to any player.

Like, oh, the BTR-60s which had, IIRC, two gearboxes because Russian tech couldn't figure out how to get them to run on one ... and both gearboxes had to be changed into the appropriate gear for the vehicle to run. AND they were not all that much more reliable than the WW2 T-34 gearboxes, AIUI.

Wouldn't count on a lot of them being available. Maybe the -70's were different, dunno ... but I don't think that Russian APCs or IFVs were notably more reliable, maintenance wise and in general, than Russian MBTs.

AIUI even Cold War era Russian Trucks and Light Vehicles were far more unreliable than western equivalents requiring more frequent servicing and subject to more frequent breakdowns.

This really should be represented in the game, but, as it stands, the resemblance between the rules and reality seem tenuous at best,

Phil McGregor
The specification for the BTR-60 called for the use of gasoline engines. The two GAZ-49 were also used on BRDM scout car - it was developed from the WW2 3/4 Dodge truck. Diesel engines at the time were not widely available. Each engine drove one side of the vehicle. This solution was inexpensive, but difficult to service and one engine down means the vehicle is immobile. The Soviets needed a cheap way of motorising all those infantry divisions. Production was 1960 to 1976.

BTR-70 was in production from 1972. BTR-70 had two diesel engines. The right engine powers the first and third road wheel, the left engine does the second and fourth. Engine production was still a problem, in any case BMP production was higher priority.

BTR-80 finally has a single diesel engine. A factory fire stopped engine production in 1993, leading the BTR-80A with a replacement diesel engine and 30mm cannon. Check out the link below on movement after tire and axle damage.

The BTR-90 was first shown in 1994, but did not go into production. This a totally new design.

Quotes from Isby:

"Compared with tracked APCs, wheeled APCs have 45-60% less production cost, 60-80% better fuel consumption, three times the lifespan, 3-5 times the interval between repairs and greatly reduced maintenance requirements."

"Soviet tanks generally require a major overhaul every 1600 km, and factory refolding every 7000 km. T-55 and T-62 engines have a life of 500-1200 running hours, about a quarter the comparable US figure..... Soviet tanks are normally limited to about 250 hours running per year, giving them a peacetime life of about 20 years."

Sources
Soviet/Russian Armor and Artillery Design Practices: 1945 to Present
Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army
https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.co ... tr-80.html
 
andresk
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Re: Armor Pen on vehicles and Small Arms

Mon 25 Jan 2021, 01:34

I'm trying to get my head around the 3-4 Armor values of BRDM-2, BTRs and MTLB (which has 4?). All of these vehicles seem to have armor plates of (from 4mm for the earlier ones) 7mm up to abouts 14-20mm on the front to my knowledge. 7.62x51 FMJ (standard military ammo) seems to have no issue penetrating right abouts 10-12mm of steel (MTLB has 7-8mm of armor sans turret and nose). An armor value of maybe 1-3 and more on front seems to be more appropriate. If nothing else, the 4 armor rating of the MTLB has me scratching my head the most as it's pretty much the same armor as on a BRDM-2 if not less. The earlier BTRs have up to 10mm of armor as well, yet they still have 4 armor rating on the BRDMs 3. It makes no sense to me. There may be more anomalies, but these are the ones I started looking at.
I understand that this might be because of balancing issues between firearms and heavy weapons, so the armor scale is not strictly linear, but the consistency seems a bit off with these ones.

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