Introduction The information included on the following pages contains detailed information about the vehicles used in the game. Since all statistics come directly from the game they should give you a greater sense for the inner workings of our battlefield model. Computer simulations are rarely able to reflect actual events or situations; however, we feel that our game brings you as close to the battlefields of WWII as you could ever wish to be. First, I would like to apologize to our hard-core fans and dedicated wargamers. This section may seem to be presented in an over simplified manner, and even considered to be review material for you. However, due to the increasingly diverse group of gamers joining the Close Combat ranks, I felt it necessary to provide this information for those who cannot distinguish a Panther G from a Mark IV. There are also places where the information has been modified ever so slightly from the historical data in order to reflect the conditions within the game. Nevertheless, I did make attempts to include details that would be useful to our diehard fans. The vehicle tables should provide you with a handy reference guide that will assist you in further honing your battlefield tactics. For those of you who are new to the Close Combat series the following pages may seem a bit overwhelming. But with a little effort you'll soon be able to tell the difference between a JagdTiger and JagdPanther, and know how to employ each effectively. Whatever your background, I hope that this resource further enhances your enjoyment of a game we are very proud of. Page Layout All of the pages are presented in a common form to help you find information quickly. Most noticeable will be the vehicle table, located in the top left corner of the page. Here you will find armor values and weapons compositions associated with a given vehicle. Below this table you will find an informational hybrid of real-world and game data. For example, the Battlegroup Name refers to the title assigned to the unit on the Battlegroup screen, while the vehicle speed is representative of the performance of the actual vehicle. Note: Veteran U.S. vehicles have slightly better armor protection than their stardard couterparts. As the WWII progressed veteran teams often modified their armor by strapping sandbags and wooden logs to their hulls to increase protection from heavy German guns. In the upper right-hand corner is a picture of the unit as it appears on the Battlegroup screen. This should help you to identify the different vehicles within the game. The text surrounding the picture of the battlegroup is historical in context, while the text at the bottom of the screen relates to game play tips. The combined information on each page should provide you with a general understanding of the capabilities for a particular unit. Armor thickness - Actual vs. Effective All armor values used in the tables are expressed in effective millimeters of thickness as opposed to actual armor values. For those of you unfamiliar with armored vehicles and the values associated with their armor, the following details should shed some light on the subject. Actual armor values are a measure of physical thickness. For example, a plate of steel 30mm thick has an actual armor value of 30mm, or as I said a measure of its actual thickness. Now, effective armor values are something completely different. Effective armor values are a mathematical expression that takes into account not only the armor's thickness but also its relative angle to a given projectile. If you were to take the same 30mm piece of steel, described previously, and fire a projectile directly at its face, its effective armor value would still be 30mm. In other words the projectile would have to pass through only 30mm of steel to pierce the plate. Now if you take the same piece of steel and place it at a 45 degree angle its effective armor value changes. Without going into an equation, a projectile would now have to pass through not 30mm of steel, but 42mm to harm any men or equipment on the other side. With this method engineers can greatly increase armor's protective value without increasing its thickness and resulting weight. Interpreting Gun Specifications One may notice that most main guns are listed as XXmm L/Y this or XXmm L/Y that. What meaning do these symbols and their associated numbers have? At first glance they could be mistaken for serial numbers, however, that is not the case. This seemingly cryptic way of classifying guns is a rough description of the weapon's capabilities. Without going into too much detail, a good rule of thumb is that projectile velocities increase relative to the increased length of a barrel. This increased projectile velocity normally results in greater armor penetration. The XXmm L/Y barrel description can be deciphered in the following manner: the first number (XX) is the caliber of the weapon, most often expressed in millimeters. The second set of characters, (L/Y), is an expression of barrel length based on the gun's caliber. Important to note is that even if two different guns have the same L/Y value, their barrel lengths may not be the same. It's all dependent on the caliber of each individual weapon. For example, the guns of the M8 armored car and 90mm AA gun share the same L/50 value but their barrels are completely different in length. Plugging their values into our equation we come up with (37mm x 50 = 1850mm) for the M8 and (90mm x 50 = 4500mm) for the 90mm AA gun. The barrel for the M8 is about 6 feet long where the barrel for the 90mm AA gun is over 14 ½ feet long! As I mentioned previously, longer barrels mean higher velocity projectiles with better armor penetration. Hence you can see why the rounds from the M8's main gun merely bounced off the frontal armor of Panther tanks, while the 90mm AA gun often destroyed these massive tanks with a single round. - Mathew "JP4" Herman Special thanks to: -
Carl Schuler |
AT
Guns
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Armored
Cars
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Half-Tracks
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Tanks
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Tank
Killers
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AT
Guns
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Armored
Cars
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Half-Tracks
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Tanks
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Tank
Killers
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