Tanks the strongest weapon in game?

Nadien · Post by **Nadien** » Jan 02 2004

I made a testgame yesterday and there i learned that tanks (especialy the leopard 3) used on mass is hardly to stop. no missle, no anti tank, nothing had could stop them with 2 or 3 big blocks (20+) invadeing and some smal to hold the supplyline open. only an other big tank army could stop this. they sink ships real fast, runing over antitank groups, missles had no vissble effect.
there need to be a stacking limit for a hex not only when they get rest on move too.
then antitank and aircraft need to balance against tanks.
infantery need bonus against tanks in towns.
it should not possible to sink ships fast. as long as they are in range they go down to fast and the back fire have not much impact. as soon as the tanks are 2 to 1 i have found nothing that had could stop them.
only drawback they have is a long build time and cost.
in smal numbers 3 to 5 they are not so great but in big numbers 9+ they are nearly unstop able.
in smal numbers atilery is a problem but in big numbers they move real fast toward the artilery and kill them.
did anyother have seen the same? or did none try a strong 95+% tank army with mostly a few antiair units and some misslelauncher.

nadien

Post by **Balthagor** » Jan 02 2004

First I should mention that the stack limit is already set for both moving and non-moving units. More than 7 in the hex and there is a penalty that reduces effectiveness. The bonus youâ€™re looking for of units in town is the close combat model that is not yet implemented. All units fighting in towns will have to use their close combat values. Tanks will have lower attacks and infantry, higher attacks.

As for the fact that the tanks are unstoppableâ€¦ why not? You said that in small numbers they are not as strong but once you have a large number they chew threw anything. Isnâ€™t this correct? Shouldnâ€™t a large tank group be needed to stop a large tank group? Anyone spending the money on 10 battalions of leopards, 580 tanks!, is going to expect to do some chewing and spiting. Missiles can stop them but you need the right missiles. The US seems to have almost an exclusive on unit killing missiles. The CASSOM (Storm Shadow) is the only European missile Iâ€™ve seen that is a good unit killer and it will still only kill 2-3 tanks per missile at best. Some would say it should only kill one tank per missile. This means you would need more than 300 of these missiles to stop all these tanks. Now, the missiles build very fast so you can actually produce about 9 missiles in the time it takes to build one tank battalion. With a few airports (each one allows three more missiles to be built) you could get a good number of missiles in a short time.

Tanks also have other disadvantages. Slow, high gas consumption, heavy and hard to transport. But once youâ€™re researching Leopard 3s, youâ€™re into some very high tech tanks!

You also mentioned artillery effects on tanks. Tanks are usually built to be able to sustain being bombarded. It is possible to still destroy the tanks; you just need a large number of artillery and a good line of armour in front of them.

For some real tests, you would really need to be playing against AIs that fight back. You moved up to high end tanks while the AI regions did no research. They only produced what they started with. You would have been fighting LeClercs that are already getting old by todayâ€™s standards. There are also some Anti-tank units that can take a big bite out of the tanks, they just didnâ€™t get researched.

Nadien · Post by **Nadien** » Jan 02 2004

Yes tanks should do a puntch and geting large numbers is expensive. i not count much for what the AI did but hanibl tried to stop me with anti tank and i rushed through.
its hard to see how to do it rigth tanks are the land attacking weapon of choice for sure and not bad in defense they are just expensive. but i think especialy in towns against infantry or antitank infantry they should be weaker.
artilery not doing big damage on tanks that is rigth but there should some that can even stop/slow tanks.
but what i see a bit diffrent is tanks against ships to look at i think it should be possible but when i think how fast i had chewed through the fregates with my leopard 2a5 was surprisingly.
i love tanks and i love strong tanks but i also like to see the diffrent roles units have.
tanks in forest even light forest is bad. or in swamp. there is infantery much better but i saw no forest on the maps sofar.
with only 1 or 2 games played sofar its hard to say a big MP game with some skirmishes would be best to test this i think.

nadien

Ashbery76 · Post by **Ashbery76** » Jan 02 2004

There should be a heavy penalty for tank attacking city's with no infantry support,to the extent that the player wouldn't dare attack a city without leg cover because of the cost..

Post by **Balthagor** » Jan 03 2004

Close combat will certainly take care of a lot of this once implimented. The close attack values for tanks are very low compared to their normal attack. As for the tanks vs. the anti tanks, I spoke to Hanibl and the unit he was using where not very strong anti-tank units. I think you crushed him becuase you picked your units carefully and pushed the research. Let me know how follow up games go and we'll keep looking at this.

Hunter41 · Post by **Hunter41** » Jan 05 2004

Nadien's point on tanks vs ships is still valid, it's not realistic for tank battalions to be sinking frigates. The effective range of tank guns is about 4km. Even the 76mm OTO Melara Compact gun on the Oliver Hazard Perry class Frigates (and many other classes) has an effective range of 8 km against surface targets, not to mention a rate of fire of around 85-100 rounds per minute! Other than artillery, land units should have an extremely limited capability to engage ships.

Hellfish6 · Post by **Hellfish6** » Jan 05 2004

I think there is only one recorded use of tanks against a naval vessel. It happened in WWII during the US landings in Morrocco, a couple of Vichy tanks fired on a destroyer off the coast, to very little effect. In fact, I think the destroyer just swung it's guns around and fired away.

I'll have to dig out my history of US Navy Destroyers in WWII to confirm the details if anyone's interested. For what it's worth, I think that only artillery ground units should get an anti-shipping attack value.

dust off · Post by **dust off** » Apr 22 2004

Looking at the attack/defence/close combat values I always thought that tanks looked too strong, especially in urban, forest, mountains. I see that in the real world that lately the insergents in Iraq have better AT weapons and tactics and are 'killing' a more MBT's.
How do infantry fair against tanks in close combat in the beta?

Post by **Balthagor** » Apr 22 2004

Close combat is not yet implemented (This refers to in city combat values being different for those unfamiliar with the term)

Post by **Balthagor** » Apr 22 2004

I still say that if a tank battalion of 54 tanks rolls into a port where a ship is parked, 54 tanks is enough to sink one ship. Ships need to be smart enough to stay back from land batallions.

Iceman · Post by **Iceman** » Apr 23 2004

Tanks are hardly unstopable
- In a test game I was attacking South West Australia. On the trek from Adelade to Perth , my Leopards and ASCORDS were almost constantly in need of fuel, and I had 12 supply truck units (to service aprox 14 Leopard Battalions, 7 ACORD Battalions, 14 Puma APC Battalions and 7 Bushmaster ADI Battalions.) In not supplying myself properly, I would have nearly ended my campaign if the AI was fully developed. A few squads of Fighter Bombers with good missiles would have ended the lives of over 30,000 men.

jalapeno · Post by **jalapeno** » May 02 2004

On 2004-01-02 05:39, Nadien wrote:
but in big numbers 9+ they are nearly unstop able.

You do that against me, that hex is going to get glassed.

Post by **Balthagor** » May 02 2004

One little nuke would certainly affect the hex