Grant HA same as Stuart?

[kverdon]

Playing the Allied campaign and finally got to the point where I could upgrade some of my armor to Grant tanks. I was a bit confused however when I went to upgrade my crusader V to a Grant and the HA value DECREASED???? Upon checking I see that the Grant has the same HA as a Stuart. Now I know the Grant 75mm had a limited traverse but that 75mm still had decent AP for the time. I would like to think that the HA value of the Grant should be at least an 8.

thanks,

Kevin

[KeldorKatarn]

The 75 gun was used for infantry support and against soft targets. The main reason the army wanted that gun was to be able to have a good HE shell to fight the German anti tank guns. The AT gun was still the 37-mm, and that gun was perfectly fine. Nobody had ever complained about the AT gun. The problem with it was that it had no decent HE shell. The 75 was rarely used against armored targets so the HA value should not be linked to it I think. It was mainly a soft target gun which is also why it didn't need the traverse that much. It was usually used against stationary targets in front.

[Razz1]

I agree. that's why the Grant is good against soft targets.

It's not bad against tanks because it has a good defense vaule.

[KeldorKatarn]

That's also mainly why the grant was used in the first place. It wasn't an optimal solution and the M4 was already being developed. But the army needed a tank to bridge the gap in time until its arrival and the other tanks simply could not deliver since the British AT guns all had no HE shells or crappy HE shells. That's why the Grant, despite being a crap tank really in comparison, was so loved by the crews. They finally had a good HE shell.
One tends to judge tanks based on their AT behavior but that's not usually what tanks were used for. And nearly always when the tanks were optimized for better AT behavior the infantry started complaining because they lost their support weapon. That's where StuGs came in and even the Americans ended up using Tank Destroyers as StuGs because they had great HE shells. When the Pz IV became an anti-tank tank, the StuGs became more important. When the StuGs were transformed into TD role and lost their short HE guns the germans started equiping those guns on halftracks and other vehicles to get that support weapon back.

So the Grant might not have been a logical development when it comes to tanks vs tank, but that's just because it was never meant to be. The british troops were completely happy with their AT gun, they wanted a tank that could support against soft targets and the Grant could do that very well. i think games about tanks tend to skew people's views of tanks. Yeah the Sherman e.g. was crap tank facing Panthers. But they hardly ever faced Panthers. Whenever they did, yes they usually got their butts kicked. but the Sherman was mostly used against infantry, and for that it was great. The Americans never went for the tanks vs tank doctrine. That's what they built the TDs for. Admittedly that entire TD doctrine was a lot less successful as planned which is why later America also went for the main battle tank route but that doesn't mean the Sherman was in total a bad tank. It was great for 90% of what it was used for. And I'm sure if the eastern front hadn't kept most of germany's tanks busy and the allies had met more german tanks in the west, the result would probably have changed. but who knows what machines might have been produced then. That was simply not the case, hence the use of the Sherman up til the end.

It was the same with the german tanks in 1940 in france. They were all crap against the French tanks. And whenever they met large concentrations of French tanks, they got their butts kicked, hard. but that nearly never happend because the French has huge troubles of using the tanks in that way. Therefore the German tanks were in the end completely adequate to achieve their goals and ended up fighting mostly soft targets at which they were great. They only started running into big problems when facing tanks in large numbers consistently on the eastern front.

So it's all a matter of "what are you gonna use it for most of the time". And games simply use the tank vs tank situation waaay more often than that happened in reality.

[ThvN]

I think the values are very reasonable. The 75mm M2 gun on the Grant tank is the predecessor of the 75mm on the Sherman, but it had a shorter barrel and was less capable against tanks, so it should be less effective than the Sherman. And the anti-tank shell was not very good, with penetration equal to the 37mm AT gun (which was in the small turret on top of the Grant). So being equal to the Stuart tank is not that weird, is that had the same 37mm. There were even field experiments to remove the 75mm shells from the propellant casings and replace them by captured German projectiles! Not a sign of a decent AP round.

Like KeldorKatarn mentions, the 75mm was excellent for use against stationary soft targets, but it could barely traverse and the curved trajectory made it ineffective in tank-to-tank combat. The reason the British liked them so much was that their own tanks lacked HE shells, they could knock out Panzers without trouble, but their tanks had great trouble attacking (soft) anti-tank guns and similar targets.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'crusader V' (?), but if you mean the Crusader Mk III, that had a 6-pdr (57mm) gun which was excellent against tanks, and even the earlier models with the 2-pdr were slightly better than the 37mm guns used by the Americans and Germans, but these guns came without any HE ammunition, so the 75mm was a big improvement. So it would indeed be a 'downgrade' in HA, but they needed a gun which was good against other types of targets, and the trade-off was worth it.

Consider the Panzer III N (short 75mm) and the Panzer III L (long 50mm), you'll see the same kind of stats. Now, the US 76mm vs British 17-pdr, that would make for a good discussion on balancing... This issue came up in the beta, together with the modelling of Sherman variants, but the stock values are still being used, despite some of them being a bit strange.

[Dragoon.]

Caliber is not the only thing that matters when firing solid AP rounds. Actually barrel length is the dominant feature along with the size of the cartridge that holds the charge. A longer barrels translate into a longer acceleration phase and a more stabilized round. Therefore the round reach higher top speed, has improved range and accuracy. That speed is so important becomes quite obvious when you use Einstein E=mc², as a raw equation for the kinetic energy aka penetration power of the round. As you see the speed unlike mass is raised by the power of two.
Of course to get accurate date you would have to add details for shape and material of the round and armor, air density, temperate etc. but let not get over our heads.

Like all the guys above me already mentioned, the Grand has a short barreled low velocity 75mm barrel, not unlike the early PzIV D-F's had which had only 75cm L24 guns. It was not until the version F2 with 75cm L43, and version G with 75cm l48, they developed real anti-tank fighting capabilities.

Of course at the time of the desert campaign, where the Grand was fielded in mass to the British, his lame gun didn't not matter. The Germans and Italians themselves where only fielding either low caliber high velocity, or high caliber short barreled low-velocity guns. There Germans are yet in for the T-34 / KV-1 surprise wake up that caused them to accelerate their tank development and upgrade program.

[ThvN]

Good explanation, but I hope you don't mind if I comment on it to clarify some things? So, wall of words alert, I'll try to keep it simple, I promise:

Caliber is not the only thing that matters when firing solid AP rounds. Actually barrel length is the dominant feature along with the size of the cartridge that holds the charge. A longer barrels translate into a longer acceleration phase and a more stabilized round. Therefore the round reach higher top speed, has improved range and accuracy.

Very good observation about solid projectiles, but the major advantage of bigger rounds is the ability to carry a useful payload, but I'll assume solid rounds to not further complicate things.

A few scientific nitpicks: yes, it's all about speed (velocity), but speed simply comes from being able to put the most energy in a projectile. Because the barrel length is always limited, accelerating the projectile must be done in a very short time. But you are right, the longer the barrel, the longer you have time to accelerate without resorting to very dangerous types of propellants or chamber pressures.

And it's easier to accelerate a light projectile (which usually means small calibre, but I won't go into that), but high acceleration means the projectile needs to be very strong to survive this. So, you want a long barrel, and you'll need a hefty charge of propellant, which you'll need a big casing for, like you said.

About stabilization, you don't need a long barrel for that, contrary to popular opinion. You just need to spin up the projectile enough to avoid it wobbling or tumbling in air for the length of time it takes to reach its target, but very steep rifling will wear out quickly. Today most tank guns are smoothbores with fin-stabilized projectiles, for several reasons.

Improved range: I assume you mean effective range, not maximum range? For effective, real-world range, you are right. For absolute range, fast heavy streamlined projectiles are better than the typical lightweight small calibre round. And a slow, heavy projectile will lose speed at a far lower rate than a small lightweight one, making heavy rounds capable of carrying much more energy at large ranges. This is basically a case of momentum (p=mv) vs the total drag. If two projectiles have the same shape, a projectile that is twice the diameter will be around 7 times heavier. Of course it will have a larger frontal area (higher drag), but the momentum will grow relatively faster than frontal area, making it more effective. Note that momentum and kinetic energy are different, and momentum is often overlooked when determining effectiveness of projectiles.

About accuracy: for real-world purposes, the faster rounds have the advantage because the trajectory is flatter and they cross the distance faster, so they'll need less precise elevation aiming to compensate for the ballistic trajectory. But a ballistic computer with good input data can give slow, heavy projectiles amazing accuracy.

The effective range, which is a combination of energy, ballistics, inherent accuracy of the round, weapon and firing platform, aiming devices and of course the operator(s), is usually higher with the faster projectiles, but these advantages are sometimes offset by other factors. So, you are basically right, but I wanted to clarify some things, since I read this and my teaching sense started tingling:

That speed is so important becomes quite obvious when you use Einstein E=mc², as a raw equation for the kinetic energy aka penetration power of the round. As you see the speed unlike mass is raised by the power of two.

I think you may have confused some theories, Einsteins theory on mass–energy equivalence (E=mc²) is about conversion of energy into mass and vice versa, the kinetic energy is calculated as KE=½mv². Which means that the energy is equal to half the (projectile) mass multiplied by its velocity squared (power of two). So you are correct about the importance of velocity for the kinetic energy, but used the wrong formula. No big problem, but we have high educational standards here, well at least I hope...

Of course to get accurate date you would have to add details for shape and material of the round and armor, air density, temperate etc. but let not get over our heads.

True, it's very complicated, and I only know a few very basic things.

Like all the guys above me already mentioned, the Grand has a short barreled low velocity 75mm barrel, not unlike the early PzIV D-F's had which had only 75cm L24 guns. It was not until the version F2 with 75cm L43, and version G with 75cm l48, they developed real anti-tank fighting capabilities.

Yep. The PzIV initially wasn't even designed to combat other tanks, but for attacking strongpoints and soft targets. The PzIII was suppossed to be the 'main' tank to deal with enemy tanks, but the Germans recognized it would also need a tank with a big, slow projectile that had good HE shells for the other targets. Later on, the only tank capable of being upgraded with an effective 75mm was the PzIV, and ironically the PzIIIN took over the role of the early PzIV models. The Grant basically had both the guns from the early PzIII and PzIV on a single tank.

Of course at the time of the desert campaign, where the Grand was fielded in mass to the British, his lame gun didn't not matter. The Germans and Italians themselves where only fielding either low caliber high velocity, or high caliber short barreled low-velocity guns. There Germans are yet in for the T-34 / KV-1 surprise wake up that caused them to accelerate their tank development and upgrade program.

Well, T-34 and KV-1 were first encountered in June 1941, long before the Grant was introduced (early 1942, with numbers were growing very slowly). And the T-34 was the reason that the German quickly introduced longer 50mm guns on the PzIII (J/1 and up), but this still wasn't enough firepower. The PzIII was at the limit of development, so they continued with the PzIV.

In the desert, the Germans were usually a step ahead in the armament race, which may have convinced them their tanks didn't need much upgrading. And they had started programs (before Barbarossa) to improve firepower, but decided to skip a few steps and speed up in response to the T-34/KV-1, like you say. Only a few of the newer types were sent to Africa, they needed everything on the Eastern Front and the older types could still deal with the British armour. But this was short-sighted as well, because better British/American tanks were just around the corner. Hehe.

[kverdon]

Sorry, the tank I meant to say I was upgrading from was the Cruiser Mk IV with the 2lber. I'm aware of the HE merits of the Grant's 75mm but I remember reading that the British turned down captured German AP Ammunition. I found a reference online that states:

"The anti-tank ammunition that you refer to was actually converted from German 75mm APCBC ammo. The Brits had substantial stocks of this explosive-loaded ammunition (from the L/24 7.5cm gun of the Pz IV) captured during the relief of Tobruk in late 1941. The resulting 75mm AP-Composite ammunition was apparently very effective against Pz III and Pz IV targets, as Mobius notes. The penetration was on par with the new U.S. M61 75mm APCBC ammunition".

The original reference I'm trying to find mentioned that the Brits converted about 15,000 rounds for use in the Grants by the time of Gazala and were quite pleased with the effects on the German armor.

Rommel was quoted to have said of the appearance of the Grant "In his journal Rommel wrote:

"... the advent of the new American tank had torn great holes in our ranks. Our entire force now stood in heavy and destructive combat with a superior enemy."

I think the above does justify the upping of the Grant HA to better than that of the Stuart. At least 8 or more should be a good value.

You can read one of the whole threads here:
http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread. ... -in-Africa

thanks,

Kevin

[KeldorKatarn]

Balistics is indeed a very difficult thing. Especially games get it totally wrong sometimes. Stopping power for handguns is often used which is usually complete crap, density, instability and other aspects of a round are not taken into acount. And yes HE shells of course have to take into account that HE explodes, so their destruction capability has not much to do with the caliber except for the fact that bigger caliber = bigger payload. The velocity of the round is not that important since HE is atually supposed to have a low veliocity and more balistic curve so that targets behind cover can be destroyed. Which is why artillery never used high velocity rounds, they do not want a flat trajectory.

Then there's of course HEAT ammo which again works completely different and APCR which is based on a very dense core, switching velocity for very very high density or the projectile, meaning more mass on a smaller caliber, since more energy on a smaller impact point = more penetration. So larger caliber = more penetration is actually wrong these days. Most tanks nowadays fire sabot ammo which is a very very small caliber and the projectile is initially packed in a material that fills out the remaining space to fit the gun, but the real projectile is a lot smaller than the gun would suggest. Therefore accelerating a very small caliber with a very dense material to a very high speed.

When considering hand guns, people usually mock 5.56mm vs 7.62 but fact is 5.56 is actually more deadly since the round is more unstable at medium ranges, hence begins to tumble and rip a much larger and deadlier wound into the target. But then again that is only true for unarmored targets. Bring body armor in the game or hard cover like a wall or a big tree and things are different again. The round is still more deadly but doesn't reach the target since a 7.62 MG cuts down trees and the 5.56 fails to penetrate, hence never reaches the target.

So it is very very hard to define the "effectiveness" of a round. it all depends on what you are shooting at, from what range and what type of taget. Do you e.g. hit an unarmored human target? Well a high velocity FMJ round may actually not be what you want sometimes. FMJ high velocity will often completely penetrate a human body and come out the other end. Of course you wounded but 5.56 would have wounded a lot more. And what about police? Police often doesn't fire high velocity rounds because they do not want the round to leave the body. People often think that they want the bullet to stick to the body because if it leaves it again, it never has a chance to deliver its full energy and "stopping power". but that's not the case most of the time. You need the bullet to stick to the target to prevent colateral damage. Imagine a cop firing at a bad guy and the innocent mother standing behind him gets hit because the bullet simply went right through him. Therefore lower velocity is used, and probably sometimes even hollowpoint, although that is banned in the military for causing unnecessarily large wounds. For the police its more important to hit only one target and not hit anyone else.

And what about special Ops? You cannot fire a high velocity round from a silenced gun efficiently because the supersonic bang beats the purpose. So you need low velocity bullets which do travel subsonic. That way you have less penetration but you fire more silent. (Btw it isn't complely silent and usually silenced weapons are used by special ops indoors not because they do not want to be heard, but to prevent completely deafening themselves. Have you ever heard a normal gunshot indoors? That's not nice.)
That is also why 45 ACP is used to often by special forces. It naturally travels at lower velocity with the standard load, hence can be used in silenced guns without the use for special ammunition. Not because of crap like stopping powere or anything.

So there is a lot about balistics and simple physics and kinetic energy is seldom the full story. I have entire books about ballistics and wound ballistics that try to come up with a "formula" for the efficiency of a round and rarely end up with a result in the end. And that's just for hand guns.

In the end the result is nearly always: "It depends"

it depends on when, where, how and at what type of target and what do you want to achieve. There simply is no best caliber or best gun or best projectile. Do you want to increase the caliber? Well get used to the fact that you will be able to carry a lot less ammo and your reload time goes down drastically. Do you want a heavier projectile? Well you either increase the caliber or you pay a lot of money for rare high density materials...

All very complicated and probably more than one book and thesis has been written about it. It is very hard to abstract all these variables in a game into one "Hard attack" and "Soft attack" value.

[KeldorKatarn]

"... the advent of the new American tank had torn great holes in our ranks. Our entire force now stood in heavy and destructive combat with a superior enemy."

That depends totally on the context. WHY did the tank do that, and who did it do it to? Rommel's "ranks" were not just tanks. Maybe he meant that the tanks killed a lot of his anti tank crews. maybe that made it possible for the tank to close range and open fire with its anti tank gun, which the 88 had prevented before, keeping the tank at distance. If so that wouldn't mean any justification for a HA change at all, since the tank wasn't better at destroying the tanks, it was better against soft targets which allowed it to reach the tanks and fire at a more effective range and do more damage.

So that single quote alone doesn't do the trick.

Also a quote you missed mentioning from that thread is this one:

General von Mellenthin [who served on Rommel's staff], talked of the Grant "as being a far more formidable fighting machine than any of the Afika Korps had so far encountered; of German tanks taking a severe hammering, of rifle battalions being obliterated, of supply columns being cut off from their Panzer division, and of Grants and Matildas pressing attacks to the muzzeles of the anti-tank guns to wipe out the crews." {from the book "The LEE/Grant Tanks in the British Service" by Bryan Perrett}.

To me this sounds exactly as I had guessed. The Grant was very effective at beating down riflemen and supply columns and anti tank guns. Probably that allowed the tanks to close the range. Matildas had been present before, so why are they suddenly effective, well with the Grant destroying the 88 AT cover the tanks could close the distance and fire effectively. And as already mentioned, their AT guns were already more than adequate. What saved the Germans previously was their ability to keep the British at range, denying them effective fire.

So again, this doesn't warrant any HA change in my opinion.

[ThvN]

Sorry, the tank I meant to say I was upgrading from was the Cruiser Mk IV with the 2lber.

No worries, thanks for explaining, they all used the same guns, but I incorrectly guessed the Crusader with the 6-pdr.

At least 8 or more should be a good value.

HA 6 might be a bit low for the Grant, but considering the early version had a shorter gun with AP ammo problems I think it's reasonable. The later version had the same gun as the Sherman and improved ammo, so for those 8 would be fine, but they would have been available later. It depends on what you want to model, and the game has only one version. So to make it more accurate several versions would have to be made, or a compromise of values for the single one in the game. It's difficult, for sure.

You can read one of the whole threads here:
http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread. ... -in-Africa

Thanks for the info, I could not find a good source for the converted German ammo (yet).

In the end the result is nearly always: "It depends"

it depends on when, where, how and at what type of target and what do you want to achieve.

It is very hard to abstract all these variables in a game into one "Hard attack" and "Soft attack" value.

Amen.

[kverdon]

I guess where I am coming from is that in the Desert Campaign the Grant was a mainstay of the British Army and in Allied Corps there is little, if any, incentive to use it. I'm coming up at El Alamein and my Armor core is composed of 4 Churchhill and 1 Crusader III tank units. So, fully 80% of my corps is made up on tanks, that in the real battle made up slightly more than 1/2 of 1% (six were in the desert at the time). The most numerous Allied tank at El Alamein, the M4 Sherman is not even available? Here is a break down of units present at El Alamein:

......................Present__%____My Core__%
Cruiser Tanks____216____20.9_____0_____0
Crusader III_______78_____7.5_____1____20
Valentine_______194_____18.7_____0_____0
Churchill__________6______0.6_____4___80
Stuart(Honey)____119_____11.5_____0____0
Grant___________170_____16.4_____0____0
Sherman_________252_____24.3_____0____0

To at least preserve the historical flavor of the Campaign, the Churchill should not be available until El Alamein at the earliest and The Grant should have an HA value that should make it attractive to use in the battles leading up to El Alamein.

Kevin

[ThvN]

Kevin, I agree with you on the availability, I was a bit surprised to find the Sherman unavailable for Second Alamein, when they were first used. And the Churchill is overpowered at this stage, it may not have much firepower but it is very tough. I presume you know about the El Alamein 'Kingforce', but the real introduction of the Churchill in North Africa was in early 1943. The problem is that the Churchill is simply too good to ignore (and its stats are a bit too good IMHO), so a lot of tank models will be ignored except by the die-hard historical players.

I tried to use a mix of Crusaders, Valentines and Grants and this really brings out the advantages of the Grant vs. the 2-pdr equipped tanks. But most players will simply skip most tanks and just upgrade from the early Cruisers to the Churchill (it first becomes available in Crusader), and skip the rest. During the later beta testing I sometimes consistently ended up with the exact same tank army you have, funny enough.

The biggest problem I think, is not the stats of all those others tanks, but the early availability of the Churchill. The only slightly comparable alternative is the Crusader Mk III, the rest is just cheaper and will end up being more expensive to keep them up to strength if used agressively. And I think even a boost to the Crusaders, Grants and Valentines won't make a difference, I even found it hard to justify buying a Sherman when I could have Churchills instead. So, this is one for the modders to solve I guess. I'm thinking of hacking up my equipment file again, but some things are difficult to model for me (movement rates), so this will take a while.

[KeldorKatarn]

Since we need another patch to fix the 1.20+DLC problems anyway, maybe some rebalancing could be worked into that patch? If a slight nerf to the Churchill and making the Sherman available earlier would do the trick, that should be easy enough to do... It's just a shame nobody reported this issue during beta.

[Zhivago]

Kevin, I agree with you on the availability, I was a bit surprised to find the Sherman unavailable for Second Alamein, when they were first used. And the Churchill is overpowered at this stage, it may not have much firepower but it is very tough. I presume you know about the El Alamein 'Kingforce', but the real introduction of the Churchill in North Africa was in early 1943. The problem is that the Churchill is simply too good to ignore (and its stats are a bit too good IMHO), so a lot of tank models will be ignored except by the die-hard historical players.

I tried to use a mix of Crusaders, Valentines and Grants and this really brings out the advantages of the Grant vs. the 2-pdr equipped tanks. But most players will simply skip most tanks and just upgrade from the early Cruisers to the Churchill (it first becomes available in Crusader), and skip the rest. During the later beta testing I sometimes consistently ended up with the exact same tank army you have, funny enough.

The biggest problem I think, is not the stats of all those others tanks, but the early availability of the Churchill. The only slightly comparable alternative is the Crusader Mk III, the rest is just cheaper and will end up being more expensive to keep them up to strength if used agressively. And I think even a boost to the Crusaders, Grants and Valentines won't make a difference, I even found it hard to justify buying a Sherman when I could have Churchills instead. So, this is one for the modders to solve I guess. I'm thinking of hacking up my equipment file again, but some things are difficult to model for me (movement rates), so this will take a while.

The Churchill Mk II is my next upgrade after the Matilda II. After that is the Churchill IV. Sure it's slow, it has a crappy hard-attack, but it survives and gains strength. When the Churchill Mk IV becomes available, it becomes more useful. However, the Stuarts and Shermans, in my opinion, just don't have the survivability to make them worth investing in. Same deal with the Stuarts and Lee tanks. Just my opinion in beta-testing. Since there are very few tanks that can take a hit from a Panzer IVx, or a strong AT unit, I'd rather go for survivability. I usually upgrade the Churchill Mk IVs to Crocodiles and Sherman Fireflies. The Croc is an awesome soft target killer, but can't do much against heavy German Armor. The Sherman Firefly has the hard-attack penetration, but at the sacrifice of close-attack defense. As I said in another thread, it would have been nice if the allies could have put the Sherman Firefly gun on the Croc (or even Churchill) chassis. Then you would have a formidable tank.

[Aloo]

I'm playing at general level and the problem with Allied campaign is the amount of prestige. I don't play too careful but find myself having a lot of prestige. I can afford the most expensive units and upgrading out of family branches.
This is the same as with the German campaigns. Historically you should have a lot of PzKpfw III and IV but you end up having as many V and VI as you can afford. Its the same here: you have a limited amount of slots and you have to optimize their use. You buy the best tools for the job you can afford unless you like to play historically. Only quick way to change this would be to nerf the best units and buff the others. Yhis has been talked about in the topics about the german campaigns a lot and I dont see much difference here.

[robman]

Here's another possibility, one that shouldn't be too hard to implement, perhaps in the next installment in the series: Fix the number of each unit type available "for immediate purchase" in each scenario. In other words, when the player "goes shopping" for new units or upgrades, and clicks on an available unit, there will be one additional piece of information: the number available right now. This is just like everyday online shopping ("order now! only 3 left in stock!"), so it's intuitive, and it addresses many of the problems we've discussed here without nerfing or buffing. Plus, it would make it possible to give the player a preview of what's available over the horizon by making exciting new units initially unavailable for immediate purchase ("zero in stock, this item is on back order"). This would model the fact that knowledge of the existence of new unit types travels faster than actual shipment of them to the front.

[KeldorKatarn]

Not so sure about this. In the end you'll only delay the "tigers and panthers" core, not prevent it.

Also in previous discussions the consensus was, that limiting the player is not a good idea. Good game design is all about giving a player choices, not forcing him into any direction the developer wants him to go to.

So a Tiger/Panther core should be possible and is perfectly fine. What isn't fine right now is that a lower quality core is not really an alternative. There should be advantages to both. I dunno how much the current "less prestige if you have a better core" does correct that, I haven't played with that ruleset yet.

[ThvN]

As I said in another thread, it would have been nice if the allies could have put the Sherman Firefly gun on the Croc (or even Churchill) chassis. Then you would have a formidable tank.

They actually tried to do just that, but the development was very slow because they practically had to re-design the whole tank. These prototypes were called 'Black Prince', here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Prince_%28tank%29

[Zhivago]

As I said in another thread, it would have been nice if the allies could have put the Sherman Firefly gun on the Croc (or even Churchill) chassis. Then you would have a formidable tank.

They actually tried to do just that, but the development was very slow because they practically had to re-design the whole tank. These prototypes were called 'Black Prince', here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Prince_%28tank%29

Cool! This is why I think it would have been nice to have had a DLC 1946 with experimental weapons on both the Axis and Allied side. It would be fun to see how the advanced/drawing board weapons performed.