Red Army = most effective force !

[Smersh]

The point however is that just blowing up a couple of bridges in front of them will not be a show stopper.

exactly,

Anyway, all too glad the Cold War didn't break into Hot one as it would be for sure bloody for both sides.

yes, who knows where even a conventional conflict could have escalated to.

[pdoktar]

Funny thing is that nobody didn´t start a war. If Red Army had such huge advantages, it´s kind of interesting that they didn´t even try to pressure the West more politically or something like that. Maybe the war wouldn´t be worth it anyhow, so the Soviet Union building policy of arms went to total waste, hence the collapse of the Soviet empire. They lost the cold war, so it doesn´t matter anymore what their equipment was like in 1980.

And doesn´t the game represent them as quite potent combat vehicles, considering the debate going on about their true quality?

[Marcello]

"Funny thing is that nobody didn´t start a war. If Red Army had such huge advantages, it´s kind of interesting that they didn´t even try to pressure the West more politically or something like that."

I could ask a very similar question.Why didn't the US nuke the USSR in the late 50's-beginning of the 60's, when they enjoyed overwhelming nuclear advantage? Why didn't they even try to pressure the USSR more?
Which brings us to the answer to your question: nukes make people a bit more cautious.

"And doesn´t the game represent them as quite potent combat vehicles, considering the debate going on about their true quality?"

There is some fudge factor inherent to how ERA is handled the game.The T-64/T-72/T-80 have also peculiar armor schemes that is difficult to accurately represent.

[pdoktar]

Yes, the game engine has it´s limitations, particularly with ERA and especially Kontakt-5 which is directly calculated to the armor values of say, T-72BM etc. Still, comparing to similar weastern units, like M1 and Leo2, T-80 and T-72 fares quite well, so in game terms there is no gap between the quality of western and eastern armor.

And thinking of nukes, there were many proxywars between the Soviet Union and US, but nukes were not used, so you can say that the whole buildup in Europe was indifferent, as nukes would be involved there anyway. Maybe conventional war couldn´t be fought in Europe altogether, so it didn´t anymore matter, who had the best conventional forces there.

[Marcello]

The problem (at least this is what I remember, I haven't played much lately beyond testing) is that game ERA seems to be triggered less frequently than what would happen in the real world.But when it works it stops pretty much anything, instead of merely degrading the incoming round.
Another problem is the protection scheme.In the real world the armor protection of any tank will be different from zone to zone.
The upper glacis of an Abrams has a different composition from the lower half which in turn will offer a different amount of protection depending on the level of fuel inside the tanks.
Neverthless on western MBTs and T-55/T-62 there is a certain degree of uniformity.On T-72/T-64/T-80 the philosophy seems to offer maximum protection only in the areas most likely to be hit, at expense of the others like the lower glacis plate. And that are not the only weak spots.Think to the lack of ERA bricks behind the searchlight on T-80U.And these two are only examples.

[pdoktar]

Yep. ERA cell defeats HEAT round completely, when going off. So ERA-armored BMPs defeat a heavy non-dc-atgm several times, before being destroyed. Dual-Charge will usually defeat normal ERA, but Advanced ERA have bigger chance of defeating DC-warheads.

If normal ERA would be directly calculated to the HEAT armor values, how would you model it with DC-ATGM?

As there are KE, CE and ERA armor already in game, the ERA should be somehow calculated into CE or (A-ERA)KE armor, so that it, for example, wouldn´t stop a normal large (HEAT 60+) warhead if it hit a BMP that has normal CE armor of 10.

BMP-3s surviving a 120mm Sabot just because there´s a message "Advanced ERA stops penetrator" is very funny indeed.

Going off-topic, but for what it´s worth..

[Marcello]

"As there are KE, CE and ERA armor already in game, the ERA should be somehow calculated into CE or (A-ERA)KE armor, so that it, for example, wouldn´t stop a normal large (HEAT 60+) warhead if it hit a BMP that has normal CE armor of 10."

But if I understand what you are proposing, that would not simulate ERA tiles depletion under multiple hits.

[pdoktar]

Yeah that would not do it. But we should figure a way of doing this, if it´s even possible for the game engine.

[Mobhack]

Any HEAT hit on a reactive surface will delete a point of ERA - whether the ERA defeats the warhead or not. With large HEAT warheads - 2 points can be removed.

Cheers
Andy

[Marek_Tucan]

Complete simulation of ERA would be very complex - it would need to account for the ERA effect (ie penetration degradation), for the ERA generation, for portion of surface covered by ERA and for number of tiles on said surface... A solution might be using two or three digit code (say "ERA" value 193) where first digit would be generation (as is now, 0 = gen. 1, 1 = gen. 2 or better), second would be no. of in-game "tiles" and third would be ERA effect divided by 10 (in this case the "3" would translate into 30 increase against HEAT and some increase - say 15 - against KE). But then forcing the game C++ spaghetti to decipher this would be (as I do imagine) extremely hard...