Red Army = most effective force !

[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...

[Smersh]

conventional forces where extremely important during the 'cold war' since it was expected that war could start at any time. Both the USA and USSR spent huge amounts of resources building complex and expensive defense systems.

the 60s idea that nuclear weapons and the air-forces would completly replace ground conventional weapons never took place. Besides many of the tanks and apcs could operate in a nuclear environment. nuclear weapons and planes can't occupy or hold any terrain.

we are lucky militaty leaders never decided on a direct confrontation, I think they understood what nuclear war would mean.

yeah, there are several limitation the old sp code is showing.