Quote:
Originally Posted by JtD
One can also be sure that a single hit of say a 100g projectile of a 20mm cannon penetrating armour and then exploding inside the tank would not always destroy the tank.
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An AP projectile penetrating armor sprays red-hot or molten fragments of metal around a very small space. Those fragments ricochet and start fires. You DON'T want to be in that space. While a 20-30 mm projectile won't usually make the tank blow up or burn, it will damage the engine (if it penetrates the deck armor or ventilator grilles) OR kills or injures part of the crew (if it penetrates the turret or hull).
Even if it doesn't catch on fire, a tank with a badly damaged engine and/or a dead/seriously wounded crewman is going to retreat. Alternately, the crew might bail out, either because the tank can no longer move or because the drivers are dead, or on the reasonable assumption that more bad things are about to come their way.
In any case, the tank is as good as "dead" that day, even if the mechanics can later wash out the blood, fix the engine and patch the armor.
A simple fix to the ground vehicle damage model in IL2 would to be have three damage states: Undamaged, Immobilized/Partially destroyed (representing a crew kill or actual mobility kill) and the current damage model "Brewed up"/completely destroyed. No new damage textures are needed for Immobilized - the vehicle just stops moving.
This intermediate damage state is important, since the disabled tank remains a target for further attacks. That means that you and your allies waste ammo on a "dead" foe.
Pictures of knocked out WW2 AFV frequently show multiple penetrations. Example here:
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i2...ps736b6ffd.jpg