I noticed this lol, I put light turrets on my mediums all the time to lower cost
Why do secondary turrets reduce armor so absurdly? (and other ridiculous tank designer problems)
- Thread starter Delpheus
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As others pointe d out, the French tried the secondary turret bit. It did not work out well.
Not only the French, everyone did. Including the Germans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neubaufahrzeug
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosstraktor
Coming from a History Nerd here, I honestly don't mind what they did with the costs of various modules and I can explain the background:
Petrol-Electric Engine: This one was only used AFAIK on the Porche Tiger Prototype of which the engine was hideously and horrendously unreliable resulting in the prototype being rejected in favor of the one that became the Tiger 1 we know today, however because Porche made something akin to like 200 hulls so the vast majority of them were converted into the Elephant TDs with a few turreted ones being kept as command vehicles for those heavy TDs
As stated, its reliability was Horrendous and is typically shown in pretty much any media portraying. There were, however, some benefits to the drive, that being reportedly it had very good acceleration and had very fast reverse speeds. In Game although there are many times it wouldn't be used, the additional benifits you don't get out of Diesel or Gasoline Engines Could be handy in situations where you have effectively endless IC and need as potent a division as possible so it could be useful on late game USSR or USA since you have endless production of the tank so you don't mind some losses
Cast Armor: In this case the uniformness of the armor produced and the lack of potential weakspots such as the welds themselves, but Casting is a incredibly expensive process IRL since the entire turret and other parts of the tank are singular pieces, you need a colossally large set of infastructure to properly cast the pieces and to have enough quality control to ensure that not too many casts have to be thrown out due to an error in the process, and to bring historical context into this, there's a reason why about 4 or 5 different French Tanks used the same Turret as the B1, and that isn't because it was a good turret-but because it would be too costly or difficult. IRL after the fall of france there's a reason why there was only 1 tank that was casted-the M4 Sherman. The other big allied tank producer, the Soviet Union, found out that Welding required a lot less infrastructure and they were able to use much smaller workshops to produce either the T-34 or T-70(Even though during the construction of these early in the war did have Severe quality control issues to the point of creating holes in the welding that some early T-34s were able to be knocked out by 20mm Flack Guns). In game its another situation of if you got a surplus of IC but need that bigger stats you can make that trade, but there's a good reason why casting tanks pretty much died out after the M4 as far as I know and welding is the norm nowadays
Fixed Superstructure: Now tbh I do have some problems with this-that being that all the breakthrough is on the turret and other modules with the actual guns of the tanks having no effect on it, but it does make sense as not only is the reaction time of the tank being slowed due to the removal of the turret, having to include the Driver as a third wheel in the aiming process does result in significant problems when going onto the offensive, furthermore having to point your Tank at the target does result in the loss of flexibility when going on the offensive. IRL this is the reason why you really didn't see casemate tanks being used on the offensive outside of a supporting role(Sans 1944/1945 Germany and the Axis Minors putting anything that had armor that was available in their armored divisions) and why the Casemate died off in the early Cold War with the German Kannonenjagdpanzer(a curious german AFV which was the mating of a 90mm gun with a Marder IFV chassis made because West Germany needed big gun vehicles Badly during the '60s) and the STRV-103, a Swedish tank that really is too complex to get into much detail here
Small Cannon Turret(And secondary Turrets in General): In general this was a interwar obsession since everyone thought Tanks would go similar to Ships-getting bigger with more guns was the way forward. This resulted in several interesting designs such as the A1E1 Independent, the Neubaufahzeug(this is a good one, as it was a production of about half a dozen dozen tanks and used prominently in Propaganda and gave the soviets so much of a freight that they designed the 57mm Zis-2 Anti-Tank gun in response.... until it was deployed in Norway where brits using one of the worst AT-Rifles ever made, the Boys .55 AT Rifle, easily knocked them out) and the T-35 for the heavies, and the M2A2, the T-28, and the twin turreted 7TPs, T-26s, and Vickers 6 Tons for the medium/lights. In all cases it shown that the extra turret resulted in entirely too much additional weight and made putting more armor onto the tank without utterly splatting the Suspension impossible, this is shown in all of the "Heavy" multi-Turret tanks as the Neubaufahzeug had a mere 20mm of armor as its maximum armor thickness, the T-35 at 30mm(and even then it proved to be so unreliable most of them were lost attempting to either flee or go into combat with the Germans), and the A1E1 at 28mm. By far the most successful of the attempts were the ones with smaller secondary turrets with MGs, as at least the twin turreted 7TPs and T-26s were at least recorded to have been useful to some extent sometimes across their war careers. But the best functioning True(as in Greater than 1) multi-turret tank would be the T-28 wherein it was reliable enough to be used to a notable extent by the Axis Minors from captured examples, with some even still in action in 1942 on top of easily having the thickest armor at 60mm(Also earning it the prize for being the only one with a proper amount of armor) and it achieved this by basically having the two MG turrets be glorified hull MGs that the commander didn't really focus on controlling much.
Even when we do go to the vastly more successful group that had a Turret and Casemate gun, both the B1 and the M3 were far heavier for their weights as their protection or mobility would imply, both being about the 30 tonne group being buds with the much more successful and useful Sherman and T-34. And from there they either had Sub-Par Protection(M3 at 50mm) or ended up making major weak-spots(B1, to be specific the flat turret and the area around the gun made significant weakspots where a 47/45/50mm gun would have difficulty in penitrating its sloped 60mm armor be able to easily knock it out, hence why the Germans either used the B1 for Garrison, turned it into a SPG, or reworked the casemate and replaced the 75mm with a Flamethrower to remove that glaring weakspot after the early days of Barbarossa) Once again there's a reason after ww2 there are absolutely no tanks that ever had secondary turrets unless you are talking about the curious case of Cupolas and the weapons mounted on them during the cold war. In game, similar to the Petrol-Electric Drive and Casted Armor, you use it if you got plenty of IC and need that division to have optimal stats as opposed to going IC to IC with your opponent
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How many Neubaufahrzeuge were produced compared to their French counterparts...?
there was a whole.... 6 Neubaufahzeug produced compared to about 405 B1s
I do find it funny how the mass produced "cheap" M4 sherman used cast armor, while the expensive panther tanks used welded armor.
But in my opinion by far the best tank is the one that puts minimal investment into armor and just goes for building absolutely as many tanks as possible and doesn't care about getting pierced. Even pierced tanks provide a very good concentration of firepower, and their hardness will mitigate a lot of the damage you'll be seeing from AI divisions in single player. And as far as I know, in unmodded MP tanks just aren't very good period.
Honestly, I would consider all of these designs to be horribly expensive, not just the one you designed to be too expensive. If my goal is to have 130 armor on a tank, I'd just build a heavy tank since it would actually be cheaper. It would have lower numbers per battalion as well as fewer resources due to needing far fewer armor upgrades for the same armor value, and also fewer engine upgrades due to fewer armor upgrades slowing down the tank.
But in my opinion by far the best tank is the one that puts minimal investment into armor and just goes for building absolutely as many tanks as possible and doesn't care about getting pierced. Even pierced tanks provide a very good concentration of firepower, and their hardness will mitigate a lot of the damage you'll be seeing from AI divisions in single player. And as far as I know, in unmodded MP tanks just aren't very good period.
The game got it backwards, it's welded armor that is the better one and that is why it's used for tanks after WW2. Casting had a large initial investment, but fast and inexpensive afterwards. But cast armor does not get the benefits from being rolled and homogeneous like the plates used for welded tanks.
When one of the primary objections was the reduced armor, I figured slapping on tons of armor would illustrate the point better. And I used mediums because I figured it would be more stark in terms of costs and modules.
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Are you sure, if they use welded armor after WW2 it can be about cost or extra advanced armor system, not because cast armor is not the better armor. The latter T34 use the combine cast and wielded armor.
Casting is sometimes used even today, but usually the structure with the armor parts mounted onto that. That does not make sense if cast armor was the best armor type as armor was quite the focus for modern tanks. Bolted armor is also used quite a lot, but that's not quite the same as old riveted armor.