Re: Facing was: Well, too interesting

KHR wrote:

>At least for WWII tanks, the optimum orientation was NOT facing the
enemy
>directly, but rather, when the diagonal pointed towards the enemy!

Yep - because many WW2 tanks, particularly German ones, had poorly
sloped 
(or even vertical), flat (ie., non-curved) armour plates and a
relatively 
even distribution of armour thickness around the hull. By turning the 
diagonal towards the enemy you created a "sloped armour" effect
increasing 
the effective armour thickness, but you often did this at the cost of 
increasing the target area displayed to the enemy... and, of course, at
the 
cost of having to put relatively heavy armour on the sides of your
vehicle 
as well as on the front (since any angle big enough to give a
significant 
boost to your frontal armour will also give a significant risk of 
projectiles hitting the side armour *not* glancing off). Sloped/curved 
armours give similar effects even when the vehicle is facing straight 
towards the enemy, in addition to allowing the sides to be lighter
armoured 
and presenting a smaller target area to the enemy. ('Course, DS2 doesn't

allow vehicles to have different Signatures from different aspects - and

for playability reasons I'm not particularly inclined to make DS3 do it 
either :-/ )

But your main point is very good: for many vehicles, DS2's way of 
determining the angle of attack in the diagram on p.32 isn't very 
appropriate - and for some models, eg. GZG's DSM-116 Poruzh with its 
wedge-shaped hull, it can be pretty difficult to apply the p.32 diagram 
anyway. I'd prefer to use simple 90-degree arcs instead, mainly because
it 
is simpler to use in play but also because it takes some of the effects
of 
glancing fire on the forward side armour (which in reality is
effectively 
part of the frontal armour anyway) into account.

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry