The Impenetrable Marder III

[ThunderChief]

Just played the Saur-Mogila operation (first turn) as the Russians. The Germans attacked and I was able to stop one platoon of their Marders with artillery.

However, one Marder III (Sdkfz. 139) was re-occupied by the crew though immobilised. I drove a KV-1 up behind it and shot it 7 times at point blank range in the rear before it finally was knocked out.

Then, I ambushed another Marder III (Ausf. H) again with a KV-1 and hit it 3 times in the gun shield from 200m, then 170m, then 150m and none of the shots stopped it, not even the one that left a clear hole in the middle of the shield.

Of course, it lined up and blew my KV-1 to pieces with its first shot.

Am I the only one experiencing the bizarre penetration resistance of this TD?

[RedFish32]

No, I actually had exactly the same situation in the Saur Mogila campaign as well, while both playing Germany and Russia.

One situation was especially curious when one Marder (I don´t remember the variant) just flat out went on a rampage, driving forward without care, turning itself around a couple of times, ignoring all the hits on the gun shield and around it and the infantry fire, and one shotting a couple of my KV-1s. It was only destroyed at close range by infantry.

I think the crew is way to resilient to gunfire and way to stubborn staying in the tank after taking hits to the gunshield. Beeing a gunner in open topped vehicles like this, I would suspect that taking a 76mm round directly to my face would be a sufficient argument to quickly dismount and run away.

[Zephyr]

Rarely such things used to happen with almost any tank model. Sometimes you could put literally dozens of shots into (recrewed) tanks and nothing would happen, but since quite a long time now I did not see such things. And with Marders I cannot renember anything strange.

The best you could do for the developers is to provide screenshots of such cases otherwise it will be hard for them to see what happened.

[ThunderChief]

It does seem a bit odd that these open top AFVs exhibit similar behaviours.

I didn't record the game and I didn't finish the engagement after watching that happen. I have yet to knock out a Marder with a KV-1S in this operation. The 76 on this KV-1S just seems to send the shell so slowly...

I'll record my next attempt.

[Flan]

Could be either:
The way the computer gunner aims at points on a target (so if you're close it can aim at the corner and miss everything important because of the sharp angle) since the computer gunner can't think like a human gunner and decide to aim at the right spot for every situation.

Gunners will load their best pen shell for an armored target so when you get close they often load their solid core shell which just poke little holes in the target especially a marder which has little armor. This can have bad outcomes where a normal shell would have worked better.

Regular shells can break or pass through thin armor at close range doing much less damage to things like hitting the shield on a marder. Hitting the upper part of a marder is like hitting a AT gun with AP shells so you have to hit right on the gun or crew or it passes through and prob detonates behind it harmlessly.
Even if the tank loads HE shells they almost always break the fuse when hitting hard metal.

So ideally the KV behind a marder would know to use its machine gun to hit the crew and could aim regular shells at the hull to start fires and cause more damage or detonate a HEAT shell on the back if the shield to destroy everything in the open compartment.
And the KV in front would know to aim at the centre hull with a regular shell to cause lots of damage. This is all easy for a person to figure our but a computer gunner has to be told how to do everything.

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Please show screenshots from statics with hit vectors.

[cineadept]

Same situation here. Mius Front, Saur Mogila campaing, KV1 in 1vs1 Marder duel has no chances of surviving!!!
KV's being destroyed sometimes with 1st shot even at night. Marders resilince is annoying. 3 KV's vs 1 Marder when at least one is flanking damn thing could destroy it. But anyway it takes like 8 or more hits before being knocked out! I play it on Windows core i7.
This completely pushes me away from the game. How can I attack having like 4 KV's and 8 super Marders waiting in front?

[Zephyr]

Originally posted by cineadept:

Same situation here. Mius Front, Saur Mogila campaing, KV1 in 1vs1 Marder duel has no chances of surviving!!!
KV's being destroyed sometimes with 1st shot even at night. Marders resilince is annoying. 3 KV's vs 1 Marder when at least one is flanking damn thing could destroy it. But anyway it takes like 8 or more hits before being knocked out! I play it on Windows core i7.
This completely pushes me away from the game. How can I attack having like 4 KV's and 8 super Marders waiting in front?

Well, sometimes it still takes quite a few hits to take out a Marder (admittedly more than I would expect), but it got considerably easier.
Marders are dedicated tank destroyers, driving straight at them, especially when outnumbered will lead to losses and defeat.

They are very vulnerable to (off map)artillery or an infantry charge with molotovs.

[cineadept]

I get the idea of tank destroyer. I read a bit about these weapons. They were mostly used in ambush, not confronting tanks head on! It is misconception. With thin armor, high silhoutte and crew uncovered it never would stand a chance in direct duel.
Another example: I just started campaign operation "Star". Second battle near Krasnaya Polana. Stug enters village full of my ski infantry. After taking 5 direct hits with molotovs and some grenades it just continues to stroll around. At some point it just made me laugh.
https://imgur.com/H3dMS5R
German armor is overpowered to absurd level. I can understand that engaging Marder head on could be dangerous for KV's. But in this game it suicide.
I can understand that it was hard to destroy Stug with molotovs. But it was possible and most important no armor crew would risk doing something as stupid as entering village occupied by infantry without support.
I left this game to be polished for two years. I came back for bitter dissapointment.

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Originally posted by cineadept:

German armor is overpowered to absurd level.

You write weird things.
Everyone knows that this game about Soviet Bias. T-34 and also T-60 and MkIIIs are impossible to kill, and they are everywhere.
Simply use T-60 instead KV, it will helps

[cineadept]

If what you write is truth than you should work on the damage model and balance or whatever needs to be worked on. Obviosuly it is a major problem for gamers. And I hope that you aim at creating best possible game and having a lot of happy customers?

[Toni]

Originally posted by cineadept:

German armor is overpowered to absurd level.

Some time ago we had a thread with the exact opposite opinion:

"Most biased game I ever played. It's so anti-germany biased it's ridiculous."

"anti-german bias is there. Shermans are virtually indestructable, and PZIII are completely useless, they almost never do any damage, even to valentine tanks, thats crazy."

etc.

Originally posted by cineadept:

If what you write is truth than you should work on the (...) balance or whatever needs to be worked on. Obviosuly it is a major problem for gamers.

Games might get balanced, but if you model/simulate real AFV combat (like GT does), then "balance" is not a criterion...

[cineadept]

Ok, maybe not all german armor is overpowered. I faced two of them, with Marder being the reason why this thread was created. Not by me. Comment on this please.

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Originally posted by cineadept:

If what you write is truth than you should work on the damage model and balance or whatever needs to be worked on. Obviosuly it is a major problem for gamers.

We are not making any changes if something creates problems for gamers. Only if something does not responsible to the laws of physics.

Originally posted by cineadept:

And I hope that you aim at creating best possible game and having a lot of happy customers?

Obviously not, we don’t do casual or arcade games that suck money out of players, so for us it’s a meaningless goal.

Also we do not balance the game, do not simplify the life of the gamers, do not change the characteristics of the weapons and vehs if the players do not like something and do not do other equally strange things.

In the world there are thousands of games in which they do all this, and dozens more come out every day, it makes no sense to do another one like that.

[cineadept]

I see the same attitude as Battlefront owners have: "Behold! We are the masters of the truth. If you dont agree read from begining!". Have good night in your alternative universe with obviously different physics than in mine.

[andrey12345 v2.0]

Originally posted by Toni:

Some time ago we had a thread with the exact opposite opinion:
"Most biased game I ever played. It's so anti-germany biased it's ridiculous."

It seems this is a cycle of biases in nature - a natural phenomenon in the virtual gaming world.