This is an idea to make "destroying" a tank (or any armoured vehicle) more about the gradual destruction of onboard systems and eventual irrepairability (even a word?) on the vehicle.
It involves boosting hitpoints but only to give room for the effects of damage.
Destruction of a tank becomes about how effectively it can fight with its damaged systems on board instead of an amount of Hit Points. tanks will be able to reach a point where repairing them would just be daft (take too long)
*# Any hit numbers I specify are just my best guess suggestions! obviously... but still
First
Bring back the engineer repair truck and tweak repair times to make them longer (yes longer) and give the truck some real use to speed up fixing.
Also give a couple extra seats for crewman
Edit the repair truck only assists the engineer in repairing the vehicle. it isnt a fix-me-qik.
Second
Double or triple the amount of hits it take to completely destroy a tank.
Meaning that itll take about 6 or more hits from another tank to annihilate it.
Fiddle the damage so a hit from a LGB or LGM will still completely destroy the tank with one blow.
Real life, tanks dont make other tanks go pop... fizz and flame maybe but not pop.
Third
2 hits on the tank should start to injure the crew, 3 should make them bleed. 4/5 of course will be death... 3 will do.
To counter this give crewmen more dressings perhaps? after all theyll have a first aid kit in that tank surely.
Fourth
turn up the level at which the tank becomes disabled (e.g. loses a track turret ring locks etc.) to the level so when a tank used to be destroyed it is now rendered inoperable.
FifthEdit
Commander Asset. Repair post, spawns repair truck and aids the engineer in repairing vehicles (speeds up repair time more than a truck)
SixthEdit
Carrying this over to APCs: 1 hit kills/injures most of the crew and moderately disables the vehicle, 2 hits = dead crew + severly disabled APC that's on fire (that'll be enough itll explode soon) 3 hits = total destruction but why waste the ammo when 2 maybe even 1 will be enough to take it out of action
Seventh Edit
En masse respawning, I think this was tried before, with these new damage physics it may work better.
Tanks and APCs repspawn every hour or so. so those that are destroyed come back together in force...
The idea is though that more tanks will be damaged instead of totally destroyed, This is just a way so we dont have endless streams of single tanks driving to face isolation on the battlefield. Tanks will be more of a cohesive unit thatll be valued by the team as they get moving
I believe thisll make it so that in a tank vs tank battle you wont see the other tank spontaniously explode after XX amounts of hits. IRL most tanks knocked out of combat weren't totally destroyed instead they were rendered inoperable and the crew had to bail out.
Picture the scene youre fighting another tank he hits you turret ring and instead of popping with an instant kill your turret is bust, you fall back oh no RPG! argh we're stuck we can't move or shoot!
Engineer!!! several more hits, the crew is dead... carcass of a tank laying on the battlefield...
A good team will repair the tank and get it back in action.
A good fighting team will choose to disable tanks rather than destroy them thus creating an endless stream of respawns.
Choppers + jets will rely on ground troops more because airstrikes destroying tanks + AA only makes them come back again. Itd be more effective to work together to render them useless...
Imagine insurgency! molotovs and rpgs on the challenger instead of it going pop it loses the track, insurgents atop the turret firing AKs and such... scarey
I think I've reached my point I hope you get it and dont miss it lol. More damaged tanks and engineers driving to repair them
REFERENCES
Commander: Not many tanks harmed during war - Israel News, Ynetnews
Main Battle Tank - M1, M1A1, and M1A2 Abrams
Quoting the latter website...
Didn't wanna have to start posting this sort of thing... Improvised bomb hits British tank - Times OnlineSafety and Survavability
The hull and turret of the M1 are protected by advanced armour similar to the Chobham armour developed by the UK Ministry of Defence. The survivability of the M1/M1A1 main battle tank has been battlefield proven. The tanks survived without damage after sustaining direct hits by T-72 tank rounds. Of 1,955 Abrams M1A1 tanks in battle, no crew members were killed by enemy fire, four tanks were disabled and four tanks were damaged but were repairable
Tank driver loses legs... Tank survives
I'll post more references as I find them
Techniques for the Field Repair of Armour Battle Damage
Guidance on how armour can be fixed in the field... It happens, you sustain damage, you need to keep fighting so you patch up what you've got, You're rarely going to war with a brand new coat of paint on your truck...
Another bio site on the Abrams
Quoting the above site...
During the Gulf War only 18 Abrams tanks were taken out of service due to battle damage: nine were permanent losses, and another nine suffered repairable damage, mostly from mines. Not a single Abrams crewman was lost in the conflict. There were few reports of mechanical failure. US armor commanders maintained an unprecedented 90% operational readiness for their Abrams Main Battle Tanks.
EDIT: Teamwork? either we keep giving soloers their 20 min respawn when they trash a tank OR they can drive out, get killed inside it and the REAL teamplayers can take over.
After all it needs teamwork to get crewman back out to the tank and get it repaired
that's what happens to most tanks on a battlefield... it's the flakes of armour inside that shatter off and do damage to the sensitive equipment and bodies of the crew inside.