MVDS and Mass Combat, revisited

[copeab]

Some of you may remember me, quite a while back, listing Troop Strength (TS) values for various ground vehicles that have been written up in G:WWII books. The main problem was that all the TS values were subjective. Yesterday, I think I may have come up with a reasonable objective system that allows one to derive the TS value of a ground vehicle by formula.

I decided to break the TS into three components: firepower, armor and mobility. I would have liked these to have been equal components, but as things turned out, the first two are weighted a bit more heavily in the formula. Here is how each component breaks down:

Firepower: Find the average damage of the main gun; if the gun has both an armor-piercing and high-explosive component, only use the AP portion of the damage. Divide this by ten. If the main gun is not in a fully rotating mount (eg, a Hetzer or StuG), divide that result by two. To this, add 1 for every LMG and 2 for every HMG the vehicle carries.

Armor: Divide the front turret DR by ten. If the main gun is not located in the turret, or the main gun is a MG, use the front body DR, divided by ten.

Mobility: Find the off-road speed in MPH. This is the mobility component.

Add the firepower, armor and mobility components, then divide by two. The result is the TS of the vehicle.

This seems to work reasonably well for tanks and tank destroyers. I have not tested it for SP artillery, and it probably doesn't work for them.