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RE: Sherman v Pz IV, is there a rating problem?
Other examples of stock armor ratings that don't make much sense with actual armor thickness and slope taken into account include the US TDs.
In the game, they are pretty much all given a pretty pathetic "2" armor rating. The Hellcat really only deserves a "1", since its armor was nowhere more than 18mm thick, being built entirely for speed. But the entire front of the M-10 and basic M36 resist like 75mm of armor plate. They are in fact somewhat better protected than a late war Panzer IV, from both front and side aspects, and had marginally superior protection to a late model L panzer III, for example. The M36B1 had a full Sherman armor layout and deserves a 4 rating.
The Russian SP TDs are also underrated, especially the SU-100. It was a beast of a late war tank dueler, the Russian Jagdpanther in effect. Its 100mm gun was more capable than the 122mm on the IS-2, and its front armor was 75mm thick at nearly the same high angle from the vertical as the Jadg (50 degrees), giving it an effective thickness of nearly 5 inches of armor.
There are also clear mistakes in some of the towed AT gun AT ratings. The US and Russian 57mm are given only 3-6 AT rating, for example, when they actually had superior penetration to the Russian 76L42 or the mid war US 75L38 before it got improved APCBC ammunition. The British kept using 6 lber main armament tanks - and sending them lend lease to Russian - into 1943 because they considered it superior to the short 75 for AT work, while the 75 was better in an infantry support, HE tossing role. By 1944, improved ammo for the US 75s put them in the same category as the 6 lber for armor penetration and this need was dropped, but the towed 57mm ATG still had just as much tank penetrating power as the 75mm on Shermans at that point. It deserves more like a 5-7 rating than the pathetic 3-6 it is given. It notably outperforms the German 50L60 that the game gives a 4 AT rating, firing a much heavier (longer) shell at an equal muzzle velocity.
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