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RADICAL Armor Ratings - 5/20/2000 4:24:00 AM

Charles22

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What I'm referring to, is some of the displays I've seen when Polish '39 armor is hit, though it doesn't seem I've seen my own Gerrys with this problem. What will happen is occassionally a Polish tank when hit will state the armor is much stronger than it is stated in the stats. For example, none of the Polish have over 80mm of armor anywhere, and yet I've got into triple digit armor ratings, or so the battle message says. Get this, I've even seen quadruple digit figures too! When you fight the Poles, you aren't fighting sissies.

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- 5/20/2000 5:15:00 AM

Drake666

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I think that has to do with the angle. You hit armour 20mm thick at 40 degrees angle and its something like hitting 40mm armour. I think that is how they did it.

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- 5/20/2000 6:48:00 AM

Paul Vebber

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Check out the combat system discussion a ways back. It explains some of this...thought Polish OOB as was brought up has a few errors.

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- 5/20/2000 7:26:00 AM

Desert Fox

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Ok, next time anyone gets that message that shows an armor rating ridiculously high, check out what armor was hit. Example: Pz IVC hit side hull...Pen: XX Armor: 356 Obviously that is impossible for it to have 356mm of armor. However, that is its effective armor, not the real armor. Look now at what unit shot it. Lets say its a Sherman M4 at 10 spaces in front of the Panzer. Now take another look, specifically at the way the Panzer is oriented to the Sherman. In this example, the Sherman hit the side hull, even though the panzer was facing in the Sherman's general direction. In other words, the profile of the panzer to the Sherman was mostly the panzers frontal armor, with just a little bit of side showing. So when the Sherman hit the side armor, the shot came in at a very small angle to the armor, hence making the effective armor very large. Example 2: Get a ruler and measure the thickness of a book. Likely something on the order of 1-2 inches. Now turn that ruler so that it makes a smaller and smaller angle with the book. Notice that the thickness of the book at that angle is actually much larger than the 1-2 inches at 90 degrees? Thats basically what is going on in the game. Something I have noticed is that unexperienced crews seem to be crack shots. They always manage to hit the small profile armor. Constantly my tanks were hitting the fronts of Sumida armored cars when the Sumidas were travelling parallel to my lines. Took forever to knock them out because of it, but no real harm done. Anyways, hope this helps you visualize what is going on.

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- 5/20/2000 8:45:00 AM

Charles22

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Desert Fox: Thanks. I figured, as I'd never seen slope calculated before, that this was part of the reason, but oh, I think perhaps you err here, I hope not. What was the situation? I'm shooting mostly with the 'experienced' PZ35T crews against the Polish tanks called 'dw' and 'jw', whatever that is (7-TP's or something). While I understand angle to tank somewhat, as you describe it, it would seem to me as though that approach would only count for more richochets, not so much armor being thicker at angle. The armor is the same thickness no matter what angle it's struck from, the only argument in favor of what you're saying, is that instead of thicker armor, the round is expending a lot more of it's impact on thin air, rather than on armor. Subtle difference, anyway. Actually, given what I just said, it would be an argument for the round fired going far below it's pentration rating, and I've never seen that. I was more thinking along the lines that the HUGE armor discrepancies might be the result of an extra digit or two sneaking into the message, though the equation calculated may not be what the message shows. In any case, if what you were saying were true, I would've had FAR MORE messages that appeared in error than I did, and since your idea is universal to all tanks, though it may had happened and I didn't notice, I NEVER saw a Gerry tank being hit where the armor was grossly out of line. I suspect the Poles aren't quite as stable as the campaign countries, programming wise.

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- 5/20/2000 9:01:00 AM

Charles22

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One last thing. If each and every shot were subject to the precise angle of the target, how many times would you get a dead straight on hit attempt, 50% at most? And yet I see accurate armor ratings at least 95% of the time in the messages. For example, if two Tigers are moving about shooting each other (this is only an example), constantly hitting each other's side hulls, we should see not see the armor rating of 80 showing up on the messages as much as I'm seeing what appear to be perfectly rated parts of tanks getting hit in various facings, with movement, etc (perhaps one time the side hull shows 95, another time 200, another time 80, another time 125. You see?). I'm not saying that the armor slope isn't taken into account, though I wonder about the angle of the tank. In any case I believe that the slope and the possibility of calculating angle, is all done behind the scenes, but is not necessarily being reflected in the message. It would seem the mission of the message is simply to tell you the penetration of the shell at that range, combined with the rating, just the rating of the armor getting hit. Elsewise, how are so many of the armor ratings that show up always so pristeenly accurate to the rating that's on the unit's data?

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- 5/20/2000 10:19:00 AM

Desert Fox

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Well, I don't know about you, but I get 'weird' armor ratings constantly. This is also going on what Paul has said in another thread. If you make sure your tanks are always facing the enemy tanks then you would almost never get a 'weird' armor value. Think about it. If you always present your front armor to the enemy tanks, then that is all they can ever shoot. I usually end up in a crossfire, or put the enemy in a crossfire, so I am constantly seeing tanks getting hit which are not necessarily aligned with their best armor to the best threat. Most of the time the angles are relatively normal, and the stats you see in the info box will be very similar to the stats in the armor table. However, when the angles become very small, then the effective armor increases dramatically. I don't think you are visualizing this well. Ok, lets go back to the book example. Say the thickness of the book (cover to cover) is 1 inch. Now lets say that the book is 8 inches long. If someone were to fire a bullet/laser/etc. at the book at a 90 degree angle to the face, then that bullet/laser/etc. would have to travel through 1 inch of material. If you decrease that angle, then the bullet/laser/etc. has to travel through more and more material to go through the book, or penetrate. If you fire that bullet at say a 5 degree angle, it would have to travel through more than the length of the book. Yes the book is still 8 inches long and 1 inch wide, but the bullet is travelling at an angle that presents a combined thickness greater than either of the two sides. So if that bullet were fired at that 5 degree angle, and it hit the face of the book, then it would be hitting the 1 inch thick side of the book, however because it did not hit straight on, it is presented with a total path through the book that is much larger than 1 inch. So imagine now that the face of the book is the side hull of a tank. A shell is fired and hits the side hull at a 5 degree angle. It will not be attempting to penetrate the given armor value for the side hull, but one that is much much larger because of the angle. Maybe Paul can shed more light on the subject since he knows exactly what is going on.

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- 5/21/2000 7:15:00 AM

Paul Vebber

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Excellent explaination D.F. (but the game deals with the 3D compound angle, so its more like measuring across the volume of a shoe box) A couple of things: 1)We are still using the "hit location" function from SP3 that used a funky "smometimes the crew aims for teh weak spot" rather than "center of mass" which was intended. We hope to fix that in a patch... 2) Because of the nature of the hex grid, there is an implicit assumption that units ARE NOT asways in the center of their hex, but somewhere in motion in teh hex. Thus the source of "randomness" is now a random variation in the angle. It is more significan tin the horizontal than the vertical. That is why you can repeaat the same "shot" several times and wee WIDELY varying "effective armor" values when teh angle is not close to perpendicular. Near perpendicular the effective thickness does not change much. You can see the effect by using base armor/(cos(angle)^1.6) a littel geometry will get you to the full 3 D formula (think of the diagonal across the volume of a shoe box), its too hard to write it without math notation...

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- 5/21/2000 7:38:00 AM

Ken Rutsky

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And there is also the fact that striking armor plate at a less than optimum angle will diffuse the effect of the hit and increse the chance for ricochet, I think. Was this taken into account? Ken Rutsky

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- 5/21/2000 10:55:00 PM

Paul Vebber

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Yes, if a hit is scored, there is first a check to see of teh round "ricochets", if it does it automatically is a "non-penetrating" hit for damage purposes. if it "bites" then the penetration is compared to the effective armor to see if it penetrates, it can then be judeged a "non-penetrating hit" or penetrate. The more "left over" penetration the more damage it can casue in side, it can have too much and pass right through in odd circumstances...

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- 5/22/2000 2:14:00 AM

Desert Fox

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quote:

Originally posted by Paul Vebber: The more "left over" penetration the more damage it can casue in side, it can have too much and pass right through in odd circumstances...

Unfortunately, I seem to see this a lot right now. I am playing a WW2 campaign as the US, and right now its US vs Japan. I have a bunch of M2A4s and M3A1 Lee tanks, and those 37mm guns are way too powerful for the Japanese armor. I keep hitting them time and time again, almost always with a penetrating hit, but no damage. This is complicated by the fact that the US in early 42 is just a bunch of farmers with rifles. BTW, that 37mm gun may be slightly too powerful in the OOB files. It has an AP penetration rating of 74. Pretty strong, even stronger than the short barrel 50mm gun the Germans use. Its probably right, but it just seems a little odd to me that a 37mm gun is so powerful.

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- 5/22/2000 3:30:00 AM

Paul Vebber

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One of the best web sources for this sort of info, www.wargamer.org lists the penetration of the M3 M51B1 as 53mm at 30degrees at 500 yards. My data is all based on capped ammo performance so that is the standard I have used. Perhaps in the future we can better protray uncapped ammo from early in the war that perfoms much worse. The German 50L42 is listed as penetrating 47mm at 500m so I believe the 0 at 0 ratings of 74 vs 71 are pretty good.

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- 5/22/2000 10:18:00 PM

Charles22

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Hmmm, started a new campaign against the Poles. The follwing may provide something of a lesson on inaccurate combat reports. There seems to be something of a funky quirk with this new campaign, or perhaps the original campaign was the funky one, or.... In any case, I reported, before, that I often saw "pristeenly" accurate armor ratings (95% of the time) when shells hit, much more than you would expect from real battle (with my then contention that this would reflect that angle computation wasn't meant to be reflected in the messages, but behind the scenes, and that this would mean the messages were just grossly off), and that all the radically off armor ratings were always in favor of the Poles. Now, new campaign, either the thrill of a new game had me a little myopic, or this one is playing differently. NOW, I've seen Gerry armor grossly off as well. Not only that, but I've seen shells penetration amounts grossly off, though I don't think I've seen them in combination. For example, I believe the PZIVC's HE rating is 24, whereas I've seen it at "1" from a range of two. Now, either this is supposed to reflect a dud shell, or we are seeing the penetration calculation being applied in one instance to armor thickness being more, compensating for angle, or as I would prefer, shell force being lessened by angle. Are the numbers "always" reflecting angle difference by showing more armor than there, or does it apply to the shell force every once in a while? It seems as though I've seen far more thicker armors, than I've seen smaller force of shell hit.

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- 5/23/2000 2:19:00 AM

Paul Vebber

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There is a small percent chance that HE shells will be "duds and greatly reduced in effectiveness (they still have some kinetic impact). There is a lot going on! HE is applied agains the base armor thickness, and HEAT is applied agains the "geometric" armor thickness and AP is applied against an "effective ballistic thickness". When you are at a 60/30 degree angle, the results can vary widely like from 50-70 meaning a swing form X2 to x10 without anything but the assumed "micro-motion" within the hex leading to random variation in the angle. If you are straight on his flank, the range might be +10 to -10 from perpendicular and not even be noticable. Geometry of teh encounter is important, but you can't "freeze" the battlefield, so the intrisic variables can cause widely varying effects, based on geometry. The forces involved understood this and the reason for many formations and the zigzagginf approaches they took were becasue geometry mattered. They did not have teh "spot -on " control you have, but that is the reason for the random variation!

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- 5/24/2000 10:41:00 PM

Larry Holt

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Playing GE vs. POL I've found that when my PzIIIe's fire against JP-7's I often get results like penetration in the high 30's, armor in the high 20's but no damage is noted. I mean at about 10 hexes, 90% of the time this happens, its not a freak occurance. What is happening? I'm hitting them with 10% more energy than is needed to penetrate but not even seeing hull damage reports. Is this a bug or am I not understanding something here? (that'd be a first - not!) ------------------ An old soldier but not yet a faded one.

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- 5/25/2000 12:36:00 AM

Charles22

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Larry: Yes, what you say is true, though I wouldn't have dreamed that it wasn't that way in the other areas of SPWAW. From what I've seen, the message will say the object has been hit, but there's no damage, nor does it say "no effect" as a non-penetrating shot would. Perhaps the shell just made a small hole, not enough to actually enter the tank completely(or would that be what is called non-penetrating?).

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- 5/25/2000 12:47:00 AM

Paul Vebber

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Penetration invokes a damage process that is based on a number of factors. With small rounds, the fact that you penetrated, doesn't mean you caused any damage. There is a "% chance" based on warhead, vehicle size, survivablity and "extra penetration" that you do damage , that is rolled for each "system". For a small caliber round, that probabilty may be fairly low, so the round has a fair chance of either penetrating an area that there is nothing much to hit, or just didn't do much but scare the heck out of the crew! Also rember that for small rounds, 10% excess isn't very much and may mean simply the difference in the size of the pieces spalled around the inside of the tank! Studies ("Lessons Learned form WW2 Tank Combat", DTIC for example) cites beteen .4 and .65 as kill probabilities given penetration, obviously varying with location and round. What that means is that the number of penetrating hits it takes to get say a 95% confidence that the tank is dead, is on the order of 3-6. The smaller the projectile, the more hits are needed to ensure a kill. We experimented with more detail in the damage modelling but it was buggy and offered only a questionable increase in accuracy given the lack of data. The current system by Mike Wood matches the general sort of detail provided above pretty well! We may add more systems and damage types, but right now there isn't a lot of justification for it other than "Its more cool" :-)

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- 5/25/2000 1:39:00 AM

Charles22

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Thanks Paul. What you said was in the back of my head, only I hadn't much SPWAW experience with many larger guns to know, though it has seemed as though with the lower penetration/armor ratings of '39, that the ratio of damage was higher with the 75L24's and I needn't get into what hits I've seen the 88's make, must I (or the Polish 75mm flaks as well)? KA-BOOM.

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