.50 cal pen vs bmp side armour

[GAZ NZ]

Was playing a game today and .50 cal on a humvee was shooting for two turns at a bmp with no effect.

Range of about 400 yards.

I would have thought the AP round would have gone thru.

Ive never tested this before.

Is this normal or a bug?

Cheers

[kuri]

It should penetrate unless it is a BMP-3 or maybe the target was angled so that the bullets would ricochet off?

[GAZ NZ]

It was from side and rear armour.

Just seemed to do nothing.

[agusto]

.50 cal isnt exactly the weapon of choice when engaging armored targets and 400 yards seems to be quite far away. Possibly you were just a tad too far away for a penetration or maybe you did penetrate but the projectiles had not enough energy left for causing any serious damage. Did you load up the save game as OPFOR and check weather the engine or tracks of the BMP were damaged? I know for sure that .50 cal can cause damage to armored vehicle subsystems in CMSF, but i very, very rarely (if at all, cant really remember doing so) actually scored a kill against an armored target with .50 cal.

EDIT:

Another possibilty would be that, because the BMP has its engine and crew in the front and the seats for the infantry in the back, your .50 calibre rounds did penetrate but just went through the empty infantry compartment without causing any damage since there are not vital subsystems located there.

Anyways, without testing and reproduceable result, all we can do here is speculating.

[Dim]

Im just in the process of finishing up a play though of the road to Dinas campaign, my BMP's have been relatively safe from DSHk fire throughout the campaign. Ive taken some track, optics and smoke launcher damage over the course of the campaign from .50, but nothing major other than losing one bmp and half its occupants to an ambush in the side from 20m away. In a few of the missions I was taking .50 for minutes at a time from 4-500m.