Damage model

[Bastables]

Originally posted by RIPper_SVK:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bastables:

I think that the effects that Rip and Dru are asking for is AP shells. Which is solid full sized rounds with a HE charge with a delayed fuze to explode after penatration.

no i'm asking for more damage to components that are directly hit by AP, and a more fragmentation damage from AP if it passes through a lot of armor.

Originally posted by Bastables:

Now to examine the Sabot rounds, the whole development of this round is that you cannot use mere steel or iron as the speeds that sabot hit would overstress the steel or iron meaning it would fragment before penatration. So Sabot rounds have always been manufactured from metals that are much harder than steel such as tungstung and Dupleated urianium metals and won't fragment.

nope that's not true, see one of my previous posts. tungsten or depleted uranium are definitely softer than steel. for example diamond is much tougher than tungsten, but it's much less dense (just look into some chemical tables).

Originally posted by Bastables:

The basic properties of Sabot type rounds is that they don't fragment much at all so they can penatrate much more armour and after armour effects are genrally worse than AP shells and Heat rounds. Things are much worse becasue they don't fling as much mass into the targets because they're smaller sub calibre rounds.

they do produce fragmentation by spalling. that means when they penetrate, they tear out bit of armor from the inside of the armor.

Originally posted by Bastables:

The game does show this as AP rounds penatrate much more against greater thicknesses but are less insta kill as penatrating heat rounds. This of course is because the Armour in the game is so effetive and more importantly everything is in sealed compartments meaning fragments are less effective at hitting multiple objects both human and equipment inside.

the problems is that even direct hits with AP are pretty innefective. in the test i described in my first post in this thread, i was shooting to the back side of thor's hull from point blank range. even after 2 direct hits to engine and fuel cells, they were pretty ok and the tank could still move...that's quite wierd that you have 2 120mm AP penetrators going through the engine and fuell cells and still be combat effective.

Originally posted by Bastables:

Maybe the problem we're dealing with is that there is this expectation and I experince this in game too of penatration should always equals a dead/exploding/burning tank. This is coupled with the hope that even on the ice ma if i can see the tgt and hit it at 5000metres the damn things should explode if I hit it at long range from the front or even at angles from the side.

no i don't think that penetration should always equal a dead tank. on the ice map i can hit a Thor's hull side (from 90 degrees) from 3kms with HEAT or AP repeatadly. but it's not effective. HEAT usually doesn't penetrate (because it hits the sloped parts mostly). AP penetrates more, but because i cannot hit the same component several times (because of gun dispersion and because the target is moving), i have to penetrate him with AP at least 5 times. </font>

[yurch]

For the record, I just penetrated (and killed) the side of a thor on the ice map with AP at a rather poor angle (almost 45'?) at just under 4k. Whatever the falloff range where HEAT becomes more practical for pure penentration than AP, it's "area fire" range.

Does everyone here know you can zoom the view in further? Pressing G while zooming in (holding E by default) switches the zoom levels. Most vehicles have 2 levels, thor has 5.

[RIPper_SVK]

Originally posted by yurch:

You won't make the AP round more useful by making HEAT better. Tanks have sloped armor for protection, that's what it's for. This effect is what keeps heat from totally dominating it from the side like it does the light tanks. The risk is still too great to leave the thor's sides open, this 'protection' isn't reliable at all.

i repeat, the suggestion to make HEAT a bit better (just a little bit) was to overcome the "too strong sloped armor" problem which is mostly seen on Thor hull side, and sometimes on paladin side. if the penetration would be just a little bit better thor hull side could be penetrated with HEAT from maybe more than 60 degrees. so if you make a nice ambush, you penetrate. but shots from about 45 degrees wouldn't penetrate.

now the situation with Thor is that it's hull side is HEAT resistant a bit above the ground, then it gets vulnerable to HEAT in the middle of hull, and then it's resistant to it again at the top of the hull....i don't think that's on purpose, that's a sideeffect of "the same armor thickness for the whole side of a vehicle" and armor slope.

actually it wouldn't be a problem for me if Thor would be invulnerable from HEAT at the sides. but make it consistent (not like now where you have a "horizontal strip" which is vulnerable to HEAT, but it's surroundings aren't).

but i don't think the important problem is HEAT penetration against thor side. if it would be consistent on the side, it would be OK. the HEAT problems just shows the issue with the armor model that has all armor on some side have the same thickness without regard to the armor slope. i think this has some ugly side effects. otherwise i think HEAT is spot on with it's performance.

Originally posted by yurch:

It is vulnerable to HEAT. I would say it's not designed specifically so, given that the thor has higher side armor than normal and a very mild sloped protection. Didn't you say earlier you wanted to use AP vs heavy vehicles and HEAT versus light?

yep i said that...if AP component damage was better than now, you would use AP to shoot at thor's side because it can penetrate from lower angles and it's easier to hit. but if the distance would be too big to penetrate with AP (the distance depends on air density), and the thor would be stationary (otherwise it's hard to hit with HEAT at long distances), you could use HEAT. i highlight the word "could". you wouldn't want to use HEAT at usuall situations against thor (even against it's sides). but if the distance would be too big for AP to penetrate, you could try shooting some HEAT at the thor's side.

Originally posted by yurch:

I murder Thors from the side with HEAT. So does everybody else, it's a one to two hit kill. If you're too far away to even hit the flat part of the Thor, the tank isn't much of a threat because it probably can't do the same to you. Part of an effective ambush is firing in effective range.

at what range do you murder them? i've done tests with Drusus, and even at 2kms it took at least 2 shots for 1 penetration. you need 2 penetrations usually to kill, but for this you need at least 4 hits usually .... we tried this on the ice map, against a stationary thor.

Originally posted by yurch:

Let me break it down:

No matter what changes you make, HEAT should always do more damage than AP if it penetrates. Therefore, HEAT will be favored whenever it can penetrate. This has been an absolute so far in the discussion. If you make HEAT more likely to penetrate, it's going to be favored over AP more, no matter what changes you make to the damage model. HEAT is supposed to be good for light vehicles and at ranges where AP has no chance of penetrating.

agree, HEAT should do more damage. all my talk about giving HEAT a bit more penetration was because of the inconsistent Thor side armor (and Paladin too). maybe HEAT shouldn't penetrate Thor's side at all, that's not a too big problem for me....but make it consistent, and not dependent on lucky hit on a vertical piece of armor.

Originally posted by yurch:

HOWEVER, HEAT is a lower velocity round. This means it will suffer more from leading, scatter, dispersion, ect. Firing HEAT long range at a main battle tank at dubious angles is an act of desperation, not practicality. I fully support your right to do this, as I believe ammo is cheaper than lives, but I do not think it should be anywhere near effective as you seem to want it to be.

yes it should be an act of desperation, AP should be the preferred anti tank weapon. the desperate situation would be too big range for AP. and you would have to be lucky to hit him.

Originally posted by yurch:

What? I'm talking about the arrangement of internal parts - a shot down the front or rear has more potential of passing through multiple parts than from the side, doesn't it?

agree. i think i missunderstood you before.

Originally posted by yurch:

I'm not sure if I'm getting across how well some players can aim. Your 1.5km hitting-components-twice challenge is most likely not even a problem for some players, and they will only get better through time. At close range it's trivial. You can one-hit-kill with HEAT on thors with a fairly high ratio as it is. Light vehicles are even easier. Short range gunnery is most certainly already effective, and it doesn't need our specific help to be any more so.

my "hitting-components-twice challenge" at 1.5 km vs moving target is a problem with AP ammo. you don't need to hit the same components twice with HEAT, there's no problem in that. it's a problem with AP ammo because AP ammo has very low frag damage, so you need to hit the same component several times (usually 2-3). this is why i want the AP to do more damage to components.

Originally posted by yurch:

You're bouncing all over the place here. You saying mobility isn't needed and you said earlier you think the HEAT should penetrate the paladin easier. The tradeoff is protection versus manuverability, is it not? If manuverability wasn't needed we could put heavier armor on the paladin...

yeah sorry i shouldn't bring the discussion about light vehicles here...but i really think that the high mobility of lighter vehicles isn't as usefull as it could be.

i think i got into minor arguments and noone will want to read it, so i'll sum it up:

1) AP does too little component damage. because of this HEAT is used much more than AP, even against tanks.

2) the fact that armor has the same thickness on one side without regard to sloping makes some ugly side effects. It creates tough spots of armor where i think they shouldn't be, like the lowerhull side of thor.

i hope devs don't think i want to bash the game. i really love it. i'd really like to see their opinion on the last 2 points, maybe i'm just smoking crack....

[inktomi19d]

I really don't mind the Thor being tough to kill from the side. It's not exactly an MBT, it's more of a heavy tank. MBTs are intended to be the *only* tank used, so they sacrifice survivability from the sides and rear to achieve the speed they need to fill the light tank role. The Thor moves at 25 km/h, so it needs to take a few hits from the side. The Thor is more of an old-style heavy tank.

I think much of the focus on the Thor is because that's what the bots will drop in absence of other orders. I generally pick a 76 truck for my first drop on the green map, because I'll need to cover the 4-5 kilometers from my LZ to the objective quickly. For a rolling attack, the best tank is the Apollo. The Thor is probably the worst vehicle in the game for an attack -- it's only useful when you can drop it within 1000m or so of where you intend to fight. Most players will chose other vehicles most of the time, so players are almost always more vulnerable.

The only reason killing Thors seems so important is that bots prefer them. But bots in Thors are easy to disable. If you get a chance for a side or back shot on a Thor and you shoot the hull instead of the turret, you're wrong. Ammo storage takes up about a third of the Thor's turret, making it an easy target, and 76 AP will get a mission kill in 1-3 hits there. With 120mm HEAT you can destroy the ammo on practically every shot.

The only vehicles I can think of which should be easier to damage are the hovercrafts and the Cutter. The hovercrafts' armor is well-angled from every direction, and they're the most difficult targets in the game to hit. The Cutter just seems to have a *lot* of empty space inside, and it's difficult to find components. Paladins can take a few hits, especially from the front, but their wheels are easily damaged even when not hit directly. Also, Paladins are not armored cars -- the armored car chassis is the Shrike, and center-mass hits with HE will kill those. Paladins are a 20-30 ton wheeled AFV, and real-life vehicles in that class tend to be very resilient, especially to HEAT rounds. It's not unreasonable to think it would take more than one round to kill them, although they seem to take damage from most side attacks.

[yurch]

I don't mind the thor being 'slightly' resistant to HEAT rather than totally. The danger area is around, I dunno, 60 degrees from the side or so, so there's still some room to play with from the front as far as angles go. Have to remember it's not just front, side, rear, ect.

1.5km is not really a difficult range to hit the same region of space on, with either AP or HEAT, especially for something slow like the thor. Against bots who are always stupidly turning the side armor towards you, you can really get a feel for exactly where that battery is...

But anyway, this is uninteresting. What's interesting is how we would theoretically fix "it" (and, of course, more arguing over what "it" is), and what we would do to compensate for "it" to make something not totally dominant.

Here is part of my attempt to figure out the component system. Yes, there are things that poke out of the chassis or turret; those things obviously only apply to the part of the item they reside inside. I think the turret and hull are seperate, and subsystems do not extend between them. Which is going to create a bit of a problem for a subsystem that is supposed to reside in both, IE crew compartment. The sphere is there because the subsystems are defined by radius; I don't know if boxes or spheres are the most appropriate, so I thought I'd have one.

The ammo and battery always destroy the object they reside within (KO) if destroyed. The engine appears to have a 25% chance of the same destruction. I'd like to point out that the battery lies behind the centerline - all AP and HEAT fire from the side should be directed behind the center of mass on the thor.

[yurch]

Oh yes, on the hovercrafts - those drive me crazy. I'm starting to think the engine subsystem should be extended to cover the entire bottom half of the craft. The reasoning is, that the hovercraft is a flying vehicle. There aren't many flying vehicles that can hover safely with control surface and engine damage.

An alternative, which I've said before, is to put weak individual engine subsystems responsible for each stabilization jet. Shoot one out and watch the fun begin.

I think the definition of 'kill' should also be extended to the entire death of the crew. Right now the only sure way to kill a tank (for say, scoring, or getting it to drop the flag) is to destroy the battery.

[yurch]

Drusus/Ripper, have you found any correlation between frag(?) damage (or likelyhood of frag damage) and the "Size" variable for subsystems? It might be damage period. This var seems not to have anything to do with the coordinate system, and I suspect it's related to likelyhoods of damage.

[Drusus]

There is Diameter and Size. To me it seems that Diameter is the one affecting if the component is hit with either fragmetation or directly. I believe that the fragmentation is not luck based, that is if the fragmentation cone intersects with the component, there is fragmentation damage every time. I didn't found what Size is about. Maybe it affects how much frag damage is done, but I couldn't confirm it.

[yurch]

Diameter is used to determine the actual component size, I'm sure of it. I still can't figure out the difference between size 100 and size 1 components, though. I get frag damge for each, but in my small test I got more frequent frag hits for size 100. Haven't had enough testing to be sure though, perhaps it's a sort of density for the subsystem.

[Kurtz]

I was a bit surprised when I got killed from the front with 20 mm when using a Thor, so made a test with 20mm AP vs Thor turret. You can kill the turret (fire/explosion) with about 5 bursts if the angle is more then about 30 degrees from front (i.e. you can hit the turret side).

This worked on the Raid map at distances up to 700 m.

[ April 16, 2006, 01:20 AM: Message edited by: Kurtz ]

[yurch]

Yeah, Thor's turret is fairly weak and a large target. It's not even quite sensical for the Thor because there's an Apollo that carries the same loadout and same amount of ammunition with nowhere near that degree of ammunition vunerability due to it's small size and it's armoring. While the front of the Thor turret is probably the best protected in the game, the back and top armor of it are exceedingly poor. 400 front, 150 side, 50 back and 75 top, according to physicalobjectgroups. For reference I think that's around 10 ion shots to the rear of the turret to knock it out.

Apollo is 300/200/100/200 with it's 120mm. You have a far greater chance of losing the Thor turret under most kinds of fire. (top attack AGTM!!!) This also explain's Thor's high frequency of being mission-killed versus Hurricanes.

To avoid turning your turret to look around (while under fire), you can use the numpad keys. Do not under any circumstances leave the sides or rear of your turret open.

[ April 16, 2006, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[Kurtz]

Maybe I should try the Apollo. The "light tank" label implies vulnerability, a bit unfair obviously.

Still, it feels a bit wrong with the 20 mm penetrating the Thor turret side at such steep angle.

[cool breeze]

I, Zamuel42, agree almost completely with Yurch. The only thing I dont like about shooting the thors side is the down sloping hull only. I dont say this for gameplay reasons, I like the lvl of difficulty scoring heat penetrations (I think shot scatter is almost zero when stopped) but it bothers me a poor tank design to have the lower armor stronger than the middle. I like that you can kill the thor from the front when things are just perfect. On the ice map i get many 1hit kills with ap. The spread of shells seems to diminish as you zoom in, but thats prolly just from better aim.

[ClaytoniousRex]

In the upcoming 0.9.45 release we've made two changes that are related to this discussoin:

1. We've improved the fragmentation system so that it's more closely correlated with the amount of armor penetrated and the amount of penetration - sort of in line with what Drusus was proposing. So when, for example, you do penetrate a heavy target like the Thor with AP you're going to see more fragmentation damage than you did before. Conversely, when penetrating a light target like a Shrike with AP, you will see less fragmentation damage.

2. It is now possible for direct hits on components to do more damage. This increases the chance of direct hits killing components in fewer shots. The amount of randomness is not greatly increased here - so don't worry about an unusually high number of 1 shot KO's, Yurch.

Both of these are pretty minor tweaks. We prefer to ease into these changes over a few releases rather than do them abruptly.

[yurch]

Clay, can you clear up what the Diameter vs Size vars do for subsystems and subsystem damage?

[ClaytoniousRex]

Consider the Size tag to be deprecated. It no longer has any real purpose and is now basically cruft.

[RIPper_SVK]

so after about a week of playing (mostly with 120mm) my remarks on the changes to the damage model:

1) AP and HEAT against Thor feel fine. i'm usually using AP against it, and it's pretty effective. i really like this

2) i find HEAT to be more usefull against Apollo, i'm not sure if i like this, any comments?

3) i think that AP is too innefective against paladins and shrikes. yes i think it should be less effective than HEAT against these vehicles, but not this much.

now it's not a too big problem because you can switch from AP to HEAT almost in no time (which i think is wrong but i won't go into that detail here).

generally i find HEAT still more usefull than AP. HEAT is more effective against everything except Thors (and probably Apollo front).

i do think one type of ammo should be used more ( i wouldn't like if both types of ammo would be used the same often for some artificiall reason). but, i don't think it should be HEAT that's used more often. it feels wrong to me that AP is much less effective against light vehicles. the gap in effectiveness shouldn't be that big.

in my opinion, if you'd see an enemy group consisting of light vehicles, you'd choose HEAT and attack with that. but if the force would be mixed with some heavy vehicles, you should be able to keep shooting AP at everyone, without being forced to switch ammo. of course, with HEAT you'd destroy light vehicles with for example 1.5 shots in average faster than with AP. now you can switch ammo for every enemy vehicle, but i don't think this should be possible.

i'm still having some "WTF" moments which i think are cause by the sloped armor. i might have an easy way to fix it. simply, if the armor is sloped then it would be thinner. so armor sloped 60 degrees from vertical would have half the thickness of vertical armor (on the same side of the vehicle). so line of sight thickness would be the same for both, but the sloped armor would still have the benefit of higher probability of ricochet of AP rounds. this would remove the annoying very thick armor on the lower hull side of Thor, i think it would also remove some tough spots on the Paladin side or hurricane side...

of course this isn't a small change and might have serious balance issues. but i do think that having armor with the same thickness without regard to sloping brings some serious problems (it's probably also the reason why does the 20mm have so much penetration compared to 120mm). the ideal solution is having every polygon with his own armor thickness, but that's an even bigger change.

another not so easy suggestion which complexity is somewehere between the current armor model and "every polygon has it's own armor thickness" would be if there would be more "areas" with the same armor thickness than now. like now you have hull front, hull side etc, then what about adding more of them? for example for the Thor and Apollo it would be pretty usefull (and realistic) if the front 1/3 of the hull side would have more armor than middle and back hull side. look at pictures of modern tanks, the hull side armor is always thicker near the front.

[yurch]

Well, I'm certainly seeing many one hit kills, which I don't like. (I like running firefights, more interesting)

I CERTAINLY do not think HEAT needs the help against paladins with the top slope armor reduced. (Remember, these are AFV vehicles, NOT armored cars) Those slopes are the only "defense" against it. If my opponent is bouncing HEAT across my top slopes, it's probably because I chose a good position, or he's a terrible shot. Towards the midline of the armor and lower on the light vehicles, it's pretty rare now that you don't get a penetration with HEAT. Seriously. It absolutely makes apollo cry.

[RIPper_SVK]

it' ok with me that apollo upper front hull can take a HEAT and go on. it makes the battles insteresting.

my problem with Paladin is it's side armor. for some reason, it's not uncommon that my 120mm HEAT doesn't penetrate in the side. i don't think 120mm HEAT should have problems penetrating Paladin's side (yes even if i agree it's not just an armored car)

i think that the more serious problem is that sloped armor thickness is probably the reason for the high penetration of 20mm AP. and i don't like the penetration of 20mm AP. especialy against Apollo front, or Thor turret side. i think they gave the 20mm such a penetration, because otherwise it would have big problems penetrating even ligher vehicles because of the sloped armor.

to me it's certainly strange that 20mm has penetration of 300 and 120mm has 430 penetration...i think it shows that there must be a problem somewhere.

[yurch]

Usually I only have trouble with HEAT from the front of paladins. I rarely have trouble at all with the side, usually getting the round intercepted by the tires is my mistake. Where are you shooting at it, exactly?

I don't mind 20mm geting a high initial penetration because it slows down much faster. Many modern armor piercers (like that silly new 23 grain 5.7x28mm cartridge) depend almost entirely on speed and a light enough weight to get it there.

I think they gave whatever penetration it has just so it could penetrate thor turret/chassis side at a reasonable range. It's the same rating as apollo front, so we can't have one without the other.

[RIPper_SVK]

i think i sometimes have problems penetrating Paladin side hull, a bit above the center

[yurch]

I usually go for the the nose or the low belly of the craft from the side. The battery, driver and engine are located in very close proximity of those areas. It's easy to penetrate with HEAT there, if you don't hit the front tire, and there's nothing interesting in the top or rear of the vehicle. The nose curves over, so you can get a small flat part to hit even if he's at an awkward angle. AP from the front down through the lower nose can often damage all three subsystems. That's a 25 percent kill chance for the engine, a chance to kill the battery, and possibly a dead driver. Almost assured to slow the paladin down at least, and a slow paladin is a dead one. I can get you a picture of the subsystems in a rendering program if you want.

For HEAT and apollo; it has a v shape on it's very front, from range you want to go for the top part of it (as the shell is now arcing down) although it's a difficult shot if he's moving towards or away, as you'll have to do the much harder up or down lead. Close up I go for the track corners or just the lower section of the v, but it isn't very reliable unless he's taken a few ion hits. This is the closest to HEAT or 20mm protection the apollo has. From the side or rear the shot is trivial.

Edit: I have to say, aiming center of mass at most of these seems to be a mistake, that's probably a bit misleading to people.

[ April 29, 2006, 11:13 AM: Message edited by: yurch ]

[RIPper_SVK]

what exactly does LossRate in the ammo definition files mean? is it the drop in penetration over the distance of 1km in atmosphere with pressure "1"?

if yes, then the lossrate for 120mm AP ammo is pretty big, i'd think even too big.

[weasello]

If I read the manual right, AP ammo loses penetration quickly in dense atmosphere but starts out quite high. Which makes sense; the shell slows down.

HEAT has a lower initial penetration than AP, but over range it doesn't lose it's penetration due to the HEAT-idness of it all.

Using this info, I always use HEAT at range and AP close up. I'm more liberal with AP in Icefields where the atmosphere is thinner.

[yurch]

I think he means in relevance to the other rounds. 20mm is 300 and 76mm is 100, which could be apropriate. This would depend on the overall cross sectional density of the round, weight, shape, and other nonsense that would effect loss of energy to air resistance and penetration.

The number is arbitrary on it's own as we have no idea what the units are or what it actually measures.