Extent of armour penetration

[RawRecruit]

Is there a rule of thumb to work out how easily a gun can kill a tank using the armour pentration values and the armour charts? IOW, how much higher(in mm) should a penetration value be, compared to the target armour, to reliably kill the said target? I assume that if the penetration value equals the armour at the same slope then you've got a slim chance of killing the target...

I know there's some colour coding in the game, and that's easy to understand for big guns and weak armour, but I get a bit lost when trying to figure out the many different PzIII/IV marks versus T34 variants over the different time periods.

[Bone_Vulture]

There are so many random factors... Round type & quality, the enemy tank's posture (trying to fire at a tank peering down behind a cliff is nearly impossible due to extreme contact angle).

I'd say a penetration is probable if your weapon chart shows a penetration figure of roughly 20% higher than the target armor face.

[stikkypixie]

No substitute for experience here. If you have ever played another Eastern front game, than you should roughly know what has a chance at killing what. Just play a lot a you'll learn, albeit the hard way.

(sorry that this didn't helped you at all)

[RawRecruit]

Bone_Vulture, thanks for the figure. This is kind of what I was after. As stikkypixie, says there's no substitute for experience, but there must also be a rough formula for working it out.

I was just thinking about making a database to help myself roughly gauge what has a reasonable chance against what, and by that I also mean AT guns, which throw another heap of data into the mix! Once I've been playing the game long enough I anticipate that this will be second nature, but for now...!

[Bonxa]

You must also consider the behind armour effect. Even a partial penetration from a big gun can make a crew abandon their tank.

I'd say that below 50 mm weapons you usually need several hits (preferably in close succession, hailfire) to reliably kill a tank. ATRs can get several penetrations without causing any damage for example.

When you're at 75 mm plus it's usually good enough to get one penetration, you might need more, to KO. I recently took out several early T34s with 105mm HE fire in directly even though the penetration was questionable. Many tanks were disabled due to gun damage.

So keep an eye on caliber as well as raw penetration data. Some shells also have an HE burster that increase kills chance while somewhat reducing the penetration stats.

P.S. A memorable moment from the CMBO days was when my Hummel KO'd a Hellcat with a miss some 5 meters away. 150mm rules!

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by RawRecruit:

Bone_Vulture, thanks for the figure. This is kind of what I was after. As stikkypixie, says there's no substitute for experience, but there must also be a rough formula for working it out.

The rough formula doesn't get any better than the data you can receive from the in-game info box. Apart from the numbers there, the most important factor is the vehicle posture. Trying to fire a Soviet 85mm AP round from the same height will do squat to Panther front hull armor: firing downwards to a valley will pierce it easily, as the impact will occur in near-zero angle.

[RawRecruit]

Hmmmm. Quite complicated. The major problem that I've had, and the one I guess I'm trying to solve without hours of extensive playtesting that I can't really afford, is choosing armour or AT assets in setup. Eg. if I've got a QB in May 1942, I now know (from painful experience) that a PzIIIJ short will barely scratch the paintwork of a T34...but what about a PzIV? And in July? The mind boggles... :eek:

I can already hear the answers, though...better fire up the scenario editor...!

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by RawRecruit:

Eg. if I've got a QB in May 1942, I now know (from painful experience) that a PzIIIJ short will barely scratch the paintwork of a T34...but what about a PzIV? And in July? The mind boggles... :eek:

Perhaps we can help you with that. As a cheap option, use the 50mm AT gun. It'll pop the T-34's. Once you've acquire either the 75/L46 AT gun, or tanks with the common 75/L48 gun, you'll demolish 99% of Soviet armor with ease.

Remember that I'm talking about turret hits only, Soviet hull armor is usually more durable. So be prepared to snipe your enemy from a distance, behind maximum cover: it might take a couple of hits before your AP round lands in the turret.

[RawRecruit]

Thanks! That's a golden wee nugget! Guess I'm just going to have to bite the bullet (or shell!) and learn the hard way, though...through getting severly dealt with by the vets out there until I know better!

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by RawRecruit:

Thanks! That's a golden wee nugget! Guess I'm just going to have to bite the bullet (or shell!) and learn the hard way, though...through getting severly dealt with by the vets out there until I know better!

You'll remember the numbers soon. Here's a good hint: memorize roughly the penetration figure a gun has at 100m versus zero degree armor with vanilla AP round. This'll give a rough picture of the gun's potency.

Next, browse and take mental footnotes of the front turret / upper hull armor of the enemy's most common tanks.

When you combine these two bits of information, you'll figure your chances soon. Also, try comparing front / side armor of the tanks. Some tanks have a sturdy layer of armor all around (like the early KV-1 tanks), others are impregnable from the front, but are tin foil (in comparison) on the sides. A good example is the German Elephant.

[MikeyD]

CM penetration models are too 'real world' to be boiled down to simple graphs. A shell may have been manufactured too brittle and break-up; or at a specific range against a specific target your round could encounter the 'shatter gap' where the shell fails; or a AP round could have a large HE cavity reducing its penetration but greatly increasing it behind-armor effect; or the target may be on enough of a slope that your round ricochets off; or the PzIII tank you were fighting last month might have got a significant armor upgrade since then; OR fog-of-war causes you to misidentify that T-34 facing to as a BT-fast tank!

That's what makes playing CM fun.

[Slappy]

1. Open the scenario editor, line up a ton of armor options and compare and contrast the pen stats.

2. The Force Purchase screen won't give you the pen values, but it will give you the main gun size in mm and length (as a multiple of diameter). So a 75mm/L43 is 75mm in diameter and 3225mm in length. Two thinkgs make a gun penetrate better, size and velocity. Velocity goes up with lenght. The 75mm/L48 has significantly higher penetration than the L43. You'd be surprised what you can infer from these figures, at least in a relative sense. If you want the highest pen possible for a given area, find the biggest diameter first, the longest relative length next. 90% of the time, you'll have found the highest penetration.

3. In a totally rough sense, you want mm of gun greater than mm of armor you want to penetrate. There are a million ways this can go wrong, but just from the QB purchase screen info this can be a help.

[Bone_Vulture]

Originally posted by Slappy:

3. In a totally rough sense, you want mm of gun greater than mm of armor you want to penetrate. There are a million ways this can go wrong, but just from the QB purchase screen info this can be a help.

Ok, it's "totally rough", but I've never figured the logic behind that argument. How about AP shots? Small caliber tungsten ammo? Just forget about the purchase screen, and check out the penetration charts in Excel format.

Somebody give this guy a link! :cool: