Ammo, Armour & Ablation

[poesel]

Getting hit currently works like this: a shell hits your armour somewhere. The projectile will penetrate if its penetration power (depending on remaining speed, angle of attack and ammo type) is greater than the vehicles armour in this place. If not, the shot will explode (HE&HEAT) or deflect (AP) without effect.

That means that given the exact same circumstances you could shoot forever at the same spot on a vehicle without hurting it a bit.

This may be realistic if the difference in power between attacker and defender is very great (like 10mm vs Thor front) and you have only 20 mins to fire, but shooting a 120mm shell at anything should damage it even if only slightly.

So what I would suggest here is that all hits should have an ablation effect like the ion. You could then wear down a target even if you can't kill him directly. This would also help the game balance IMHO since you wouldn't need to be that exact in armour calculation (think ATGM vs Thor turret - if you'd up the top armour just one point there would be no more turret kills (IIRC)).

The ablation effect should depend on shell size (120mm &gt 76mm &gt 20mm)(none for &lt 20mm) and type (HE &gt HEAT &gt AP) and of course be smaller than ion generally (although the amount of ammo available would limit it in first place). That would also give the HE round more uses.

Thoughts?

[yurch]

Originally posted by poesel71:

This would also help the game balance IMHO since you wouldn't need to be that exact in armour calculation (think ATGM vs Thor turret - if you'd up the top armour just one point there would be no more turret kills (IIRC)).

Nah, you could double that piddly top armor and the ATGM would still get through.

I think the ablation works by facing right now. That means a shot to the front right of the chassis would also weaken the front left, and anything else that falls under the 'front' category. For that reason alone I'm not much a fan of this to be happening with conventional weaponry. If it were to be changed to be more locale based, I guess it would depend on the numbers. It doesn't seem too terribly realistic for a guy to waste his time emptying ammo on a target he can't penetrate.

[poesel]

Yes its not realistic that a shot to the left weakens the right but this is how ion works currently or am I mistaken? Armour rating is per side too even if in 'reality' the values would differ for different pieces on one side.

To be more realistic you had to account for each triangle in the 3D model. This would probably slow the game too much. If it doesn't...

It would be useful for long range shooting. Especially against the ion thors that sit far far away. A few dangs on the head with HEAT would make them more cautious.

[mcoyote]

Originally posted by poesel71:

...That means that given the exact same circumstances you could shoot forever at the same spot on a vehicle without hurting it a bit...

That seems unlikely -- I haven't done sepcific testing but it certainly appears that damage of this sort is cumulative. I have pumped a few 76mm rounds into the same general area on a Thor and eventually had them penetrate.

It's concievable, however, that I got lucky and hit some vulnerable spot without knowing it.

[yurch]

Originally posted by poesel71:

Yes its not realistic that a shot to the left weakens the right but this is how ion works currently or am I mistaken? Armour rating is per side too even if in 'reality' the values would differ for different pieces on one side.

I think that's how it works. I currently rationalize this by noting that ion is one of those space things. I'm open to change there.

It actually would be a hell of a lot more interesting if the ablation (even if initially set with the uniform values) was tracked by individual triangle or face. If anything, this'd be great for the ion, allowing us to up the overall ablation rate for the thing, but requiring that the player bore through a very limited spot on the armor.

You'd probably need some kind of burn or scarring texture on the surface of the vehicle.

[B0nes]

And there was me trying to aim at the exact same spot...

[ClaytoniousRex]

It could be done on a much finer grained basis at the expense of additional memory consumption. Things like this start to pinch on the already-below-min-spec users, but I guess "That's Life". We'll look at how much of a hit this actually is.

[cool breeze]

For me vpretty large areas would be almost as good as small ones. Ide even be happy with just three segments for the ssides and 2 halves for the front. But if its easy for everyone to have small areas im all for it. I had been trying to hit the same 2 square feet or so, which is too hard for the amount of damage it currently does. I think that if we get many pieces of armor there needs to be an ion damage texture so we dont have to keep track. and the smaller the segment the more damage we should do. I bet you knew all this. Thanks!

[Caseck]

deleted.

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

Speaking of armor, I´ve seen people quote armor values here. Where can I find them? Theyre not in the manual I believe.

[poesel]

Look in the data directory for the .physicalobjectgroup files for the respective vehicle. The armour values are there.

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

Originally posted by poesel71:

Look in the data directory for the .physicalobjectgroup files for the respective vehicle. The armour values are there.

thanks, but, um, :blush:

what program can read .physicalobjectgroup files?

[yllamana]

You can read them in any text editor. There are probably some better programs for it that someone could point you to, but I just open them in Xcode. Anything that can read text should be fine.

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

Originally posted by yllamana:

You can read them in any text editor. There are probably some better programs for it that someone could point you to, but I just open them in Xcode. Anything that can read text should be fine.

I tried that, but I´ll try it again now