Panther has 80mm hull front? Right...

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by SoaN:

To shred some light in this topic.

The issues that are calculated in the game:

- armor thickness

- hit angle

- ricochet angle

- shell normalization angle, if normalization is supported by type of ammo

- in the moment of normalization there is calculated a chance of destruction of shell

- type of ammo. For example if APHE penetrates armor there will occur explosion inside the tank causing some extra fragmental damage.

Any questions???

Kewl. I have a spring-butt question ;P

How are you determining ricochet angle? I assume by this you mean critical ricochet angle?

[Thomm]

Thanks!

[Jeff Duquette]

Never mind -- I see Moon put together a brief right up on ricochet on the other thread. Thanks. I like that you touched upon ricochet being partly a function of t/d.

Couple things I wanted to throw out there for anyone interested. Critical ricochet angle varies dependent upon several additional factors – above and beyond t/d. Obviously attack angle is the crucial ingredient – and as Moon has already indicated, the games attack angle seems to be the complex angle of the design plate slope combined with projectile line of impact. Plate hardness and impact velocity are also rather crucial in determining the final critical ricochet angle for a specific target\projectile impact event. Moreover, if we were to hold plate obliquity and projectile attack angle constant, a slower moving projectile will have a lower critical ricochet angle than the same projectile moving at higher velocity. In addition, if we hold all constant except plate hardness, the softer plate will have a higher critical ricochet angle than the harder plate. It is in essence one of the advantages high hardness, highly sloping armor brings to the table.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

All right, there is a lot of additional information thrown around that doesn't address the core question.

Let me ask in the most simple way:

Does the game have a database (which contents are not displayed to the user) with the angles of the individual plates?

a) yes

no

Example: when the Panther upper hull front is hit the game engine pull the information that this plate is at 55 degrees vertical out of the database and uses it for penetration calculation. Is there such a database that has the 55 degree angle for this plate?

Please don't just repeat mixed other angle glibberish. We already know that some other angles are taken into account, but we don't know the answer to the above question.

%%

Thanks for threads in the tactics forum, Martin. You do, however, give an example that does not address the question above. We already know that the positional angle (from vehicle positions) is taken into account. The drawings you posted only show an angle without saying where that angle in the drawings comes from, hence we don't know the answer to the above question.

%%

Now, let me repeat that if the answer to the above question is "no", that is not a big problem. For the purpose and audience of the game you can just convert thickness and angle into one effective thickness. Not great but really good enough. Even TacOps does it. But you do have to make that conversion if the answer is "no".

Bu... ba... bump.

It must be possible to give a "yes" or "no" to the simple question: does the game assume a 55 degree angle for the Panther upper hull?

[Jippo]

Wasn't it quite clearly answered that it assumes. But the penetration is calculated with the actual loss thickness, not horisontal 55dgr/80mm LOS thickness.

-jippo

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Jippo:

Wasn't it quite clearly answered that it assumes. But the penetration is calculated with the actual loss thickness, not horisontal 55dgr/80mm LOS thickness.

That would be great, but I can't see why none of the developers or publishers can confirm this.

[Jippo]

Originally posted by SoaN:

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

So does "hit angle" include the mounting angle of the armor plate or not? From the sound of it this only uses the positional angle from the vehicle positions (and that would be in line with what was said way before the release).

If that is the case, that the plate angle is not talen into account, that wouldn't be a problem, but you would have to make an approximate conversion from the plate thickness and base angle to a base thickness.

Hit angle means angle relative to the hit surface. So plate angle is taken into account. </font>

[SoaN]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

All right, there is a lot of additional information thrown around that doesn't address the core question.

Let me ask in the most simple way:

Does the game have a database (which contents are not displayed to the user) with the angles of the individual plates?

a) yes

no

No. We don’t need database because game is in full 3D. Models have all the right angles as they were.

Originally posted by Jippo:

Isn't SoaN developer? It sounds quite clear to me.

-jippo [/QB]

Yes I am one of developers.

[Jeff Duquette]

Hi SoaN:

Did you rely exclusively on Lorrin Bird's manual "Armor & Gunnery" for the game?

Thanks

Jeff

[rune]

Exclusively? No. Also on Jentz, and some British WOs, and John D Salt, and others.

Rune

[Jeff Duquette]

But slope effects are Lorrin's?

[Redwolf]

The game doesn't have slope effects. It uses LOS thickness after computing the angle.

[Jeff Duquette]

than the answer would be slope effects are nominal thickness divided by cosine theta.

however since your previous posts suggest that your understanding of the game design is relatively limited, maybe I'll wait for one of the designers to comment.

[Kharnvor]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

The game doesn't have slope effects. It uses LOS thickness after computing the angle.

Wouldn't that be a slope effect? The effective armour thickness based on the angle of the armour?

The angle at which the shell impacts the armour based on slope and angle-offset (is the shot coming from 12 o'clock to the armour facing or off to the side a bit?) is used to determine if the shot ricochets or not. If not, then it is determined if the shot normalizes or not, shatters or not, then penetration is calculated. That how SoaN's explanations read to me.

[Dennis50]

Originally posted by Jeff Duquette:

than the answer would be slope effects are nominal thickness divided by cosine theta.

Jeff, I really like reading this stuff (in a perverted sort of way ) ...but man does it make my head hurt. :confused:

It's a good hurt I guess ..not like a tax time numbers hurt ! :mad:

Regards,

Gunz

[Bioseed]

Looks like someone got lost in translation

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by Kharnvor:

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

The game doesn't have slope effects. It uses LOS thickness after computing the angle.

Wouldn't that be a slope effect? The effective armour thickness based on the angle of the armour?

The angle at which the shell impacts the armour based on slope and angle-offset (is the shot coming from 12 o'clock to the armour facing or off to the side a bit?) is used to determine if the shot ricochets or not. If not, then it is determined if the shot normalizes or not, shatters or not, then penetration is calculated. That how SoaN's explanations read to me. </font>

[Jeff Duquette]

Originally posted by Redwolf:

Right, but WW2 AP projectiles don't behave like that.

Actually slope effects do work that way, although this would be relative to lower obliquities. Divergence from a simple cosine relationship starts anywhere from approximately 10 to 30-degrees dependent upon the projectile, impact velocity and t/d amongst other things.

Obviously for higher obliquities, slope effect modeled as thickness divided by cosine(theta) is not a particularly accurate representation. That's pretty fundmental. However, a poor representation of slope effects doesn’t really imply that there are “no” slope effects being modeled by the game. But I suppose we should never sweat the details if we happen to be swimming around in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy, or when attempting to stir up a lynch mob.

So what are you basing your guess that ToW’s slope effects are limited to line of sight thickness only?

Originally posted by Redwolf: HEAT doesn't suffer from this problem,.

HEAT slope effects are pretty much LOS thickness -- nominal plate thickness divided by cosine of obliquity.

Originally posted by Redwolf: and neither do modern SABOT penetrators as they are designed to dig into the armor to counter the above effect, not to mention they are very slim anyway.

If we are talking about monolithic steel armor targets, rod penetrators will perforate a greater thickness of armor at obliquity than 0-degree obliquity -- assuming we hold impact velocity and such constant. This is a function of the break out phase of perforation by long rod penetrators; or you can call it backsurface effects if you like. However, the armor on modern MBT doesn't typically consist of monolithic steel armor.

[Kharnvor]

Right, but WW2 AP projectiles don't behave like that.

Capped projectiles do normalize, reducing the chance of ricochet and the effective angle of impact. That's the whole point of the cap, like Moon mentioned in his thread in the Strategy Forum:

Unit Damage Model and Ballistics

Now I grant you, this angle change may be miniscule, but millimeters matter in these situations.

[Redwolf]

Right. ToW doesn't use a formula like CM did to deal with angle effects. But it knows about different projectile types and has those which are prone to angle effects ricochet more often.

Since for the player it doesn't matter whether the projectile ricochets or breaks apart or gets stuck the outcome is pretty close to expects result, aka the game doesn't just do LOS thickness seen from that perspective.

[wokelly]

Does the slope calculation take into effect the blunt nose soviet ammo? Many of their guns except the 100mm used blunt nose ammo, which meant their effect vs sloped armor was greater then regular point nose ammo.

[Kharnvor]

I've seen shots ricochet and almost hit other units, and I've seen shots impact and do nothing or go nowhere. I think it might matter, cause if the shot ricochets into another unit, especially infantry, it could cause damage still.

The fidelity of the ballistics in this game continues to impress me. I've had a Tiger fire an HE round at infantry in a trench where the shell missed just above the trench and exploded down the hill behind the trenches, but still killed the infantry because the shell itself had hit him.

[Freeboy]

All very interesting, I saw a armor piercing round at close range go through a US tank destroyers turret, killing the crew and causing a divit in the dirt/ground some distance behind the TD.. very cool