Future possibility for showing vehicle armor and main gun penetration

[Wengart]

In the tab menus for defenses there could be a list of facings + the armor in mm of that facing and the slope of the armor at that facing.

Front: 100mm 30° Side:75mm Rear:50mm Top:20mm Bottom:20mm Turret: 100mm 15°

and perhaps under the main gun tab there could be a list of ranges + mm of armor possibly penetrated at that range for the gun.

500 Meters: 100mm 1000 Meters: 50mm 1,500 Meters: 15mm

This would allow the player to see at a glance what type of armor they had on a specific vehicle and the penetration power of the main gun.

I would like to point out that these numbers are completely made up.

[gibsonm]

There is a many page thread often vitriolic in content about this divisive issue already.

I don’t recall exactly where it is but then again I’m not interested in it, but a quick uses of the “search” function should find it for you.

Just so we don’t go down this rabbit hole again (but I’m sure we will anyway).

[WineCape]

Charles math formulae for penetration calculations and there being no hard and fast way to indicate what can, or cannot be penetrated at certain ranges, whether due to obliquity, FH-armour or homogeneous armour etc. is one of the main reasons. Just too varied to even give a rough colour coded indication of penetration values.

Granted, it may be very helpful in some ways. Currently CMBN do give you a very basic colour coded 'lethality warning' against various projectiles that a AFV can defend against. But do you really want to see 23 colour-coded penetration bars for a particular gun WITH footnotes in-game? Programming time could be better spend doing else, I assume.

[Wodin]

This is the reason i'm staying out of alot of threads I expect on release...as old CMSF ground with all those engine debates will most likely rage again...due to people being new to the core system....I really can't be bothered to get involved in all that...

I'd say the search engine is the best place peolel should go to first before asking about things that need or they want changed...as it is likely it's been done to death over on the CMSF forum. So the answer will already be there.

However I know thats not likely and I expecta fair few old debates will be rehashed all over again.

[FragerZ]

Does the game do calculations using thickness and angle, or does it use the simple colour codings?

Also, all I would really like are general bars on the units icon, cm1X style. So when you click on a tank, it's silhouette has small colour coding on it. It wouldn't take any programming time... All you'd have to do it change the silhouette picture to have colours representing the thickness. It would be much more intuitive than the bizarre looking ><>>>< symbols.

[gibsonm]

Like I said, do a search.

Statements like "It wouldn't take any programming time ..." are littered all through the thread along with lengthy rebutals.

[MikeyD]

The game's penetration models are very much more complex than any mere penetration table. The manufactured quality of the armor is taken into account, whether its face-hardened or layered, whether it tends to flake or petal, whether or not the projectile is capped or has an explosive filler, on and on and on. A pull-down menu saying "500 meter: 100m at 90 degrees would be meaningless.

Beside, I've noticed most people who want a ballistics data sheet don't need a ballistics data sheet. They're usually the ones who have already got a pretty good handle on what's going to get penetrated at what distance. They just want more 'stuff'. A more useful drop down data sheet would list the construction materials and wall thicknesses of individual buildings... but you're not going to get that data sheet either.

[Sergei]

In the tab menus for defenses there could be a list of facings + the armor in mm of that facing and the slope of the armor at that facing.

Front: 100mm 30° Side:75mm Rear:50mm Top:20mm Bottom:20mm Turret: 100mm 15°

It's not that straight forward. CMBO had three values for each direction, turret, hull top and hull bottom. But this is unperfect because most of the time a tank isn't just a symmetrical box. In CMBO a big issue arose when people noticed that Tiger got too many turret front penetrations because a single value was being used for the turret front, which left out the thick gun mantle which covers a lot of the turret face. So the code was tweaked. In later games, stuff like curved armour were added for tanks like the T-34.

CMBN armour calculations are not based on anything like that, so it would be very difficult to implement. Armour angles are taken from the 3d model, so there usually are more than one angle.

[LemoN]

Hey, long time lurker here, registered a looong time ago but forgot my username/password and had to register again now.

Anyway, I'd LOVE to see the pop-up window from CM:BB and CM:AK again (never really played CM:BO a lot so I can't say if it was in there or not).

The numpad enter popup was incredibly useful for a variety of different things, to look up most effective ranges for your guns, special things like equipment on the tank, etc. One key feature was a basic penetration chart against "normal" armour at 0°, 30° and 60°, which often served as a good indicator if that gun had a good chance to penetrate that tank or not. It also featured rough armour thickness and angles of the tank. Granted it wasn't too accurate, but having a chart say 70mm rounded is better than nothing.

The limited amount of time I played CM:SF (quite frankly, I hated it, not because of the mechanics but because of the horrible scenario... I just dislike modern settings, let alone asymmetrical warfare) I always missed that key, and I personally find these different categories complete unusable and nonsensical. Is a 75mm considered a medium or a large calibre? If a 50mm is considered a medium calibre and a 88mm a large calibre... is a 75mm a large calibre? What about the M1 76mm or the 17 pounder? If the 17 pounder is considered a large calibre and the 75mm a medium calibre... is the KwK42 a medium calibre? God, that system is just complete unusable IMO and confuses me more than I could use it as a guide. It didn't take any special things into account but then again, I don't think anybody would want that.

I simply want a rough indicator at what kind of armour my tank has and what kind of capabilities it's gun has... heck, even ToW does a way better job in this regard than CM:BN. Granted, I know quite enough about armour, guns and the physics behind armour penetration but CM:BB is the reason that got me into this kind of stuff. If it wouldn't have been for CM:BB I never would've started to read up on this stuff, buy books and study reports. I hate the very thought that THE one single feature that opened this whole world to me... is gone.

Yes, I do associate a LOT with this one single feature.

[Magpie_Oz]

I agree that some form of penetration v range chart could be useful, not from the sense of being able to exactly determine the result of a shot but mainly to be able to get a "feel" for how well your guns will perform against the enemy.

[ShakyJake]

Hmmm, it might be worthwhile to maybe generate a few charts showing the relative penetration of various guns, shown together, for that purpose. I've just done a fresh reformat and don't have Matlab installed at the moment, but I could probably do that later when I have some time. Or, having the data out of Rexford's book (and particularly the equations), it might be possible to create some kind of embedded function in javascript or something on a webpage. I don't have any experience at all with that, but if someone had some pointers for where to look I'd be appreciative.

[Magpie_Oz]

Hmmm, it might be worthwhile to maybe generate a few charts showing the relative penetration of various guns, shown together, for that purpose. I've just done a fresh reformat and don't have Matlab installed at the moment, but I could probably do that later when I have some time. Or, having the data out of Rexford's book (and particularly the equations), it might be possible to create some kind of embedded function in javascript or something on a webpage. I don't have any experience at all with that, but if someone had some pointers for where to look I'd be appreciative.

I was thinking more along the lines of an empirical list,

Gun Name, Pen at 500, Pen at 1000

Simple and to the point so you can easily see the data to make a quick best guess as to whether you would penetrate or not.

[gibsonm]

I was thinking more along the lines of an empirical list,

Gun Name, Pen at 500, Pen at 1000

Simple and to the point so you can easily see the data to make a quick best guess as to whether you would penetrate or not.

But while that's simple in terms of what is firing, its not in terms of what its hitting.

For every line in your table you'd need a whole bunch of target types, eg.:

Gun Name

Pen at 500 homogenoeus plate at 30 degrees using solid shot

Pen at 500 hetrogenoeus plate at 30 degrees using APCR

Pen at 500 homogenoeus plate at 45 degrees using solid shot

Pen at 500 hetrogenoeus plate at 45 degrees using APCR

Pen at 500 homogenoeus plate at 90 degrees using solid shot with spaced armour .....

And of course that's by no an means exhaustive in terms of ammunition natures, angle, composition, weld vs cast vs riveted, etc.

So in the first column you need entries from say Boys ATR to 128mm (with all their natures) and across you have all the permutations of target type.

And that information is for one range bracket only.

It tends to stop being simple very quickly.

[Magpie_Oz]

It can be a simple or complex as you wish I suppose, I am remembering here the old days of the ASL gun chart where you could fairly easily see the probability of your gun penetrating the target.

I'm not talking about being able to pre-determine what the result will be just get and idea of the answer to :

Should I fire my 37mm at the Tiger?

Should I set my M10 ambush 500m from the bend in the road or 800m?

Should I drop a smoke screen 300, 400 or 600m in front of my 6 Lbr AT gun when the PzIV's advance ?

Just general feel kind of stuff that allows you to gain an understanding of how your weapons will perform. You could of course look at "real" data but data derived from the game engine will be more useful.

[gibsonm]

It can be a simple or complex as you wish I suppose, I am remembering here the old days of the ASL gun chart where you could fairly easily see the probability of your gun penetrating the target.

Sure but that was once of the aspects of the previous thread(s) on this.

Some people wanted a rough guide, some wanted the equivalent of Janes, still others wanted some middle ground, then there was the issue of "how to present it?", etc.

Another common thread were those who didn't want development time diverted to this anyway and suggested that people would "learn by their mistakes" if you like (i.e. that didn't work last time, maybe I should get closer this time or wait for the target to come closer, etc.).

You could of course look at "real" data but data derived from the game engine will be more useful.

Arguably these are the same (i.e. Game stats are based on real data).

[Magpie_Oz]

Another common thread were those who didn't want development time diverted to this anyway and suggested that people would "learn by their mistakes if you like" (i.e. that didn't work last time, maybe I should get closer this time or wait for the target to come closer, etc.).

Yes I had the feeling it would be again at the expense of the pixeltruppen that the knowledge would be gained.

[yllamana]

Maybe there's a compelling reason why not, but wouldn't a good way to get a rough feel for the way a vehicle is armoured be to have a 3d, rotatable representation of the vehicle's hull colour-coded for thickness (e.g. deep red for thin armour, green for thick)? It could have a little labeled scale at the bottom, maybe, so that you could see what the colours corresponded to. It could even be effective thickness if you wanted.

You'd need a little bit of background knowledge to interpret it, but it should be pretty clear.

For the guns, why not a small graph of penetration vs range?

It seems like something that'd have big dividends in terms of how much more sense the game would make vs how much time it took to implement, especially with regards to new players or people who don't play often or enough to pick up the relationships otherwise. Having a high-fidelity simulation doesn't mean much if the player can't make sense of it.

[stikkypixie]

I simply want a rough indicator at what kind of armour my tank has and what kind of capabilities it's gun has... heck, even ToW does a way better job in this regard than CM:BN. Granted, I know quite enough about armour, guns and the physics behind armour penetration but CM:BB is the reason that got me into this kind of stuff. If it wouldn't have been for CM:BB I never would've started to read up on this stuff, buy books and study reports. I hate the very thought that THE one single feature that opened this whole world to me... is gone.

Yes, I do associate a LOT with this one single feature.

CMBN has a rough indication of how well protected a tank is, but not how powerful its main gun is. Bigger is better (actually longer is better) is my rule of thumb .

[~Viajero]

Hmmm, it might be worthwhile to maybe generate a few charts showing the relative penetration of various guns, shown together, for that purpose. I've just done a fresh reformat and don't have Matlab installed at the moment, but I could probably do that later when I have some time. Or, having the data out of Rexford's book (and particularly the equations), it might be possible to create some kind of embedded function in javascript or something on a webpage. I don't have any experience at all with that, but if someone had some pointers for where to look I'd be appreciative.

But, but, but....

We ve always had these:

http://mysite.verizon.net/pchardwarelinks/cm/

Good enough for me!

I think for CM:BN, probably the CMAK tables are the most appropriate as they will probably have the widest range of guns and armour accross all periods. I have just merged the CMAK Guns table (penetrations) with the CMAK Tanks table (armour thickness/angles) in one spreadsheet for ease of reference, and off I go! I would be surprised if BFC has decided to reinvent the wheel on this and started using a significantly different set of numbers...

[Marco Bergman]

There is a mod...

[WineCape]

Marco, you beautiful bastard!! Please PM the link so that I can install this for my beta test copy of CMBN. Maybe I will have an extra advantage while Peng get's nailed the 4th time by his own CAS in our PBEM battle. Do you have one for planes too? For him.

[Guardsman]

That is a superb looking Mod Marco, and very useful! Brilliant stuff.

[c3k]

Marco has created a work of art...

[Other Means]

I'm using Marco's mod and even without studying it, it gives a good rule of thumb feel for what you've got.

[James Crowley]

Wow! A mod that not only looks fantastic but is genuinely useful as well. great stuff!