I’m posting this to showcase a couple of oddities that I have found while quickly looking through Gszab99i’s WT Datamine repository, some of which are quite upsetting.
The repository can be found at: https://github.com/gszabi99/War-Thunder-Datamine/tree/master/aces.vromfs.bin_u/gamedata/weapons/navalmodels_weapons
Disclaimer: This is the dev server, things are subject to change. I do not know how exactly the devs choose the “demarrePenetrationK” value, they have not stated how. The judgements I make are based on the basic shell properties, as well as some past decisions by the devs.
I have not gone too deeply into some other shell characteristics like steel composition, hardening pattern, cavity size, cap properties, which may or may not have influenced the devs’ decisions. This is all to say that my judgements may be incorrect.
To start: How is the penetration value of SAP shells found? It’s pretty simple, you take the penetration of the shell using the Demarre formula https://wiki.warthunder.com/jacob_de_marre and then you apply a coefficient called demarrePenetrationK with a maximum value of 1. A shell with a coefficient of 0.57 has 57% of the penetration of an AP shell of the same stats.
First thing, Roma’s AP shell. For some reason, the AP shell has a coefficient of 0.88. This is very strange, because all AP shells are supposed to have a coefficient of 1.
Because of this, Roma loses a fair bit of pen compared to the expected value from the calculator:
(note the stat card values start at 1km, so slightly lower speed)
Considering that the Italian AP shell was given a small bursting charge so as to improve penetration, this is quite the loss.
Onto SAP shells. Now, I do not know how the devs choose the coefficient value, but I do know that they look at the charge/mass ratio of the shell to see whether it should be set as SAP or AP (see the whole Dunkerque discussion). I am going with the assumption that C/M ratio should also affect the coefficient. Besides, it also makes sense, a larger bursting charge means a larger cavity and worse penetrating abilities.
We saw from the devserver that Soyuz’s SAP shell has very high penetration, especially considering the large amount of explosives inside. Yet her C/M ratio is fairly high at 7.94%. It is possible that the SAP and its cap could be quite hard, but the cavity should still be too large for such penetration values.
Once again, Roma is being badly treated, her SAP shells get a K value of 0.55, yet her C/M ratio is fairly small for a SAP shell, at 3.58%, and it’s known that the shell did have hard caps.
If anything, Roma’s SAP should have a higher K coefficient than that of Soyuz.
Lastly, dispersion. Dispersion is given by two values, “maxDeltaAngle” and “maxDeltaAngleVertical”.
In brief, Littorio and Richelieu got the short end of the stick when it comes to dispersion. They both have the values “maxDeltaAngle”: 0.34, “maxDeltaAngleVertical”: 0.39. This is among, if not the worst dispersion values in game. For comparison, Iowa, Bismarck, Colorado, Soyuz, and Yamato have dispersion values of 0.22 and 0.24 in horizontal and vertical respectively.
There are talks out there about how the Italian 381mm dispersion issue is overblown and only happened in one occasion (Vittorio Veneto off Gavdos).
Even if dispersion were to be a balance tool, which would be fine, it’s still mind boggling for it to be used against Roma when she already has an anemic fire rate, and gets penetration robbed from her.
What’s difficult about all this is that we can’t use datamines to report issues with the game. So if we’d need to find other ways to go about doing this.
Hopefully these things change by the time the update goes live.