So what’s the whole deal with ERA being so blantantly overpowered? Oh, sorry, I mean soviet/rusian ERA being so blantalty overpowered. What’s the whole deal with dart destabilization and this sort of thing? What’s the whole deal with single plate being able to eat multiple low caliber darts when it should be depleted after a first shot? Furthermore it’s affecting every single one in the same way. What’s the whole deal with soviet ERA having a fixed penetration debuff for every incoming dart independent of it’s generation and contact angle and speed? And what’s with all the artifically missing Anti-ERA measures for NATO darts? Can we stop playing this game of pretend and cope? I’ve only listed mechanical capabilities from the game I don’t even want to start talking about ping/server lag related issues regarding ERA. Why doesn’t NERA destabilize darts? The only armor tech that was purposefuly designed to do that via alter angled plates? Why does cave level tech given so much more than it deserves and is?
Spoiler
The answer is because if it’s rusian it’s true and if it’s not - it isn’t.
Second answer is that gaijin specificaly chooses the path of money and two most played top tier nations right now are soviets and chineese.
You know, for a while I thought that a sign of good game design is to try and stimulate players to go off meta if the pure even balance is impossible (which it isn’t in this game, given the unregulated vehicle addition pool). And you know what? I would keep thinking that I’m right.
The question I really yearn to know answer to is why positive assumption bias exclusevely used towards rusian style trash tech? Why trash tech? Because it’s pretty much is.
If its such cave level tech then you should have little trouble researching it and understanding it. Here’s a section of a Ukrainian report on Kontakt-5 that, while rather dated, outlines the principles involved with the kinetic protection provided by Russian ERA to get you started:
"What we found was that we had these two plates, each individually with about 60% the momentum of the long rod penetrator, were moving oppositely up/down to each other, and that the path of the penetrator was such that it was moving between them. The forces exerted on the penetrator are apparently very large, so large in fact that they were in the region of plastic failure for most (read: all) metals. Essentially, when the penetrator touches the rear plate, the front plate guillotines off the first 5 - 6 cm of the rod. For a round such as the 120 mm M829A1 this represents a loss of about 8% of the total mass. More importantly, the nose is blunted. You would not believe how important that sharp point on the penetrator is. The difference in penetration between an equivalent hyper-sonic spike tipped penetrator and a blunt nose one is at least 20% (to a maximum of around 30%). This is mainly because a blunt nose is very inefficient in the initial phase of penetration before the ablatic shear phase can begin. The penetrator has to actually sharpen itself to the optimum Von Karam plastic wave theory shape for penetration of the target material before it can begin radially displacing the target material. This resolves itself in the form of a lot of wasted work and thus penetrator mass. The blunted penetrator also suffers structural damage and more mass loss as a shock wave travels down its length and blows spall off the tail. The main secondary effect of Kontakt-5 EDZ against APFSDS rounds is yaw induced by the front plate before contact with the rear plate is established. The total is about two to three degrees of yaw, which suddenly becomes a lot more in a denser material such as steel. Reduction in penetration due to a 2° yaw is about 6% and it grows exponentially worse from there, and on the 67° slope of the front glacis of the T-64/72/80/90, this is increased to about 15%.
Total loss in penetration amounts to about 2% + 8% + 22% + 6% = 38%, or in other words the penetrator is now only capable of penetrating 62% its original potential. Conversely we could say that the base armour is increased by the factor of the reciprocal of 62%, which is - surprise! - 161%."
Archive of the full article here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20230213211848/http://fofanov.armor.kiev.ua/Tanks/EQP/era.html
Autocannon ammo doesn’t detonate the ERA so its basically 2 Appliqué spaced armour plates of 15/20mm (for Kontakt-5).
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