Just to clarify things a bit. It’s not that all pure AP shells have no damage. The problem is that the post-pen fragments creation formula that Gaijin use doesn’t work well especially for shells of lower caliber and smaller mass.
For example, if we use a 90 mm caliber, 10.61 kg M77 shell and shoot the middle of the Tiger I, the damage is completely fine (this shell creates many post-pen fragments):
But if we use a 76 mm caliber, 6.8 kg M79 shell and shoot the same place of the Tiger I, the damage is a joke (almost no post-pen fragments):
This is the real problem. The current post-pen fragmentation formula fails for some specific AP shells (lower caliber, lower mass).
So please don’t use the argument of “everything is fine with other shells than APHE”, because it’s simply not true. In the above example, we are talking about a 76 mm caliber, 6.8 kg object that penetrates the tank and does pretty much no damage, which is unrealistic. This is what actually needs to be worked on and improved.
Of course you can have your own opinion and vision of the game, even if that’s unrealistic. We could treat shells like lasers and only damage the crew if the shell actually directly touches the crew member on flight. You have the right to like such damage model.
But you still can’t say that everything is fine with all other shells than APHE. If you want to have reduced post-pen fragmentation effect then:
all larger caliber AP shells need to be massively nerfed
all larger caliber APDS shells need to be massively nerfed
I personally disagree with this, I prefer more realistic approach and any penetration should cause serious damage.
Either way, the post-pen fragmentation formula has to change. It doesn’t matter which direction you want to go (less or more fragments). Because the difference between the number of post-pen fragments of some shells of the same type is way too huge currently (look at the 90 mm vs 76 mm pure AP example above).
mass of 90mm m77: 10.61 kg, pen at 500m 0 degrees: 148 mm
mass of 76mm m79: 6.8 kg, pen at 500m 0 degrees: 121 mm
both of them attempt to pen a tiger’s front plate, which is 100mm sloped at 5 degrees, 500m away
m77 is about 64% heavier and 30 m/s faster (at point blank tho) than m79
My point is that m79 will generate less spall from the very start since it has a way lower mass than m77, and since it also has less pen power than m77, it will have way less residual energy to generate much spall at all.
I will post another reply with another sample that will help my point.
Very slight difference, as you can see.
Why is it that way? Because both of them lose their energy because they had to spend it all to penetrate that 100m plate, making them unable to generate secondary spall.
My conclusion is that AP shells work as they are intended to and act in a realistic way (unlike APHE shells with their sphere of death).
Even though both rounds have roughly the same penetration at the distances you’ve shown, M77 still has far greater energy.
For 121 mm of penetration, M79 has around 736 m/s of velocity, and M77 has about 669 m/s. Those values give kinetic energies of 1842 and 2372 KJ of energy respectively. M77 has over 25% more energy on the impacts you’ve shown yet it deals basically the same damage.
Edit: It’s also worth pointing out that nevertheless, solid shot needs to be changed in some way. Whether the changes to APHE end up being done or not, the APHE counterparts to the M79 and M77 rounds will still be better in basically every way, having more penetration at all ranges, and dealing more damage. These rounds are worthless and are only used when vehicles are stock and don’t have other options, and a nerf to APHE will not change this.
This is all interesting, but this still doesn’t change the fact that:
on your screenshots the shell entry point is about 30-50 cm from the driver (also the driver’s head!), and fragments barely damage the driver (in the game such damage is negligible).
the shell penetrated the tank, which means it definitely created a hole in the armor. These fragments can’t magically disappear. There are simulations on YT, where you can see how these fragments behave.
the shell still had enough energy to destroy the engine, so you can’t say it had no energy left after the penetration. I’m sure there is a formula somewhere that would allow to calculate the shell speed (after penetration). I don’t know what speed that will be, but I’m sure I wouldn’t want to be hit by any metal fragment flying at similar speeds.
For 10 years we’ve been asking for aphe to be made more realistic, it was brought up by the gaming community in the list of major fixes and roadmap Ped and now people are voting against it. Insanity.
Oh no, ~52% of the community said no, I guess the other ~48% don’t matter despite the vote being extremely close (and at one point being 65-35, but changing to 50/50 in literally just 2 hrs which totally isn’t fishy at all ;] )
They definitely won’t test a change to the game now!
Indeed. There are many heavy-computing simulations in YouTube that show very clearly how, when a shell barely penetrates an armor plate, it punches through with very little energy, barely residual, and therefore low and weaker amounts of spall, compared to a shell that slices through the armor with a full punch still behind to deliver.
People suggesting all AP should murder everything upon penetration “for balance” (instead of fixing APHE) regardless of penetration, mass and post-pen energy don’t have a good point IMO.
And even if we artificially buffed AP to create a cone of death, it would still pale compared to APHE’s 360° sphere of death.
At this point let’s just make it so that any penetration into the crew compartment mission-kills the vehicle and call it a day, since it’s what everyone seems to want now apparently.
Tbh the ones that are voting for the change are probably british or french mains, because admittedly the change would benefit them (Except for their heavies), simply because it kinda closes the gap. However, nations that rely on APHE (i.e. germany, japan, and russia) are most likely voting against it, as are people that comprehend the effect on balance it will have.
Like- I main sweden, and tbh I would have the most to benefit from this. Our APHE tends to have enough to overpressure, and we rely p heavily on HEAT/APDS or extremely fast reloads. Hell, APHE isnt even my favorite shell atm- that honor goes to slpprj m/61 on the 105.
At least for me it is in no way a ‘oh I want to keep my funny sphere of death’, its me seeing massive balance concerns with it.
