exactly my point, it’s odd that IFVs suffer less from overpressure. Doesn’t make any sense.
Or the real world example of the Churchill III AVRE being used vs a Panther in an unexpected engagement in France. Round detonated on a power line considerably above the tank, tank was intact, but it wasn’t moving anymore afterwards. I don’t know if said crew was pasted or just all the electronics were fried and it could no longer move.
The noise and vibration alone would probably knock out most people unconscious for a few minutes given the amount of explosive in there. Another example is the SU-122 being used as a tiger tank killer, using the power of the HE shell to knock out the turret crew from the sheer power of the explosion (and also breaking the turret ring).
Meanwhile you can shoot an ikv73 5 times with an 122mm shell in the turret and nothing happens
2 Likes
I still love the fact I once got overpressured as a Maus because a heat shell penned my lower front armor.
Except my turret crew died in the process for 0 reason they’re 5 meters away in another fully separate armored compartment bruh
If only VIDARs could also do that when I shoot 7 shillegahs at the thing trying to find the damn loader t posing somewhere
Or me shooting an M18 5 times with a long 88 prior to hull break being added and having to finish it with an HE shell.
Currently thats how overpressure works, it doesnt need to enter crew compartment, it seems to only need to overpressure at least something.
If i will be able to find it I will send clip of IS-4M getting overpressured in same scenario.
Definitely overdone in its implementation. There are reports from WWII of Soviet SU-152s and IS-2s shooting tigers and tiger IIs with HE rounds and blowing their turrets off with those rounds and the US would use 155mm guns and once a 203mm howitzer against Panthers once or twice and it had similar results as the Soviet 122mm and 152mm guns. Interestingly, the Brits tested their tanks throughout WWII during their developmental trials and found them pretty much immune to HE rounds up to 155mm. Cold War tanks with more efficient armor and armor density and angles help deflect the blast waves that would create overpressure. Then factor in with hatches closed most cold war tanks had slightly overpressurized interiors to help prevent fumes from entering the tank after firing. Overall, against medium, heavy and MBTs HE really shouldn’t be killing those tanks from overpressure mechanics. Light tanks, armored cars should get damaged from HE. Keep in mind, HE’s real power is in it fragmentation against infantry. Now bombs and large caliber naval gunnery striking against or near a tank is a different story as that is significantly higher explosive yields.
The current system does not work well for either HE slingers or their targets.
Sometimes overpressure triggers, and the HE kills its target. Sometimes you’re a millimeter too far away to trigger it and your shell does nothing at all. And if you have a long reload you get deleted in return fire.
Artillery pieces should be the ideal counter to heavy tank spam, to then allow the plague of HEAT-spewing and APDS-slinging lights to get pushed up to where they frankly belong. Problem is, the above inconsistency with overpressure actually triggering means derp guns would be not all that good at such a job.
Now how could we resolve this? There are a few options, with varying degrees of complexity:
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Implement an armor degradation system so successive HE hits will break armor. I have no idea if the game engine can properly code this, and if volumetric armor tells us anything, it won’t be implemented all at once, be buggy as f***, and cause way more short-term problems than it solves before eventually being accepted as “normal,” even though it is by far the most “realistic” option.
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Implement a limited form of hull break to all turreted vehicles. Sufficiently large shells impacting the turret would rip the damn thing off even if they “non-penned,” but not if it was an AP round bouncing off. This could be called “turret break,” I guess? Smaller HE rounds could add up towards the breaking threshold, but it would mostly be impractical for those, and intended to help the derp cannons be consistent even when overpressure doesn’t roll in their favor. This is somewhat realistic. However, I could imagine rapid-firing HE slingers capable of overpressure (read: Gepards & Co.) overwhelming such a system to kill things far above their pay grade that even their sabot can’t hope to pen, equally overwhelming whining from people as a result, and some overkill re-nerfing to end up back here where we started.
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Run existing HE shell specs through the existing WT armor pen calculator without changes, and use the numbers it spits out. Keep overpressure mostly as-is. Then, HE would function as a worse AP that instakills what it pens. The HE blast pen would be added onto the AP kinetic pen. Has some components from real history, but this is the most fictional of the bunch, yet by FAR the easiest to implement.