Is the penetration of the HSTVL XM885 bullet truly faithful to reality?

Machinery of War Discussion
1

Hi I found a post online where they even state that the point blank penetration of the xm855 bullet is very similar to that of the m774 bullet carried on the 105mm cannon on the m1 abrams, if that were true it’s not very realistic in game
This is the source link

2

Yes, this is known. Have a look at this thread: HSTV-L has an undeveloped ammo

TLDR: Gaijin bases in-game XM885 on a 26x270mm rod, which using the LO formula gives the current in-game penetration. However there are many indications that this is incorrect and that the round is likely much longer (increasing its penetration). Now my estimates are not perfect and should not be taken as fact, but they do give a clear indication the current in-game values do not seem to line up with reality.

3 Likes
3

Gaijin should really make a closed thread on the Machinery of War section just going over everything that they use to “assume” things. A lot of people don’t know about the penetration formula, a lot of people don’t know about their “standards” for sources, etc. It’d probably save the forum mods (and forum members) a lot of headache if they could just post a log of sources for each vehicle in the game.

4

Agreed, though it would be a ton of work just writing it all down, there surely must already be an internal database of the currently used sources for everything in the game right? I mean how else do they check bug reports and where every value comes from.

Seems that as of now though, they only seem to write these explanations down if there’s a big part of the community asking for it. See the whole Abrams armor debacle, MANPADS G-loading, etc. More recently a less “official” (as in no dedicated post) to AESA/PESA radar speed, and I hope to expect some reasoning/sources for the upcoming RWR changes in a dedicated post as well. But yes having them all saved in a seperate section would be great, as most of these dev sources/explanation posts would otherwise get buried over time as well, right now all their sources or assumptions are all over the place and it’s really annoying to find as a forum member at least. For instance, this is the spreadsheet for APFSDS dimensions for the LO formula (outdated by now for some).

I think in a lot of cases they also don’t show their own sources is because they may not exist or are technically substandard to the same standard we are expected to hold on to for our bug reports.