MANPADS Missiles and Overload: The Technical Details

[S-200VE_Vega]

@luque13

Even if you fly into their engagement envelope, Strela in game cannot be countered, if you do inadvertabtly enter it’s engagment envelope you should have a chance to defeat it.

no you made a mistake now the enemy gets a kill on your mistake thats how the game works. you shouldnt be able to kill enemy team outside of strela range without effort and then be able to kill the enemy team inside of strelas range too and be able to outmaneuver the missiles
patriot and s400 can be countered by not being inside their engagement limits (minimum, maximum range) but if you are in the nez you arent gonna be able to do anything yet it doesnt matter, because we wont have those in our game

again counterplay against strela doesnt require skill you can effortlessly kill their team and the strela itself while they cant do anything against you outside of the range, therefore you shouldnt be able to do anything against them inside their range

it wont get changed. learn to play the game if you have a problem.

if everyone played properly strela would get 0 kills while cas would get 10-15kills
thing is noobs like you make it possible for strelas to get kills because they fly braindead into the sam zone for no reason

[KillaKiwi]

Literally everything you said is simply wrong.

Let’s start:

@Necronomica

The first thing is that you are not showing a HEFI-T in the first image, its just a FI-T.

There are no FI shells. Fragmentation shell is literally just a Russian name for how they described their shells.
In WT even Soviet 23mm shells are called FI shells, despite having no difference to other nations HEFI shells. At best a Fragmentation shell is a HEF shell with so little explosive filler that’s completely irrelveant and all the damage potential comes from the fragments.

@Necronomica

Second thing is that explosive mass matter way less than TNT equivalent mass for explosives as you can have two explosives of different types with the same mass but that does vastly different amount of explosions.

This is irrelevant because both shells use the same type of explosives.
A-IX-2 is simply just RDX with Aluminum powder and wax, while German HA 41 is exactly the same.
Instead of telling me how I’m wrong, you could have just looked at the shells TNT equivalent in-game,
which would have shown that 4.13g A-IX-2 == 6.36g TNT and 18.7g HA 41 == 29.76g TNT and therefore the ratio is still the same.

@Necronomica

The FI-T shell tends to do more damage to a single part while the HEI does less damage per part but hits more parts per shell. and since both are incendiary i would venture a guess that the HEI is more likely to sett the enemy on fire as it has more chances per hit to do so, but i’m not sure.

FI-T shells or any other HEF shell in game uses the realShatter mechanic and the damage inflicted has nothing to do with reality.

A Mineshells entire purpose is to inflict high structural damage, by creating few fragments for carrying more explosive.

Therefore it’s simply impossible for round passing through the empty area of a wing or stabilizer to inflict more damage with fragments compared to the blast.

In WT it’s completely the opposite:

Spoiler

10/10 times the Mineshell will damage all three crew while 8/10 times the FI-T shell will not even damage a single crew member with 1/10 damaging one and 1/10 times dealing fatal damage.

@Necronomica

Sidenote:
Screenshots from protection analysis don’t really tell you much and can be manipulated to show an agenda if you just aim it correctly. With these screenshots of the same shells you used i can make it look like its the opposite of what you say:

Sidenote: I don’t need to minipulate protection analysis results to show that what happends is clearly incorrect.

@Necronomica

(Now these are purposefully picked to NOT be accurate to expected outcomes on average, just to show how the protection analysis screenshots often don’t tell the full story)

I’m well aware how the damage mechanics and protection analysis functions.

@Necronomica

FI-T shell do more damage to a single part while HEI does less damage per part but hits several all at once likely increasing the chances of starting a fire.

That’s simply stating how it functiones in the game. Yet you completely ignored the fact that this isn’t realistic, which was the entire point.

You didn’t tell me anything knew there.

There’s the game and there’s reality. So when WT models things based on reality, why should this descrapency exist?

It’s not about how effective a shell or a gun is in destroying an opponent. It’s about this complete lack of realistic damage mechanics.

At this point every aircraft might as well get an HP bar and every round shows how much damage it deals. Then what you basically saying is: FI-T deals high crit damage while HEFI deals more AeO damage.

But it’s about how guns should deal damage, which isn’t even remotely realistic in WT.

I could list you every single ammunition type in the game and tell you how completly wrong the implementation in WT is.
Just the fact that a Pilot can survive a 20mm piercing round and the damage is 99% based on the penetration value, really grinds my gears.

TLDR:
Damage mechanics should make sense and not be completely made up.

[Necronomica]

@KillaKiwi

There are no FI shells. Fragmentation shell is literally just a Russian name for how they described their shells.
In WT even Soviet 23mm shells are called FI shells, despite having no difference to other nations HEFI shells. At best a Fragmentation shell is a HEF shell with so little explosive filler that’s completely irrelveant and all the damage potential comes from the fragments.

I don’t understand, in the game there are shells called FI so how can they not exist in the game?
The naming scheme even uses the thing you said above.
HE - High explosive.
F - Fragmentation
I - incendiary
So doesn’t it explain itself that the FI has less explosive filler as it isn’t named HE as well?

Edit:
Even the German plane you showed has its own FI-T shells for the 20mm

@KillaKiwi

This is irrelevant because both shells use the same type of explosives.
A-IX-2 is simply just RDX with Aluminum powder and wax, while German HA 41 is exactly the same.
Instead of telling me how I’m wrong, you could have just looked at the shells TNT equivalent in-game,
which would have shown that 4.13g A-IX-2 == 6.36g TNT and 18.7g HA 41 == 29.76g TNT and therefore the ratio is still the same.

The ratios are slightly different at 1.54 and 1.6 respectively, a very small difference but a difference nonetheless. My main point is that it ain’t the best to use that as a basis and it’s much better in the long-run to use the TNT equivalent as that avoids mistakes in the future as well as paints a better picture.

@KillaKiwi

FI-T shells or any other HEF shell in game uses the realShatter mechanic and the damage inflicted has nothing to do with reality.

I wasn’t talking about reality, i was describing how they tend to work in game. How they work IRL and how you expect them to work in game would be a topic for a bug report with sufficient evidence.

You asked:

@KillaKiwi

Next I want an explanation how a 96g HEFI-T shell with 4.13g explosive is blowing up an airplanes wing in the same amount of shots as a 92g HEI shell with 18.7g explosive.

and so i wanted to explain how that happens in game, your first post had no indication of your intent of wanting to change how the shells function in the game with respects to how they function IRL so how was i supposed to know that was what you ment?

@KillaKiwi

Sidenote: I don’t need to minipulate protection analysis results to show that what happends is clearly incorrect.

True, that is also why i added it as a side note and not a main point. I do not like using the protection analysis to try to prove shell effect in game as it doesn’t show everything (like for example fires).

@KillaKiwi

That’s simply stating how it functiones in the game. Yet you completely ignored the fact that this isn’t realistic, which was the entire point.

Again, nothing in your first post indicated this, at all. There was no way for me to know that that was what you were getting at.

@KillaKiwi

So when WT models things based on reality, why should this descrapency exist?

It shouldn’t and should be reported with evidence. I’m not refuting this nor have i stated anything on how the shells work IRL.

[AlvisWisla]

Strela is 10.3, at 10.3 CAS exceeds Strela missile range by at least 5km.

@luque13

You shouldnt have a weapon system thats a guaranteed kill.

Strela has never been a guaranteed kill.
If you use Strela at top BR you’ll never get frags with it, it’s physically incapable of even matching Q-5L and Super Etendard CAS range.

[Boomer6161]

why are you always acting up the only threat to cas is sam and not other interceptors (aka fox1, fox3 slingers). You literally cannot fly high(especially above 5.5km on non winter maps) if theres a guy with iq of two digits, they’ll be immediately launches fox3 which you either fly high go defensive or just have to hug deck and abuse multipath. After that, launching any a-g ordinance beyond strela range at deck level cause ordinance missing.

[USAARMY369]

where my AGM-114L (FNF)

[AlvisWisla]

Dying to an interceptor is one less person on the enemy team helping their team.
A team of mine almost lost a match because they kept spawning in air after I told them to stop.

If a single CAS plane even forces 1 enemy to spawn air, that’s 1 less enemy to fight during the match unless they willingly respawn or die to SPAA.

@USAARMY369
At BR 15.0.

[RavenGuardMarine]

EO shouldn’t work through cloud cover.

I’m quite sure it’s not a SWIR sensor, so clouds would provide both IR and daytime EO protection because if I remember right it uses a contrast seeker.

So if you’re saying it works through clouds, this is wrong.

[RavenGuardMarine]

Kinda funny if it’s true that a 10.3 Russian SAM is better than Israeli and Japanese top tier SAM systems lol.

[Boomer6161]

It aint about dying to an interceptor which not the thing i was saying, it’s the problem you cannot just fly high enough to give a-g munitions enough loft and energy to reach strela meanwhile outranging it.
And if you think forcing anyone on the other side spawning an interceptor( which at 12.7 its pure multirole fighters still spawning with full cas loadout), so is spawning spaa should be same to you which means 1 less enemy to fight on the ground but that interceptor part turned into another cas problem to you.

[AlvisWisla]

Strela is 10.3 not 12.7, so being 10,000 meters up with your 16km range GBUs when all you need is 7km since Strela missiles can’t even climb 10,000 meters let alone 7.

[Backfirejr]

Holy necromancy, why is this thread even being revived after having been dead for almost two years? o.O

Wouldn’t it be better to create a new thread on the topic if there’s more stuff to discuss on the matter? You can always link to the original, if relevant.

[Morvran]

The “devblog” threads can carry more weight with the devs than a regular thread as they are monitored more actively and creating a new thread when an existing relevant one already exists is considered spam.

The fact this thread is still going after 2 years though, clearly shows the issues this devblog attempted to address were clearly not

[tripod2008]

@Morvran

The fact this thread is still going after 2 years though, clearly shows the issues this devblog attempted to address were clearly not

I have a growing feeling that it’s obvious that accepted “Suggestions”,(like the maneuverability report, Lack of the Optical Contrast mechanic and lock-on range) don’t get triaged the same way as regular reports do, so tend to be left languishing for whatever reason.

I’m sure @Gunjob explained the difference between Submitted Reports and Suggestions at some point (could really stand to be specified in the reporting guidelines topic as well) in one of the various topics. But from what I recall the delineation that caused the report to be a suggestion and not a Report is the use of Historic sources, I just wish that there was some way to elevate them considering that it directly contradicts an actual Article they have published, as they directly state that they were willing to review additional info, and explains where they are making errors in their assumptions about said systems

Just look at the number of times assumptions are made in the following excerpt

Exerpt from the article

For other MANPADS systems, open sources indicate a higher overload such as 18, 20 and even 25g in the case of the Mistral 1 MANPADS. However, these MANPADS systems have only slight differences in the area of aerodynamic surfaces compared to the 9M39(There are significant functional differences), so a multiple increase in average achievable overload compared to the 9M39 cannot be expected

Why?

We believe that the slightly higher overload of other MANPADS systems is mainly due to the slightly higher maximum speed(again Why?) of the missiles in comparison with the 9M39 MANPADS missile. Therefore, we assume that for the MANPADS FN-6, FIM-92 and Mistral, the documents

What documents? Why is this even a Valid comparison?

indicate the peak overload achieved at the moment when the rudders are in the maneuver plane.

The FIM-92 does not Use Bang-Bang actuators, or an Open Control loop, like the Igla / FIM-43 does as detailed in the above report

With this assumption, the average available overload for the half-cycle of rotation of these MANPADS will be 63% of the peak and will be consistent with the data on the available overload of the 9M39 MANPADS.

It’s erroneous as per the report and supporting documentation provided.

Within the game, due to technical limitations, even in the case of single-channel relay control, we use two-channel proportional control of missiles.

This is a technical limitation of using PID control and using it universally and is otherwise understandable.

Therefore, the maximum overload for the autopilot of MANPADS missiles in the game was set to the average overload of a real missile over a half-period of rotation.

This is suitable for those that use Bang-Bang actuators and and open control loop, not for those that don’t.

I sort of wish a Content Creator would pass it on though the various backchannels we know they have, but it’s not sexy nor does it really have much of a felt impact even considering it’s scope.

[Morvran]

Yeah… I’ve seen too many reports that would be meaningful improvements (and not necessarily to just a single nation/vehicle) just never get resolved.

Its pretty clear that, unless there is significant player interest in something getting fixed. There is a good chance it wont be.

[tripod2008]

@Morvran

there is significant player interest

It’s got 51! People also with “similar issues” so it should be pretty visible, considering the average is 4~10 or so

[Morvran]

I actually doubt that vote system thing actually does anything. Instead its people complaining on the forums about something and the CMs passing it along that gets the most attention (like F-15Es engines)

[tripod2008]

@Morvran

I actually doubt that vote system thing actually does anything

It probably draws the attention of The Technical moderators, so draws attention to it for entry into whatever back end Gaijin actually use. Past that I don’t think it does much but Who knows if they are actually linked in some way.

[tripod2008]

Also

A look at the bug forums

Graphs for this are not that great but I can give you some stats. The median number of users affected for accepted reports is 4, and for fixed reports 2. 51 users is at the 95.50 percentile for accepted reports and 98.25 for fixed reports.

A high score really isn’t a good sign, considering both are above One in 22 (95%) Something is probably up.

[lisavita]

this is what warthunder should be like. figuring out every single weapon instead of pasting vehicles and adding unhistorical things