Maus / E-100 / Jagtiger - Fixed Penetration

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
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Maus / E-100 / Jagdtiger
Apart from their ultra thick armour, the tanks are also easily recognised by their huge 128mm Pak 80 guns.

The 128mm Tank Gun can shoot 28.3kg APCBC shell at 920m/s.

Penetration:
287mm @ 0m (0 degrees) - 920m/s
212mm @ 0m (30 Degrees) *
109mm @ 0m (60 Degrees) *

[Ballistic Factor of 1400, velocity drop off]

This means that the Frontal Hull armour of the IS-3 can be penetrated up to 1100 meters. By that I mean either of the cheeks will be defeated when the pike nose is facing the 128mm Gun directly.

Even if it was to face T-54, T-55 and T-62, penetration against their upper plates can be achieved up to 750 meters. That being said, the turret is easier to penetrate than the Hull glacis armour.

  • I used AP Slope modifiers from wwii ballistics instead of the APC(BC) slope modifiers due to the fact that with other apcbc sources the AP slope modifier gives accurate values, whilst the APC(BC) slope modifier is off. One example was when the British recorded 60 degree penetration for 20 pounder APCBC and whilst the AP was giving me around 230mm at 0 degrees at point blank range, the APCBC slope modifier was giving me around 265mm of penetration at point blank range which clearly is wrong and didn’t even match with the stated 30 degree value. This is just one such example so I just ditched using the apcbc slope modifier in wwii ballistics altogether. Unfortunately gaijin uses it to model sloped penetration in game for apcbc rounds.

What makes more sense to me is the British conclusion after they tested variety of AP vs APCBC rounds against sloped armour. This is their conclusion

Source: Report M.7000 A/11 No.1 , Department of tank design armour branch.

According to the British, as long as the AP and APCBC rounds had the same penetrator size and the penetrator still had same striking velocity after the piercing cap was out of the way (which is why the slight extra velocity is needed) the penetration was the same. This means that using AP slope modifier for APCBC rounds isn’t wrong. Plus using AP slope modifiers doesn’t give me conflicting results relative to actual sources.

If the 128mm gun got fixed and would actually be capable of penetrating IS-3 and and T-54/T-55/T-62 tanks, it would actually be worth using, because right now the targets the 88mm can’t penetrate, the 128mm can’t penetrate eighter. Which makes the much longer reload 128mm gun simply not worth using because the 88mm gun can penetrate the same targets with much faster reload speed.
However if it got fixed, tanks such as Maus and Jagdtiger would be far more easier to balance.

After the fix, the Maus would be far more usable at 7.7BR whilst not as suffering as much thx to also the fact that most HEATFS slingers got uptiered recently. The lower tier tanks wouldn’t suffer much either since 1st gen APDS had its vertical penetration significantly buffed and Maus has flat armour

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They don’t use documents for AP penetration values anymore, just HEAT. It probably won’t get buffed since they ran it through the penetration calculator and got the values. I’m not sure what the differences they have between the APCBC, AP, and APBC shells in the calculator are but APBC has the highest angled modifier of them

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All it would take is replacing apcbc slope modifier with a universal slope modifier for AP and APCBC rounds in their calculator

Then also instead of having HE filler negative modifier, they should simply just remove the filler weight from total shell weight to get more accurate vertical penetration
(Since the HE filler weight shouldn’t count as part of the penetrator that penetrates the armour)

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There should only be 1 universal slope modifier.

Russian flat nosed APBC rounds seem to have better sloped penetration but not because they do.
Whilst the shell doesn’t suffer at 60 degrees and works optimally, the flat nose makes it terrible at 0 degrees. Then when you compare the terrible 0 degree penetration relative to 60 degrees, it gives a false illusion of better sloped performance when a sharp nose AP round would have same penetration at 60 degrees anyways but the 0 degree penetration wouldn’t actually suck badly.

All AP / APBC / APC / APCBC rounds should be calculated based on 0 degree value when none of them deform using the universal slope modifier and then penetration penalties should be applied afterwards for AP / APBC / Flat nose APBC rounds afterwards vs low obliquity flat armour when they suffer from deformation due to lack of piercing cap.