Modular charges for SPGs

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
,
1

I think it would be a great addition to the game, since it would bring a more tactical feeling to SPGs. Because in my opinion they feel boring to play, the way they are played right now. So you can just switch between 3 charges for short, medium and long range

8 Likes
2

I would LOVE to have low powder charge options for my SPG’s with high capacity HE shells. I LOVE lobbing shells over hills 😄

Especially since a handfull of the HE flingers were changed to higher velocity shells it has significantly reduced their utility. Can’t lob shells when they are too fast.

Even when some SPG’s have “slower” velocity shells, they are still far too fast for effective hill lobbing. Anything above 500m/s is too fast, ~300m/s is my favorite velocity for lobbing. Even a bit slower can be ok/fun.

My ideal choices for powder charge velocities, if we “only” got 3 options:

  1. If I/we had to pick one speed for the slow/low powder charge, I would choose 300m/s. (No higher than 350m/s though. Even at 400m/s the trajectory starts to get too flat to lob down over the “big” hills in the game.) For lower BR’s/Tiers 200m/s - 250m/s would be acceptable. But starting at around BR’s ~8.0-9.0 the vehicles get quite a bit faster and 250m/s is a bit too slow. (See BMD-4M notes below.)
    So, 300m/s-350m/s would be the best choice if we only got one low velocity option across all BR’s.

  2. Medium charge velocity between 500m/s to 700m/s.

  3. And full charge velocity somewhere around 1,000m/s. Or even up to maybe 1,200m/s. Would depend on each specific SPG’s real life max velocity.

If anyone would like to test out some low velocity HE lobbing in a test drive, I would highly suggest test driving the BMD-4M. It is a premium, so anyone can test drive it. And while it is NOT an SPG, it has two different HE shells you can play with, one @ 250m/s and one @ 355m/s. (I personally only take in the 355m/s HE option, for one it has more TNT equivalent, and the 250m/s HE shell is a tad too slow for that BR range.)

This is one reason why I would STRONGLY advocate for 350m/s being the maximum velocity I would want for the low powder charge option. The BMD’s HE shells @ 355m/s are sooooo good and fun for lobbing over almost any obstacle/hill that we encounter in the game.

For Medium and Fast velocity powder charge testing I would suggest test driving the VIDAR. Actually an SPG and premium again so anyone can test drive it. Medium velocity shell is 563m/s and the fast velocity shell is 935m/s.

Both the BMD-4M and VIDAR have an autoloader and Laser Rangefinder, so makes testing much easier and faster.

2 Likes
3

This mechanic is actually very neat considering SPGs are supposed to use variable charges for different missions. This might also make some higher-tier SPGs worth to be moved up in BR as they would get to be used on larger maps where such mechanic would find the best use.

There are two ways to implement it:
a) hard way - search for data for each charge for every round used by every calibre gun. Say, M107 155mm HE fired with minimum charge would have different balistics from L/22, 30, 34 and 39 cannons. It also would mean that some howitzers do not necessarily have the same amount of modular charges (if they even have them), so some howitzers with such mechanic would be more balanced than the others.
b) easy way - simply take a projectile with N m/s muzzle velocity when fired from the gun it is used in (for example, M107 fired from Japanese L/30) and divide its possible charges in 3 categories: minimal, regular/common and maximum. If the shot’s muzzle velocity is 580 m/s (from the said example), regular charge will be the same 580 m/s, and lower and maximum charges, for example, will universally provide 25% muzzle velocity decrease (to 435 m/s) and increase (to 735 m/s) respectfuly. Not the most realistic thing if you ask me, but this way all howitzers in-game may benefit from equal % increase/decrease regardless of existence of modular charges or not.

I’d do the easy way as it is the simplest mechanic to be introduced without digging for thousands ballistic tables and tests in order to provide the data for every single charge for every single round from every single calibre gun, and later on compiling them reports to get things fixed.

3 Likes