Currently, as evidenced in the video below, explosive shells and bombs work like this:
-game determines the POINT of impact
explosion starts from said point
the game checks if there’s LOS to areas the explosion can actually penetrate.
The problem?
If the armor is not flat, all it takes is a some concave/convex shapes that will block the LOS to the top of the hull or some other penetrable area. Any dent in armor that’s hit - and there goes your chance to score a kill.
It’s INCREDIBLY frustrating and also unrealistic, as it’s pretty damn obvious the explosion of a shell would reach the hull top. But in game it gets blocked by the geometry.
There are several ways of fixing it.
The absolute simplest: the explosion starts not at the point of contact, but a distance relative to the size of the shell, f.e. 1 shell diameter away from armor.
For 37mm shell that’ll be 37mm. For 150mm shell - 15cm.
That’s a simple way to do this.
A more realistic way to do this is to model some simplified elongated shape, roughly the size of explosive cavity of the shell and just make it expand in all directions and perform the penetration checks this way.
Or just don’t start from a point, but from a sphere with radius dependent on the explosive weight.
Either way, the idea is to make situations like in the video not happen anymore. BTW in the same scenario even a 1000kg bomb would fail to kill the tank.
With my simplest suggestion at work, the 1000kg bomb’s explosion would happen around 60+cm away from armor, thus mostly negating the impact of any slight curvature of the armor.
HE mechanics are already wildly overperforming. If they become any more reliable, they are going to be preferred over even APHE on a lot of BRs. You already have APHE detonating externally and overpressuring crew, 35mm autocannons overpressuring heavy tanks, Enormous tanks dying to HE engine hits (seriously, look how little it takes to overpressure the Class 3), and anything open topped dying to arty shells through a whole block of buildings. If you want better HE mechanics, start by eliminating overpressure then rebalance based on spalling.
That’s just wrong. Overpressure can just be toned down to be more realistic
And the problem I’ve shown also applies to bombs and Sturmtiger, making the game feel like a clown show.
I don’t see where’s the benefit of 1 pixel of armor blocking a 1000kg bomb from destroying your tank if it hits directly. This makes no sense.
For this you need 1x45mm piece of sheet metal where the shell hits the 1mm edge.
I think this game would benefit more from.WW2 infantry. I just want to strafe targets with HE, just like they did IRL, because trucks, infantry positions, ammo and fuel storage, trains, artillery were very common while in WT ground vs f.e. WW2 russia, if you don’t have bombs or very good AP, you won’t achieve anything more often than not.
