Why does this happen? Why don’t my 770/730mm shells work?

My friends, this has reached an unprecedented level of frustration, and I’ll explain the situation below.

This event, like others, has disappointed me more and more with the penetration mechanics of this game. You land shots with a 100% chance of penetration on the first or second hit, and they just don’t work.

What am I shooting at my enemies? Beans? Peanuts? Brown rice?

You must have seen this in countless YouTube videos during tank and naval battles—it happens a lot! The system is BROKEN. It’s NOT COUNTING. It’s NOT CALCULATING CORRECTLY.

“But you’re shooting at too steep of an angle, too low, too high, too central, too much at the 2/3 mark, too much at the 1/4 mark, too much at the 4/90 mark.”

If you can’t control the angle of the shells after firing or even before, why do you keep insisting on this ridiculous argument? Shells follow a random and completely different trajectory throughout their path from the moment you aim at the future impact point with the target. And I’m not even considering the naval guns’ inaccuracy, which seems really off because these ships had good accuracy at long and medium ranges in real life.

“No, you’re wrong, this is a skill issue, you’re doing it wrong because 770mm can penetrate everything in the ocean.”

My dear friend, tell me then, why can the miserable German Scharnhorst with its 579mm shells penetrate my MUTSU from 15km away, taking out 25% of my crew per hit, while I, with my mighty 770mm-penetrating guns, can’t do the same, even with an ACE crew?

Why, dear Gaijin defender, should I, who should be able to shred a ship like that after 2 or 3 shots, suffer massive losses against guns that can only penetrate 579mm at 2,000km but seem to penetrate 2,000mm at 15,000km?

I could easily crush any event in the first 7 days by reaching 750,000 points in the coupon, but you get discouraged in every match because your enemies seem to have Iron Man’s protection, their shells are crafted by Green Arrow, and their crews are trained by Batman to not take fire damage for 50 seconds.

It’s exhausting, it’s terrible. Please rework the game’s penetration system because it’s not functioning correctly

1 Like

What ship in the world has caliber 770mm?
The biggest naval guns i can think of were on the Yamato with 460mm.

3 Likes

I’m referring to the ammunition, please understand the game.
image
It seems like you’re making a joke instead of simply trying to understand the text.

1 Like

Drilling 776mm at a distance of 1000m does not mean you have the capability to destroy everything.
If the enemy ship is sufficiently angled and has reasonable armor, it can be very difficult to destroy.

1 Like

Apparently, you didn’t read anything.
It even seems like a bot.

Maybe the problem is damage modelling of the ships and not the ammunition? I often see that even the black parts of the ships still do not lead to sinking you have to switch off the crew which is funny

Maybe, but if that’s the case, then the Sharnhorst’s shells, which can only penetrate 561mm, are “breaking what’s broken,” since they’re able to penetrate a battleship like the Mutsu and Fuso from 15km away without any difficulty.

Apparently if I don’t give you every reason you are simply insulting.

I read the entire message, which is a lot of text to say so little, and
based on so little information I looked for a possible explanation to your problem.

3 Likes

Really seems like OP doesnt really understand that there can be a plethora of factors that lead to a round penetrating or not, and also doesnt understand how the crew system in this game works. I’ll compare the Scharn and the Mutsu because those are the vehicles OP mentioned.

You will have to clarify what you mean by “shots with 100% chance of pentration”. The whole issue you are having is that these shots you are firing are not penetrating, yet others seem to be perfectly capable of doing so, so have you considered that maybe what you think should be penetrating is in fact the issue, not what is actually happening. Lets look at the armour on the Scharn to start, it has 320mm main belt, then a 105mm turtleback plate behind the main belt that covers the machinery space. The barbettes are 350mm thick, and are also behind the main belt.



General battle ranges are 7500 to 15000m, so I will use the 7500m pentration values for the 16" No.5 APC shell the Mutsu uses. As you can see in the screenshots below, this round is unable to penetrate the belt and turtleback armour of the Scharn when fired from 90 degrees broadside, in the best case scenario.

This is your first problem, that if you hit the most armoured part of the Scharn, then you will not be able to do any damage at all.
However, if you are able to land your shells below the waterline, then you will be able to penetrate this weakly armoured part of the hull and will be able to do damage.

In reverse, the Mutsu has 304mm of main belt armour, and a 76mm angled plate behind it. This second plate is consierable less angled than the turtleback plate on the Scharn, so is considerably less useful, as well as being thinner. The Barbettes are 304mm thick, but are not covered by the belt armour at all. This armour profile is much worse than the Scharn, and as such with the Scharn shooting the 11" Psgr. L/4.4 APCBC, replicating the first shot, again in optimal conditions shows that the Scharn is in fact capable of pentrating the Mutsu’s belt and causing internal damage.


Similarly, when the shot is placed underneath the belt armour, the round will penetrate an reach the machinery spaces.

All of this said, even without taking angling into consideration, the Scharn has a large advantage in terms of armour and despite the lower penetration, is still very capable of pentrating the most armoured part of the Mutsu whereas the Mutsu has to lan shells underneath the belt to reach the machinery spaces, which is the most impartand part on any ship, and I will get to why in a minute.

It is very easy in GRB to recognise when and by how much another player is angling their vehicle, but it is much harder in naval, though it does still have the same effect on armour and penetration.
The turtleback armour plate on the Scharn is already very angled, and as such its effective thickness is greatly increased as can be seen below.

When the main belt armour is angled, it also quickly increses in effective thickness, as shown here:

It is fairly needless to say that this is practically unpenetrable by anything in game, and the same is true for the Mutsu.

It is important to note that, on both ships shells that hit under the belt will still easily penetrate and reach the internal spaces, even at these extreme angles.


This means that on top of the advantage the Scharn already has, if it angles it can effectively mean that you are unable to penetrate even the weaker parts of its belt armour, however this does decrease the areas the Scharn can effectively penetrate. Overall, this means that there are several ways that you or the enemy can make it considerably more difficult for your ship’s armour to be penetrated. You really should be angling in any engagement, and attempting to make it so that the way the enemy’s angling is less effective and I suspect you are not doing this at all, and are just sitting in gunner view shooting at whatever you see, I have made some images below to display what i mean.

image


I’m sure you get the idea, and though it will never be this cut and dry in a match, if you can try and use this angling you will find that you will take less penetrating shots, and if you can recognise how the enemy is angling you can potentially re-orient yourself to get better shots on target.

The next thing that I do not think you fully understand is the crew system. The crew in your ship is distrobuted unevenly in the critical parts of each ship, and can be seen in the hangar. Crew count matters a lot in naval, and for the ships we are comparing, there is quite a large disparity, with the Mutsu having just over 1300 crew, and the Scharn having just over 1900. This means that the Scharn will inevitably be much more survivable in any given fight.


As can be seen here, the majority of the crew is in the machinery spaces, which is why I said earlier that it is the most impartand part of the ship. Obviously Ammo racks will cause greater crew loss than anything else, and can oneshot ships, but if you are talking about the survivability in terms of crew these high crew density spaces are the most important parts of ship for its survivability. With the crew distrobution shown, it is not surprising that a single penetrating hit that bursts in the machinery spaces and destroys several boilers will cause a high percentage of crew loss, and it is much easier for the Scharn to hit and penetrate the larger and less well protected areas of the Mutsu that the crew is located in, than it is for the Mutsu to do the same. The level of crew will only mitigate this slightly, and ultimately if a shell destroys critical components in a very crew dense area it will do a lot of damage.
This is another area where the Scharn is a significantly superior ship to the Mutsu, and I’m sure you are seeing a trend here.

The last thing I want to talk about, is aiming. There are naval players who will vehemently deny that aiming really matters in naval, and you should focus on hitting the target as much as possible, but it isnt possible to aim for specific components of ships at longer ranges, and there are also people who will argue that you can aim for specific components, and can reliably hit them at longer ranges. I think ping will greatly effect this, and it will be different for different ships with the different dispersions, but overall I think you can aim for specific components, and can reliably land hits in a specific area of a ship, but you cannot reliably hit specific components of ships at longer ranges, and I will explain how I think this works. In the game currently, there is a natural spread at even point blanc range. This means that there is a rough oval in the water where the shells from any given salvo will land. When firing at longer ranges, the dispersion naturally increases and so this oval gets larger and larger. Given that the crew dense vital components of any ship are generally lower down, usually below the waterline, under-ranging is generally the best way to hit critical components, and leading the target more than the indicator tells you to(if you want to aim for magazines), by half a shiplength or a little less, should mean that the oval where the shells can land covers the part of the ship you want to hit, and from here there is mostly just luck involved, waiting for hits on the specific components you are aiming for.

image

I believe this is more effective than just lobbing shells that are generally on target but with no specific aiming point, as it greatly increases the chance of hitting a specific component that will cause meaningful damage.

Overall, the matchup described in this post is not a balanced matchup, the Scharn is far superior in just about every way to the Mutsu apart from raw penetration, which as I have talked about doesnt really matter given the specific circumstances. What OP thinks he should be able to do is not really based in reality or in a good understanding of the game mechanics. There are definitely bugs and issues with the armour/ammo mechanics in game, and ping can greatly effect one’s experience, but overall the system works, it just needs to be understood properly.

16 Likes

What a magnificent explanation you have given.

You have all my respects

5 Likes

image
Obviously, I understand every type of combat in this game. I didn’t reach the high ranks of tanks, ships, or aviation without understanding each game mode and its “tricks” for better survival and response to the enemy.

Clearly, you focused on ridiculing me, but let’s set that aside, and I’ll share my perspective on the battles I fought last night against this specific ship using my rounds.

Both ships are at the same distance, in the same direction, and at the same angle, making any interfering factors irrelevant. Given this, all that matters is the player’s skill and their efficiency in the first three shots on the target, with the first shot considered a “test of the affected area,” the second shot providing “knowledge of projectile dispersion with the calculated distance to the area you want to hit,” and the third shot giving you all the necessary information from the previous two to hit the weakest points of the target or cause a major combat loss (destroyed turret or bridge).

Can you tell me who has the advantage in these conditions? Perhaps the powerful 776mm penetration of the MUTSU IJN? No, it doesn’t have that advantage because, according to the game’s ammunition stats, at longer distances it has less than 600mm of penetration (remember, neither ship is angled; both players are facing each other in the same direction).

The incredible thing is that, despite the Mutsu having the advantage, even with the significant drop from 776mm to less than 600mm, it is still incapable of penetrating the Sharnhorst after 3 rounds that should destroy its internal “liquid fuel” protection. But this doesn’t even happen properly because the shells don’t seem to reach the compartment.

So, shifting focus to the German ship, you with your 579mm of penetration at less than 2,000 km and 376mm at 15,000 km begin to fire and apply the same 3-shot test that the MUTSU used against you. But you quickly realize you don’t need them, as the first shot already significantly affects the Mutsu, reducing its crew by 15% and causing severe damage to the center of the ship.

In the hangar, ballistics tend to work perfectly, and you get a great response on what should or shouldn’t be possible! But, as I, you, and many other players know, a PUMA 2.7 can withstand a shell from an ABRAMS SEP V2 11.3, and a FOX can finish off a MAUS frontally by ricocheting its rounds to the upper chassis.

Hangar vs. Practice is something entirely different.

image

In the second image, which is painted with the colors indicating the affected area provided by the game when selecting a target, the shells are going to hit the center of the ship with a 99% chance, causing fires, lengthy repairs, and the loss of the bridge if the bridge tower is located in the mentioned center.

With that, you adjust your next shots to hit the desired locations, but guess what? The Sharnhorst apparently denies this, just as it previously denied its inability to penetrate the Mutsu at 15,000 km. Not only can it penetrate the Mutsu, but it can also disable turret rotation near the center and cause fires in nearly 70% of its hits.

As I said before: Some ships seem to have armor made by Iron Man, shells made by Green Arrow, and crews trained by Batman.

Because, with the Mutsu, you can’t deal equal or superior significant damage to the Sharnhorst, even though you have 12kg of TNT in your shell, while the Sharnhorst only has 8kg of TNT.

The red areas are where you would try to hit below the hull, as you mentioned, “an oval area” that allows the shell to pass through the ocean and penetrate just below the hull.

The problem with this “oval area” view is that it doesn’t seem to exist—at least, it doesn’t for me. You can clearly see the shell landing mere centimeters in front of the ship, and there are no “hits” being registered on the hull. In other words, either the ocean in my game is swallowing the shells, or this area simply doesn’t exist in the game.

(I apologize, I forgot to mark the blue area where it should be possible to pass through the waterline and hit the weaker part of the ship’s hull.)

Observing everything that happened during my matches last night, not just with this specific ship but also with other Russian ships like the Marat, tell me what factor determines that the Sharnhorst can come out victorious against the Mutsu. I have 2.7 rounds per minute, a faster reload than him, and superior penetration both below and above in the center of the ship.

By all factors, the victory should be mine: the amount of TNT in the shell, penetration capability, skill, my ship’s armor (which is also a battleship), and a superior reload rate.

But for some alien reason—which I attribute to the game’s flawed penetration calculation system or, as someone else put it, “faulty armor”—the Sharnhorst manages to cause me more casualties, more damage, and withstand my rounds as if they were nothing.

So no, I can’t agree with your entire argument, even though what I’m saying here is based on a specific angle. This issue often affects inexperienced players in naval mode, where they turn their ship, let it go straight, and fire at the desired target simultaneously.

For the rest, I agree. In some battles, I was less angled than my opponent, but not completely without any angle. In other cases, I was angled, and my opponent was not, yet they still managed to take less significant damage than I did.

And at long distances like the ones mentioned (15,000 / 13,000), you can indeed limit the area where you want to cause damage to the opponent starting from the second shot, using it as a test.

What would make hitting the desired compartment more difficult is if the enemy were fighting you in a zig-zag or S-shaped maneuver, moving the ship up and down (I’m not sure if you understand, but they would be purposely closing the distance and, after moving 1km forward, returning to their previous position), making the game’s auxiliary aiming system (the green arrow we see in the scope) practically useless, relying solely on your skill in the game.

No way, they slapped Schwerer Gustav on a ship

2 Likes

However, I don’t care about that. Either way, it doesn’t make sense for me to explain things in even more detail and with demonstrations and knowledge like you did because I would just be wasting my time.

As I said before, a Puma 2.7 can withstand a sabot round from an Abrams SEP V2. There’s no point in delving any deeper into this; I only opened the topic to bring attention to the issue, not to try and prove that X actually makes the sound of X.

Level and playtime does not always equate to an understanding of the mechanics of the game. Different people learn at different paces, and other never try to understand what is going on and why, they just play.

I really didnt, i focused on explaining the many reasons you were struggling in the Mutsu, and some ways you can begin to improve. In your original post and even the response you have given to mine, you are demonstrating a lack of understanding about how these things actually play out in battles.

As i described, this is a mistake on your part if you are playing like this.

Assuming the 2 players are of equal skill, then what matters is which ship is better. The Scharnhorst is better than the Mutsu, so your complaint isnt really valid from the beginning.

The Scharnhorst because, as I explained in the post I made, the lesser penetration it has doesnt end up really effecting much, because of the weaker armour the Mutsu has. Something i did not mention but probably should have was the coverage of the main belt. The main belt on the Scharn covers more than the main belt on the Mutsu does, increasing the chance of you striking it and your rounds doing nothing.

Because, again as i said in the other post, there are several layers of armour, ther is the main belt, then the turtleback plate, which is designed to catch anything that penetrates the main belt.

This as a statement encapsulates your misunderstanding about how things work. The Scharn has More armour, more crew, better crew placement for that crew to be covered by its best armour, and its shells can still penetrate the Mutsu in many places. It doesn’t have magic armour, shells and crews, it is simply a better ship. If you look at the crew placement for the Mutsu in the hangar, you can see that there are several places where there is a lot of crew, such as the torpedo tubes and casemates, that are really not protected by much armour at all. This will mean that these crew are much easier to knock out. You talked earlier about the Scharn setting fires with the majority of shells, and this is because it is penetrating your armour and damaging the components of the ship that are susceptable to fires, such as the funnels and boilers.

The oval area is a visual representation of where the shells from any given salvo could land. As far as i know, it is still the case that there is a mechanic in game where shells can dive and pass through a small amount of water before hitting ships, and as such you can hit below the armoured belt on ships, I feel that i do it fairly regularly. If you are unable to do so, I’m not really sure how to help, you might just be really unlucky.

Again, you do not understand the capabilites of your ship and your enemies. The Scharn is by far a superior ship to the Mutsu, it has the armour to stop your shells, it has the crew to withstand taking damage, and the Mutsu does not have the armour to withstand the Scharns shells. The reload and amount of filler in shells does not matter when you are not penetrating the armour.

Ultimately, this is the real issue. You are attributing a small amount of edge case scenarios to the entire system being flawed. These are bugs, and can be excacerbated by ping. If you find a specific bug, or issue with the system that you can observe, quantify and replicate, then bug report it.

4 Likes

I don’t play ships in WT cause well, reasons.

Though I do want to know if high arc shots does have an effect and if deck armor does count?

Also, realistically speaking, you made a very good point and explanation. Even though the MUTSU should win the fight based on armor value, the Scharn does have better armor placement and layout in comparison. My thought would be that the Scharn with its radar (if it is in game?) would have a better standoff at longer ranges combined with its speed? Though battle outcome would change in closer ranges?

Basically, how well does WT play to the design of the ships?

This is a common misconception, the battle range you would have to be at for your rounds to be coming down into the deck of a vehicle and the plunging into the internal spaces would have to be immense, 30000m or more to get more than 35 degrees. Especially at the battle ranges in game, the angle of fall will generally be significantly lower, i’d say <20 Degrees, so because of this the deck armour doesnt really matter for anything other than AP bombs, which are rarely used.

It is not modelled in game like it would have worked in real life, and i think all it gives in game is a slightly faster refresh speed on the range estimate.

Speed is also not something that really matters in game, unless it is extremely high speed combined with a small target. The 31kt the Scharn can do only equates to 57kph in realistic and 61kph in arcade, which isnt very fast when you consider the overall distances the fighting happens at and the size of the maps.

The armour on the Scharn really is what makes it strong, the armour layout is very effective, and it is difficult to ammo rack. The longer the range gets, the stronger this advantage becomes especially given the huge amount of crew the Scharn has, allowing it to take many critical hits that would otherwise knock out the whole crew of most of the other 7.0’s.

At much closer ranges any battleship on battleship fight becomes who can destroy the critical components first, and knock out the other ships crew, or find the ammo rack and sink the ship that way. It basically comes down to a mix of the individual aim of each player and the luck of which shells land where you need them to and which dont, it is often a situation of near mutual destruction, where the survivor is easy pickings for any other ships around.

Depends what you mean by this really, is WT like real life? No, not really. Most of the engagements in real life were at much longer ranges than we have in war thunder, and were not fought to the death. The Battles that were fought to the death were situations where a ship was disabled from range, then closed on and finished off. Are there differences in how you should play different ships? Sort of, though often there are good practices, and bad practices, with the better ships, like the Scharn, being able to get away with much more than the worse ships. Staying at range can be effective, using hard cover like islands or sitting behind teammates so they get targeted first, and using the ranging fire mechanic helps. Naval has a massive problem with compression right now, and the disparity in capabilites of ships at the same BR is quite large. For example, the Scharn being the same BR as the Renown is criminal, and the same could be said for many of the italian or french ships at 6.7.

2 Likes

Dear Sir,
I do think this should be enshrined in any “Naval Gameplay Guide”

2 Likes

Thank you, I think you answered everything fairly within game aspect, whether OP likes it or not.

From being a casual in ground and air RB, one thing I have learned is to take everything in game with a “nod” to reality - your responses on this thread has encompassed that nod clearly.

1 Like

I proposed a scenario where both are facing the same direction. INTERPRET THE TEXT.

If I didn’t seek to know everything that happens and changes in the damn game I invest my money in, I would certainly agree with you on this part. But yes, I’ve been playing for a long time, and I know how to execute all possible survival tactics in each battle when there are opportunities to use them.


ell me where this is humanly possible, tell me where a ship with 200mm less penetration is able to penetrate you, and you, with 200mm more, can’t penetrate it. Explain the logic of this math that you want to shove into the heads of fools who believe in this nonsense.

Angled, it makes even worse your 'claim that the Sharnhorst penetrates the Mutsu at 15km.

Even if those rounds hit the Mutsu’s turrets, they still wouldn’t penetrate because they have more than 140mm of thickness beyond what the Sharnhorst’s ammunition can penetrate at 15km.

This is so childish and shows such a ‘zero IQ’ level of interpretation that I won’t even bother to respond properly.

You weren’t even able to understand the satire, I give up trying to get into your head something that’s happening and is making naval players either migrate to a certain nation or completely lose interest in the mode because of a son of a truck driver who is invulnerable to all 7.0 ships since not even the MUTSU IJN is capable of going against it.

Since the public has chosen you as the ‘holder of naval wisdom,’ then there’s no way I can change that by trying to explain things simply to save my time, but I don’t mind. Those same players, once they reach top-tier naval in nations other than Germany and face this situation, will change their minds on their own.

Sharnhorst is a problem, and other ships like Marat are also an issue, and denying these high-efficiency problems to the point where they can hold off an entire team is pure and simple ignorance of the reality you live in.

Have a good night, I won’t be able to keep the conversation respectful seeing how incapable you are of interpreting scenarios and texts. Apparently, in some countries, schools are intentionally skipping over text interpretation and how to identify the key factor in a situation.

Stay now with a random image.
image