ZTZ-99A‘s armor’ :Are Chinese Tank designers not smart or Gaijin make the wrong armor modle?

[Shimakazerun]

When this 2.39 version was released. I appalled to realized that ZTZ-99A’s turret got a super huge weakness point at the bottom.

the KE protection of this area is only 300~400 mm,and the CE protection is only 650 to 750mm.
need to know—— FY-5 ERA will provide 250mm KE/600mm CE protection. that means the huge composite armor provide only like 50~100mm protection against CE or 50~150mm KE. And that is ridiculous.
As a comparation.just several pixel above.the CE/KE protection becomes 1200mm and 790mm.

Then I started to find out what had happend here.

As we all know that: when you try to play “protection analysis” in hangar. the armor had been penetrated will shown as a shallow outline. After several shoot at ZTZ-99A’s turret. I’m able to shape out the structure of ZTZ-99A’s turret composite armor.I post it below.

In the B part of the picture. the thin yellow line is the 20mm RHA facing plate of the armor. the block marked as “4” is 65 mm RHA backing plate.
The blcok marking as"2" and “3” is the “700 mm NERA” shown on the Xray mode.

The issue of turret weakness point is clear now: the NERA armor does not extended to the bottom of the armor block—— marked as “air” in the picture.And hhis is exactly where the weakness point locate. In this area. the armor should be: 250/600 mm ERA +20 mm RHA @20° +65 mm RHA @50° ≈ 370mm KE/ 720mm CE,which is comply with the test abvoe.

We can see.there’s nothing had beem penetrated in this area.

My common sence told me that: if you want to make the NERA plates fixed.You shouldn‘t hang it on air.but need to set it on a rack. let alone to hang it will cause the composite armor got a weakness area.

I tried many other Chinese tank like: ZTZ-99s and MBT-2000/Al-khalid.and all of them got NO similar issues.

Let’s look at MBT-2000 who shares a similar composite armor shape.It got a steel rack for the NERA(which is similar to NERA marked “2” on ZTZ-99A above. And the steel plates(similar to NERA marked “3” on ZTZ-99A) it setted tightly to the bottom of the Armor block. That’s maching our common sence.

So I think only 2 reasons can explain the armor issue of ZTZ-99A:
1/ Chinese designers created this weakness area on purpose.
2/ Gaijin just make a wrong armor modle of ZTZ-99A.

---

I do have post the similar issue on issue section before. but they replied:
"We cannot accept a report based on just a visual model analysis. Without sources, such reports will not be accepted.“

So I can just post it here.

[Shimakazerun]

And the same modle issue is also exist on ZTZ-99A’s hull armor.
the game data shows that. the ZTZ-99A/s hull composite armor should be 20mm RHA + 215mm NERA +50mm RHA. the NERA got a KE mult of 1.175 and a CE mult of 1.235.

That will makes ZTZ-99A got a 322mm KE protection and a 335mm CE protection at 0 degree. Or the in-game X-ray shows a 20 mm RHA+150 mm NERA+50 mm RHA.which equals 246mm against KE and 255mm against CE.
But in game “protection analysis” .we got only 237mm KE and 248mm CE instead.

It looks like we lost some of the armor due some unknown reason.

Then I realized we can caculate the real thickness of the ZTZ-99A’s hull armor by this way:
we know the coner of ZTZ-99A’s hull armor got two steel blocks. and it’s thickness is just fit the composite armor. At 0 degree. we got the thickness of the steel block is 159mm

And 159 ≠ 20+215/150. so, maybe 20+215 does not exist at all.
Instead we got 50mm steel backing plate and a 159mm NERA,witch provide 50+159x1.175=236.8mm KE protection and a 50+159x1.235=246.4 mm CE protection.which is just fit on the test above.

I’m just wondering. if the armor structure dosen’t work at all. Why to creat it?

[DPRK_19480909]

Another problem caused by spaghetti code lol.

[中东车组]

this is a serious problem about ztz99a

[中东车组]

i agree

[Shimakazerun]

For the lower part of hull up part(sorry I don;t know how to discrabe this part,so shown on pic),the KE protection is also lower than other parts.
and the reason is:
FY-4 ERA got a thickness of 85mm and a KE quality of 1.06. which means it can provide 85*1.06=90mm KE at 0 degree. and it increases as the angle increases,untill it could provide 180mm KE.

for other part of FY-4 ERA. the angle is 70 degree.so the KE protection is 90/cos 70°= 263mm. cause 263mm >180mm .so the finall protection of FY-4 is 180mm.

but at the lower part the angle of FY-4 is wrong setted as 33 degree. so it can only proved 90/cos33°=107mm KE protection. and that cause this part is lower than other part fot 73mm KE protection.

considering the real ERA worling principle. this is also very very ridiculous.

—————————————some additional infos—————————————————

Accroding to the acceptance criteria of FY-4 armor shown below.the effictive area should be like what I had dawn below(marked as strike zone).

In the strike zone. the FY-4 must provide 180mm KE protection or it will become a nonconforming product.and outside this strike zone (marked as “invalid zone”) maybe or maybe not provide 180mm KE protection.

By calculate we can clearly see that: the 33 degree zone got about 60% zone could provide 180mm KE protection rather than 107mm in game now.

——————————————————————————————————————————

And It’s easy to fix this bug:
divide FY-4 ERA to 2 kinds: let’s call them “FY-4-HULL” and “FY-4-OTHER”
the “FY-4-OTHER” remain the in game data as “FY-4” now.
change the “FY-4-HULL” to
thickness:85
KE quality:1.84(rather than 1.06 now)
max KE protection: 180

then It could provide full 180 mm KE protection without any new bugs.

[照月女仆超可爱喵0v0]

as you know, gaijin always “make sth wrong” in chinese veichle XD

[BasherBenDawg8]

The way the modeled armor looks makes it feel like it’s definitely wrong. Just the abnormally shaped blocks of armor, like on the Japanese MBTs as well, can’t be correct right? Surely…

[Ibash_Aminoas]

ridiculous mistake, now the KE at the bottom of the turret is only 350

[Miraz05]

Meanwhile Russian ERAs are stopping every apfsds rounds

[THE_SHOREKEEPER]

Errors need to be fixed

[bigapplesama]

Gaijin should have a look about this

[洛天依]

This is an obvious mistake. I don’t know the reason why GAIJIN did this.99A has 7.1S+577mm.This is the slowest.Now Gaijin is starting to weaken the armor of 99A again.

[向晚大魔王]

These are very ridiculous problems, please fix them

[Константинович7]

Out of topic but the biggest problem with Chinese MBTs overall is the huge lower frontal plate, the british must explain something.

But, I may be wrong, most of these penetration bugs are caused by the game’s calculationg, and as, well mentioned by DPRK_19480909, the spaghetti code.

[MiG_23M]

@Gunjob Has anyone made a formal or internal report on this issue? Gaijin has once again failed to model the Type 99 properly.

[Ibash_Aminoas]

gaijin just made enough money from Chinese players. then they continued to discriminate against Chinese vehicles.
all of this seems more intentional. at least there haven’t been so many new issues before the update on the 25th. now Gaijin refuses to acknowledge the old version of armor KE screenshots.
and blocked all error reports. even imprison those who question them.
not only is the KE value of the hull reduced, the thickness of the bottom of the turret now is surprisingly only 350mm
we have never been able to obtain a vehicle that can rival T80BVM, Leo2A7, and strv122. Players have always been striving to achieve this. but Gaijin believes that Chinese TT only deserves to have a pile of garbage.
we got a s( )t VT4, and now we have another s( )t 99A.
at the slowest loading speed of 11.7. extremely poor penetration of shells. less peeling fragments are produced by shells. completely unreliable armor. is even worse than M1A1.
compared to other vehicles, mobility does not bring any significant advantages. And now the maps and combat distances are getting smaller and smaller.
there are no advantages to them, but some people still think they perform well.
this is the source and truth of the problem
of course, Leclerc and Mekava also have such problems.
extremely poor competitiveness without any “balance” adjustment.
do this during a Chinese themed version and the Chinese National Day holiday. Undoubtedly toxic and deliberate.
the 55 ton 99A tank lags behind the 45 ton Russian tank anywhere. the armor performance is even inferior to the old 99 designed in 1999. and they all adopt the same design concept.
just to fulfill their stereotypes and create the myth of Russian vehicle number 1

[巴拉莱卡]

Chinese players need an explanation

[Dinfire]

@Pacifica No hate, my man, only pointing out this player’s rather exceptionally well-researched topic considering ZTZ-99A. Think they can make a suggestion in the suggestion forum and you can tag some of the other tech mods to have a look-see and confirm what’s being shown here?

[天城やん]

It’s a classic example that after one fix we have a new problem.But since this is a Chinese vehicle, I think it will be given the “not a bug”