Armor penetration tests

[Anomaly27]

Armor penetration is a strange issue because the different nations used different testing standards. The Soviets used the CP-75 (75% certified penetration) and harder plate than the Germans (who used the CP-50). In German and Soviet tests of the German 37mm anti-tank gun (the same type of gun and ammo were used in both tests), Soviet figures were about 70% of German ones. This would make their penetration values appear to be lower than they actually are. I think the British used the CP-80 for certain tank guns. That's why I always play the game with German armor strength set to 80%.

P.S. What % penetration did the United States count as a full penetration?

[This message has been edited by Anomaly27 (edited February 04, 2001).]

[Paul Vebber]

The game penetration is adjusted to account for that. I used two differnet DeMarre based formula and "adjusted" book values to get the peentration figures for the projectiles.

THe process is limited and Combat Leader will do a much better job of accounting for these differences

[Anomaly27]

can you tell me the formulas? I would really like to know.

and what are the figures adjusted to, because the Soviet figures look like the CP-75 figures?
http://history.vif2.ru/guns/defin_4.html

[This message has been edited by Anomaly27 (edited February 04, 2001).]

[Paul Vebber]

Because of the way ricochets work, the probability of penetration varies with incidence angle, and is closer on average to CP80 or 85 than 75. But I'm leery to give a single number, given the conditional probabilities invoved.

The values are for vertical plate at 0 range so none of them are taken from the website you mentioned, thought the site was used to as one of many sources to validate the equations used.

The derivation of the constants used is a big job the results of which we consider a bit proprietary at this point. You can find discussions of similar forumla at
http://www.tanknet.org

forum's ballistics discussion.

We are really limited in the SP architecture, the "6 slab" tank model, and the single penetration number (when penetration varied strongly with penetrator material and armor type) so "splitting hairs" on penetration is chasing "insignificant digits" in the game.

What we have shows the relativve effects of T/D and 3 dimensional angle, but the variability means that you have a +/- 10-15% range variability or penetration, and a +/- 7.5 degree variation in angle of impact in results, so tryong to pin down penetration numbers to a finer precision than that is not productive.

Combat Leader will let us tighten that to about 3-5% or so and use a more "event based" algorithm.

[This message has been edited by Paul Vebber (edited February 04, 2001).]