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How do I find out if a bullet or a shell from one unit can pentrate another units armour?

This seems a simple question but I cant work it out!

Basically it's shell Penetration vs Armor alterred by Armor Slope.

I THINK, but by no means am certain, that it's (Armor) X (Slope), and the penetration may be modified by warhead size. After each round you get a results info box with the Pen and effective Armor rating. If the pen is hinger you may have punched through, but if the difference is too high the round may have passed through doing only minimal damage.

The effective armor rating is adjust for terrain, height difference and other things I haven't worked out yet. :rolleyes:

I have an elite Pz III crew that rips up T34s but whose entire purpose in life seems to be making AC drivers change their uniforms.

Okay..

If you are playing a game, you can select a unit and press 'space'. This will bring up unit info screen. Under the unit pic you can see tables for the armour thickness and slope and below it a table for ammo penetration at certain ranges.

For the enemy, you can click the encyclopedia button and find the unit via it. You'll find the armour thicknesses and maximum penetrations from there also.

Now if your unit's gun has bigger AP (or APCR, if it has the ammo) penetration figure than the enemy unit's armour thickness is, then you have a chance for a penetration. Firing angle and some fudge factors are calculted in so it is not always certain that you *can* punch through, only that you have a chance. Both of these numbers are in mm so it's easy to compare. The armour thickness is just that, a max thickness. However when the ammo impacts the armour slope is taken into account too so the actual 'line of sight' thickness can be more. Then there's armour quality but let's leave it to another day


You can also browse though this data if you start the OOB editor, that's where the encyclopedia get's the info.

Voriax

Thanks for the info, much appreciated!!

IIRC it should be base thickness /cos (angle of hit)

For balistic rounds. HEAT uses thermal thickness and HE base thickness. IIRC. Anyway, it should be in the manual somewhere.

Angle of hit is influenced by height and possibly more factors I don't know from top of head. Arty and mortars ought to hit from the top more often, but if it's only IDF or also with direct fire I don't know.

err, sin instead of cos

like:

...../
..../
.../ )a
--x----

a = angle

It satisfies most of the time if you just compare the AP rating of the round at the range you are firing vs. the armor rating of the target. If it is going to be close, then it may be worth it to maneuver so that you have a higher angle of impact (e.g. 90 degrees, or perpendicular). This seems to work most of the time and remember that any shot will have an effect on the crew, so it is sometimes worth it to take several shots with no chance at a kill just to get the suppression or that lucky kill that is always possible.

Doing the exact calculation is unnecessary because as likely as not, you will have a ricochette when you should have had a kill and vice versa. You can look at the picture of your target and also get a sense of the effectiveness of its sloped armor without having to calculate anything. Think in terms of the slab-sided Matildas and KVs vs. the sleek looking panthers. But then again, when you are shooting at sloped armor from above you are actually increasing the effectiveness of your shot.

This might not be very important, but.....

Well, according to my memory the actual formula is more like

Effective armour = base / cos(u)^1.4

Remember that the encyclopaedia lists angles from *vertical* . So 0 degrees impact angle should correspond exactly to base armour. So it must be cosine =).

Don't ask me where 1.4 comes from, it's an estimate based upon observations. Mr. Vebber often likes to explain this stuff.

There are some more factors, but this is the simplest way to put it.

Armour quality can mean a factor *roughly* 0.7 to 1.1 IIRC, based upon shell caliber and armour thickness. Shell caliber is derived directly from WARHEAD rating.