AP shells dont matter

[Mooncatt]

dunno, maybe its just me. Im playing "numbers don't matter" I have the max 17" guns maxed out on accuracy, super heavy shells, the best towers for accuracy and also the best balance I can get weight wise...think im 0.3% bow heavy. for a start I cant hit crap even at 12km out, (in naval terms, that's not that far) ive tried smaller guns also to no avail. when I do eventually get  a "lucky shot" the HE does more dmg than the AP. even at almost 100% broadside on the AP shells are appalling!! they either bounce or do slight dmg. cruisers and DDs might as well be invincible since you cant hit them at any range anyway so they get ignored by me.

I know the game has been patched to reduce the effectiveness of the HE shells which is fine, but the AP shells need addressing badly. even at 20km range the AP shells score a hit on deck armour and don't seem to do much compared to HE.

im sure this is also on the future hit list by the devs, but I cant wait for waterline shots. i.e shells landing very close to a ship but no dmg model, shells would carry on travelling under water causing "holes" below the water line. I know its Alpha etc just trying to give constructive criticism.

[Latur Husky]

Angling is also very important. Show flat broadside to that enemy BB and he'll show you how ineffective AP's are xD. Anyway, it also depends on other modifiers like gunpowder you use or Armor layout of enemy ship. 

If you score good hits on enemy from +20km that means he's got thin Deck and possibly thick Belt armor, that's why  you get such effect on target. As AP's are most effective hitting Belt they'll become effective at proper range and angle. 

Waterline shots are already in the game and some AP shots are actually causing floodings.

Edited October 26, 2019 by Asthaven

[kadm]

What? 

I just finished this mission with 3 BCs (3x3 18" max accuracy and very hight deck/tt armour ) I get 20-30 % at 25km then set a perpendicular course to the BB and go for a walk. Ez

[Christian]

AP is quite useless yes

 

12 inches of krupp iv is 24 inches of effective armor and 15 inches is 30 inches

 

maximum pen achievable AT POINT BLANK is 36 inches with best powder + super heavy shells

made a thread on AP performance

 

[Absolute0CA]

Actually the issue is that we only got about 2/3rds the AP we should have. The 18” only has 48” at the muzzle when it should have something like 78”

[sRuLe]

Chose High TNT and Heavy AP... works well to me some time even 16" cause an +1600 DMG, the 17" and 18" does even more.

Actually the best Tower ain't work as it is, gun placement stats are also do a trick.

[Absolute0CA]

AP works it’s just it doesn’t work as well as it should.

[SiWi]

It usually works fine but in that mission you often get a BB as enemy which has armor beyond your comprehension asinine mortal...

 

so that does mean that you often can't penetrate even if 18inchers...

 

So HE is the name of the game in that mission.

 

But in others? AP does work wonders and can sometimes REALLY put the hurt into targets.

[RedParadize]

I do pen with 18" + heavy shell + white powder. Usually from far away and trough the deck.I usually have a much squishier ship than the target, so better sink it from far. 

I will post a example of my ship in a minute.

[RedParadize]

This need explanation I think. Here is 3 example. one with each of the choice. All happened at very long range, that mean higher chance to hit the deck, penning deck is much easier than belt.
Note that since I can't control how the enemy ship is built nor how the engagement will form, penning a already destroyed compartment do next to nothing. So we should not look total damage done nor or the damage per shell. We should look at the ratio of no damage, bounce, over pen and pen. We should also look at how much damage each of them do compared to each other.


Compare to HE they can get bounced. I think I read somewhere the bounced shot can hit bridge and guns. Cant find where I read that trough. Anyways, partial pen vs pen do allot more damage. It still start fire and all.

Now the HE. You do not get bounce but you do get no pen. Obviously at that range you will not get many of them. If you compare partial pen vs pen. Pen still does allot more damage. It is possible that HE pen does more damage than AP. But again it might just be that damage was spread to more compartment.

Now Auto. I am not certain at what percentage IA switch from HE to AP. It seem to be around 10%. As you can see when that picture was taken there was no bounce, so shot fired were mostly HE.

If you compare the respective damage of pen vs partial pen on both HE and AP pen do most of the damage. More importantly it seem that to knock out turret and engine (not sure about bridge) is more likely trough penetrating shot. I often see ship with most of its compartment destroyed by fire or else, staying alive because few compartment or engine are intact. The best way to get these is also trough pen.


My conclusion is that against poorly armored ship or trough deck pen at long range, HE will do massive pen damage. But as you get closer or against better deck armor, AP is a must. So you should go for max pen power with all method possible, bigger gun, heavier shell and white powder will increase the likelihood of penning with both HE and AP.

The pen percentage displayed seem to take in consideration the likelihood of hitting the deck, Auto mode seem to do a good job at choosing the good ammo type for you. But if you wish to do it manually I would suggest trying HE and see if you get some pen. If you don't, then do not bet on partial pen and fire to do the damage. Just go for AP as a single penetrated shot will do more damage than 10 partial pen. Note that armor seem to worn out, you will get penetration eventually. However if the penetration chance percentage fall too low, say under 5%, you might consider suppressing the enemy with just HE.

Edited October 30, 2019 by RedParadize

[sRuLe]

5 hours ago, Absolute0CA said:

AP works it’s just it doesn’t work as well as it should.

The thing is... which 17" and 18" AR shells we talking about? The lightest is Japanese 1460kg and only A-120 48cm gun and A-150 51cm gun have heavier APC 1770kg and 1910kg accordingly. US 18" APC has weight 1746kg, Brits have an 1506kg APC shell for 18"/45 and APC 1880kg round for 18"/40 gun and also an 1814kg HE round for the same gun.Russians developed 2 APC rounds for 18"/42 and 18"/45, firs was equal british 1506kg and the next was 1580kg round.

French 17" is a bit different... there where few guns and rounds, for 431mm/45 Mil1932(36) was made an 1380kg APC round, but french also have an 450mm/45Mil1921 gun with APC round that was 1680kg heavy with a huge muzzle velocity around 850m/s, which is during it's cal. is a most penetrating round until german 53cm/52 Gerat 36 AP round that weight an 2200kg with muzzle velocity of 820m/s.

Most of you lads know such game as WOWS, and heard about "Rule 14:3"? IRL it's a... pure bolox. Due to weight drag(kinetic impulse of a shell) there is no thin around 40mm armor on the planet, Earth under any angle that can stop an 1460kg APC shell of Yamato, and we not talking about american 1746kg heavy AP round. Nothing less than 406mm cemented armor Mk.4(equal to in game Krupp IV) angled on 20 degrees outside flip can stop such a supersonic wagon full of iron.

So I agree with Absolute0CA in that.

Edited October 30, 2019 by sRuLe

[sRuLe]

15 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

But as you get closer or against better deck armor, AP is a must.

o7 post you made. +

 

But, there is an Protection Scheme that most forgot... so caller T-Protection or Double-T Protection, also known as Citadel-Deck Sandwich. What it means... You got an 8"-10" main deck armor, 4"-7" slopes, and average 5" underdeck, and 6" to 7" sloped citadel walls. How it work? Large heavy shell pen's an heavy armored deck but ignites and explode between Main Deck and Under Deck. Same with a "side-kick", heavy AP pens a slope but detonate in a bulkhead with integrated bulge before hitting Citadel Wall. Such protection scheme does not obviously need an conventional Main Armor Belt. 

[RedParadize]

@sRuLeIf what you say is true (and I do not doubt it) then armor is irrelevant. IRL we figured out that weapon were superior to armor long time ago. But this is a game about battleship, and a battleship without armor is not one. For the same reason they discarded aircraft and subs, they have to balance the game in a fashion where armor is relevant.

Edit: Bad timing. I posted this before your latest post!

Yeah. For tanks its called spaced armor. Its the most cost&weight/effective armor kind. Take a look at standard NATO targets. The triple heavy is the hardest to pen for most shell type. This another reason to go for internal belt.

Edited October 30, 2019 by RedParadize

[sRuLe]

1 minute ago, RedParadize said:

@sRuLeIf what you say is true (and I do not doubt it) then armor is irrelevant. IRL we figured out that weapon were superior to armor long time ago. But this is a game about battleship, and a battleship without armor is not one. For the same reason they discarded aircraft and subs, they have to balance the game in a fashion where armor is relevant.

There is an example of T-Protection and well known to all Big Gun Ship lovers... USS Iowa class. T-Protection is made for a long range shootout. Double-T is made for both. Other is full armored deck scheme, but still need an armor slopes for internal protection. It does not throw armor away, it's just relocate it to meet an incoming shell in a worst for penetration angles.

[sRuLe]

14 hours ago, Christian said:

12 inches of krupp iv is 24 inches of effective armor and 15 inches is 30 inches

30 inches is a 406mm 1200kg APC shell penetration on 15 miles. Monsters like 17" or 18" heavy-super heavy APC or even CPC just will ignore 12" of Krupp-4 in a distances around 28-30 miles. It's an obsolete different protection scheme against such heavy shells with their penetration drag which works to bounce a shell in a lay trajectory or detonate safely on a steeper one inside an armor sandwich.

Edited October 30, 2019 by sRuLe

[RedParadize]

27 minutes ago, sRuLe said:

There is an example of T-Protection and well known to all Big Gun Ship lovers... USS Iowa class. T-Protection is made for a long range shootout. Double-T is made for both. Other is full armored deck scheme, but still need an armor slopes for internal protection. It does not throw armor away, it's just relocate it to meet an incoming shell in a worst for penetration angles.

Sorry Because our two post came out at the same time I edited my last post to answer to your first post about this. But my edit also came out after your next answer lol.

Check out my last post again.

[sRuLe]

37 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

Yeah. For tanks its called spaced armor. Its the most cost&weight/effective armor kind. Take a look at standard NATO targets. The triple heavy is the hardest to pen for most shell type. This another reason to go for internal belt.

Like all the modern MBT armor... but with larger space between, and much thicker plates that turned into all around horizontal protection instead of spaced-side protection of a tanks. Where (talking about ships) the first plate is thickest one to charge a shell fuse, second is a bit thinner to sustain explosion and shreds.

[sRuLe]

6 minutes ago, RedParadize said:

Check out my last post again.

Already done 😺

[RedParadize]

@sRuLe It depend on shell mass and fuse. Delayed fuse may require a minimum to trigger. But if the second plate is too thin then it may not stop the blast from it. Most case scenario, if I had the choice, I would go with a ratio like nato double heavy or even better triple heavy.

[sRuLe]

17 hours ago, RedParadize said:

@sRuLe It depend on shell mass and fuse. Delayed fuse may require a minimum to trigger. But if the second plate is too thin then it may not stop the blast from it. Most case scenario, if I had the choice, I would go with a ratio like nato double heavy or even better triple heavy.

T and Double-T protections is much more than NATO-Double Heavy. It's a two horizontal protection layers and one vertical, all can be also sloped.

[RedParadize]

Without talking about modern material and technology, modern thinking could offer allot of solutions to warships armor. 

Unlike tanks, cost matter more than weight and space. Weight still matters trough. Instead of opting for 12" thick and expensive face hardened plate of steel, a simple sandwich of 12 spaced 1"steel plate would do just as good of a job at a much lower cost. You could even bolt most of them as deformation is actually what you are looking for.

since 1" plate are much easier to mass produce it would be cheaper and easier to make it of greater quality.

 

 

[RedParadize]

After a bit of reading looks like it had been done to some extent. Like the Littorio-class 

I think it's a good exemple of people knowing something but not fully exploiting it. Like sloped armor for tanks.

[Steeltrap]

15 hours ago, RedParadize said:

After a bit of reading looks like it had been done to some extent. Like the Littorio-class 

I think it's a good exemple of people knowing something but not fully exploiting it. Like sloped armor for tanks.

It's often not fully exploited because doing so typically creates its own issues and compromises. At some point you have to choose which to accept.

Sloped armour on tanks, like the famous T-34 for example, comes at the cost of reducing available space inside the tank, and that can create its own problems.

Edited November 1, 2019 by Steeltrap

[sRuLe]

Sloped armor on the ships is bit different than on tanks... due to difference of an ballistic ark, on ships it's more steeper.

[Cptbarney]

6 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

It's often not fully exploited because doing so typically creates its own issues and compromises. At some point you have to choose which to accept.

Sloped armour on tanks, like the famous T-34 for example, comes at the cost of reducing available space inside the tank, and that can create its own problems.

However it does greatly reduce the cost and also complexity of the vehicle, plus you don't need to make the tank as thickly armoured as others too.

Plus tanks were quite big even with slopped armour so space is a non-issue, except for really smoll tonks or tanks that are quite close to the ground.

But having the armour boxy can make things roomy i guess, but makes the armour weaker (corners, flat surfaces) and heavier just to get the same material for the same protection.

Its why the T-34 and argueably the panther were such great tanks (if they also had more time develop them that would of helped).