Penetration values for HE shells?

[goduranus]

It seems that HE need to penetrate to do damage? But what is the penetration value of HE shells? Seems like 1-2 inches it will go through, but exactly how much?

Edited November 4, 2019 by goduranus

[DeiLwynnA]

depends on the shell size, weight and range, when i can go with heavy 16" shells or better, i use he shells at all times, even when firing at a battleship at long range, deals up to 3500 damage per hit with heavy 16" at ~22km range, its depending on their armour thickness, bulkheads and where i hit 

[goduranus]

Yeah, but how much do HE shells penetrate? the game doesn't say

Edited November 4, 2019 by goduranus

[DeiLwynnA]

i dont know the he shell penetration values in this game but i do know they still do damage, although just minor, when it hits armour plating that ap shells of same size would just shatter or bounce on

[Pedroig]

10 hours ago, goduranus said:

Yeah, but how much do HE shells penetrate? the game doesn't say

Technically it is hard for a HE shell to not penetrate SOMETHING, it creates an explosion creating a high pressure wave which is bound to find a weakness in its effective radius.

[Benjamin Magnus]

Ive seen large HE rounds penetrate up to 18 inches of armor (10 inches + 80%). And smaller amounts on the regular. I was really hoping with this patch that the current HE meta would be improved upon, but I still found it crazy effective to only fire HE because the shells can reliably penetrate, start more fires, and bounce/shatter less. 

[Steeltrap]

In my view this aspect of the game is still substantially out of balance. Still too easy to load HE and kill things, although AP can be the better choice in certain situations.

Either way, getting big numbers and going through multiple decks worth of compartments, even to the point of causing flooding, with an HE shell from a gun whose AP can't defeat the deck armour is nonsense. If a superheavy AP round can't get in through the deck armour and go bang, HE is going to be even less effective at doing so.

HE is still absurdly effective in situations where it ought not be, which in fact is any time the target has any sort of meaningful armour. There's a reason the big gun ships of the world carried very little 'high capacity' shells, or whatever the particular nation called what was more or less HE, and that's because it was never going to do the sorts of damage to opposition capital ships that AP would.

Still reminds me of WoWS too much in that regard, and that's not a good thing lol.

[Illya von Einzbern]

HE floodings does make sens.
I mean if the plate ruptures it will start to leak and so on.
AP shell won't do much if it does not pen. Hits the plate and detonates there as it got stuck. Behaves like HE.
Pens and detonates in enclosed compartment more dmg. HE has more filler to rupture the first plate it contacts while AP smashes in said first plate.
Poke enough holes to a dam and it will have a catastrophic flooding.

the amount of damage it does to deck pens are some times of the charts or par with AP.
belt his are more or less ok

[Steeltrap]

4 hours ago, Illya von Einzbern said:

HE floodings does make sense.
 

Throw the bow where unarmoured? Sure.

But I was making reference to plunging fire where the AP shell that hit a BB target bounces, yet HE blows the hell of it from deck to keel. That makes no sense yo me whatsoever.

The only way that would happen were if the target were something small with negligible armour, in which case the AP would have gone straight through it (which also ought to start flooding).

But no way do I see that an HE shell strikes the deck and blows through all the different decks of a somewhat modern BB (the enemy in "The Modern BB" scenario seem something like the 1930s BB) and start flooding.

I found this page rather interesting, too:

https://www.navalgazing.net/Shells-at-Jutland

Cheers

[RHDK]

On 11/3/2019 at 5:35 PM, DeiLwynnA said:

depends on the shell size, weight and range, when i can go with heavy 16" shells or better, i use he shells at all times, even when firing at a battleship at long range, deals up to 3500 damage per hit with heavy 16" at ~22km range, its depending on their armour thickness, bulkheads and where i hit 

Which makes me wonder how many ammo detonations, engine loss or massive floodings you missed out on doing that. While 3500 does sound like a lot the APs 15.000-55.000 ammo detonations are so much more fun.