HE Overpenning?!

[captinjoehenry]

So I've been messing around with some nice 8 inch secondaries on my super BBs.  And I've noticed that when they are fighting DDs and are firing HE they do a rather piddling amount of damage.  The reason is the High Explosive shells are overpenning DDs.  Which should just be impossible.  These are contact fused high explosive shells.  They should hit a destroyer and detonate almost immedietly with devestating effect.  Which is exactly what happens when the 8 inch super heavy HE shells actually pen a DD and go off properly.  They delete the DD as they should.  But somehow almost all of them overpen when they should be contact detonated!

Anyone else encountered this issue?  Is there anything I can do to mitigate this?

[Steeltrap]

I've been raising this for the best part of a year. In fact I've a bunch of screen snips of various scenarios aimed directly at questioning the interaction of the armour, pen and damage systems I was going to lay out in the "Issues" thread, but haven't raised the enthusiasm to take the time required.

You'll see the same thing even with 4" to 6" HE shells hitting transports.

I believe it is due to the crude mechanism regarding how pen/overpen/ricochet is calculated. Have you noticed HE shells NEVER ricochet? Same issue.

1. When a hit is scored, the system seems to check for ricochets first. It appears HE shells are exempt from this.

2. The system seems to have a set if thresholds along the lines of checking to see if the pen exceeds the effective armour thickness. If it exceeds by "too much", however, then it becomes an "over-pen" and does 10% the damage a pen would in the same situation.

3. As far as we know (someone looked into the coding in more detail), the HE has a pen of 1/3rd that of the AP.

Thus the problem becomes a large calibre HE round may be treated as having 7" pen at relatively close range because the AP has 21". If it hits something with 0 effective armour, it falls outside the "Goldilocks zone of penetration" (that's an unfortunate image, LMAO) and thus becomes an over pen. More annoying still, it doesn't matter WHERE it hits. You can hit a ship from astern such that the shell ought to be travelling the full length of the ship and it STILL treats it as an over-pen.

In another thread I pointed out that the famous USN 16" "super heavy" AP shell had a fuse that required only as much force as would be applied by striking 2"/5cm of armour plate at 90 degrees, or as little as 1" at 60 degrees.

The very idea that large calibre AP shells "ricochet" from the 1" bow of a light cruiser in any but stratospherically rare instances yet HE detonate perfectly under the exact same conditions is a load of BS straight out of WoWS. It's also why I immediately force my guns to use HE whenever a ship is doing the whole "angling" thing, again another mechanism disturbingly familiar to any WoWS players. Other people around here disagree with me on this, but, to be bluntl, my many years (35+ on and off) of reading all sorts of sources suggests they're incorrect.

It's another core mechanic I see as needing some attention. It's currently WAY too crude.

If it's because we're dealing with another instance of "placeholder, good enough for now" core mechanism, fine. Provided, of course, the devs indeed see it as such and plan to update it to something more accurate.

Well, that is if they want to continue to mention "realism" anywhere, lol.

[captinjoehenry]

3 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

I've been raising this for the best part of a year. In fact I've a bunch of screen snips of various scenarios aimed directly at questioning the interaction of the armour, pen and damage systems I was going to lay out in the "Issues" thread, but haven't raised the enthusiasm to take the time required.

You'll see the same thing even with 4" to 6" HE shells hitting transports.

I believe it is due to the crude mechanism regarding how pen/overpen/ricochet is calculated. Have you noticed HE shells NEVER ricochet? Same issue.

1. When a hit is scored, the system seems to check for ricochets first. It appears HE shells are exempt from this.

2. The system seems to have a set if thresholds along the lines of checking to see if the pen exceeds the effective armour thickness. If it exceeds by "too much", however, then it becomes an "over-pen" and does 10% the damage a pen would in the same situation.

3. As far as we know (someone looked into the coding in more detail), the HE has a pen of 1/3rd that of the AP.

Thus the problem becomes a large calibre HE round may be treated as having 7" pen at relatively close range because the AP has 21". If it hits something with 0 effective armour, it falls outside the "Goldilocks zone of penetration" (that's an unfortunate image, LMAO) and thus becomes an over pen. More annoying still, it doesn't matter WHERE it hits. You can hit a ship from astern such that the shell ought to be travelling the full length of the ship and it STILL treats it as an over-pen.

In another thread I pointed out that the famous USN 16" "super heavy" AP shell had a fuse that required only as much force as would be applied by striking 2"/5cm of armour plate at 90 degrees, or as little as 1" at 60 degrees.

The very idea that large calibre AP shells "ricochet" from the 1" bow of a light cruiser in any but stratospherically rare instances yet HE detonate perfectly under the exact same conditions is a load of BS straight out of WoWS. It's also why I immediately force my guns to use HE whenever a ship is doing the whole "angling" thing, again another mechanism disturbingly familiar to any WoWS players. Other people around here disagree with me on this, but, to be bluntl, my many years (35+ on and off) of reading all sorts of sources suggests they're incorrect.

It's another core mechanic I see as needing some attention. It's currently WAY too crude.

If it's because we're dealing with another instance of "placeholder, good enough for now" core mechanism, fine. Provided, of course, the devs indeed see it as such and plan to update it to something more accurate.

Well, that is if they want to continue to mention "realism" anywhere, lol.

Christ.  I mean I get how you can see a AP shell over penning.  After all just look at Taffy 3 where the destroyers shrug off tons of AP shell hits because they don't fuse.  But if they were hit by 8" HE shells they would just be deleted.  

Honestly it's just SUPER annoying that high explosive shells of all things are even capable of over penning considering they explode on contact.  After all heavy cruisers should just cast deletus on DDs when using HE shells.

[Steeltrap]

We haven't even mentioned something rather important:

By the end of WW1 and the introduction of the 'green boy' AP shells, Royal Navy BBs carried almost (or sometimes literally) ZERO common/HE shells.

Kind of makes you scratch you head when you measure these game mechanics against the fact that the world's most powerful capital ship fleet DIDN'T CARRY HE for its main guns (most of which were 13.5" and some 15"),

The main reason a shell would "over-pen" is it would not encounter enough resistance force to trigger its fuse in time for the shell to explode within the target. That's it. If it DOES encounter enough force, even if it's somewhere later in the ship, the fuse will be triggered. It then becomes a matter of the velocity of the shell multiplied by the time delay of the fuse to tell us how much further it will travel before exploding. That could well be OUTSIDE the ship, a "through and through" so to speak, as happened at Samar as you mentioned. OK, I've left off the potential issues of de-capping and tumbling etc, but we don't need to go too crazy, lol. Besides which, an HE shell ISN'T capped.

So it COULD be possible for a heavy HE shell to over-pen, but it would largely come down to the fuse timing. Suggesting a 6" shell can penetrate a transport's side from ANY angle and not explode, however, strikes me as utter bollocks. Either it would explode on the surface plate (most standard ships were constructed with well under 1"/2.5cn plating so that won't help), or it would travel a certain distance inside before doing so.

Edited November 25, 2020 by Steeltrap

[IronKaputt]

It seems like latest hotfix (?) improves the situation a little bit and now 7" and below shells (at least super heavies, at least at long range) prone to deliver the full blow.

Will run more test tomorrow.

[madham82]

3 hours ago, IronKaputt said:

It seems like latest hotfix (?) improves the situation a little bit and now 7" and below shells (at least super heavies, at least at long range) prone to deliver the full blow.

Will run more test tomorrow.

Saw this in one of the screens from a test I ran Monday. You can see there is one over-pen from 7" HE, but mostly pens. These are against a DD with max bulkheads.

 

[Steeltrap]

Try a scenario where you shoot transports.

Even 6" HE over-pen left, right and centre, regardless of the angle from which they strike. I don't know how a 6" HE shell is imagined to penetrate the flat side of a transport (what would be its belt) and not get fused by SOMETHING.

I'm not convinced the normal hull plate of even a merchant ship of the period wouldn't be enough to fuse a 6" HE shell, let alone one that's clearly going to bump into all sorts of things in the ship (which I see frequently). I see this even when it's entered from directly astern and MUST be going to pass along the entire length of the ship's interior. What happens to it, does it just vanish?

[captinjoehenry]

On 11/27/2020 at 10:52 AM, Steeltrap said:

Try a scenario where you shoot transports.

Even 6" HE over-pen left, right and centre, regardless of the angle from which they strike. I don't know how a 6" HE shell is imagined to penetrate the flat side of a transport (what would be its belt) and not get fused by SOMETHING.

I'm not convinced the normal hull plate of even a merchant ship of the period wouldn't be enough to fuse a 6" HE shell, let alone one that's clearly going to bump into all sorts of things in the ship (which I see frequently). I see this even when it's entered from directly astern and MUST be going to pass along the entire length of the ship's interior. What happens to it, does it just vanish?

HE are contact fused.  They should go off more or less as soon as they hit anything.  Frankly they shouldn't even penetrate a target considering how they surface detonate.  There is technically SAP Semi Armor Piercing which is HE that has some AP power.  But even that should easily fuse inside of a DD or any other light target. 

Frankly HE shells should have 0 chance AT ALL to over pen.  With how they detonate on contact.

[Steeltrap]

20 hours ago, captinjoehenry said:

HE are contact fused.  They should go off more or less as soon as they hit anything.  Frankly they shouldn't even penetrate a target considering how they surface detonate.  There is technically SAP Semi Armor Piercing which is HE that has some AP power.  But even that should easily fuse inside of a DD or any other light target. 

Frankly HE shells should have 0 chance AT ALL to over pen.  With how they detonate on contact.

TL;DR? The way the game treats HE v AP remains too crude and produces obviously flawed results. This is in part also due to the armour scheme being too crude. Yet it's also because of the simplicity of the "penetration of HE" calculation and a somewhat poor differentiation of the genuine differences between AP and HE, smaller and large calibres.

The kraken in the bath (elephant in the room really didn't fit)? Navies all but eliminated HE/common shells for BB calibre weapons by the end of WW1. How do the devs plan to reconcile that FACT with the whole "oh no, ship is angled, break out the HE" bullshit mechanics we're being forced to live with?

What would I change immediately for trial? Make it so an over pen with HE is IMPOSSIBLE unless the shell trajectory means the shell would pass through such a small area that even if fused it would not explode.

Either it shatters on thick armour without detonating, explodes on armour with a blast effect mitigated according to that and surrounding armour's thickness, or it explodes inside. The idea that the best protection against certain shells in some respects is to have NO armour at all is just dumb unless you're speaking very narrow ships struck by very large AP rounds, as happened at the infamous Battle off Samar. Even then, read the crew accounts. It wasn't exactly a picnic.

At the same time, REMOVE HE for all weapons >9" in calibre.

We KNOW this is what the world's navies did. Why aren't we making that happen? Sure, it's a sandbox. The trouble, however, is it's forcing or allowing, not sure which, poorly working mechanics to persist, producing some truly perverse results.

It's one thing if someone wants to spam 15" HE rounds (despite nobody doing so with the real tech of the day any time after about 1917). It's quite something else to have mechanics that indulge or even reward them for doing so, let  alone potentially make it the superior choice. THAT is NOT ok in my books.

=================================================

Yes, there are two real differences between AP and HE: thickness of shell construction including capping for larger calibres, and fuse delays.

That's really all there is.

Even a 16" AP shell is contact fused in that it is fused once it experiences a certain level of force. Issues such as 'caps' designed to facilitate armour penetration and preserve the structure of the shell behind it didn't alter the fact there's a fuse there, obviously.

Even so-called semi-armour piercing really came down to variations of shell construction and fusing compared with a common/HE (different navies used different terms) and a traditional AP and from recollection they only existed below certain calibres.

One trouble I suspect the devs have is they've elected to use a system that gives an arbitrary pen value of HE that's relative to AP. They then use a system that seems to determine if it ricochets (although HE never does, which is false in one respect) and if not then decides if it over-pens, partially pens or pens. Those seem to be based entirely on ratios applied to the armour thickness. I know they altered the partial pen ratio in a patch/hot fix before the latest one such that shells with even less than HALF the required pen could score a partial pen which seems a bit excessive to me.

We know that BBs in particular used various means to attempt to defeat AP capped shells such as multiple void spaces. The idea was to 'de-cap' the shell thus greatly reduce its further capacity for penetration, and possibly even cause the shell to 'tumble' and not strike the next layer nose first and thus potentially also not detonate.

They ALSO, however, well understood how HE shells operated. It's why they featured multiple layers of decks in particular. The USN WW2 built classes (North Carolina, South Dakota and Iowa) used something like a 1" deck then a 5" main armoured deck then a further 1" splinter deck (I'm being lazy again and not looking up the specific numbers). The idea here was to fuse the HE shell with the 1" and have it explode on the main armoured deck below. The splinter deck below that was to catch any fragments that may either have cut through that armour or arisen through spalling.

The point is they viewed even 1" as enough to fuse most if not all HE shells. I've pointed out before that the USN's 'super heavy' 16" AP round's fuse required only as much force as could be applied by 2"/5cm armour struck flat, or 1"/2.5cm at 60 degrees, to activate the trigger. The fuse delay then tells us how far the shell will travel simply by using the formula of distance = velocity x time.

The other factor to remember is that when speaking of HE "penetration" there are a few different versions of that. There's one where the shell physically punches into or through whatever it strikes before the fuse delay triggers the detonation. Even a 'zero' fuse delay will result in a tiny delay simply due to nothing truly being instant. That's clearly going to be a function of the thickness and mass of the shell. The larger the calibre, the thicker and more massive the shell HAS to be simply to survive the process of being blasted out of a rifle 20km or more away, lol. Once it has done that, however, it ought still explode.

The second type is more of an explosion part way through a heavier layer of armour. This will shower the area with fragments from the blast, potentially including some within the area not fully penetrated and/or by a spalling effect.

The last is a surface detonation on armour heavy enough to defeat the shell's inherent penetrating capacity yet the shell survives long enough still to explode. In most cases this ought to do next to nothing to a fully armoured structure (main guns, belt, main armoured deck).

If you're reading all this babbling and thinking "Hang on, those describe how AP shells behave" it's because that's kind of the point. BOTH AP and HE shells are lumps of metal with a void space containing an explosive of some sort and size (the bursting charge). The only practical difference between them is their construction and the amount of the charge inside. AP rounds will be thicker, often even having more of a pointy nose but not always, especially when more elaborate capping designs appear. That's about it.

HE will be 'defeated' by MUCH lower levels of armour. The issue here is that 'defeated' frequently will mean "goes bang against". It's entirely possible for an AP round NOT to go bang 'properly' while an HE round DOES. The difference is that a surface detonation of an HE round on an armoured layer of any significance doesn't necessarily do a hell of a lot.

Well I've been rambling for far too long (had some time to kill).

Why did I mention armour before? Let's take the example of "deck armour". Are we assuming ONE deck of that thickness? How low in the ship? Are there subsidiary splinter decks or extra horizontal armour over magazine spaces for example? Not all capital ships had equal deck thickness over their entire citadel, sometimes having more over the magazines than the engineering spaces. Not all of them had vital systems BELOW all their horizontal armour; a common criticism of the Bismarck class is too many important things were ABOVE the main armoured deck. I've read several well qualified sources saying they were monstrously strong against horizontal fire (thus the irony of the Brits closing in on Bismarck to "finish her off" in fact played directly into her armour scheme's particular strength, one that a more modern "all or nothing" scheme would NOT have had), but unnecessarily vulnerable to the effects of anything striking the decks compared with, say, the Iowa class (in fact I've even read Bismarck's armour as being a 'modernised' Baden class).

Not wishing to get off topic, but the point is "not all deck armour schemes are created equal", and that's why the armour system ALSO matters here. The terribly crude "various citadel schemes give small multipliers to effective armour thickness EVERYWHERE" (which, frankly, makes no LITERAL sense even if it's easy to understand the PRACTICAL sense they're getting at) is a problem. What if I want ONE heavy main deck (more of an AON design such as the USN WW2 BBs? How about splitting the armour thickness into TWO equal thicknesses? How will THOSE choices effect how an HE round striking them will behave? How about AP? Is one superior to another? (yes, one is, as we know the answer to that given the advantages of hindsight, but the naval designers didn't and had to make their best estimates against the background of significantly changing gunnery tech, let alone aircraft and bombs)

[As an aside, WG had a hell of a time trying to address this in WoT, lurching from "HE kills everything" (Soviet guns, chosen for their HE performance, happened to do rather well here, one of many reasons why WG was accused of Soviet bias, LOL) to "HE does very little" and settling on something like "HE either obliterates or does next to nothing". That damage/model changing back and forth for HE pen and damage is also one reason why Arty was so obnoxious, typically being the largest calibres in a battle. Ships AREN'T tanks, however. Even the crews in main gun turrets survived non-penetrating strikes by large calibre weapons if the armour held up, in part because a main gun turret is a LOT larger space than a tank and thus percussive/compression effects are much better dissipated. Yet in WoWS HE is GROSSLY effective against capital ships. That's because of the arcade nature of a competitive game forcing ships to fight each other with gunfire who in reality would never have chosen to do so. There's a reason BBs ruled for a long time. They simply would obliterate anything not of their class in 99% of situations.]

THIS game really ought not make HE a "when it doubt spam HE" get out of jail for someone dumb enough to pit their cruisers against enemy BCs or BBs if it wants its advertised claims of being focussed as much on realism as possible to have any credibility. It's got better, but has a ways to go.

One last illustration of what I worry about is the latest update includes a comment about "guns lower than 11" doing meaningful damage against a BB". Excuse me, WHY SHOULD THAT BE TRUE???? It shouldn't, unless they mean having the capacity to cause incidental damage or damage to sensitive systems like radar and various fire control directors and the like, but those are pretty rare. If that's what they mean, well it's another case of where they need their notes to be MUCH more explicit. I've volunteered to work with them on that, but no interest; that's fine, but their patch notes remain frustratingly badly vague, something I and others have written about many times.

 

[SonicB]

9 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

One last illustration of what I worry about is the latest update includes a comment about "guns lower than 11" doing meaningful damage against a BB". Excuse me, WHY SHOULD THAT BE TRUE???? It shouldn't, unless they mean having the capacity to cause incidental damage or damage to sensitive systems like radar and various fire control directors and the like, but those are pretty rare. If that's what they mean, well it's another case of where they need their notes to be MUCH more explicit. I've volunteered to work with them on that, but no interest; that's fine, but their patch notes remain frustratingly badly vague, something I and others have written about many times.

 

I have nothing technical to add here as you've summed the current state of the game vs historical reality pretty well. I think I can speak for most people who chose to support the game that I'm happy to support and sympathise with the devs as long as the current system is explicitly a placeholder. However, I do feel that in return for the serious trust we showed in laying down AAA release money for an alpha, we're owed a little more transparency about the development pipeline and future plans.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for the great write-up.

[o Barão]

10 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

The kraken in the bath (elephant in the room really didn't fit)? Navies all but eliminated HE/common shells for BB calibre weapons by the end of WW1. How do the devs plan to reconcile that FACT with the whole "oh no, ship is angled, break out the HE" bullshit mechanics we're being forced to live with?

At the same time, REMOVE HE for all weapons >9" in calibre.

"The large-caliber guns were designed to fire two different 16 inch (406 mm) shells: an armor-piercing round for anti-ship and anti-structure work, and a high-explosive round designed for use against unarmored targets and shore bombardment. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16"/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun

 

The Yamato 46 cm HE shells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46_cm/45_Type_94_naval_gun

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:46_cm_Type_0_High_Explosive_Shell.jpg

 

The Bismarck HE shell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_C/34_naval_gun

38 cm Spgr L4.5 Bdz (m.Hb)
base-fused HE shell with ballistic cap

[disc]

Japan actually did not seem to like big HE very much for anti-ship purposes after Jutland: They were very impressed by the use of German AP at long range at Jutland.

Development of large HE shells sort of stalled out after WWI. As far as I am aware, the 41cm gun used on the Nagatos lacked HE entirely until 1940. The 14in/36cm guns had a HE shell, the Common Type 3, from 1915, but there was no new HE design for another 25 years. The 46cm Type 5, which would have armed some ships of the post WWI program, also apparently lacked HE.

Medium caliber guns are a little less clear-cut. The 20cm Type 3 No.1 and No.2 both had HE from the start, but the 15.5cm Type 3 (the Mogami/Oyodo/Yamato gun) did not have HE until 1940. In fact, the Mogamis lacked HE for their main guns for their whole lives until they were regunned with the 20cm.

In 1940, Japan introduced HE for all its guns of cruiser size and bigger, with the new Type 0 Common shell (and then, for most guns, the Type 3 incendiary common and its derivatives). My limited understanding is that these were generally issued with time fuzes, at least to begin with. This would make them suitable mainly for AA and shore bombardment. I do suspect the Type 88 nose percussion fuze could be substituted for time fuzes, but I am far from certain that was universally true. I am rather convinced that IJN battleship main guns were "supposed to" use AP in basically all anti-ship combat.

The IJN fortuitously discovered (in the middle of combat, it seems) that the HE time fuze was a little "defective", and the fuze and shell would detonate when impacting other ships. The distinct impression given by the US Technical Mission documents is that this was an unintended side-effect. This served the IJN well in the Solomons, when guns loaded for shore bombardment fired on unexpected American attackers.

[disc]

On the other hand, before WWI, big-gun HE was extremely popular and cannot be neglected.

The eponymous Dreadnought was designed per the then-current hypothesis that battles would be decided by big-gun HE shells fired at long range, with AP used only to finish off opponents at short range. It's true that AP essentially took over for ship-to-ship combat on battleships after WWI, but I feel imposing a blanket removal is too aggressive, given that big HE shells were so popular before the war. The Duncan class of battleships, for example, completed 1903-1904, carried 320 combat shells for its 12in guns, of which 216 were Common (ie HE), 64 were AP shell, and 40 were AP shot.

[Steeltrap]

9 hours ago, o Barão said:

"The large-caliber guns were designed to fire two different 16 inch (406 mm) shells: an armor-piercing round for anti-ship and anti-structure work, and a high-explosive round designed for use against unarmored targets and shore bombardment. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16"/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun

 

The Yamato 46 cm HE shells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46_cm/45_Type_94_naval_gun

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:46_cm_Type_0_High_Explosive_Shell.jpg

 

The Bismarck HE shell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/38_cm_SK_C/34_naval_gun

38 cm Spgr L4.5 Bdz (m.Hb)
base-fused HE shell with ballistic cap

Hi there, I didn't say the HE/common round was not manufactured. Of course it was, shore bombardment being a thing.

The point is that ships generally carried Armour Piercing (usually capped in one way or another) in far greater numbers UNLESS they knew they were undertaking a specific mission such as bombardment where they'd need a different shell load out.

The Royal Navy is something of an oddity here as they replaced their HE with a CPC shell, or "common pointed capped". They had gone from a straight HE/common to a "common pointed" with a solid nose and base instead of nose contact fuse. The idea was to give some AP performance to an otherwise HE shell, but this meant having a smaller bursting charge Tests the Brits did themselves showed it was largely not much difference from the CP shell, and certainly didn't have much performance in terms of AP.

Even so, the RN generally had a ratio of about 4:1 of their APC v CPC, again showing their intended weapon of choice against enemy ships in most cases was expected to be the APC. Once the Allied navies didn't expect serious surface opposition, they started to increase their HE/common or equivalent or, as I said, swapped to a very HE-heavy load for bombardment missions (for obvious reasons).

The reason I proposed getting rid of HE is because, frankly, other than pre-WW1 and arguably early WW1, the large gun ships expected to fire a form of AP at their opposites. Furthermore, and this is part of my reason, it would mean the devs would have to take a serious look at their penetration/armour/damage interactions if HE isn't going to be an easy out for them to let all ships use.

In short? The whole 'over-pen" and performance of AP rounds both in themselves and vs HE generally is questionable. In a game focussing on Dreadnoughts that strikes me as rather a problem.

As an aside, the whole matter of what happens to shells when they hit things is a tremendously complicated subject. Happily enough there's Nathan Okun who has spent decades working out all sorts of remarkable details and even making available programs that allow you to see what sort of shell (including different sorts of caps; soft v hardened, the metallurgy makes a difference) v what sort of armour (face hardened or not, for example; again, metallurgy matters) is likely to produce.

Some fine gentlemen used his materials to produce the following. Well worth a read.

http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/Penetration_index.php

As is everything by Nathan Okun. Indeed he has produced so much remarkable stuff and is so greatly respected he rates his own page on NavWeaps:

http://www.navweaps.com/index_nathan/index_nathan.php

The fact is NONE of this stuff is a mystery. Complicated, terribly so if you want to include the various measures of metallurgy such as brittleness and the like, both for shells and armour, sure. But all the values from the best minds on the subject have produced a wealth of stuff that not only explains it all, but also allows you to produce useful information. The first link is an example.

Call me silly but I'd think if you were looking to simulate this period of warfare "somewhat realistically" you'd have gone over this stuff in great detail to determine what you're going to use and how to do so.

Lastly, I will confess much of my complaints about "angling" stems from the same sort of thinking. It's not that the angle at which something is struck doesn't matter, of course it does. No, it's design choices that put a truly absurd level of emphasis on it, so much so that you need to manoeuvre and think generally in terms that simply were NOT the main priorities of ships of the period. If the mechanics make me behave in ways that I know historically are nonsense, such as "always angle" or "spam HE, it's super effective" then I have a problem with them.

I will add that NONE of this is intended as a slight on the abilities or intentions of Nick and the rest of the team. In fact it's quite the opposite; if I'm going to test a system using "reasonable realism" as a selling point, I consider part of that testing to comment on instances where I think/suspect mechanics depart from realism to degrees that seem unnecessary or baffling. Hence my comments through the "Long List of Issues" and many other places. If they choose not to use my suggestions or to ignore my hopefully constructive criticism (which is why I usually try to make a suggestion; no manager alive would prefer a barrage of complaints/criticisms unless accompanied by some form of suggestion, a "here's what I think is a problem and why, and here are my initial thoughts as to what night improve/address/solve it".

If others criticise my ideas constructively and produce better suggested solutions etc, I'm entirely in favour of that. What matters is what the end result is; I improve things for a living, so I'm not the sort who's obsessive over who gets credit or indeed desperate to preserve my ideas in the face of any or all criticism. The exception to that is when people choose to follow a bad faith approach and become essentially ad hominem. It's never tolerated in a professional environment, and ought not be here, either.

Cheers

[Steeltrap]

4 hours ago, disc said:

On the other hand, before WWI, big-gun HE was extremely popular and cannot be neglected.

The eponymous Dreadnought was designed per the then-current hypothesis that battles would be decided by big-gun HE shells fired at long range, with AP used only to finish off opponents at short range. It's true that AP essentially took over for ship-to-ship combat on battleships after WWI, but I feel imposing a blanket removal is too aggressive, given that big HE shells were so popular before the war. The Duncan class of battleships, for example, completed 1903-1904, carried 320 combat shells for its 12in guns, of which 216 were Common (ie HE), 64 were AP shell, and 40 were AP shot.

Absolutely.

There is a whole slew of articles and discussions over how the observed results of Tsushima affected thinking on gunnery, including shell types and designs. It's been suggested the apparent effectiveness of HE in that fight failed to consider many other relevant factors, for example, plus the fact that the Russian AP rounds did punch some holes in the Japanese ships yet more or less didn't explode. Much like the Brits and Jutland, it's interesting to wonder if there might have been any difference at Tsushima had those shells exploded as intended.

If the solution were to tie the type of load to the tech level of the shells/explosive, seems fine to me.  I still think the general points about mechanics etc stand, but a more nuanced answer is almost always better.

My blunt "get rid of HE for >9" guns" is more designed to get the issues of the relevant mechanics addressed without the potential crutch of possible overly effective HE or ineffective AP (take your pic, lol). The issue of over pen of HE itself is another instance of why I think this whole area is rather crucial and in need of attention.

Cheers

[SonicB]

7 hours ago, Steeltrap said:

If the mechanics make me behave in ways that I know historically are nonsense, such as "always angle" or "spam HE, it's super effective" then I have a problem with them.

Absolutely hits the nail on the head. (Or hammer on eggshell, if we prefer Churchill.) I can live with a certain amount of simplification, but basic mechanics that work directly counter to proven, repeated historical experience should be anathema in a game that sold itself on realism.

[Skeksis]

The trouble with realistic boasting is that the hardware application is never included i.e. enquires into the limitations of the home personal computer. There has to be simplification of basic mechanics in order to produce the game intentions/core…

"In the campaign you participate in an ongoing naval arms race and try to overwhelm your opponents by maintaining economic and technological superiority. You fully manage the fleets and naval construction programmes"..."set in a global scale"..."huge strategic board"..."includes rebellions”…”government from Monarchy to Democracy"..."as head of the admiralty"..."to manage the naval budget and"..."technological research, crew training, shipyard development and ship building".  

If you consider the overall intentions including all descriptions then simplification of low level mechanics makes sense. What counts is the vision of realism and the game is doing a fine job of that.

 

WOWS and War Thunder sell themselves on the realism experience, why can’t UAD?

Edited December 1, 2020 by Skeksis

[madham82]

I think removing HE ricochet/over-pen would be easy enough to implement. You are actually simplifying the model in that case. 

Also games (WoWS in particular) may claim realism, but that doesn't make it true. UAD "aims" for realism. How much realism is practical and entertaining is subjective. All we can do is voice our opinions. It's up to the devs to take it or leave it. 

Edited December 2, 2020 by madham82
not "forcing" our opinions :D

[Skeksis]

2 hours ago, madham82 said:

I think removing HE ricochet/over-pen would be easy enough to implement. You are actually simplifying the model in that case. 

Damage is percentage based, guns don’t actually aim and try to hit the target.

If removing ricochets%/over-pens% then the overall hit rate would be reduced for HE, so how does the game maintains its overall hit-rate percentage while switching between HE and AP? How do you even display that?

Also reduced HE hit-rate would mean longer intervals between hits, less visual interaction.  

Edited December 1, 2020 by Skeksis

[madham82]

13 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

Damage is percentage based, guns don’t actually aim and try to hit the target.

If removing ricochets%/over-pens% then the overall hit rate would have to be reduced for HE, so how does the game maintains its overall hit-rate percentage while switching between HE and AP?

Also reduced HE hit-rate would means longer intervals between hits, less visual interaction, might lead to an unbalanced game.  

Did I miss something? The round was going to hit or it wasn't. A ricochet is a hit, and would just impact fusing(as in the case of AP). HE fuses, as I understand it, would still be successful in a ricochet situation. Over-pen, well obviously that is a hit because it still does damage as modeled now. 

HE damage is already calculated based on the armor. So there's no change there. 

So why are you under the impression the hit rate would be affected?

[Skeksis]

2 hours ago, madham82 said:

removing HE ricochet/over-pen

There's only one hit rate for both shells, you can't remove part of the equation if both shells are using the same equation e.g.  "removing HE ricochet/over-pen" just for HE. 

[madham82]

9 minutes ago, Skeksis said:

There's only one hit rate for both shells, you can't remove part of the equation if both shells are using the same equation e.g.  "removing HE ricochet/over-pen" just for HE. 

I follow you now, but we also can't assume they are unable to be separated by shell type in the code. Steeltrap mentioned someone had seen in the code 1/3 pen values for HE (compared to AP). So that tells me they can adjust the way the shells are handled. Only the devs can really answer. 

[Cpt.Hissy]

1 hour ago, Skeksis said:

There's only one hit rate for both shells, you can't remove part of the equation if both shells are using the same equation e.g.  "removing HE ricochet/over-pen" just for HE. 

in "proper implementation" HE will have only two kinds of hit result: partial pen and pen. What would otherwise be overpen is considered a pen, what would be ricochet is considered either pen or partial pen depending on armour thickness. This doesn't even need any code changes, just set ricochet angles for HE so it never ricochets and overpen values so it never overpens.
Very simple and Absolutely nothing to do with hit rates or anything else.

[captinjoehenry]

Lots of good points from everyone   One thing I will say is BBs and other big gun ships definitely did carry HE shells.  Both for shore bombardment.  And for use VS light ships like DDs.  This is going off of the battle of samar where if the japanese used their 8" HE shells they would have destroyed the DDs easily but instead they were using AP shells which didn't do anywhere near as much damage.  So BBs and other such ships should definitely carry HE as they do have valid uses in naval battles.  Strictly vs really light targets when there aren't bigger heavier targets that they need to be shooting at.

Probably the easiest and quickest way to do it is make HE never overpen. 

Beyond that just leaving it with only Penning and Partially Penning for when it hits armor enough to stop it but thin enough that the shell still explodes instead of just going splat.  But when a HE shell hits thick heavy armor it should just go splat and do nothing like in real life.

[Robak]

 

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