How soft object penetration works

Source: http://wargaming.livejournal.com/1732.html

Hello everyone,

developer Bigangrycat posted the following explanation of how the penetration of soft objects works on the developer blog. The penetration is introduced in 8.10 – AP and APCR shells will penetrate softer (destructable) objects, such as fences and walls and will continue to fly forward with 25mm penetration loss.

Here’s how it’s going to work (I modified the developer picture by cutting out the Russian text, I will explain below):

81374_original

This penetration mechanism does NOT apply to HE and HEAT shells, those work like before. Here, we can see an example of four shell trajectories. As for AP/APCR shells:

- shell 1 is aiming into the wall, it just stops there and won’t fly further like before
- shell 2 is flying through the stone fence, it will lose 25mm of penetration and will fly further
- shell 3 is flying through the very soft gate, shell flies through it without penetration loss
- shell 4 is again flying through the stone fence: if it was a HE/HEAT shell, it would simply destroy the fence without flying further (this is to simulate the fact that HE and HEAT shells have fuses, that do get triggered by such impact)

From the discussion:

- you might have noticed that there are destructable houses in the game, consisting of “segments” (for example when you run into it, only half breaks down and you have to drive further to destroy it whole. In such a case, every such segment counts as one destructable object, so when you shoot through such a house with two segments (smaller wooden houses for example), both will get destroyed, but the shell will lose 50mm of penetration (25mm for each), while before you needed two shells to destroy such a house
- at the same time Bigangrycat states that the majority of houses is not penetrable this way
- complete list of destructable objects won’t be issued, there are too many
- penetration will also cause the destruction of the object
- objects, that earlier didn’t react on shells passing thru them (for example haystacks) will stay the same
- the “silhouette” will work the way it did until now

46 thoughts on “How soft object penetration works

  1. This will change the balance of a lot high pen/long reload tanks like hell. I think there will be a lot to rebalance in 1-2 months after the patch hits the live servers.

  2. This will add some variety to the arty playstyle. AP might actually be more useful now.

  3. I thought that you will be able to see silhouette now when aiming “trough” those penetrable objects, but it remained the same as before which is somewhat confusing. You need to aim yourself approximately where the enemy is to hit it, because you don’t see his silhouette.

      • Then why would you see a tank’s silhouette when he’s 600m away from you and there’re three bushes between you two? This game isn’t for absolute historical accuracy.

      • That’s an idiotic argument for not liking this. It seems like you’re argument is based on the idea that all cover used in the game is soft cover. Most cover, including small hills, rocks and most buildings, still can’t be penetrated. Besides, a gun shooting a shell designed to penetrate thick steel should be able to shoot through a stupid fence and carry on and do further damage. Use your head.

        • You quoted the wrong post. In any case, I agree with both of you and Dai-san. But then, who would expect accurate, unbiased information from a blog named “WOT Contrarian”? The previous article whining about the “rigged” matchmaker based on that patent’s existence (something that nobody has proved is true using objectively sound methods like statistical analysis) lowers the author’s credibility incredibly.

  4. The M12 SPG was known to load and fire HE shells through buildings… sometimes several buildings before the fuse would fire and explode the shell. IE time delay. I have one account where in a city the M12 fired an HE round through 3 buildings and it exploded in the 4th one.

    Its not likely it will ever make the game but it would spice things up… More so if all HE shells could still go through the fences and just lose 25mm pen like all of the other shells.

    Hope for the best and Load the Gold for the worst.

    • It would be pretty interesting if WG implemented adjustable fuses on HE shells (would have to force a shell reload).

      It’d definitely be only for those unicum arty players and WG already said they don’t want to overcomplicate the game.

      • Just the ability to pen fences and stuff for the loss of 25mm on the HE shells would be fine really… But I dont expect even that to happen as SPGs would in some cases need a slight penn buff to the shells. 5-15mm to keep them useful.

        But too many people would rage over what would be next to nothing in terms of game changing. SPGs tend to die quickly as they are now anyways.

      • Yes there are.

        There are records of even an US 8 inch howitzer crew in WW2 in Italy averaging 3 shots per “kill” (Trucks and cars and I think a few half tracks) at a range of about 10k yards.

        There are also kills being done by German 8,8cm’s in Morth Africa in direct fire.

        Then there are WW1 reports from the Germans and British killing tanks with field guns in indirect and direct fire.

        Need I find more?

        • So a single howitzer crew required 3 shots to kill very lightly/non-armored vehicles at 9 kilometers? Not very impressive, and can’t be translated into tank-killing ability.

          Artillery in wot still makes no sense; they remain one-shot slot machines.
          -Remove arty full pens.
          -Increase ROF
          -Increase splash
          -Increase accuracy
          -Decrease dmg

          • 3 shots is pretty dam good considering they had an observer and the crew knew what they were doing.

            Do you even know how many rounds it could take for even a Tiger I to knock out another tank? The Tiger might expend 3-5 rounds alone just on ranging the target. Much less hitting it and knocking it out.

            There are no shortcuts when visually trying to range a target in a tank. You might not even be able to see the whole tank at times. With the M4′s as well as others it was common practice to keep an HE loaded because you could see the pufft of dirt at long range.

          • In the end it just seemed you hate being one-shotted, then why not ask for FV215b(183) nerf? WT E-100 nerf (all but “one”-shot any vehicle that fails to get away)? And the autoloader family, you get far more easily killed from full health by them than arties which need to predict your location 3 seconds later.
            Don’t forget that arties constantly get one-shotted by other vehicles. Autoloaders and Tier X TDs that can one or two-shot tanks have around 2000HP while arties have 500-ish, if the changes you mentioned were to apply, then an arty hitpoint buff is needed. Or it’ll be tanks enjoying the “one-shotting arties” carnival without the risk of being killed.

          • Back then, as JT and JPE driver, I hate arty to the core, but after grinding arty by myself……especially now, arty isn’t easy mode again. it needs brain to fully maximize it

            • It’s easy to play arty, but it’s very hard to master. You must to know where to camp, and where to aim. You must know to read the battle situation, so you can cover the in-danger flank. You must to predict enemy movement, calculate shell flying time, so you can hit them when they moving. You must know when to run, when to hide, and when to fight back if a scout run to your position. You must know what target is you primary, what is the secondary… especially when you only can shot 1 every 40 sec. You must must know what direction you should run, when to stop, when to go backward if you are spotted, so you can avoid enemy arty shot. You must know when to counter, when to avoid counter, and when anti-counter in a match with more than 3 arty. AND last but the most important is : you must pray RNG god when you fire “plz plz plz a direct hit “. Arty now is a brain game, not for somebody want easy mode.

  5. - shell 3 is flying through the very soft gate, shell flies through it without penetration loss

    Will an HE round fly through a “very soft gate” or fuse?

  6. Any info if a heat/hesh shell will explode and knock out multiple close objects? Would be nice to knock down a 4 segment house with one HE shell, make it a little more useful in game.

    • HE/HEAT/HESH shells have not been changed anyways. What you are reffering to is splash damage, which depends only on the caliber of the gun.. Since these ammo types have a fuse, the penetration is impossible(ingame) so they haven’t been changed.

  7. this is going to be a doubled edged sword, tactics involving using soft cover to cover your tank for an extra hit need to be revised. while shooting enemies behind cover is now possible with penetration loss depending on the type of cover. but i like it none the less, soft cover was never able to stop Ap-APCR rounds travelling at 900-1000 m/s.

    HE shells can penetrate soft cover if they are equiped with the right fuse, however it needed to be strong enough to survive the initial impact. this is mostly used by arty to get a shell to explode inside the building for maximum effect, and get the building to collapse. or to destroy roads or other types of infrastructures.

    tank HE shells in my opinion explode on impact for destruction of soft targets.

  8. What about the semi-destructible houses? The ones that take a dozen shells and still remain partially “up”. I guess the part that can come down will ony take 1 shell and the part that remains is not penetrable at all.