WoT Hitbox Oddities

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Thanks to noruzenchi86 for this one.

Hello everyone,

remember the “lol we left half of Panzer 38t armor missing” bug, that was fixed a patch later? Well… the developers did it again, on a smaller scale though.

This is the frontal hull of the RhB Waffenträger. Notice the closed hatch on the upper hull.

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And this is the hitbox of the same spot (different angle for better view).

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Yup, there is a hole where the hatch should be (and no, this is not intentional, if it was supposed to simulate a thin sheet of hatch, there would be a zone of 0 armor). You might ask what the problem is with that – after all, it’s not like the RhB has much armor anyway. Well… for one, the shell detonation. An armor plate, that nominally has 0mm will register as a hit with AP shells and, more importantly, it will make a HE shell detonate (if the plate has more than 0mm thickness, the armor is also considered when calculating the damage done to the vehicle (if the shell does not penetrate). In this case, the shell will pass straight into the tank and will detonate deep inside. I am sure you can imagine why that is not a good thing. Then there is the issue where that area will not actually ricochet a shell when getting fired at from the front and instead it lets it pass into the vehicle (potentially damaging the turret rotator mechanism when fired from the front, let alone the crewman under the hatch).

TLDR: forgetting to add armor zones is bad.

Another strange thing is the armor model of the American M41 artillery (in 9.3, it will be renamed to M41 HMC to make the name different from the M41 Walker Bulldog).

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Notice anything strange? That’s right, the odd white bricks, that aren’t there in the visual model. So, what are those?

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Yep, they are crewmembers. Strangely enough, the M41 hitbox has crewmembers listed as pieces of armor (which, again, is not good, as the poor guys will cause shell detonations, damage to the healthpool and all other kinds of weird stuff). Other open-topped vehicles do not have it like that – in case of for example the RhB, hitting only (!) the crewmember taking “cover” behind the shield will kill him, but it will not take the health of the vehicle down, in this case, it will. Odd.

But ultimately, these things are not about the vehicles, it’s about the principle of messing with a hitzone and then forgetting to fix the “improvements” they made. Also, consider this: RhB is one of the most played tier 8 tank destroyers. There are probably thousands of battles on those vehicles played each day. In each such battle the vehicle is fired upon and – often it does not survive. Out of those tens of thousands of hits, if we say, 1 percent of all the shots ends in this problematic area (which is quite exposed in the front), you have hundreds (maybe thousands) of shots that would behave differently if the model was correct ruining the RhB’s battle. That’s not good. You might say that “lol OP RhB deserves this” – but today it’s RhB, tomorrow your favourite tank….

34 thoughts on “WoT Hitbox Oddities”

  3. My favorite tanks are the Chaffee and the WZ 131. Yeah, armor.
    I’ll call ‘How terrible’ on this one.

  4. Honestly, there is no practical difference between the way the Rheinmetall is currently configured or if they had put a 0 armor sheet there. Both will do full damage if hit by HE or AP.

    • It is about reaching modules that are inside. If the shells explodes on the armor it has a lower chance to destroy things that are on the inside. This bug basically makes RHM easier to crit than it should be.

      • Hint: HE shells have a penetration value, too. They don’t automagically explode just because they hit armor.

        @Silentstalker, you got numerous mechanics wrong in this blog entry. It still should be fixed asap. Also, the error was present for a long time already, though guessing from the pic, it got worse. Originally, the RHM had some sort of recess there, instead of just a gap.

  5. Which software did you use to see where are the crew hit boxes? Knowing the positions of certain crew members of tier X tanks can sometimes be a good thing.

    • Almost every tank is not shipped to the client with the module hit boxes. There are a few tanks where they have been given to use in error, like E 50M and M41 SPG.

      Sadly I don’t know the name of the program displayed, but I assume it was from a time when WG gave us the module hitboxes on everything., but unless the client files (where the model is loaded from if it’s locally) has the hit boxes in the collision model file, which they aren’t supposed to have, then a program to display them will be pointless.

  6. Oh lol,So the Radioman really does sit in the front of tanks and exist to become spaced armor…

  7. Im maybe stupid, but i dont understand the issue with RhM and AP shells, so:when AP shell penetrates armor, it will do DMG, but now, when there isnt any armor, it will just kill crewmembers and damage the modules causing 0 DMG, right? Thank you.

  8. I wonder How the fuck would anyone cause such a screwup ? in the patchnotes there wasnt anything concerning the Rhm’s model , then why touch it from the first place ?

    • I encountered this Rhm’s bug right after they add Rhm to the game, the model hasn’b benn changed since then. I thought that that hole was that on purpose, you know, there is some ventilation door or something like that.

  9. Oh, I did have 0 damage shot once that killed my driver. It was a bit of wtf moment during the battle, but after I checked tank inspector I have noticed the gap in the armour. I thought the hatch must have been so think in real life the devs didn’t put any armour there on purpose.

    However, that particular situation actually saved me during the battle, as I had enough hit points to survive another shot, that would have killed me otherwise, had the hatch was there and counting as damage zone lol.

    Also, just a thought … we have many tanks in WoT …. but only so many. There’s finite number of them, really, even with optional turrets. I guess it would take less than one day for one person, even with god damn tank viewer or tank inspector, just to quickly look at all of damage models, to look for “oddities” and report them to modellers to confirm either they’re intentional or bugs.

  10. Hmm, I often disable rhm’s engine or set it on fire when I shoot it with my VK28′s 105mm HE, rather than taking out the gun or the gun crew despite me always shooting the gun/shield/”turret”. Probably has something to do with the splash off the gun shield hitting engine deck from above and maybe this hole helps it too. Which I’m sure a lot of players are fine with considering the stupid camo this thing has (better than majority of scouts) and a decent amount of HP for what it is :)

  12. ” M41 hitbox has crewmembers listed as pieces of armor ” I wonder if this is a feature of all SPGs with an open crew compartment. Strictly speaking the splinter shield should not detonate AP and it should pass through without damage apart from killing crew. Having crew as armour means the chances of taking max damage from a AP round are almost certain and it is an effective stealth nurf for all OT SPG’s. I wondered how easy it has been to kill SPGs by hitting almost any part – even just clipping the upper corner of the splinter shield with AP when I should have loaded HE. I used to be able to fend off and survive more attacks in a SPG’s than I can now……………..

  14. I’d say they nerfed the same Hans who forgot to close turret doors on Pz4… Strange that it never happens on Russian tanks.

  16. Honestly I don’t see whats wrong with having crew as part of the hitbox.. I mean they were there IRL and its only reasonable if a HE shell went into the crew compartment, the crew should be injured… Im tired of shooting into open top vehicles, esp the waffentragers, but not injure the crew even if i shot right through the tank…. I just doesnt make much sense imo…