First/Second Inner Belt Armor?

[direstorm]

Anyone know how this mechanic works? Which is better - 6 inches outer belt, 6 inches first inner, 6 inches second inner - or - 16 inches outer belt, 1 inch first inner, 1 inch second inner?

[Lakel]

Can't say I know the specific mechanics but as I understand it based on general warship armor schemes, each layer is a smaller section of the ship, down to the final layer being the final smallest part around the citadel. These of course being layers of armor behind the main belt.

Game mechanic wise as I understand it, if your main belt fails to stop the shell, it now has to determine how far it penetrates to determine damage inflicted, assuming not an overpen.
Say the shell has 24 inches of penetration, your main belt has an effective 15 inches of protection, now the shell still has enough oomph to punch through 24-15, ergo 9 inches of armor.

Now your inner armor layers come in, First layer is 5 inches behind the main belt, the shell will penetrate it increasing the damage inflicted with enough power to make it through 4 more inches.

Assuming you have full All or Nothing (AoN) protection, you still have 2 more layers, and so it goes until the shell punches through into your citadel for a major hit, or runs out of penetration and is stopped by the inner layers. Simplified a bit not counting for angles, but that seems to be the mechanics.

I don't know if the barbette armor is in addition to the citadel armor or only impacts above the hull turret though.

Main benefit of increasing inner armor versus just stacking main belt is the area covered is reduced, so light armor to reduce damage taken on damaging hits.

[direstorm]

Seems a bit counter-intuitive that they represent the all-or-nothing armor scheme, which is literally based on either having maximum protection or minimum with no gradient, as having a whole bunch of graduated internal citadels which become increasingly armored as you go.

[Lakel]

Theres a lot more to the armor than just a giant armored box .
https://forum.game-labs.net/topic/34330-aon-armor-scheme-is-a-death-trap/?do=findComment&comment=709241 Has a few pictures detailing it, most AoN ships were actually hybrids, with varying degrees of adherence to the philosophy.

Note the first Iowa, so many 22mm bulkheads along the way ontop of the 307mm belt.
Yamato was a bit simpler, but they made more sacrifices for weight.

[Napalm]

Could they also affect the shell's detonation point based on the shell fuse stat? Say the shell pierces the first two layers with some pen left but has the fuse exploded there instead of going through the third?

[Rear]

Originally posted by direstorm:

Anyone know how this mechanic works? Which is better - 6 inches outer belt, 6 inches first inner, 6 inches second inner - or - 16 inches outer belt, 1 inch first inner, 1 inch second inner?

So I did some testing in an attempt to answer your question, and citadel/inner belt armour seems to have no noticeable impact on ships from what I could tell. Not sure if it's bugged or if I just didn't test in the right way.

I set up a series of Custom Battle fights between my BC with 13.9"/20% guns that had an AP penetration of 39.1" at 1km, and an enemy BB with an armour set up so that I could only realistically penetrate their main belt (16" at +140% quality, so 38.4" effectively).

All penetrating shots were made broadside within 1km at an angle as close to 0 degrees as possible to avoid deck penetrations.

https://imgur.com/a/GmhT97K

1) 4x tests with max inner belt armour
2) 1x test with more than max inner belt armour (was a bug)
3) 1x test with half of the inner belt armour from the previous test
4) 3x tests with zero citadel armour

I had worked out some average damage and average crew loss values per shell penetration, but I accidentally closed the file I'd written them down in and I can't be bothered to figure them out again From what I remember they were pretty similar though.

Flooding and fires didn't seem any worse without inner belt armour, and neither did the chance of engine(s) getting damaged. Structure (HP) was also identical at ~11000 with or without.

The last couple of tests I did was to switch from All or Nothing (Citadel V) to Turtleback (Citadel IV) in case the problem was having 3 sets of inner belt instead of 2 sets, but again there was no difference in having citadel armour or not.

Either citadel armour is broken, or the benefits it's providing are so small that they're not worth the weight cost.

N.B. I did consider whether the shells were retaining too much muzzle velocity at short ranges for the inner belts to have an impact, but idk if that's too technical to even be modelled in the game.

[vanDyck]

Would be nice to know if you can rebuild a decapping armor plate setup with this, having a weak around 10cm main belt and then a thicker inner belt behind it...

[direstorm]

Thank you for doing the science! That's very interesting.

Bullet velocity is generally measured as "How many inches of armor pen do I have"? If you are shooting a 36" effective belt with a 40" effective penetration, and then you add another 5 effective inches and nothing happens, that sounds like there's something funny going on.

[Lakel]

Originally posted by Rear:

Originally posted by direstorm:

Anyone know how this mechanic works? Which is better - 6 inches outer belt, 6 inches first inner, 6 inches second inner - or - 16 inches outer belt, 1 inch first inner, 1 inch second inner?

N.B. I did consider whether the shells were retaining too much muzzle velocity at short ranges for the inner belts to have an impact, but idk if that's too technical to even be modeled in the game.

An idea would be to compare it to SAP for the difference in fuse timers, assuming all these penetrations were main belt nothing extended?
Just looking at average penetration versus the armor penetrated, it doesnt even seem to add the inner layers as part of the calculations for that stat.

Which to me means its either supposed to be a damage reduction only, or is completely ignored for whatever reason right now.

[godspeedthunder]

The citadel armour currently doesn't work.

It didnt add any penetration protection and from what I could tell it didn't reduce the damage. If it did then it wasn't enough of a reduction to worth investing in.

[godspeedthunder]

Invest the tonnage into main armour. I recommend-

BB 1920
Main belt- 12"
Fore and aft belt- 9"
Main deck- 7.5"
Fore and aft deck- 5"
Conning tower- 14"
Superstructure- 9"

Main gun turret
Side- 14"
Top- 9"
Barbette- 14"

I put 0.1" on all parts of the citadel just in case it does something but I doubt it does.

Feel free to reduce the armour slightly to add components where you desire but I recommend sticking to the same ratio.

[godspeedthunder]

I read a naval document about layers of armour that went into the science of why layers are better than 1 block but I don't remember what is was called. I will try to find it.

[Lakel]

Originally posted by godspeedthunder:

I read a naval document about layers of armour that went into the science of why layers are better than 1 block but I don't remember what is was called. I will try to find it.

Well historically it was a couple of factors, unable to manufacture a plate that thick, tendency to shatter the whole damn plate like a pane of glass, are the two that come to mind.
Plus spaced armor does tend to have that decapping effect, takes the penetrator off and the round might start tumbling significantly reducing its penetration.

[godspeedthunder]

Originally posted by Lakel:

Originally posted by godspeedthunder:

I read a naval document about layers of armour that went into the science of why layers are better than 1 block but I don't remember what is was called. I will try to find it.

Well historically it was a couple of factors, unable to manufacture a plate that thick, tendency to shatter the whole damn plate like a pane of glass, are the two that come to mind.
Plus spaced armor does tend to have that decapping effect, takes the penetrator off and the round might start tumbling significantly reducing its penetration.

yeah i also remembering it saying that each gap between layers reduces the velocity quite significantly too.

i cant remember any actual numbers but it was along the lines of 600m/s velocity becomes 500m/s when it hits the second plate so spacing the armour gives more overall protection even if the numbers added together are the same.

and i think they used the 3rd layer purely to contain splinters so that one was very thin.

[DARTIS]

The inner armor layers allow much larger protection for less weight. The extra inner armor layer reduces the penetration greatly in a varied manner, with base penetration reduction 40%, 60% and 80% per layer but due to randomization of impact effect and many other factors, this reduction can increase even more.

[godspeedthunder]

Originally posted by DARTIS:

The inner armor layers allow much larger protection for less weight. The extra inner armor layer reduces the penetration greatly in a varied manner, with base penetration reduction 40%, 60% and 80% per layer but due to randomization of impact effect and many other factors, this reduction can increase even more.

Something is wrong with the pens atm.

I can get successful pens from well outside of pen range.

Enemy had 16" fore belt +142% (38.72")
And 11.6" main belt +142% (28.07")
With 2 inner belts
5.8" +142% (14.03")
4.6" +142% (11.13")

I shot at it with a 7.9" gun at 6.5km range with a belt pen of approx 28.5" pen.

I penetrated both the main and fore belts.

I posted screenshots of this happening in the feedback section.

I had 10" less pen required for the fore belt pen and if the citadel armour was a flat addition to the main belt (I know its not exactly) then I had 25" less pen required for that too.

This needs fixing.

If you require a video then I'm more than happy to provide one.