Penetration?

[purewhitenoise]

Is anyone else confused by the penetration calculations in this game?

Just now I was playing the "Modern Battleship" mission in the Naval Academy, and I build a nice Iowa clone with 16" mains. A little ways into the mission, I was being chased by a destroyer squadron and taking pot shots at them with my mains from around 10,000 meters. I was getting a lot of misses, which makes sense, but I was also getting a surprising number of partial pens and deflections. Like I was getting a hit a minute or so, but all my hits were partial pens and deflections.

These are destroyers I'm shooting at, and my 16 inch shells are being deflected off these ships with a max belt of 2". Something is wrong. You're never going to convince me that a shell weighing over 1000 kg is going to deflect off a destroyer. It's going to punch right through and out the other side, and lord help anything in between.

I would encourage all of you to go take a look at some penetration tables for 16" American guns from the 30's and 40's. The table from this site https://www.warships.com.cn/navweaps/WNUS_16-50_mk7.htm quotes a penetration of over 26" of armor at 10,000 yards. Again, that's 1000 kg of hardened steel penetrator traveling at 632 meters per second.

What's everyone's thoughts on this? Do you think penetration and battle-damage mechanics in this game are realistic? Personally I do not, but if someone has more knowledge please change my mind. I like this game, but when basic mechanics seem so out-of-wack it tends to take a lot of the fun out of it for me.

[fixius01]

welcome to admiral dreadnoughts funkiness if you want to have a more polished and relatively more ´realistic´ experience you should play rule the waves 3.

[purewhitenoise]

Okay, well now I just played a round and my 16s are going through heavy cruisers like they were butter. Maybe there was something weird with that one game?

[pombruv]

Originally posted by fixius01:

welcome to admiral dreadnoughts funkiness if you want to have a more polished and relatively more ´realistic´ experience you should play rule the waves 3.

There are certainly some aspects of that game that are quite good, particularly if you enjoy spreadsheets. Let's face it RTW3 is a chartered accountant's and insurance assessors wet dream, but if you want "realism" - no way.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by pombruv:

Originally posted by fixius01:

welcome to admiral dreadnoughts funkiness if you want to have a more polished and relatively more ´realistic´ experience you should play rule the waves 3.

There are certainly some aspects of that game that are quite good, particularly if you enjoy spreadsheets. Let's face it RTW3 is a chartered accountant's and insurance assessors wet dream, but if you want "realism" - no way.

Still definitely more realistic than this title though but to each their own.

[cyan027]

Can I know what type of ammunition you are using? and what angle you firing at target?

If you are using wrong ammo and firing at target from sharp angle, you will have ricochet for sure even your target has no armor.

[purewhitenoise]

Hey Cyan027. I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact details of the shell type. But I would argue that when you're talking about a destroyer, a 16" shell is such tremendous over-kill that a different shell type shouldn't make any appreciable difference in penetration. Likewise with an angled shot: the momentum of a 16" shell is not going to be deflected or ricocheted, the shell is just going to keep going.

Again, I'm not some type of ballistics expert, but this just doesn't pass the sniff test. If there's anyone with more ballistics knowledge than me and thinks I'm wrong, please explain it to me!

[cyan027]

Originally posted by purewhitenoise:

a 16" shell is such tremendous over-kill that a different shell type shouldn't make any appreciable difference in penetration.

If your shell does not touch your target with its tip, it WILL be deflected. DD has no armor but its structure still made by steel. The difference between steel and armor is "surface harden process" that is why your shell will be deflected.

For same reason, that is why AP need a blunt head "cap" to help reduce the chance of ricochet, but blunt cap has bad aerodynamic so it needs another ballistic cap. If you choose "Ballistic capped" or "improved Ballistic capped" ammo for your AP you will hardly have any ricochet. At least I never see any in my combat.

[purewhitenoise]

Hey cyan. I don't know too much about tips of shells or AP caps or ballistic caps. All I can say is when I look at the mass, and the muzzle velocity of a 16" shell, I have a hard time believing it's momentum could be stopped or even deflected in any way by a destroyer.

when I look at penetration tables like the link in my initial post, and see that expected penetration at 10,000 yards is 26" of armor, that also makes me think that these shells should be going right through a destroyer like a .22 through a tin can.

I won't try to change your mind, you sound like you know what you're talking about with the caps. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, but I just can't believe it :)

[fixius01]

Originally posted by purewhitenoise:

Hey cyan. I don't know too much about tips of shells or AP caps or ballistic caps. All I can say is when I look at the mass, and the muzzle velocity of a 16" shell, I have a hard time believing it's momentum could be stopped or even deflected in any way by a destroyer.

when I look at penetration tables like the link in my initial post, and see that expected penetration at 10,000 yards is 26" of armor, that also makes me think that these shells should be going right through a destroyer like a .22 through a tin can.

I won't try to change your mind, you sound like you know what you're talking about with the caps. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, but I just can't believe it :)

think like if you took a thin sheet of metal buckled it with your hand not that hard, now think that the hand is the 19 inch shell and the destroyer armor is the sheet, now think that with that shell going at supersonic or near supersonic speeds and with such speeds come huge friction forces, so the shell at moment of impact even with very shallow angles the shell would be digging into the destroyer armor and into the ship, while the hard side of the armor would some what protect it from digging into the armor, but the hard part would be so thin compared to the shell that it would just shatter and the shell would just dig into the softer parts of the armor, while the battleship thickness it would deflect.

[cyan027]

Originally posted by purewhitenoise:

All I can say is when I look at the mass, and the muzzle velocity of a 16" shell, I have a hard time believing it's momentum could be stopped or even deflected in any way by a destroyer.

Believe me, nobody can believe this until they see how APs get deflected in combat. That is why APs does not come with a blunt nose or a blunt cap at very first.

But maybe mathmatic can shade us some light.

For example, if 16-50 MK7 firing a shell with 880 m/s muzzle speed at target with sharp 5 degree attacking angle.

the surface of target will suffer the impact speed equal to 880 * sin(5) = 880 * 0.087 = 76.56 m/s

Yes, the surface will be dented but it will not be penetrated right away. Why? because the shell is slipping away with 880 * cos(5) = 880 * 0.996 = 876.48 m/s. It will slipping onto freshly new surface before it can dig into the impact point, with the help of its very smooth shell nut.

The impact energy will be distributed along the impact direction and be absorbed/deflected by ship structure. the shell will cause a very terrible long scar along with screaming noise but it will be deflected away.

Oh, it will looks like those scars left on car accidents.

[fixius01]

the power of math

[purewhitenoise]

Hey Cyan.

Thanks for the good discussion, and taking the time to do the math for a shell coming in at a narrow angle. I agree with your point I think: depending on the strength of the armor, a shell coming in with a narrow-enough angle will scrape along the side and be deflected. This video is I think similar to what we're talking about: https://youtu.be/RxHdlklCruo

I guess the point I was trying to make in my initial post is that there seems to be quite a bit of wonky-ness to penetration and battle damage in general. The 16" inch shell being deflected by a destroyer was an example. I think we agree that a destroyer might deflect a 16" shell, in a very narrow set of circumstances. What I'm saying is that it seems really strange that this happened repeatedly over the course of 5 minutes.

Things just seem off to me whenever I play. I see a LOT of large caliber shots fail to penetrate, and when they do penetrate there effects are underwhelming. This doesn't match up very well with what I know about the history of sea combat in the Dreadnought era, and it doesn't seem to match up with what I see when I look at ballistics tables.

But, maybe I'm just not doing a good job building my ships or controlling my fleet. Maybe there is some mechanic that I'm failing to understand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What do y'all think?

[cyan027]

Originally posted by purewhitenoise:

What do y'all think?

20% you didn't pick a proper ammo type, 80% faulty game mechanism.

Although I didn't see any ricochet so far but I saw a lot of 3 inch shells "partially penetrate" my battleship's 11 inch modern II armor.

[WASTED]

well can't say for the destroyer but I have noted that when the fighting AI cruisers and battleships I sometimes get 9 out of 10 ricochets when they flee no matter the range but very few ricochets if they are charging. Of course they have much heaver armor then a destroyer. I also note that my ships don't seem to get lucky like that if I turn and run. I usually play late game and use the improved soft cap AP shells and we are talking 30 to 45 KM range where I would think you would be having plunging fire and would not be hitting at a shallow angle. I am sure that there are some very knowledgeable folks here though that can explain this and it may be totally accurate for all I know. That's just what I have noted in my games so far.

[purewhitenoise]

Here's some surprising damage results from a game I played just now :)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3014080351

The Bersagliere took fifteen 13" HE shells no problem, and even had the time to fire off some cheeky torpedoes at me!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3014080393

This scrappy little destroyer took seventeen 13" HE shells, but she's not letting that get her down. She's still got a lot of fight left in her.