What is going on with the tank damage model?

[kenbb99]

I've been playing the game a few months, and recently the tank damage model changed - it now makes no sense. It takes three close range AP shots to the rear of a Stuart for a Panther to destroy the Stuart? And three shots to the front of a Panther from a Stuart destroys the Panther? Shooting any of the tanks in the turret says 'Hull Damage'? It seems like there is no damage model at all - three shots (no more, no less) from any tank to any part of any other tank and the target is destroyed. The exception seems to be the heaviest German tanks which have nonsensical uber damage models that shrug off close range AP hits to the rear and sides from all the Allied tanks.

[Marco Amadei [Corvostudio]]

Hello, tank damage model takes into account various things such as armour thickness and bullet impact angle with realistic vehicle data to determine if a bullet should or should not penetrate an armor. Bullets can also be of various kind, but the usual type of bullet used to penetrate armor in game are AP bullets. After an armor penetration bullets will damage the overall integrity of the hull of the tank. Bullet might also hit and kill crew members or modules of the vehicle, depending on where the impact happened. A vehicle can fight until it has crew members, hull integrity and vital modules intact.

You can study armor penetration, armor thickness, bullet damage data, vehicle integrity and so on in the shooting range as most of the important data is displayed in the UI

[TheIdiot]

I must note that I have also noticed this. The issue seems to be specifically with post-penetration damage; it's severely underwhelming, especially when not in Realism mode. Played a game today in the Battle of France campaign where I was putting 47mm rounds from the Char B1 through the turret of PzKpfw III and IV at about 200m and it appeared to do almost nothing - despite the gaping holes in the turret, the crew seemed to be able to operate it, rotate and fire back easily. But the fourth round invariably knocked the tank out 5 times out of 5, even though it was in roughly the same spot. Very strange. Feels almost as if tanks have an HP system now that isn't based on sustaining critical damage.
I also noticed that infantry anti-tank such as the RPzB 54 has similar issues - had a scenario today where a Sherman survived 3 accurate rounds to the rear of the turret (where ammunition is stowed, along with the three turret crewmen) to destroy the tank, and three out of four crew still bailed out, and the tank was fully functional, still aiming and shooting the whole time despite three rounds all hitting one of the weakest points on the Sherman.
Something just isn't adding up with the tank damage all of a sudden. I will have to try the shooting range and see if I can understand what's going on.

EDIT: In the shooting range, I'm noticing two things:
1. Hitting a tank and not penetrating it seems to be sometimes displaying a dent in the hull, other times it shows as a gaping black hole as if a full penetration was achieved. This might explain why sometimes it looks like a tank is taking damage, but actually isn't.
2. There is no indication of penetration vs range...is gun penetration the same at all distances? If so this really needs to be changed and would explain why sometimes you can get sniped from across the map in a T-34 from a 5cm AT gun which would have struggled to penetrate your frontal glacis at range. Range is just as critical as penetration for a balanced and realistic simulation.

[Guy]

Originally posted by TheIdiot:

I must note that I have also noticed this. The issue seems to be specifically with post-penetration damage; it's severely underwhelming, especially when not in Realism mode. Played a game today in the Battle of France campaign where I was putting 47mm rounds from the Char B1 through the turret of PzKpfw III and IV at about 200m and it appeared to do almost nothing - despite the gaping holes in the turret, the crew seemed to be able to operate it, rotate and fire back easily. But the fourth round invariably knocked the tank out 5 times out of 5, even though it was in roughly the same spot. Very strange. Feels almost as if tanks have an HP system now that isn't based on sustaining critical damage.
I also noticed that infantry anti-tank such as the RPzB 54 has similar issues - had a scenario today where a Sherman survived 3 accurate rounds to the rear of the turret (where ammunition is stowed, along with the three turret crewmen) to destroy the tank, and three out of four crew still bailed out, and the tank was fully functional, still aiming and shooting the whole time despite three rounds all hitting one of the weakest points on the Sherman.
Something just isn't adding up with the tank damage all of a sudden. I will have to try the shooting range and see if I can understand what's going on.

EDIT: In the shooting range, I'm noticing two things:
1. Hitting a tank and not penetrating it seems to be sometimes displaying a dent in the hull, other times it shows as a gaping black hole as if a full penetration was achieved. This might explain why sometimes it looks like a tank is taking damage, but actually isn't.
2. There is no indication of penetration vs range...is gun penetration the same at all distances? If so this really needs to be changed and would explain why sometimes you can get sniped from across the map in a T-34 from a 5cm AT gun which would have struggled to penetrate your frontal glacis at range. Range is just as critical as penetration for a balanced and realistic simulation.

This, if were gonna have the armor pen be a number in game, let it be realistic to the tank it is being used by, for example a stuart should have SIGNIFICNTLY less armor resistance than a PANTHER. so in game it would show as Stuart: 100 Armor , Anything with a certain angle of 55 or more should pen right through and depending on thickness of shell should one shot. anything less would deal ZERO armor damage or barely any armor damage( this would force you to flank and find a weakpoint in armor)
Panther: 500 armor heavily defended, anything below said threshold deals little to no ARMOR damage, forced to flank and find a coponent like engine or tracks to disable it, that way you still can force the crew out and kill them that way, you just woudnt be killing the tank


if it wokrs this way already in game fine, but as of now, ive seen multiple times a stuart getting kills on my pziv while i cant pen it at all from any angle and i can barely do hull damage sooo...

[watermatte]

i think the constant unpredictability is good because despite your knowledge on the enemy tanks anything can happen

[watermatte]

also is it possible to destroy tanks cannon or have my own damaged

[TheIdiot]

Originally posted by clₒᵤtbₐlⱼₑₑt:

This, if were gonna have the armor pen be a number in game, let it be realistic to the tank it is being used by, for example a stuart should have SIGNIFICNTLY less armor resistance than a PANTHER. so in game it would show as Stuart: 100 Armor , Anything with a certain angle of 55 or more should pen right through and depending on thickness of shell should one shot. anything less would deal ZERO armor damage or barely any armor damage( this would force you to flank and find a weakpoint in armor)
Panther: 500 armor heavily defended, anything below said threshold deals little to no ARMOR damage, forced to flank and find a coponent like engine or tracks to disable it, that way you still can force the crew out and kill them that way, you just woudnt be killing the tank

if it wokrs this way already in game fine, but as of now, ive seen multiple times a stuart getting kills on my pziv while i cant pen it at all from any angle and i can barely do hull damage sooo...

This system already exists in-game, go into the shooting range and you can see how the armour works. It's actually quite realistic, the angle and thickness of the armour makes a huge difference. However it seems range is not taken into account so a Sherman has 80mm of penetration from 100m AND 1000m. Which makes the tactic of sitting back in a tank with a superior gun pointless because you can just be sniped as if the enemy tanks were right next to you. The Panther in particular is affected by this since its entire advantage of having an good main gun and heavy frontal armour is completely negated if you hit it in the side from a somewhat flat angle.

The PzKpfw IV by the way is not a good tank for slugfests. Its main gun is good but it has poor armour and the Stuart's gun (which is surprisingly good for a 37mm cannon) is capable of penetrating every part of it except for the front hull plate on the later versions.

Originally posted by watermatte:

i think the constant unpredictability is good because despite your knowledge on the enemy tanks anything can happen

I totally agree with the unpredictability aspect. Every hit to a critical system might not completely disable it - but if I hit the engine three times on a tank, I do expect that it probably shouldn't be working properly anymore. The issue is when hitting a tank repeatedly in weak points (such as the sides and rear of the turret) does absolutely no noticeable damage at all. I had a scenario where I put three 8.8cm rounds from a Panzershreck through the back of a Sherman's turret just yesterday and the entire crew still managed to bail out after the third shot. Nobody being killed or wounded by HEAT rounds detonating inside of the turret makes zero sense - there are three people clustered around the main gun, not to mention the ammunition and a bunch of other important stuff all right where a jet of molten metal is expanding rapidly inside of a small space. I get that this wasn't on realism mode but it is very frustrating when it feels like powerful rounds are having no post-penetration effect on tanks.
Penetration feels fairly realistic (minus the seeming lack of distance effect) but the effects of penetration feel extremely lackluster, to the point that it just feels like you're taking away HP from the tank with each round rather than causing realistic levels of damage.

[watermatte]

your right about that each i think if any tank crew survive a critical hit like that at all, at least be on fire while bailing like easy red 1 that would be realistic depending on the molten shrapnel effects on different penetrating hits, and i think it would be more realistic if the penetrating hits make holes in the armor plates and damage and penetrate each individual plate differently like exposing the engine through a penetrating hit or punching holes into the first person view port or cracking plates also how the russians constantly fired AT rifles at the german tank drivers and they had severely dented and obstructed some view ports with their non penetrating hits would be a good effect on the metal

[Nukoolamukmuk]

I saw a Battle of Bulge documentary and one American tank commander said a round from a Jagdtiger went right through his Sherman's turret and they were okay. I think the Jagdtiger was cooked immediately after cause they had Wolverines for anti-tank. It was during Patton's charge north to break through to Bastogne.

I had a big problem with AT rifles in this game cause some tanks are completely immune to them like the Lee tank is utterly immune from all sides even up close, and the Russian tanks are nearly impossible to damage with AT weapons. I've seen very occasional damage to T-34s but never once saw a KV-1 or 2 damaged by AT. The problem is infantry have no other AT ability like no satchel, demolitions or sticky bombs like they had historically for close assault on tanks, so if the AT guy is killed then the whole squad is hooped, and infantry squads are fully helpless against tanks.

[Marco Amadei [Corvostudio]]

Originally posted by Nukoolamukmuk:

I saw a Battle of Bulge documentary and one American tank commander said a round from a Jagdtiger went right through his Sherman's turret and they were okay. I think the Jagdtiger was cooked immediately after cause they had Wolverines for anti-tank. It was during Patton's charge north to break through to Bastogne.

I had a big problem with AT rifles in this game cause some tanks are completely immune to them like the Lee tank is utterly immune from all sides even up close, and the Russian tanks are nearly impossible to damage with AT weapons. I've seen very occasional damage to T-34s but never once saw a KV-1 or 2 damaged by AT. The problem is infantry have no other AT ability like no satchel, demolitions or sticky bombs like they had historically for close assault on tanks, so if the AT guy is killed then the whole squad is hooped, and infantry squads are fully helpless against tanks.

In missions featuring mid and late war tanks AT rifles can usually be usefull whn hitting the back or the rear of a vehicle on current public verison, however they are gonna be way more usefull after the next update we are preparing where tracks can be damaged and destroyed independently, even from AT rifles.
You can already try the system from the BETA version working on many tanks already, or watch the news about it on the Discord server:
https://discord.com/channels/778000642932211752/831187976796504094/1288881798218121379

[Fife]

Having issues with even the bazooka isn't causing any damage to German tanks unless you are 10 feet away from the rear end...okay, okay, rant over, feel better now. Be well.

[Marco Amadei [Corvostudio]]

Originally posted by Fife:

Having issues with even the bazooka isn't causing any damage to German tanks unless you are 10 feet away from the rear end...okay, okay, rant over, feel better now. Be well.

M1 Bazooka is actually a quite powerfull weapon capable to penetrate up to almost 100mm of armour, meaning
it can easily take off most german vehicles from the front (https://youtu.be/HKv1q3Cd_eQ)
and even heavy tanks from the side (https://youtu.be/7ztY-WudOU8).
However just like any other weapon it is subject to angle of penetration, so make sure to always try to hit enemy tanks at 90 degree angle to maximise the penetration.

[Nukoolamukmuk]

thanks Marco. Sounds realistic to have AT damage tracks and stuff

[TheIdiot]

Originally posted by Nukoolamukmuk:

I saw a Battle of Bulge documentary and one American tank commander said a round from a Jagdtiger went right through his Sherman's turret and they were okay. I think the Jagdtiger was cooked immediately after cause they had Wolverines for anti-tank. It was during Patton's charge north to break through to Bastogne.

Yes, overpenetration, this makes sense. Shooting a Stuart with a Panther might very well cause something like this to happen (though of course depending on where the round goes into the tank, shrapnel might end up wounding the crew anyway, even if the round doesn't detonate inside the tank). But it makes literally zero sense when rounds are continuously going through the exact spot in the cramped turret where the crew should be, and they're all totally fine, along with the gun mechanism. The occasional shot overpenetrating or luckily not wounding any crew is realistic; multiple shots in a similar spot where I KNOW there are supposed to be vital parts having zero effect is not.