How to HEAT shell

[Steve_the]

Im makeing a 400mm heat gun as a gimmick for a custom campaign ship, is there any way to make it decent?

[FourGreenFields]

HEAT generates all fragments at the first airgap or non-structural block, as long as the penmetric is sufficient to reach it. You need sqrt(15) or about 3.873 pen-metric per metre of metal to generate fragments at all, so you generally want 12 or more. Adjust the slider on the HEAT-head accordingly.

Add an inertial fuse to trigger on shields, if you haven't allready.

And I tink beyond that HEAT isn't that great at dealing damage. Main advantage is that you need spaced armour to counter it. Shields don't work, LAMS only if they take the shell out far from the craft, and thick armour can be beat quite easily too. Also, HEAT starts "working" (aka generating enough fragments to take out 1-2 internal blocks) at relatively low calibres (like, roughly 10-15cm).

[Steve_the]

Thanks, Normally id just use frags but I needed a gimmicky he shell that wasn’t HESH

[Steve_the]

Also is there any point to using secondary charges for a general purpose shell?

[FourGreenFields]

Probably not since the HEAT-overhaul. It'd help against external ERA, but external ERA is quite easy to remove with airburst frag or airburst HE. Internal ERA would remove the primary charge, and then the secondary charge would generate fragments at the ERA's former position - which'd only really help if there was no more armour behind that ERA.

[Steve_the]

Good to know.

[Draba]

HEAT is useful because it will do some damage against virtually anything(bypasses shields and shaped charge nose is as fast as composite).
Damage is small against strong things with 1-2m internal armor, but the rest except HE won't even do that against shields. HE damages outer armor/wipes surface so different behavior.

Secondary charge helps against things with internal ERA. Enemy has a huge wall of armor/ERA/armor, you shoot it and kill a single ERA block. Decent chance by the time next shot lands exactly there it'll be repaired. With tandem first charge kills ERA, second spawns frags in its place.
ERA is decent but isn't that big an improvement over just having an internal metal wall, didn't want to encourage spamming it too much as it inflates block/vert count a lot.

Primary+HE/secondary+HE spawns more frags(with lower penetration) than primary+3xHE IIRC, might be at 4 bodies though. Overall dual is slightly better in huge shells, single otherwise.
When in doubt increase caliber instead of length so single is usually a better choice unless you specifically want the ERA bypass.

[Katante]

Strong is Hesh with secondary Heat. The Heat damage is applied before the hesh so it can clear a hole in the armor for the hesh fragments to hit something if there is an air gap or something.