Different type of tank ammo

[Princess Celestia]

Hello. I have a newbie question here. Does anyone have an guide what the different kinds of ammo does? I mean HE, APHE, HEAT shells that tanks and arty uses.

[Arpente Reves]

AP is your standard slug of metal. APHE has an explosive mass inside, so more damages iirc. APCR has much better penetration, I think with less range, but it does very poorly against any angle. They all lose penetration value over distance
HE is straight up High Explosive. HEAT is anti tank and keeps its penetration value no matter the distance and had a bit of a blast (hopefully it's vanilla, can't remember)
Smoke is... well, smoke, but do know that white phosphorus shell also burn pretty nastily

[Raubritter]

They function like in real life, so your guide is just Wikipedia.
As far as the common ones:

HE (High Explosive): Makes a big boom (relative to it's caliber), good against infantry, trucks, building, barricades etc. Not good against tanks unless it's a very high caliber round (ISU-152, Sturmtiger etc.)

AP/APHE/APCR (various types of Armor Piercing) A big bullet with little or no explosive. Good against tanks. Useless against infantry because only a direct hit will kill. APCR is the best of the three.

HEAT (High Explosive Anti Tank) Another type of armor piercing round that functions differently. Instead of being a very fast and heavy bullet, it's an explosive round where the explosion is shaped into a jet of molten metal. Good against tanks. Somewhat useful against infantry in a pinch because it does make an explosion, but much less effective than true HE, and you don't wnat to waste valuable HEAT rounds on infantry.
Due to the way HEAT works, it's just as effective regardless of its velocity, so even when fired from a short-barreled gun (like the late Pz. III variants) it's still effective.

Smoke rounds serve to hide your troops (or yourself) or blind the enemy. As Arpente Reves pointed out Phosphorus rounds can also set fire to infantry and I think some vehicles as well.

[Saxhorn]

There are blogs from the developers for this.

These links are probably best copied and pasted into a web browser rather than trying to use Steam.


Blog #46

https://steamcommunity.com/games/400750/announcements/detail/356177263210682894?snr=2___

Blog #47

https://steamcommunity.com/games/400750/announcements/detail/289750654259080822?snr=2___

I think at least one of these articles is stickied at the top of the Steam forum.
Nope : Looks like the sticky was removed :(

[Saxhorn]

The Blogs are very good but I'd add one thing.

Use direct control when shooting at a truck, jeep or some of the half track vehicles - load a solid AP round (APHE etc) and aim for the engine. One hit usually sets the engine on fire and the crew bails out.

If you let the game automatically fire at the truck, jeep or half track the weapon will load HE and start banging away. Against a truck this isn't terrible and after a couple of rounds the truck will be out of action. Against an armoured half track HE can take quite a few rounds to destroy the vehicle or kill all the crew.

The bigger HE shells are fine so this is more for the 57mm (or lower) calibres - apart from the automatic AA guns which spam enough rounds that it doesn't make too much difference. For them just fire whatever the gun has loaded.

[Princess Celestia]

Thanks guys! It was very helpfull