Tank armor changes

[Roque_THE_GAMER]

Explosives do not take into account the collision mesh no, they only affect the vehicles "default material", from w/e side of the vehicle they are set off.

And ye, these changes will be in v1.4

cool, so the APFSDS will be less effective against light armor? can we have the numbes too?

[Gerfand]

Can the AP ammo do the same damage on side and back, or at least the HEAT do more damage???

this because the way the AP will damage the tank and the same for the HEAT

[PT-76 best tonk]

"We decided to go with this setting as modern reactive armor has proven to make HEAT projectiles very ineffective. Even tandem warheads fail to penetrate quite often. Some of our tanks do not feature reactive armor, but for now they will have the same armor values as those which do."

I don't understand.
I thought that PR was about asymmetrical teams and realistic equipment and warfare.
But now every tank gets magical invisible reactive armor because of fake "balance"? What is this ****?

AT-4s and RPG-26s doing less than 15% damage to the side of an MBT, even when no RA is present, when the hull sides of MBTs are still vulnerable to this day to even ACs with modern ammo, kit or no kit.

Soon every weapon will be weakened and bastardized until the game turns into an arcade clownfest. First it was missile guidance because "attack helis shooting from long range isn't fun!", now it's tanks getting magic armor because "one-hit kills aren't fun, to hell with realism, I want my Hollywood tank action!".

My opinion: New armor layouts are good (current ones are flawed), making weapons unrealistically weak is not.

[blayas]

If the Devs can apply that suggestion, we would have much deeper game/strategic concept and realistically asymmetric vehicles, forcing their crews to work with their advantages and disadvantages and differences provided by the philosophy of combat and construction applied in each tank. Requiring some research by the devs to implement realistically the peculiariades of each armor.

It is possible to set different levels of protection in the same area of a tank by applying more meshes in it? this would allow a more complex detail level in the tanks and a deeper/dynamic game , a T-72m1 for example, represented in PR, has considerably different levels of protection in the same frontal area between LFP, UFP, mantling and tower cheeks, and their general level of resistance could be simulated by a differences in life bar based on estimates of their armor, so for the other tanks to.




would not be necessary to deal with a very complex model, but something like this I did in that ugly painting , thus if would enable weakspots in the the front section to ATGMs (HEAT penetrators ) in some MBTs

[chrisweb89]

ATGMs to tank frontal armor already don't oneshot them half of the time. I really don't see how these changes will improve the situation.
Even if it helps vehicle launched ATGM-vs-tank combat, it's just going to completely ruin the tank-vs-FOB combat. Right now it's already fairly easy to take out a TOW on a fob with a tank, but at least there is a risk that TOW will take the tank out. If these changes are implemented you will be able to simply roll up without even thinking and just devastate said FOB.

Agreed these changes may be good for hand held AT, and vehicle mounted ATGMs that can manouver and pick their shots. But for a sationary tow it will mean the death of many more fobs. I know it would be weird to have two standards, but either that or another balance of more TOWs or HATs should be available to counter.

[Mats391]

"We decided to go with this setting as modern reactive armor has proven to make HEAT projectiles very ineffective. Even tandem warheads fail to penetrate quite often. Some of our tanks do not feature reactive armor, but for now they will have the same armor values as those which do."

I don't understand.
I thought that PR was about asymmetrical teams and realistic equipment and warfare.
But now every tank gets magical invisible reactive armor because of fake "balance"? What is this ****?

The armor materials are the same since several years. I am not sure you realized, but even in previous versions T-72 and other lower tear tanks could stand up to modern MBTs. This fake balance is nothing we introduce now, but rather something in game for years. Also if you read the post you will notice that we are looking into making tank armor more diverse in future releases.

AT-4s and RPG-26s doing less than 15% damage to the side of an MBT, even when no RA is present, when the hull sides of MBTs are still vulnerable to this day to even ACs with modern ammo, kit or no kit.

Soon every weapon will be weakened and bastardized until the game turns into an arcade clownfest. First it was missile guidance because "attack helis shooting from long range isn't fun!", now it's tanks getting magic armor because "one-hit kills aren't fun, to hell with realism, I want my Hollywood tank action!".

My opinion: New armor layouts are good (current ones are flawed), making weapons unrealistically weak is not.

The damage of LAT vs side armor was not changed. So again complaining about something that is not new, but has been like this for several releases. That being said we are already discussing increased damage vs side armor.

If the Devs can apply that suggestion, we would have much deeper game/strategic concept and realistically asymmetric vehicles, forcing their crews to work with their advantages and disadvantages and differences provided by the philosophy of combat and construction applied in each tank. Requiring some research by the devs to implement realistically the peculiariades of each armor.

While we probably could do that amount of detail, our models are not really set up for it. In the end a lot of factors wont be taken into account such as angle and previous hits. That is why we decided to go the rather simple approach of front, side, rear and top armor. It is also hard to find data on armor strengths and with this approach it makes it easier to estimate strength across a side of the tank. Also to remind everyone again, this is the first iteration of armor changes. More stuff will come later on. Including one-hitting shitty soviet tanks

[ferrett]

Armor model like this would be pretty good I think. IRL turret front is the best armored part, and turret front sides pretty tough aswell. Hull front generally is somewhat weaker than turret, and lower front part of the hull is even weaker like illustrated in the picture. Also the gun mantlet (area right around the gun) is generally weaker than other parts of the turret armor. Also turret ring is in no way protected, but it's very small area beetween turret and hull.

Some information from tank armor is available, but mostly more or less guestimates as the exact values are classified information. Here is one website for example that can work as some type of guideline:

Tank Protection Levels

Also RHA penetration values for projectiles aren't always comparable with armor RHA estimates so it's mostly speculation. But for example well armored western tanks have sustained hits from powerful projectiles at times, for example Challenger 2 from old MILAN missile and M1A1 Abrams few hits by friendly rounds in both Iraq wars. Then again, both Challenger 2 and Abrams have been taken out or damaged by RPG-29 in Iraq.

Here are couple of links you can check out if you're intrested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_M1_Abrams

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPG-29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge ... al_history

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthre ... -speed-%29

Also, as a suggestion, if you make armor models more realistic, T-72 will be pretty much obsolete tank as in real life too. It could be balanced in maps by giving more of them. On some occasions in Gulf War, american Abrams tanks were outnumbered by Iraqi T-72s but still managed to wreck them as they were far superior. I don't think it would be bad idea of giving few more shitty T-72s to MEC when facing against UK or US in the game, it could create pretty intresting unconventional situation.

[viirusiiseli]

Most of the times when you see a tank, it will not be facing exactly toward you. Nearly always you can hit the side with whatever you're shooting with, you only need to aim for it.

Wont make tanks invincible, atleast if you know how to aim.

The damage of LAT vs side armor was not changed. So again complaining about something that is not new, but has been like this for several releases. That being said we are already discussing increased damage vs side armor.

That being said, increasing LAT damage to the side of a tank is not a good idea, it is already quite weak and it means you can do this damage from the front aswell. You only need to see a tiny bit of the side. And PR doesn't account for angle effect. Furthermore, if you get to shoot at a tank with LAT from close by, it usually means you can also hit it into the rear/top instead of the side.

[PatrickLA_CA]

Viirus has a good point, in PR, you can hit those 2 exposed pixels of the side armor and it will deal damage. Armor is not supposed to be an easy kill, it is supposed to be a smart kill if you don't have armor.

[PT-76 best tonk]

[quote=""'[R-DEV"]Mats391;2122860']The armor materials are the same since several years. I am not sure you realized, but even in previous versions T-72 and other lower tear tanks could stand up to modern MBTs. This fake balance is nothing we introduce now, but rather something in game for years. Also if you read the post you will notice that we are looking into making tank armor more diverse in future releases.
The damage of LAT vs side armor was not changed. So again complaining about something that is not new, but has been like this for several releases. That being said we are already discussing increased damage vs side armor.[/quote]

I know about the current situation, but when I saw something about armor changes in the launcher news I expected a bump in realism. "It's been in the mod for years" doesn't justify anything. The excuse itself baffles the mind.

[quote="viirusiiseli""]And PR doesn't account for angle effect. [/quote]

About that, the BF2 engine does have a system for bounces built-in. FH2 used it and you would see shells bounce off tanks when hitting at high angles. The problem was that FH2 at the time had overdone their vehicle hitboxes causing really weird bounces to occur.

[Mats391]

I know about the current situation, but when I saw something about armor changes in the launcher news I expected a bump in realism. "It's been in the mod for years" doesn't justify anything. The excuse itself baffles the mind.

It is not an excuse to not change it. As it has been said multiple times by now, we want to change it but it takes time. Pushing a complete armor rework with new materials, new damage and realistic assignment of those to tanks into one patch would be a huge cluster fuck. We will do one step at a time to ensure the game stays playable and enjoyable. The end result hopefully will result in cracking T-72 with 1 AP shell from more modern tanks. That is if others will let me do it

About that, the BF2 engine does have a system for bounces built-in. FH2 used it and you would see shells bounce off tanks when hitting at high angles. The problem was that FH2 at the time had overdone their vehicle hitboxes causing really weird bounces to occur.

The angle and ricochet system is quite buggy. In BF2 you had the situations where you could destroy tanks easily by having the shell bounce between hull and turret and deal damage each time. If we want to do this, we will have to heavily rework the collisions just like FH2 did.

[Jacksonez__]

It is not an excuse to not change it. As it has been said multiple times by now, we want to change it but it takes time. Pushing a complete armor rework with new materials, new damage and realistic assignment of those to tanks into one patch would be a huge cluster fuck. We will do one step at a time to ensure the game stays playable and enjoyable. The end result hopefully will result in cracking T-72 with 1 AP shell from more modern tanks. That is if others will let me do it

Why do you want to nerf T-72 so badly? :/

[Roque_THE_GAMER]

Why do you want to nerf T-72 so badly? :/

nobody likes Russian armor :/

[Jacksonez__]

nobody likes Russian armor :/

Too bad the MEC T-72M1 is inferior soviet export model. Russian armor is good and well engineered though maybe not ergonomic for its user

[Mats391]

Too bad the MEC T-72M1 is inferior soviet export model. Russian armor is good and well engineered though maybe not ergonomic for its user

That is basically the main point. The T-72M1 is pure shit compared to modern tanks
Looking forward to some more modern T-72 variants

[PT-76 best tonk]

Looking forward to some more modern T-72 variants

There's the Polish modernized T-72 coming up soon right? They also got some modernized BRDMs with new optics, some smoke dispensers and a few seats for infantry.

[Jacksonez__]

That is basically the main point. The T-72M1 is pure shit compared to modern tanks
Looking forward to some more modern T-72 variants

How come this mystery Middle Eastern Coalition has not upgraded their T-72M1 if they have upgraded the BMP-2? MEC isn't any real country so why not balance it a little bit by upgrading the T-72.

Or are you trying to find the balance by nerfing T-72 and keeping BMP-2M at its current state? Though it isn't really a hardcore tank killer to be honest with that slow ATGM.

[Ts4EVER]

The angle and ricochet system is quite buggy. In BF2 you had the situations where you could destroy tanks easily by having the shell bounce between hull and turret and deal damage each time.

That is not necessarily unrealistic. FH2 actually does that on purpose to simulate "shot traps" on some tanks (namely the Panther A and G models before the mantlet "chin" was introduced), so you can hit the lower side of the mantlet and the shot ricochets into the driver cabin through the hull top armor.

[camo]

That is not necessarily unrealistic. FH2 actually does that on purpose to simulate "shot traps" on some tanks (namely the Panther A and G models before the mantlet "chin" was introduced), so you can hit the lower side of the mantlet and the shot ricochets into the driver cabin through the hull top armor.

Not as common though with modern tanks, with armour designed either to not deflect or to simply shatter tungsten/du/whatever penetrator upon impact. Plus if we did happen to have it it would deal damage each time it bounced which wouldn't seem fair and/or realistic, unless there's some way around that bug.

[PT-76 best tonk]

That is not necessarily unrealistic. FH2 actually does that on purpose to simulate "shot traps" on some tanks (namely the Panther A and G models before the mantlet "chin" was introduced), so you can hit the lower side of the mantlet and the shot ricochets into the driver cabin through the hull top armor.

The nature of composite armor and modern shells (redirection/absorption of kinetic energy etc) has basically eliminated shot traps. That's why, for example, the Leopard 2 has this downward angle to its lower turret front: despite looking like an obvious shot trap (similar to the rounded PzV mantlet), there's no risk of a ricochet into the top armor with the materials involved on both the attacking and defending sides.

If the ricochet system is added to PR, it would be not to introduce ricochets but to take advantage of its mechanics to make rounds hitting at crazy angles (like sniping a little bit of side armor on an MBT that's almost but not perfectly facing you) ineffective.
Like, if it could be adjusted to make a round hitting moderately thick armor at a high angle do less or no damage, without generating a ricocheting projectile, it would be a great step forward.
But that can only work if it can also be made to function differently with different materials. Otherwise we're going to see things like 125mm rounds being negated when hitting an APC just because of the angle, when the extreme penetration factor of such a round against such thin protection would cause the round to go through in that case, high impact angle or not.

The ideal would be to enable ricochets where they make sense (rifle rounds hitting asphalt at high angles etc) and use the system just for damage negation/mitigation for heavy armor mechanics. But I doubt that the shitty BF2 engine would be so convenient.