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What is the use of HEAT rounds now?
Yesterday we hit a BMP-1 with a HEAT round from the Syrian Rebels' T-62 and we only got the BMP-1 smoking.
HEAT is ineffective against vehicles and HE-FRAG is way better against infantry.

Navo wrote:What is the use of HEAT rounds now?
Yesterday we hit a BMP-1 with a HEAT round from the Syrian Rebels' T-62 and we only got the BMP-1 smoking.
HEAT is ineffective against vehicles and HE-FRAG is way better against infantry.

This. HEAT round and AP round need to have their properties switched between eachother against APCs. This would bring HEAT a new use instead of making it useless. AP in real life can go back to back through an APC without doing anything critical where as a cumulative round will have a bigger damage for the APC itself or the crew. Implying of course the round perforates the armor.

This would mean AP for killing tanks along with ATGM.
HEAT for killing emplacements, fortified infantry positions and lighter vehicles up to APCs.
FRAG for infantry only.

Also another concern about HESH. For those who don't know what it is. The HESH round should also be quite effective against APCs or tanks without spaced armor or specific spall liners. I tested it on a few things but it does not seem to have any major damage to APC or tank. Is this something that will get changed?

viirusiiseli wrote:This. HEAT round and AP round need to have their properties switched between eachother against APCs. This would bring HEAT a new use instead of making it useless. AP in real life can go back to back through an APC without doing anything critical where as a cumulative round will have a bigger damage for the APC itself or the crew. Implying of course the round perforates the armor.

This would mean AP for killing tanks along with ATGM.
HEAT for killing emplacements, fortified infantry positions and lighter vehicles up to APCs.
FRAG for infantry only.

I agree with this.

viirusiiseli wrote:This. HEAT round and AP round need to have their properties switched between eachother against APCs. This would bring HEAT a new use instead of making it useless. AP in real life can go back to back through an APC without doing anything critical where as a cumulative round will have a bigger damage for the APC itself or the crew. Implying of course the round perforates the armor.

This would mean AP for killing tanks along with ATGM.
HEAT for killing emplacements, fortified infantry positions and lighter vehicles up to APCs.
FRAG for infantry only.

Also another concern about HESH. For those who don't know what it is. The HESH round should also be quite effective against APCs or tanks without spaced armor or specific spall liners. I tested it on a few things but it does not seem to have any major damage to APC or tank. Is this something that will get changed?

i agree, that can make tank vs APC/IFV battles more interesting

What is the use of HEAT rounds now?

Same as before, hasnt been touched at all.


Gotta somewhat agree on this though:

AP for killing tanks along with ATGM.
HEAT for killing emplacements, fortified infantry positions and lighter vehicles up to APCs.
FRAG for infantry only.

HE-FRAG should just devastate soft targets too, not only inf.

HEAT has always been ineffective against basically anything APC and above.

It was like a fancier name for HE for a long time.

I hope it's finally fixed.

This is how it should be, I think:

AP = 2/3 hit kill tanks and 1 hit kill for any other vehicle
HEAT = 1 hit burning on anything below a tank + moderate splash explosion + light damage (4 hits to kill) on tank (1 hit burning on <t-72 models)
FRAG = 1 hit kill for lightly armored vehicles (anything below heavier APCs) + big splash explosion
HESH = 1 hit burning on anything below a tank (if possible 1 hit burning on <t-72 models too), same big splash explosion like frag.
(WP = burning infantrymen!)

That's how it should be. I feel AP should still remain effective against APCs, because the depleted uranium of AP rounds ignites when heated up after striking a vehicle (thus setting fire to stuff and causing havoc inside). Against light skinned vehicles you could argue it should be less effective, but it really requires more complex damage models (AP through the engine block should fuck up a vehicles, through the drive compartment only the driver etc, I don't think we can do this with current engine.).

The biggest change should be: loading AP when you think theres gonna be tanks, HEAT when you think there's only gonna be APCs and infantry, and frag when you wanna wreck infantry.

HESH should have the properties of FRAG and HEAT combined, that's what it's designed for, but deal little to no damage against tanks.

We probably do need to look into re-working our rounds as yes, "HEAT" hasn't been portrayed in PR properly in past releases and with the inclusion of proper AP rounds, we should look at making HEAT work as it dose in r/l.

FattyMcBlobbicus wrote:FRAG = 1 hit kill for lightly armored vehicles (anything below heavier APCs) + big splash explosion

Anything with even a little amount of armour would be able to shrug off most FRAG rounds since all most of them are, are just shells with a bit of explocives in them and lots of tiny steel balls that go flying out in all directions on detonation, designed to act as light projectiles that would rip though any soft tissue etc. As such, any armour that can shrug off any kind of normal bullet would also be able to shrug off these and as such, FRAG rounds would only be effective against un-armoured targets such as civilian cars since the fragments of the FRAG round would rip though them, creating even more fragments as it went, deviating anyone inside.

So any kind of APC or lightly armoured vehicle wouldn't have to worry about them.

AP goes through soft objects irl, I guess thats how it is in game. We shot Warrior in back hatch with T72 AP, did not instantly explode up.

I heard you gotta use AP only for tanks and HEFRAG for inf and HEAT is kinda multi-purpose (against apc especially)

[R-DEV]Rhino wrote:We probably do need to look into re-working our rounds as yes, "HEAT" hasn't been portrayed in PR properly in past releases and with the inclusion of proper AP rounds, we should look at making HEAT work as it dose in r/l.



Anything with even a little amount of armour would be able to shrug off most FRAG rounds since all most of them are, are just shells with a bit of explocives in them and lots of tiny steel balls that go flying out in all directions on detonation, designed to act as light projectiles that would rip though any soft tissue etc. As such, any armour that can shrug off any kind of normal bullet would also be able to shrug off these and as such, FRAG rounds would only be effective against un-armoured targets such as civilian cars since the fragments of the FRAG round would rip though them, creating even more fragments as it went, deviating anyone inside.

So any kind of APC or lightly armoured vehicle wouldn't have to worry about them.

I understand that. But I was thinking MTLB and below. I mean MTLB max armor is 14mm. Is that enough to shrug off a 120mm frag round?

Either way it's not so imporant. What's really important is to make HEAT and HESH do proper damage to APCs. That's the big step.

FattyMcBlobbicus wrote:I understand that. But I was thinking MTLB and below. I mean MTLB max armor is 14mm. Is that enough to shrug off a 120mm frag round?

I'm guessing with a direct hit from the round itself, the kinetic energy of the round would probably penetrate the armour before/as it explodes, which in turn would probaly kill the crew inside, depending on where it hid of course.

But a vehicle with even light armour would most likley be able to shrug off the round exploding near/next to it, since the fragments from the round are unlikely to penetrate anything other than body armour at best and only at close range.

[R-DEV]Rhino wrote:I'm guessing with a direct hit from the round itself, the kinetic energy of the round would probably penetrate the armour before/as it explodes, which in turn would probaly kill the crew inside, depending on where it hid of course.

But a vehicle with even light armour would most likley be able to shrug off the round exploding near/next to it, since the fragments from the round are unlikely to penetrate anything other than body armour at best and only at close range.

Sheer kinetic energy from a 120mm HE hitting something like a MTLB would leave the crew splattered over the instruments, crack the armour and create a gaping hole big enough for another MTLB to drive into the fighting compartment.

Well, when I was listing the ways I want the damage, I was assuming direct hits on every round. I don't expect splash damage to damage anything armored. Do you agree with it, Rhino?

I was under the assumption that there's really only two values that define damage within the BF2 engine, force (damage dealt directly upon impact) and splash damage (dealt over a certain also adjustable radius).

If that is the case, I don't see how proper APFSDS and HEAT can be implemented to the game, because in order for lightly armored vehicles to withstand KE penetrators better than HEAT a lot of questionable adjustments to the whole damage system might need to be taken (I guess).

As of now tank ammunition might not realistically display real life very well, but the rule of thumb "AP for vehicles, HEAT for area effect" works well within the game and is easy to teach to new players.

Real life friendly fire incidents showed that DU does not, in fact, cause catastrophic ignition of anything, at least not reliably.

Hurricane wrote:I was under the assumption that there's really only two values that define damage within the BF2 engine, force (damage dealt directly upon impact) and splash damage (dealt over a certain also adjustable radius).

If that is the case, I don't see how proper APFSDS and HEAT can be implemented to the game, because in order for lightly armored vehicles to withstand KE penetrators better than HEAT a lot of questionable adjustments to the whole damage system might need to be taken (I guess).

As of now tank ammunition might not realistically display real life very well, but the rule of thumb "AP for vehicles, HEAT for area effect" works well within the game and is easy to teach to new players.

Different materials can take different damage from same source.

Oh yeah, totally forgot about that. In that case, it should be totally possible to make KE penetrators the weapon of choice against MBTs and some of the IFVs, whereas you'd be better off with HEAT against APCs, trucks, jeeps, helicopters etc. as well as infantry of course.

Hurricane wrote:Oh yeah, totally forgot about that. In that case, it should be totally possible to make KE penetrators the weapon of choice against MBTs and some of the IFVs, whereas you'd be better off with HEAT against APCs, trucks, jeeps, helicopters etc. as well as infantry of course.

As far as I have tried, APfsds already need 2 hit to kill APC（it will die soon but not instantly）.

It also does terribly against chinook

Well it makes sense that it wouldnt be terribly effective against helicopters. Unless you hit something vital for flight its just gonna go right on through all it'll do is leave a couple holes.

Wheres_my_chili wrote:Well it makes sense that it wouldnt be terribly effective against helicopters. Unless you hit something vital for flight its just gonna go right on through all it'll do is leave a couple holes.

Well the rotor area does not seem like it is of different material either.

My point is that APFSDS is already making sense damage-wise against different targets of differing levels of protection.
(infantry is one-shot kill, of course, but I would like to see a little splash on APFSDS, and APHE rounds from 122mm field guns)

I want to know what the difference is between HEI-T and HE-FRAG on ZTZ-99; because it seems like HE-FRAG is just a straight-up better(as in it makes a much bigger boom with huge splash damage that could even kill yourself) version of HEI-T.