Official zero damage critical/penetration...
Sadukar09
May 19 2011
If you are having problems with zero damage criticals, please read this explanation.
CHANGE IN 0.7.2
Voice messages were changed in the patch.
Instead of stating "Critical Hit!" or its variants, your commander now says "Penetration!" for any shots that only hit the tracks.
Otherwise, the mechanics below still apply.
Differentiation of Issues
The true zero damage hit/criticals is when a tank gets shot, say in the lower hull or an IS-4's driver's viewport, leaves a mark, but there's no damage. On the receiving end, the tank takes no damage, but lost a crew or module. An occurrence like this happened to me once in a blue moon. Out of my 12k games, I can count on both hands how many times it happened to me. We only remember it to be common because this issue is lumped with the problem below. Of course, this dilemma still a very important, but the solution to it may be more difficult to come by. This is a game mechanics issue, but Overlord said they are overhauling it in a previous Q&A.
The issue most people are talking about is rather a voice response error. The commander used to tell you hitting only the tracks is a critical hit, even if you hit the reduced damage area, and didn't penetrate the hull. A few patches before, the tracking mechanic was changed to the present. Before hand, hitting a track anywhere will generally destroy it, immobilizing the tank. From the 0.7.2 patch, the voice message was changed by the developers as a fix. Instead of "Critical Hit!", the commander now respond with "Penetration!". The commander says that regardless of whether the shell really penetrated the tank's hull or not. Needless to say this solution didn't work.
What doesn't help is the fact of shell dispersion when a shot is made. A shell has a 97% chance of hitting anywhere in the circle, so despite you may have aimed above where you pointed at, the RNG may made the shell go lower than expected.
Furthermore, roadwheels on tanks actually act as a separate layer of armour. Roadwheel armour ranges from a measly 5mm to an additional 50mm+ on the E-100. Since the roadwheels act as a separate layer of armour, shells may change directions or lose normalization after hitting the roadwheels.
Now what I'm betting is this is simply a localization error. I have contacted a NA community manager. He is passing my proposed fix up to the people at Minsk HQ.
Proposed Solution
My fix simply turns the commander's response into how spaced armour is currently handled. Spaced armour has two parts, outer and inner. If the outer spaced armour is penetrated, it will leave a gaping hole in the tank. However, if the inner armour is not penetrated, the commander will state "Didn't penetrate" or "Bounced". The message depends on how the shell turned out inside the spaced armour.
With my fix, if a shot hits the tracks, but did not penetrate the side hull armour, the commander will say it didn't penetrate. As opposed to the current "Penetration" for every hit, this will reduce the confusion among the player base.
Zero damage AP hit.
Red: Hull clearance above ground.
Yellow: Area where hits count as hull hit
Blue: Area where hits count as hull hit, as well as tracking the tank (If projectile damage is greater than track module health).
Green: Area where hits do reduced damage to track (1/3), but no hull damage. Will be explained.
White: Area where hits do not count as hull hit, but will track the tank (If projectile damage is greater than track module health).
T-54
Panther
Tiger I
As it can be seen above, all three have areas where hits do absolutely nothing to vehicle health (not to track modules however). Now, you may wonder why tanks have areas where no damage hull occur. That is a good question. The images below will answer that.
Remember the red lines? They're back. Look underneath the red line. What do you see? If you cannot see anything, you are correct. There is nothing there. This is why shots can hit the tank in the hull and do no damage whatsoever. T-54 has this "problem" because its hull lies above the ground way more than most other vehicles in the game. They also have low height, forcing tanks to depress their gun more, which coincidentally makes the gun's line of sight going directly into the ground.
Another explanation of course is the fact the gun's aiming reticule only means that your shot may land in there. Therefore, it is very likely your shot strayed from your aiming point, striking the green area.
This is likely the most common occurrence regarding zero damage criticals.
Zero damage hit on a hatch or viewport: Most vehicles have viewports weaknesses, but some tanks do not. Vehicles like the Maus have viewports hitboxes away from the hull. Happens very infrequently.
Zero damage HE hit:
A. Shell hit the track. If the shell was small enough calibre, splash may not be enough to damage the tank. (Armour absorbs HE damage to some extent) For artillery: Some shots impacting at very high angles reduces splash by quite a bit. You can usually see it in overhead when you miss. A normal splash explosion is very large, but a reduced splash from angle results in a small puff of dirt. When the angled hit impacts the tank, your splash is still reduced. Common.
B. Shell hit the turret. Shell most likely hit the gun, which is quite far away from the frontal turret armour. Thus splash damage may not be enough to hurt the tank. Common.
C. Shell hit the mantlet. Quite a few tanks like the Maus, Pershing, Patton, etc. have non-penetrable mantlets. AP, even HE shells are absorbed by it. Uncommon.
D. Shell hit T1 Heavy, M6, M6A2E1, T95, Maus, E-100, GW Type E. These tanks have skirt type armour near their suspension/tracks. HE shells are absorbed by the skirt armour. Common.
Zero damage hit without any critical hit sounds, leaves damage mark, etc.
A. Shot impacted a no damage hitbox on the tank. Maus has a big one in front of the turret, the little angled plate on top of the engine deck.
B. Shot hit skirt armour, but did not damage suspension. Side skirts adds additional armour for the shell to penetrate before doing damage. After hitting the side skirt, shell's penetration drop significantly. Tanks like the E-100, T95, are affected. IS-3/704/IS-7 are affected as well. The side armour of those three have two parts. 1 is a 30mm side plate at 45 degree angle, then inside it, there's a 90mm plate at 60 degrees. The armour there is ~200 without normalization. Below is an image of an IS-7, which shares similar side armour characteristics of the IS-3. Before 7.0, the IS-3 only had a 90mm plate at 45 degrees. IS-7 has a similar armour hit box to the IS-3, but the inner side armour is 100mm.
Shot B penetrated through both tracks, but hit nowhere near the hull. Considered a false penetrating hit.
Shot X ricocheted after striking the falseboard on the side of the IS-3, impacting the 90mm @ 60 degrees upper side hull at a high angle, or the shot did not have enough penetration to make it through both the falseboard/side hull. Shots like these get no voice report from your commander, but leaves a hole on the tank's armour.
Shot Y went through the track, and hit the lower side hull, where it's 90mm @ 0 degrees, damaging the tank. Considered a real penetrating hit.
IS-3 and 704 both have 90mm @ 60 degrees side hulls+30mm @ 45 degrees falseboard, IS-7 has 100mm @ 60 side hull+30mm @ 0 degrees falseboard.
CHANGE IN 0.7.2
Voice messages were changed in the patch.
Instead of stating "Critical Hit!" or its variants, your commander now says "Penetration!" for any shots that only hit the tracks.
Otherwise, the mechanics below still apply.
Differentiation of Issues
The true zero damage hit/criticals is when a tank gets shot, say in the lower hull or an IS-4's driver's viewport, leaves a mark, but there's no damage. On the receiving end, the tank takes no damage, but lost a crew or module. An occurrence like this happened to me once in a blue moon. Out of my 12k games, I can count on both hands how many times it happened to me. We only remember it to be common because this issue is lumped with the problem below. Of course, this dilemma still a very important, but the solution to it may be more difficult to come by. This is a game mechanics issue, but Overlord said they are overhauling it in a previous Q&A.
The issue most people are talking about is rather a voice response error. The commander used to tell you hitting only the tracks is a critical hit, even if you hit the reduced damage area, and didn't penetrate the hull. A few patches before, the tracking mechanic was changed to the present. Before hand, hitting a track anywhere will generally destroy it, immobilizing the tank. From the 0.7.2 patch, the voice message was changed by the developers as a fix. Instead of "Critical Hit!", the commander now respond with "Penetration!". The commander says that regardless of whether the shell really penetrated the tank's hull or not. Needless to say this solution didn't work.
What doesn't help is the fact of shell dispersion when a shot is made. A shell has a 97% chance of hitting anywhere in the circle, so despite you may have aimed above where you pointed at, the RNG may made the shell go lower than expected.
Furthermore, roadwheels on tanks actually act as a separate layer of armour. Roadwheel armour ranges from a measly 5mm to an additional 50mm+ on the E-100. Since the roadwheels act as a separate layer of armour, shells may change directions or lose normalization after hitting the roadwheels.
Now what I'm betting is this is simply a localization error. I have contacted a NA community manager. He is passing my proposed fix up to the people at Minsk HQ.
Proposed Solution
My fix simply turns the commander's response into how spaced armour is currently handled. Spaced armour has two parts, outer and inner. If the outer spaced armour is penetrated, it will leave a gaping hole in the tank. However, if the inner armour is not penetrated, the commander will state "Didn't penetrate" or "Bounced". The message depends on how the shell turned out inside the spaced armour.
With my fix, if a shot hits the tracks, but did not penetrate the side hull armour, the commander will say it didn't penetrate. As opposed to the current "Penetration" for every hit, this will reduce the confusion among the player base.
Zero damage AP hit.
Red: Hull clearance above ground.
Yellow: Area where hits count as hull hit
Blue: Area where hits count as hull hit, as well as tracking the tank (If projectile damage is greater than track module health).
Green: Area where hits do reduced damage to track (1/3), but no hull damage. Will be explained.
White: Area where hits do not count as hull hit, but will track the tank (If projectile damage is greater than track module health).
T-54
Spoiler
Panther
Spoiler
Tiger I
Spoiler
As it can be seen above, all three have areas where hits do absolutely nothing to vehicle health (not to track modules however). Now, you may wonder why tanks have areas where no damage hull occur. That is a good question. The images below will answer that.
Spoiler
Spoiler
Spoiler
Remember the red lines? They're back. Look underneath the red line. What do you see? If you cannot see anything, you are correct. There is nothing there. This is why shots can hit the tank in the hull and do no damage whatsoever. T-54 has this "problem" because its hull lies above the ground way more than most other vehicles in the game. They also have low height, forcing tanks to depress their gun more, which coincidentally makes the gun's line of sight going directly into the ground.
Another explanation of course is the fact the gun's aiming reticule only means that your shot may land in there. Therefore, it is very likely your shot strayed from your aiming point, striking the green area.
This is likely the most common occurrence regarding zero damage criticals.
Zero damage hit on a hatch or viewport: Most vehicles have viewports weaknesses, but some tanks do not. Vehicles like the Maus have viewports hitboxes away from the hull. Happens very infrequently.
Zero damage HE hit:
A. Shell hit the track. If the shell was small enough calibre, splash may not be enough to damage the tank. (Armour absorbs HE damage to some extent) For artillery: Some shots impacting at very high angles reduces splash by quite a bit. You can usually see it in overhead when you miss. A normal splash explosion is very large, but a reduced splash from angle results in a small puff of dirt. When the angled hit impacts the tank, your splash is still reduced. Common.
B. Shell hit the turret. Shell most likely hit the gun, which is quite far away from the frontal turret armour. Thus splash damage may not be enough to hurt the tank. Common.
C. Shell hit the mantlet. Quite a few tanks like the Maus, Pershing, Patton, etc. have non-penetrable mantlets. AP, even HE shells are absorbed by it. Uncommon.
D. Shell hit T1 Heavy, M6, M6A2E1, T95, Maus, E-100, GW Type E. These tanks have skirt type armour near their suspension/tracks. HE shells are absorbed by the skirt armour. Common.
Zero damage hit without any critical hit sounds, leaves damage mark, etc.
A. Shot impacted a no damage hitbox on the tank. Maus has a big one in front of the turret, the little angled plate on top of the engine deck.
B. Shot hit skirt armour, but did not damage suspension. Side skirts adds additional armour for the shell to penetrate before doing damage. After hitting the side skirt, shell's penetration drop significantly. Tanks like the E-100, T95, are affected. IS-3/704/IS-7 are affected as well. The side armour of those three have two parts. 1 is a 30mm side plate at 45 degree angle, then inside it, there's a 90mm plate at 60 degrees. The armour there is ~200 without normalization. Below is an image of an IS-7, which shares similar side armour characteristics of the IS-3. Before 7.0, the IS-3 only had a 90mm plate at 45 degrees. IS-7 has a similar armour hit box to the IS-3, but the inner side armour is 100mm.
Spoiler
Graphical explanation. (TL;DR)
Spoiler
Shot A was at a bad angle, striked one track, completely missed the hull. This is considered a "Penetrating hit", but it should not be.
Shot B penetrated through both tracks, but hit nowhere near the hull. Considered a false penetrating hit.
Shot X ricocheted after striking the falseboard on the side of the IS-3, impacting the 90mm @ 60 degrees upper side hull at a high angle, or the shot did not have enough penetration to make it through both the falseboard/side hull. Shots like these get no voice report from your commander, but leaves a hole on the tank's armour.
Shot Y went through the track, and hit the lower side hull, where it's 90mm @ 0 degrees, damaging the tank. Considered a real penetrating hit.
IS-3 and 704 both have 90mm @ 60 degrees side hulls+30mm @ 45 degrees falseboard, IS-7 has 100mm @ 60 side hull+30mm @ 0 degrees falseboard.
XenomorphZZ
May 19 2011
Well jeez this makes want to NOT smash myself into a T-54 even more now...
scyrehawk
May 19 2011
congrats for taking the time to do this, I've tried explaining it to many people but hopefully this does a better job of letting people get their heads around it.
Whyan
May 19 2011
holonite, on May 19 2011 - 04:51, said:
lol and none of this apply to the t1, as any hit is good hit
ttme
May 19 2011
I understand hitting green box will have no hull damage, but why no track damage as well??
I mean, sure it will be harder to de-track tanks when hitting in the center of the track as oppose to hit at the front or rear end. But I would thought if you hit it often enough, you shall still be able to de-track the tank?
btw, I remember reading it somewhere mentioning that, the dev made "center track hits" harder to de-track tanks but NOT impossible? although I have yet to test it, but that would make more sense than the no track damage you mentioned
I mean, sure it will be harder to de-track tanks when hitting in the center of the track as oppose to hit at the front or rear end. But I would thought if you hit it often enough, you shall still be able to de-track the tank?
btw, I remember reading it somewhere mentioning that, the dev made "center track hits" harder to de-track tanks but NOT impossible? although I have yet to test it, but that would make more sense than the no track damage you mentioned
Momaw
May 19 2011
This new tracking mechanic helps medium tanks more than anybody else. They are fast and tend to weave a lot without slowing down. It's all well and good to say "T-54 is still easy to track, just aim" but the simple reality is that the thing is damned fast, and unless the player is a complete idiot, won't give you time to aim. New mechanic reduces the chance of tracking the thing by 75%, giving them even more free rein to dodge and weave all over the place without regard for cover.
(Also unless its repair time was nerfed hardcore, your tracks will be up in 2 seconds anyway.)
(Also unless its repair time was nerfed hardcore, your tracks will be up in 2 seconds anyway.)
Mizar_Panzer
May 19 2011
Momaw, on May 19 2011 - 08:41, said:
This new tracking mechanic helps medium tanks more than anybody else. They are fast and tend to weave a lot without slowing down. It's all well and good to say "T-54 is still easy to track, just aim" but the simple reality is that the thing is damned fast, and unless the player is a complete idiot, won't give you time to aim. New mechanic reduces the chance of tracking the thing by 75%, giving them even more free rein to dodge and weave all over the place without regard for cover.
(Also unless its repair time was nerfed hardcore, your tracks will be up in 2 seconds anyway.)
(Also unless its repair time was nerfed hardcore, your tracks will be up in 2 seconds anyway.)
I always thought the T54's side hull hitbox are tiny. From your pictures they is actually a fair chance of hitting there. Although it is still smaller than the German counterparts.
Elepole
May 19 2011
You are just wrong on one thing: Hitting the track in the middle where you put the yellow box do not do hull damage. It just do track damage. I did testing with my Leo, the middle track are a real damage absorbing shield. And that's where the patch fail.
teamoldmill
May 19 2011
How come there does not seem to be any fear of the Panther line? I even see some Pershing fear, but never Panther fear. I have seen some T-54's, they tear me up.
BlindProphet
May 19 2011
teamoldmill, on May 19 2011 - 13:34, said:
How come there does not seem to be any fear of the Panther line? I even see some Pershing fear, but never Panther fear. I have seen some T-54's, they tear me up.
Personally I don't know what to expect out of a Panther II. I see far more pershings and T54's than Panther II's. I'll get a odd game against one now ant then, but I don't think I've ever actually fought one myself. On the other hand I've had to directly face T54's and Pershings all over the place.
Momaw
May 19 2011
teamoldmill, on May 19 2011 - 13:34, said:
How come there does not seem to be any fear of the Panther line? I even see some Pershing fear, but never Panther fear. I have seen some T-54's, they tear me up.
T-54 has alien-designed armor, and bounces shots like crazy. Pershing has a BFG. Panther has.... ? Well, accuracy I guess.
Pravda
May 19 2011
ttme, on May 19 2011 - 05:38, said:
I understand hitting green box will have no hull damage, but why no track damage as well??
I mean, sure it will be harder to de-track tanks when hitting in the center of the track as oppose to hit at the front or rear end. But I would thought if you hit it often enough, you shall still be able to de-track the tank?
btw, I remember reading it somewhere mentioning that, the dev made "center track hits" harder to de-track tanks but NOT impossible? although I have yet to test it, but that would make more sense than the no track damage you mentioned
I mean, sure it will be harder to de-track tanks when hitting in the center of the track as oppose to hit at the front or rear end. But I would thought if you hit it often enough, you shall still be able to de-track the tank?
btw, I remember reading it somewhere mentioning that, the dev made "center track hits" harder to de-track tanks but NOT impossible? although I have yet to test it, but that would make more sense than the no track damage you mentioned
Well, you CAN, it's just that tracks take only one-third damage in the center, ie several shots instead of one.
At least that's the value I've heard - don't quote me on it, test it yourself, etc.
random51
May 19 2011
It is a shame my experiences don't agree with this, at least not when shooting AP with a BL-10.
I think they should change the HP system so that all hits cause at least some HP damage. If you're going to add magical HP to a tank, why not add it to the entire tank?
I think they should change the HP system so that all hits cause at least some HP damage. If you're going to add magical HP to a tank, why not add it to the entire tank?
GSPatton_
May 19 2011
random51, on May 19 2011 - 16:30, said:
It is a shame my experiences don't agree with this, at least not when shooting AP with a BL-10.
I think they should change the HP system so that all hits cause at least some HP damage. If you're going to add magical HP to a tank, why not add it to the entire tank?
I think they should change the HP system so that all hits cause at least some HP damage. If you're going to add magical HP to a tank, why not add it to the entire tank?
true though i am using bl9 atm, soon to be 130mm
Webtroll
May 19 2011
easier than killing womprats in beggars canyon (or however the line goes)
