penetration of armour, is it a wild guess or?

[netjens]

How does it work in the game with the penetration power of different tanks. I know that those who are doing the game is old tankers, but how would anyone know how good the front armour of a M1 is or a Leo. Has anyone been on a secret test, where a T80 shoots at a M1 at a certian distance?

The armour size itself is not secret as I understand, but how the armour is made is a big secret. So, the different ammo against a secret mixed armour...
Anyone tell me about this?

[Maj.Hans]

For long rod (APFSDS) rounds:
P=(1.044*V-0.194*ln(L/D)-0.209)*L*S*M

Where:
P = Penetration into rolled steel armor in mm
V = Impact velocity
ln = The natural logarithm
L = Length of the rod in mm
D = Diameter of the rod in mm
S = Scale factor
M = Material factor

The better numbers you can get to work with the better you can estimate the performance of the AP rod.

HEAT rounds are pretty much in direct proportion, and through the use of some technical papers the SB guys have managed to simulate several HEAT warheads.

Disclaimer: None of the above is my own work. You can find all of this information, and more details about the formulas, the error percentage, etc, in the "Battlefield Hazards" section of your manual or the matching PDF file in your Steel Beasts 1 documents folder. Sorry but you SB Pro PE guys will have to figure out where your stuff is.

[Ssnake]

The better numbers you can get to work with the better you can estimate the performance of the AP rod.

That's the rub, of course. But, like you wrote, both the ArmorBasics.pdf and Battlefield Hazards 6.1.pdf are mentioning many of the sources that were used to come up with the performance estimates. Other estimates try to shape the ballistic parameters of the rounds to calculate their impact angle and velocity. Finally we're then deducting the (material thickness x impact angle modificator) from the penetration capability of the round to determine whether it can penetrate a surface; then we're looking at the impact vector and line up all the surfaces in its way & repeat the process until the energy of the round has been expended.

My guess is that even though we try to reduce the error in all steps of our calculations, the error of the actual damage calculations is by far the biggest in the entire chain while ballistic calculations are the most accurate, and the armor properties are still "reasonably accurate".


Ultimately the question should be whether the model is good enough for the desired purpose. Which needs a definition of the desired purpose first: The purpose of Steel Beasts' vulnerability model and ballistic calculations is to facilitate the training of crews to let them learn the difference between promising and risky tactics, and between weak and strong spots of enemy armor.
For this, our model probably is overengineered already. So, let's add "immersion for the user" to the list of requirements for the model. SB's vulnerability model's purpose is explicitly not to provide a basis for quantitative statistical analysis of future battle results. You should NOT try and utilize Steel Beasts to predict the outcome of future battles. It is not validated for this purpose.

[dejawolf]

the damage model is not over-engineered, when it comes to light forces vs tanks, in which engagements are more harassment than actually killing.
you can actually do some pretty serious damage when shooting up a tank from the front.
and from the side, possibly kill a tank by shooting at its engine.

[BRGillespie]

the damage model is not over-engineered, when it comes to light forces vs tanks, in which engagements are more harassment than actually killing.
you can actually do some pretty serious damage when shooting up a tank from the front.
and from the side, possibly kill a tank by shooting at its engine.
Perhaaaaapppssss....

But I've already had in-game experiences of going kamikaze against a lone T-80 with a platoon of Bradleys. Firing on AP-High against the front, side, and rear of the tank PROBABLY damaged a number of systems... but it still traversed its turret in my direction (after destroying the rest of my platoon) and bored a sabot round right through my Bradley. ;P

And who kills whom is all that matters. :)