T-72 vulnerability

[jppsx]

nothing to do whit the first problem but I found that it possible to kill all t-72 version that are playable ( I did not test other one ) whit cv-90-40 by shooting driver periscope I dont know if it normal or not , to what I saw on sbwiki cv9040 should not have penetration power to do that ?

[Ssnake]

Thanks for both reports, we'll be looking into them.

[Jartsev]

Truth is that driver's periscope is indeed a very weak spot on real vehicle, not counting practically unprotected turret ring.

 

P.S. Also, it is important to understand that in real life any modern MBT(not just T-72) has such spots on it's frontal projection.

[dejawolf]

yes, this is a feature.  right around the drivers vision block, the armour is significantly weakened in order to make room for the vision block.  russians wanted to save weight... 

it's worse in the older T-72s, where they have composites all the way up to the vision block. on the T-90, the poor APFSDS protection has been alleviated by adding a block of steel near the vision block, although this reduces HEAT protection somewhat. 

Edited March 9, 2020 by dejawolf

[Bond_Villian]

@jppsx

How many times are you shooting the vision block to get the kill?

[jppsx]

just hit it once

[Ssnake]

Well, the 40mm APFSDS is the most potent round of all AFVs with an approximate max performance of 140mm RHAe. And right behind the driver is the ammo carousel. So there's a decent chance that a single hit in that spot can take out the whole tank. At typical engagement distances of 1,000m+ however the vision block is such a small target that you need luck to hit this spot, even if your aim is perfect; the ammunition dispersion will distribute less than 70% of all rounds into a circular area of more that a meter diameter.

The vision block is what, 5cm high and 15cm wide?

That makes .0075m² vulnerable area, let's round it up generously to include weakening edge effects for the surrounding armor, to .01m²

The first standarddeviation of the Slpprj 90 creates an impact zone area of .69m². The weak area of the vision block comprises 1.4% of that area, so the chance of hitting it with any perfectly aimed shot at 1,000m range are slightly above 1%.

 

Almost needless to say, this is just a first order approximation. If the vision block's dimensions are above .01m² in size the chances will go up, of course.

[Gibsonm]

3 hours ago, Ssnake said:

At typical engagement distances of 1,000m+ ...

 

Well if the firing vehicle is the one you can partially see in the second screen shot I suspect we are way closer than that.

[jppsx]

I was at around 200m doing those test , second pic is the turret of another t-72 turret that flew off

[jppsx]

i found whit some testing that everything whit more than 100mm penetration is able to penetrate that spot , tested Bradley and t-72 survive ammo used have 100mm penetration , then i used df-30 and there ammo have 110 mm penetration and was penetrating that spot and destroying them , then i tried the  cv9035 whit PPT FRAG M /XXLS THAT HAVE 120mm penetration where popping of the t-72 turret almost every time .

i like to know how much protection that spot is suppose to have ? to what i tested in games the protection is around 100 to 105 mm  .

Edited March 9, 2020 by jppsx

[Ssnake]

Look, this is really the wrong question to ask.

Our armor protection estimates are solid, but at the same time asking about a specific combination of some protection component and some specific ammo type at a specific range is introducing pseudo-accuracy into the whole debate. Who knows if the ammo would penetrate exactly 100mm or 105mm? Who knows how much of a difference these 5mm extra power would make in real life? Would it still ignite propellant in the carousel, or "just" kill the driver. Steel Beasts isn't designed to answer such questions. You learned that the driver's vision block is a weak spot for some munitions but not for other, smaller calibers. And that concludes the lesson for today.

 

Computers and formulas will always calculate a result down to the micrometer, but that doesn't mean that micrometer accuracy is attained. If the original data are estimations, even if they are good ones, there'll always be that error in all results. So you can say that we estimate the vision block's resistance to be 100mm RHAe, but it comes with a +/-5 or 10mm total margin of error when you add ammo performance to the equation, plus certain ammo-armor plate interaction special cases that our model might not even consider. At the end of the day we're not taking material samples of the armor plates to determine their Brinell hardness (let alone sampling across a number of tanks to get a fleet average plus distribution characteristics), and above all we're not running a finite elements analysis of the impact dynamics with hydrocode. Our software is not designed to give you the specific target range (APFSDS performance is a function of range, after all) below which you can expect to reliably defeat this particular tank in that particular spot.

[Ssnake]

Also, what you learned is that in order to hit such a small vulnerable spot you need to be really close. And that means you now understand the tactical challenge to get that close in the first place, without being detected and defeated at longer ranges. And then, you have defeated one tank and made the rest of his buddies angry, And they might not show their vulnerable vision blocks.

 

These are all valid conclusions you can take away from Steel Beasts. Just not the question whether you can defeat tank X by hitting spot Y from under 207m range, or 210m.

[Hedgehog]

So as a suggestion for improving your chances of you pixeltruppen surviving.

 

Try attacking from a position that offers you a tactical advantage, such as a flank, preferably while hull down.

 

However as potent as a 40mm is.

The infantry in the back are the main weapon of the CV9040.