HEAT warhead: automatic stabilization and radio damage (4.161)

[Captain_Colossus]

i noticed on the instant action range using the M1A1 (HA), M1A2 and Leopard 2A4 that every non lethal ATGM hit on the front of the player's tank always resulted in a base damage of stabilization and radio at minimum. this became so predictable that i set up and ran several tests. all test cases confirmed that any non lethal hit on the front always resulted in the same base damage to radio and stabilization damage regardless of hit location.

 

i ran several trials using a mix of  targets: M1A1(HA), M1A2 and Leopard 2A4 vs. shooting vehicles consisting of BMP-3, BMP-2 and T-72M1; in all cases where the BMP ATGMs or the T-72 HEAT rounds hit the front of the test tank, radio and stabilization damage occurred at minimum: sometimes additional damage may occur, i.e., damage to commander or GPS to a top turret hit, but all scenarios still had the radio and stab component damage in common ( the T-72 BM-32 APFSDS rounds did not produce the same results, seemingly limiting the behavior to HEAT type warheads)

 

for example: BMP-3 fires AT-10 gun fired missile at M1A1 (HA); the computer controlled BMP-3 always preferentially aims for the lower hull if the target front profile is entirely exposed; on every test, a hit scored somewhere on the lower hull, in all cases radio and stabilization damaged.

 

the same results occurred with the Leopard 2A4 and and M1A2; hits to the lower hull knocked out stabilization and radio, and in all cases no other damage. if the test tank was hull down, the BMP-3 preferentially aimed for the top of the turret with its AT-10 missiles, either resulting in a kill outright, or if not multiple component damages usually resulted, but always stabilization and radio base damage at a minimum, or combined with other damages.

 

several BMP-2 and T-72 tests were run so that i could aim the sights and selectively place shots- again, either BMP-2 AT-5 or the T-72 BK-14 HEAT rounds scoring hits on the hull or on the turret front always resulted in stabilization and radio damage (and no other damage).

 

in sum it seems like the dice rolls are over determined when it comes to non lethal HEAT type damage to Leopard 2A4, M1A1(HA) and M1A2- since these are the only tanks tested, this may or may not entail similar results for other tanks capable of surviving hits of a similar weapon type or class.

 

 

[Ssnake]

These are all pretty strong HE explosions that, while failing to penetrate the armor, still generate shock (gyros > stabilization) and fragments with a high likelihood of ripping off the radio antennas. The die roll differentiation will occur at lower explosion thresholds, e.g. RPGs, medium caliber HE rounds, ...

[Gibsonm]

Plus not every radio set in every AFV is wired into its shock mounted cradle / mounting tray, etc.

 

This sort of shock is likely to dislodge a set, break a power lead, smash something (like a crewman or at least their CVC / body armour against the front of the set) all of which are likely to mean that the radio is U/S for a while.

 

 

Edited June 2, 2020 by Gibsonm

[Assassin 7]

IRL for the Abrams many of the internal components are attached to rubber shock absorbers including Gyros.

Edited June 1, 2020 by Assassin 7

[Captain_Colossus]

10 hours ago, Ssnake said:

These are all pretty strong HE explosions that, while failing to penetrate the armor, still generate shock (gyros > stabilization) and fragments with a high likelihood of ripping off the radio antennas. The die roll differentiation will occur at lower explosion thresholds, e.g. RPGs, medium caliber HE rounds, ...

sure, but the takeaway is this: i have not seen it not do this in about 30 trials- always the same base damage, which is interesting because direct penetrating hits to the vulnerable engine, rear turret, or to thinner side armor or to the ammo storage are not as predictable to damage or disable crew members, other components or generate

a hard kill as these two component damages are whenever sustaining hits from the front on any surface or aspect (notwithstanding the tracks, i did not try that) . a theoretical lesson therefore is if i am confronting a tank such as the M1 in a T-72, i know my most effective round barring BM-42

is a HEAT round, and i know if i score a hit on the front, i can reasonably predict and assume the condition of the tank is that the tank's stabilization and radio are now damaged.

Edited June 1, 2020 by Captain_Colossus

[Ssnake]

The question is, how did your 30 tests look like. If they were all involvilng similarly sized warheads (caliber 100mm+) / HE explosion strengths, why would you expect different outcomes? Our model is both stochastic and energy-based. Once a certain energy threshold is crossed there can't be much variation anymore. Without the energy component a stochastic damage mode would just be chaotic.

[Captain_Colossus]

granted, the reason why i raised this is the way other aspects of the damage model are not predictable as this is- many times tanks will be hit in the side armor or in the turret ring or in the engine compartment with similar categories of weapons with no damage to internal components or crew, this area stands out more than the others which seem more random or 'chaotic', which is the reason why i noticed this- it is so predictable.

 

in any case it sounds like an intentional design decision, if that is the case, i withdraw the report as a potential bug.

[Ssnake]

I'm not categorically rejecting the possibility that something may has slipped through our attention. I would encourage you to keep looking. All I say is, there needs to be some variation in the test setup, like DF90's 90mm HESH round, Scorpion's 76mm HESH, BMP-1's 73mm PG-9, CV90/40's 40m HE round etc. to check the lower end of the energy spectrum. If you then still see no variation, I'd agree that something is amiss.

[Volcano]

13 hours ago, Assassin 7 said:

IRL for the Abrams many of the internal components are attached to rubber shock absorbers including Gyros.

Right, same for almost all modern vehicles (including the M1A1 back in the 1990s).

 

Its not modeling that kind of damage though, its temporary commo loss. As you know, on the actual tank, commo is very finicky thing, so its a reasonable abstraction (temporary couple minute communication/radio loss due to a direct impact/explosion is not unreasonable).

[Assassin 7]

30 minutes ago, Volcano said:

Right, same for almost all modern vehicles (including the M1A1 back in the 1990s).

 

Its not modeling that kind of damage though, its temporary commo loss. As you know, on the actual tank, commo is very finicky thing, so its a reasonable abstraction (temporary couple minute communication/radio loss due to a direct impact/explosion is not unreasonable).

Yeah remembering traveling down trails and if you didn’t have that nut tighten enough, the damn radio would vibrate just enough out of the mount to lose comms. Lol 😂 good times

[Captain_Colossus]

for the sake of consistency, it does not appear that indirect HE artillery fire produces similar results, that is, using the M1 again as a test, it is nowhere near as sensitive to predictable damage like that from direct or near hits

[Ssnake]

Different mechanisms at work.

[Captain_Colossus]

in what sense? the different mechanism of a HEAT warhead penetration, granted, but the blast wave and fragments  of a large caliber artillery shell on or near the turret roof should have some continuity otherwise- it seems a bit squirelly after all that has been said,

all of a sudden a barrage of 155 mm shells actually hitting the tank on the turret roof don't produce results such as knocking out exposed antennas anywhere near as predictably.  i set this up a couple of times, and not a single direct from 155 mm shell did that (there may have been other damage but none to the radio), whereas every single time a sufficiently large

enough HEAT warhead does that regardless of location to the frontal arc. if it is the way it is, and you're happy with it, that's fine with me. but i think it explains why it took me long enough to figure out that a large enough HEAT warhead seems to achieve the same affect 100 percent of the time (not that I have tried it 1000 times, i don't have the time

or patience for that), because the model is elsewhere random enough that i never got to focus on it; it all  seemed to give the impression that it was all more difficult to predict like that. no worries.

 

[Ssnake]

Different mechanisms in the way how non-penetrating direct hits are evaluated compared to near-miss explosions.

[Volcano]

Just general FYI to the discussion here...

 

The key here is to look at the sub events. None of the original AAR images actually show the sub events.  The sub events are the sub events of the impact, that you see by using the little arrows at the bottom of the Event Dialog.

 

By looking at it, I predict that the impacts in the images are inflicting overpressure type damages on commo and stabilization. This would be correct, and you can see this in the sub events (it will list "overpressure" as the cause).

 

In regards to overpressure, HE and HEAT are handled in an identical way, and it depends directly on the proximity of the explosion to the vehicle. In these examples, the explosion is as close as you can get to the vehicle (its a direct impact) so its more likely to cause those damages. The same is exactly true of HE artillery.  The further away the HE and HEAT explosion is to the vehicle, the less likely it will cause those overpressure damages.

 

But that is not to confuse the direct penetrating impacts, these are the other mechanics which cause damages, of course. So, to sum it up...

 

• Overpressure effects are handled in the same way with HE artillery and HEAT, with the probability of damage depending on the size/power of the explosion, and proximity.
• You have to look through the sub events in the dialog to know exactly where the damage is coming from (whether its overpressure or non-overpressure based).

 

 

 

 

[Captain_Colossus]

On 6/8/2020 at 8:51 PM, Volcano said:

Just general FYI to the discussion here...

 

The key here is to look at the sub events. None of the original AAR images actually show the sub events.  The sub events are the sub events of the impact, that you see by using the little arrows at the bottom of the Event Dialog.

 

By looking at it, I predict that the impacts in the images are inflicting overpressure type damages on commo and stabilization. This would be correct, and you can see this in the sub events (it will list "overpressure" as the cause).

 

In regards to overpressure, HE and HEAT are handled in an identical way, and it depends directly on the proximity of the explosion to the vehicle. In these examples, the explosion is as close as you can get to the vehicle (its a direct impact) so its more likely to cause those damages. The same is exactly true of HE artillery.  The further away the HE and HEAT explosion is to the vehicle, the less likely it will cause those overpressure damages.

 

But that is not to confuse the direct penetrating impacts, these are the other mechanics which cause damages, of course. So, to sum it up...

 

• Overpressure effects are handled in the same way with HE and HEAT, with the probability of damage depending on the size/power of the explosion, and proximity.
• You have to look through the sub events in the dialog to know exactly where they damage is coming from (whether its overpressure or non-overpressure based).

 

 

 

 

 

i was not aware of sub-events and overpressure as being descriptive anywhere. i am still running 4.161, if it was present then, i have never seen it, i'll look again the next time i can run steel beasts. i am pretty confident by this point that a sufficiently large. non lethal HEAT impact against the front profile of a tank such as the M1 will at minimum always produce

the radio and stabilization damage; overpressure or not, you could set your watch to that. more often than not, those are the only two damages occurring unless the hit is directed on the target roof or doesn't manage to hit something vital like the turret ring. to understand the extent of it,

i ran a few artillery tests as well in those tests several direct hits to the turret roof did nothing of the sort, and a near hit produced damage to the idler only- by near miss by what look like within a meter. this doesn't mean it will never happen that the radio and stabilization will not be damaged by artillery direct or near hits, but from what i have seen it is obviously much less predictable.

 

as an aside it just happens to be one of these cases frequent use of the software- any game or simulation software starts to show certain predictable behaviors- right or wrong, but you cannot unsee it once that happens. in older DOS based flight simulators players could probably predict the direction or course computer pilots

may bank or dodge and this kind of thing as they begin to intuitively see the code behavior running its routines.

 

whenever i see a missile coming in, i know that i am going to lose the radio and stabilization, i am already thinking one move ahead ready to gunnery switch modes to prepare for the loss of stabilization and return fire, i am already thinking what my next move is with radio loss if i need to issue orders to other units or call for artillery (say jumping to another unit to issue orders)- it is so consistent in the SB world that it compares to other rarer but certain events like always running over troops results in a kill without variation (as well as it probably should i reckon), there are some scenarios that are not variable, and this appears to be one of them. i don't have any calculations which would contradict it, if esim believes it is the best possible compromise, that's fine with me- but i do mention it does stick out in a model which largely is more variable than that elsewhere; i hadn't noticed it previously but once i figured it out, it cannot be unseen. 

Edited June 10, 2020 by Captain_Colossus

[Ssnake]

Well, there's basically that S curve everywhere. If you're low on the attacking projectile's energy, nothing or only very rarely will something happen. And if you're past a certain energy threshold, then certain damages will happen in nearly 100% of all cases. It's the transition zone where interesting stuff happens (where the attacking projectile is almost exactly a match for the defending armor plate), but that transition zone can be broad or narrow.

 

Ultimately, if there is a big overmatch on the armor side, you don't want anything to happen. This is what protection is about, after all. Conversely, the the overmatch is in favor of the attacking projectile, you want reliable destruction. So, these ends of the spectum are close to being entirely deterministic.