[Guide] Armor penetration, angles and physics.

Edit: Guide is no longer available.

Very, very useful! Great job!
Although I do have a question. Apparently IS-7 should have 355mm armor, but in WoT it can be penetrated with 250mm pen guns. Why is that so?
And also when you have 60 degrees armor, by calculating you get x2 effective armor, but in WoT it isn't like that. How come?

Some of the formulas are bit over my head, but good explanation nevertheless.

But about the last point. In one of WG's gamemechanics video, they said that spaced armour doesn't change the shells flight path. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq5S8CrsUig at about 11:00.

@Vampir It's all explained there already Basically angles+normalisation.

Vampir_Kifla wrote:Very, very useful! Great job!
Although I do have a question. Apparently IS-7 should have 355mm armor, but in WoT it can be penetrated with 250mm pen guns. Why is that so?
And also when you have 60 degrees armor, by calculating you get x2 effective armor, but in WoT it isn't like that. How come?

Lower plate has less thickness than upper plates. Middle upper "prow" armor is angled at an extreme 65 degrees, while the V shaped side plates are at about 55 degrees.

150/cos(55) = 261. Depress the gun a bit and you get far below 261. If a Maus depresses the gun to say, -7 degrees, you get 48 degrees angle, meaning 224mm armor.

Upper angles get armor reduction the more you depress your gun, while increasing lower armor. The more you elevate the gun, the thicker the upper armor gets, and thinner the lower armor, this is what you abuse when tanks crest hills.

Nice use of trigonometry to explain it.

Personally I've never had an issue understanding but I believe this guide will help greatly anyone who does have difficulties comprehending.

do we have a +1 button like in WG forums? would help for stuff like this

Good guide on the basics but worth mentioning in any armour guide just to get the point home, especially with the bumpy new maps that even the slightest bump in the ground and/or the person firing at you being at an (indiscernible to the eye) couple of metres difference +/- elevation can make a vast difference when you think you are in a safe position.
Don't rely on your armour angles too much, keep moving or rocking back and forth if pinned and obviously stop yourself being shot by killing the person shooting you

If you're pinned, I'd estimate you're in a facehug situation anyway, then I'd rather be shaking the entire tank if possible or using my gun barrel to block my cupola. Also, I think it's quite obvious that I'm speaking of flight path angle rather than sheer gun depression, I'm only saying gun depression helps at close ranges vs upper plate slopes. Also, wiggling the tank can sometimes be dangerous if you wiggle it too hard, as it could leave the axles vulnerable. Also with gold shells flying everywhere nowadays you can't really rely too much on armor in the first place (much to my dismay)

More like you're in that situation in a random where they all go one way and you just have to go and guard a flank on your own in the vague hope that one of them will turn their minimap back on Find a place to shelter and take the long range hits kind of thing!

I got a beauty of a shot in and one shotted a T110E5 with my E4 because he hadn't noticed his rear track on a rock had raised his rear up and I was slightly higher and got one into his top rear. He did ask how and was cool about it! I seem to get these odd shots in at least twice a day since the new bumpy maps came in and receive the same when I'm sure I'm safe lol

Unless that player has issues with his fire extinguisher, I doubt you 1 shotted a T110E5, the ammo rack isn't located in the rear. But yes, I do advise people to check their own profile with respect to the enemy by holding down the right mouse button just to check, as such bumpy things do happen from time to time.

What is on the back of the T110E5 since I've got one there with the GWPanther before and I presumed I'd affected the ammo rack with HE to make them blow like that, no burning, just instant explosion?

The ammo is stored at the rear of the turret and right under the turret ring. If you penetrated the top rear turret, that can cause ammo rack, but the rear of the hull is the location of the engine, not ammo rack.

I voted by accident. Didn't know we have a voting option and saw a strange + link, and of course I clicked it . Now one of your recent entries has a green bar, Kawa

It was recently added due to tony's request.

Denolven wrote:I voted by accident. Didn't know we have a voting option and saw a strange + link, and of course I clicked it . Now one of your recent entries has a green bar, Kawa

Ops....temptation got the better of me with your post

Kawashiro wrote:The ammo is stored at the rear of the turret and right under the turret ring. If you penetrated the top rear turret, that can cause ammo rack, but the rear of the hull is the location of the engine, not ammo rack.

I suppose it must have been the HE effect from the big shells in the E4 and GWP!

Sad as it is I remember them both exactly;

Himmelsdorf - The GWPanther I was firing up from K3 at the T110E5 as he came round the front of the hill in F9.

Karelia - T110E4 I was sat at the bottom of the hill in H4 and the T110E5 appeared in K6 firing up at the tanks coming over the hill.

Both were 100% and just went boom and the best bit was being zoomed in in the E4 and watching the shell fly without much hope of a hit, to one shot a T110E5

Did the tripple shell icon pop on top of the tank to indicate an ammo rack?

I don't remember seeing it on the E4 one but he was partly behind a rock so maybe.
It definitely didn't with the GWP but that one might well have hit the lower rear turret?

I did it again with the GWP, same shot, same place about a week later but he was only at 60% health.

It works this way. GW panther doesn't have enough dmg power to full hp kill a T110E5, so if the ammo rack icon didn't light up, it means you hit the enemy at the same time as an ally. Even with full dmg roll and HE pen, you wouldn't be able to kill a full hp T110E5 unless you ammo rack it.

Must have been ammo racks, I only remember them since they were so remarkable that I checked the stats after and it was one shots both times. Only the T92 (understandably) and S-51 have one shotted my T110E5 so far!

great read! Learned something new.

- Count

Kawashiro wrote:It was recently added due to tony's request.

ah nice to see u implemented this. its cause i realy like this on the wot forums. thx very much

What is the effect of spaced armor against HEAT shells in WOT?

CountOfTuscany wrote:What is the effect of spaced armor against HEAT shells in WOT?

Only difference from AP, is apparently no overmatch, that's the only difference. In real though, the pressure of the HEAT would spread and the point of penetration would become much weaker at the inner layer due to the formula explained before.

The way a HEAT shell works, is to funel the explosive forces into a very small surface area, creating immense pressure at the point of impact, this pressure forces the metal molecules apart and blasts inwards, this is NOT melting. But when it penetrates the outer layer, the pressure spreads in the inner layer, decreasing the pressure immensely, this is why spaced armor works excellently against HEAT and HE. Say if the surface area of the HEAT shell is 1cm, but after the distance from the outer plate to the inner plate spreads that surface area to 5cm, the penetration suddenly drops to 20% of its original force.
However, WoT does not have this system I believe, HEATs act like AP shells without overmatch and HE dmg when hitting 0 crit areas.