HE Feedback: Comprehensive Study.

Draschel: So I have had plenty of time to figure out HE over the past week with it LIVE, instead of common test. If you are TDLR, whatever. This is for people who want to learn. I would like to point out, I think 1.13 has been a generally beneficial and good patch update, a good direction to point the game in. First things first, HE can be used still as general purpose ammunition like out of M4 sherman or panzer IV, just be expected to land lots of 0 damage hits. Track hits, spaced armor, gun barrel length - all this stuff will typically give you 0. However you can now shoot through walls, shots through low tier tracks (IE 10mm track armor) if more or less perpendicular will usually penetrate when tanks have like 20mm side armor like lowly BT7. So before in 1.12, you would have hit BT7 in the tracks for pathetic 150 damage splash, now you can get 410 damage penetration. I think it balances out.  Secondly, it is important to truly note the importance of spaced armor and their benefits in reducing HE effectiveness. I don't think WG published this fact well enough, placed any emphasis on it, yet its among the most important changes. Vehicular spaced armor, including constructs not necessarily designed to act as protection, like modules:  IE tracks / suspension strut / gun barrel these act much like dedicated spaced armor, like boiler casting on suka pershing or super conqueror, armor shields on IS6/E100. These all receive an added benefit in reducing HEs effectiveness, and they do a very good job at that. Walls, fences, doghouses, cars don't share this property. A little math for tackling, or avoiding this problem, and reducing the amount of irritating 0 damage HE hits you will cause. Avoid spaced armor at all cost. Lets look at IS6 for a moment, at 50 angled arc from frontal cross section. If an HE shell strikes its 30mm spaced armor side skirt, then there is 20mm tracks and boogies, and finally the 100mm side hull plate....what would you do even with high penetration HE? 105mm HE pen from Centurion 7/1 or Leopard PTA will contact 30mm @ 50° (no normalization effect) x3, PLUS 20mm @ 50° (no normalization) x3. Then the actual hull which is 100mm @ 50° underneath all the aforementioned. So the spaced armor alone before contacting the hull, using a +/-3 inclination of gun height average, is a whopping 196mm effective armor VS HE, which throws your high pen 105mm HE into the trash. 0 damage HE hit, hull body isn't met, spaced armor absorbs the shell. In order to contact the hull, you need among the higher pen HESH pen in the game, like Centurion 7/1, Conway, 4005. In order to penetrate? You need 327mm HESH, which is   lolExamples like E100 and Type 4  &  5, make this example even more severe, as their side screens are far thicker. Don't shoot  HE at spaced armor.If you must hit spaced armor, do so at perpendicular angles, and make sure it is thin. Hitting an AMD17 or Hotchkiss 10mm tire in the side, with the math above but at flat angle, results in a 30mm tire, which means HE ammo typical like 54 pen HE from a howitzer, still has good chance to penetrate.  And lastly, weird HE effects being seen. I am seeing alot of weird as f--- HE splashes, that typically happened extremely rarely before. The difference is, they are very common now, daily basis. I am talking about splashes for damage, not penetrations. FV4005 splashing enemies for 1000+,  KV2 splashing enemies for 600+, Etc. This sort of stuff just didn't really happen before, and if it did it was usually brushed off as a max roll splash, AKA rare. I am seeing this stuff, like FV4005 shooting light armor targets like panzer wagon, AMX30, STB1, Leopard but is unlucky not penetrated, but still deal close to 1K damage. Before in 1.12 we'd be looking at 600-800. KV2 and OI splashing something like cromwell B, for 600. Whereas before it would be 300-400. I wonder what this is all about.  So, what would I have done to refine the HE changes? Well, I don't think spaced armor need the HE countering reductions applied to them. Like how obstructions have it, they get none. War Thunder has an interesting way of depicting materials, like for example tool steel, structural steel, alloyed aluminum, wood logs, formed rubber  all  VS  rolled armor steel. Rolled armor steel is your 1.00 control value, and the various materials beforehand would be like 0.75, 0.90, 0.40, 0.33, 0.15 compared to RHA 1.00 value. Something like Bisonte and Super Conqueror UFP with dedicated spaced armor steel panels, which are probably high hardness steel over top rolled steel backer, can have something like 1.25, sure. But I think WG definitely jumped the gun by adding 3x effectiveness, over normal stuff like track belts and tires, which alot of are constructed of rubber, what the heck.....?  I think this was a terrible idea, the chain link skirts which protect something like panzer IV schmulturm and WZ132 1 offer the same modifier as dedicated UFP over top protection like Super Conq? Craziness. Another thing I would have done, is increasing HE burst radius of ammunition vs  map objects, to increase their utility in demolition. Since this has nothing to do with attacking tanks anymore, why not make them more effective in destroying obstacles? For instance making a 3in  or  76mm HE do 2.50m now, instead of 1.06m,  versus a home or barn. Lastly, apply the artillery HE velocity changes for tanks too. Many HE shells weigh more, are shaped differently, that would impact tank gun velocity. Alot of old school, 2010-2014 game physics remain with ammo, with tanks simply maintaining the same ammo velocity model continues, and shouldn't.  AP should be normal control speed, HE and HESH should be slow, HEAT should be not as slow,  and APCR should be quick. Generally speaking, of course.