Talk:Tank ammunition

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Revision as of 07:38, 11 December 2019 by bangerland (talk | contribs) (Regarding shell descriptions)
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Anyone know where to source a shrapnel round image to match the rest in the page? I tried screenshotting it in-game but it didn't come out great. --_artek (talk) 03:46, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Looks like the other ones are just screenshots from the game. By comparison here is the clean image of a shrapnel round Icon Shrapnel Shot.jpg. Maybe worth a debate if we want to update the other ones in the article to be like that one I just uploaded, or if we want to update the image I uploaded to match the other ones (a screenshot). I would be inclined to say go with a screenshot as it shows the penetration effect. --Flame2512 (talk) 11:01, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Regarding shell descriptions

I have a few points to make with page as it is right now, mainly in two ways:

1) The explanation is made in very "main faction" way, as in US, GE, USSR, with a speck of French, while most of them mention WW2 period. Would probably be nice to also mention japan and Italy in appropriate sections, especially in HEAT and APHE department (or just rename Germany to Axis, where it can be generalized, because for the most part they receive those at same periods.) Dunno about china, because it's literally just using the abovementioned factions tanks.

2) I also kind of have issue with the basic ammo explanations, because unique features of every ammo were and are still omitted in favour of flavor/historical text.

I feel like APHE vs AP comparison is necessary, because the difference is just in that: AP can penetrate modules and APHE generally cannot, because after fuse activation it explodes to add AoE damage. The 1.91 practically killed the whole "you cannot use APHE against light tank" thing, since the fuses even on 105 mm are now 14mm, which is 1 less than armour on most vehicles in the game, so there is just no way it wont detonate. But there still is a high possibility of APHE hitting a big enough radiator/transmission and doing nothing.

Same gripe with APDS: It's different from APCR only because it does not have negative normalization (nor much of positive) and it's not as bad against light tank as against spaced and heavy tanks, because when you hit heavy tank with it, the shell loses all it's "penetration" = "health" by penetrating armour and "shatters" inside of it or does miserable damage, IE you have to fish for unarmored tank parts and it is more for sniping, not just for bashing heavy tanks in(unless you have to), like APCR, in my opinion.

APDSFS ability to penetrate multiple tanks should be mentioned, I believe. Also being ineffective against light tanks is pretty much void, because every time it hits a light tank, it either causes colossal spall (due to it working as both AP and APDS) and it hits ammo rack, resulting in explosion, or just hull breaks it. Specifically with 1.93 hull break updates 7.0-8.0 light tanks hullbreak easier than 4.0 artillery trucks ever did. (maybe it's just related to tanks, but, uh.)

Perhaps it is possible to extend the paragraphs a bit for in-game strengths/weaknesses or comparisons? Could try to reshape, update and censor the collected information on the matter, so it could be used here in some form. The main issue here is that both of last patches (1.91 and 1.93) severely changed the shell mechanics, so the info might get obsolete again in 1.95 or whenever (just like with radar pages).

3) Not that important to the topic, but I heard people talking about something called "HE FS" being on soviet tanks, but I cannot find it anywhere. Is it some form of a practical re-name joke or it was removed from the game? The screenshots had a different icon for it too, I think?

Either way, if you people agree on either of points i could try to look in some direction. --bangerland (talk) 11:09, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Few points on this; first and foremost this was just an interim update to 'clean up' the page a little - if you look at the history the old layouts weren't very clean and the old info was pretty uninformative. Despite that, there's always room for more information and I'm definitely not gonna take offense to any changes.
In regards to APHE - you're correct, and that's probably a valuable point to add.
Your note on APDS is also correct but I do think you need to aim for vital points within a vehicle regardless of how heavily armoured it is - APDS has pretty negligible post-penetration, regardless of what it hits.
APFSDS does shrapnel a fair bit but remember that a lot of late light tanks are laid out in a way that counteracts that (such as the Type 89 which is more than capable of taking 3 or more shots from certain directions) - additionally, APFSDS doesn't often hull break and it's much more reliable with HEAT-FS (in 1.93 they updated it so 105mm HEAT-FS could hull break a lot of light vehicles that previously required a 120mm round, however I don't remember seeing any updates on APFSDS hullbreak)
The 'HE-FS' is what I believe the Russians referred to as 'HE-FRAG'; and it is essentially the same concept as a HE round, and has, at least as long as I've had high-tier Russians, had the same icon as HE in-game, despite the fact that the actual round looks different.
--_artek (talk) 19:22, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
I do realize that you were just updating the page, which is why I mentioned both old and new pages. Sorry if It felt a bit too direct. As for hull breaks, in 1.89 they added track hullbreak, and basically if you hit 7.0+ light tank track/suspension wheel with any 75+ mm chemical it instantly explodes, even if it didn't penetrate track or did any damage (ex: you can kill Warrior and many others with literally any tank, even with composite shields on if you somehow hit the track itself directly). The 105 mm HEAT hullbreak is basically a cover-up, as it already hullbroke most tanks before, they just raised the amount of surfaces that do this, due to it becoming more like APDS in 1.91. I'm sure any big AP, including APDSFS that isn't 105- mm can hullbreak type 89 and most of other light tanks, if it hits it straight to the hull, but kinetic hullbreak is custom-made for each tank, so it may be different in your experience (in my experience people just hit it directly to the hull and the shell just inevitably flies through middle of ammo rack even if it didn't work, and they never fire at turret).