(Devblog) "Improved" Penetration Mechanics

[TD1]

Just in case you guys haven't seen it yet...

 

There are new penetration mechanics being tested. They are now on PT server.

 

So this means that when a shell hits a torpedo bulge, it deals 10% damage if it penetrates. Secondaries and AA mounts are treated similarly. 

Under the current system, an HE shell striking a torpedo bulge will explode against it and deal zero damage. AP has reduced penetration when it hits the bulge, then strikes the armor belt and has to penetrate it to deal damage.

 

As you can see, ships with external bulges take a deep hit to their survivability (since, theoretically, you can take a Smith and sink a Yamato by shooting the bulges repeatedly). New York, Texas, Lyon, Amagi, and so many more will take a direct hit to their damage-absorbing abilities. This also means HE spammers like Worchester, Akizuki, Kitakaze and Harugumo are going to be even more annoying than they already are.

 

So I wish to invite everyone, myself included, to this thread, where we can voice our disapproval. Even a pro-WG voice like me thinks negatively to this change. Added, this is one of the few times I agree with the NA server (I am normally cynical of their complaints but this one isn't unfounded). 

 

@HuginnKR I hope you are paying attention- many are opposing this change in the NA forums, and I assume the EU forums are already up in an uproar. I hope this change does not go through, because if it does I predict an uproar of unforeseen proportions and a lot of people outright abandoning the game.

 

DO. NOT. LET. THIS. CHANGE. GO. THROUGH. PERIOD.

[mr_glitchy_R]

15 minutes ago, TD1 said:

As you can see, ships with external bulges take a deep hit to their survivability (since, theoretically, you can take a Smith and sink a Yamato by shooting the bulges repeatedly). New York, Texas, Lyon, Amagi, and so many more will take a direct hit to their damage-absorbing abilities. This also means HE spammers like Worchester, Akizuki, Kitakaze and Harugumo are going to be even more annoying than they already are.

HE spam is simply the scariest thing in this game and WG is going to increase their combat effectiveness? Good job, good job. I will leave the game if they're not listening to the players and implementing it.

[waichung1823]

Hmmmm. 

[keskparane]

But don't forget why they are ding this. It's to prevent damage saturation from letting a ship survive. Now where's that youtube vid of the destroyer surviving about 9 torps?

[TD1]

7 minutes ago, keskparane said:

But don't forget why they are ding this. It's to prevent damage saturation from letting a ship survive. Now where's that youtube vid of the destroyer surviving about 9 torps?

If that is what they were planning to eliminate, I do not think the whole can of worms it opens up is worth it. Besides, they are not doing this to stop damage saturation, they are doing this to reduce/remove the "zero damage penetration" thing where a penetration ribbon is awarded (meaning shell penetrated) but did 0 damage (most likely cause in my opinion is it getting through the torpedo bulges, but striking and bouncing off the internal belt armor.

 

You probably do not know, but torpedo bulges are mostly the same thickness as the bow plating. Yes. Imagine that:

-Musashi and Yamato will be able to overmatch the torpedo bulges and punch straight through, for one.

-Also, now bulges will be a liability for ships, because instead of bouncing they will strike the bulge for overpenetration damage. Texas and New York, with their massive bulges, are gonna be pretty badly hit; Texas will be nothing but a lumbering AA battery, while New York doesn't even have that. That is just the two New York-class dreadnoughts. There are other ships that are also affected.

 

@mr_glitchy_R It's even worse than that IMO. Now you can, theoretically, use the USS Smith (that T2 USN destroyer with single torp tubes and 76mm guns) and defeat a Yamato just by shooting at the bulge. With HE. The HE spam becoming scarier is a side-effect of the change.

[keskparane]

8 minutes ago, TD1 said:

..... Besides, they are not doing this to stop damage saturation, they are doing this to reduce/remove the "zero damage penetration" thing where a penetration ribbon is awarded (meaning shell penetrated) but did 0 damage....

my bad

[mr_glitchy_R]

@TD1 Wait.So now HE shell that puny can damage a 410mm bulge? I mean how the hell? There should be some limitation on this. Seriously, this will increase the amount of HE spam meta in the game. AP shell should be the thing to damage these part of the ship. But small HE shell penetrating Yamato's thick torpedo bulge? It's just too much.

[TD1]

19 minutes ago, mr_glitchy_R said:

@TD1 Wait.So now HE shell that puny can damage a 410mm bulge? I mean how the hell? There should be some limitation on this. Seriously, this will increase the amount of HE spam meta in the game. AP shell should be the thing to damage these part of the ship. But small HE shell penetrating Yamato's thick torpedo bulge? It's just too much.

There are no 410mm torpedo bulges lol. Torpedo bulges share thicknesses with the bow armor (so if the bow armor is 32mm the bulges are more likely than not 32mm).

 

It turns out, this is much more urgent than we thought. This change is now in the TEST SERVER (that's right, not supertest, if it is approved it is coming out next patch). I did some testing with Akizuki (w/ IFHE), approached a stationary Amagi to within 1-3km, and let rip with the HE shells on the Akizuki's 100mm guns. The results are astounding:

 

Yes, that's over 170 penetrations in what should have been non-penetrations (because normally if they pen the torpedo bulge the belt armor stops them, if my memory of game mechanics is correct). I shot mostly AP however, with switching to HE every now and then, for the same result.

[Thyaliad]

Utterly ridiculous change.

This will just encourage BBs to camp in the back.

Besides balance reasons, the change is totally illogical and counter-intuitive.

To use WoT as an example, it is like saying having cage armour will cause my tank to take more damage from AP. Wut? 

[leops1984]

Flamu is doing some testing on his stream right now. This looks like a significant nerf to the survivability of ships across the board.

[TD1]

OK, I did some testing on my own, along with PassTheSalt from Jingles' Salt Mines Discord server.

 

Test parameters were: Akizuki w/ IFHE, vs Amagi (in a training room), range 2.5 km, shoot at torpedo bulges. I tested on the 0.7.11 PT server, he tested on the live server with his own Akizuki.

This is how much damage I managed to get (I destroyed the Amagi just by riddling it with HE shellfire). Look at the main battery damage:

PassTheSalt did 200 pens then rammed the Amagi (lol):

So I redid the test with 200 pens (well, 201, with the 1 shell being freak RNG, and I treated the 1 shell as a negligible margin of error), and this is the amount of damage I did:

 

LOOK.AT.THE.DIFFERENCE. This is what I heralded when I said that HE spam is gonna be even more prevalent, and ships like the Akizuki, Kitakaze, Harugumo, Wooster, and general HE spammers are gonna be even scarier than they already are to face.

 

[sunlo2013]

Are we looking at the same link? the Dev blog only mention large caliber AP hitting DD. 

[TD1]

22 minutes ago, sunlo2013 said:

Are we looking at the same link? the Dev blog only mention large caliber AP hitting DD. 

Dammit, my bad. I fixed it.

[Paladinum]

Those 2 mechanics aren't related. One is about hitting sections of a ship that shouldn't take damage, and the other is eliminating damage saturation.

Both are game-changers, but one is just plain dumb, the other is imo needed.

Increasing influence of HE spamming is just stupid.

[mr_glitchy_R]

6 hours ago, TD1 said:

It turns out, this is much more urgent than we thought. This change is now in the TEST SERVER (that's right, not supertest, if it is approved it is coming out next patch). I did some testing with Akizuki (w/ IFHE), approached a stationary Amagi to within 1-3km, and let rip with the HE shells on the Akizuki's 100mm guns. The results are astounding:

OMG no way!. It shouldn't be like that! 176 penetration is really outstanding for guns that small with HE shell. Oh no. Amagi will no longer the best BB in it's tier. Battleship is becoming more and more unpopular. 

 

5 hours ago, Thyaliad said:

This will just encourage BBs to camp in the back.

Agree with that. Passive BB play are still a problem until now and WG is trying to makes it even worse :(

[dieselhead]

If you think WG will listen to you here when they ignore their own testers that is unfortunate. Testers told them wooster would be OP but thy didn't care.

They will probably release this to live server, after all have a look at how many HE spamming ships have been released recently?

[spixys]

So 2019 will be the year of CV and fast HE spamming gun ships.

And congrats for baBBies whiner, you win - now you have too many ways to bully BB like real babies.

 

 

[S4pp3R]

Has anyone done a list of ships and how they'd be affected?

(Outside DDs)

[sunlo2013]

I think this will favor ships that is harder to hit. Therefore, smaller ships and more nimble ship certainly work better under this change. 

Also it will increase the skill gaps, so people who are better at aiming and dodging will benefit the most.

[luftkopf]

Well, WG did say they wanted BBs to be less popular...

[TD1]

8 hours ago, S4pp3R said:

Has anyone done a list of ships and how they'd be affected?

(Outside DDs)

Simply put, anything with torpedo bulges that are reachable (i.e their bulges are not at the bottom of the ship, underwater). 

This is what I can think of, most of them premium battleships, but some of them aren't.

 

-Texas, New York: Their massive bulges makes a massive liability. Texas becomes nothing more than a floating, lumbering, massive AA battery. New York doesn't even have that.

-Warspite: Getting to secondary range is exceedingly dangerous.

-Massaschusetts: Getting to within secondary range is exceedingly dangerous.

-Alabama: STAY AT RANGE, or you will get clobbered.

-Amagi: Loses some of its resilience. While as a battlecruiser it's not supposed to be a huge issue, Ashitaka and Kii which (iirc) lack torpedo bulges will be tougher (ironic, considering those two premiums are known for being really fragile).

-Ashitaka/Kii: becomes tougher than Amagi, ironically, due to their lack of reachable torpedo bulges (most of the bulges that do exist are underwater near the bottom)

-Dunkerque: Angling is of much less use.

-Yamato/Musashi: These ships will be able to overmatch the bulge armor of everything now, which makes their infamy for penetrating everything even more pronounced.

-Most German battleships: They get buffed by proxy, because their bulges are underwater near the bottom.

 

[S4pp3R]

7 hours ago, TD1 said:

Simply put, anything with torpedo bulges that are reachable (i.e their bulges are not at the bottom of the ship, underwater). 

This is what I can think of, most of them premium battleships, but some of them aren't.

 

-Texas, New York: Their massive bulges makes a massive liability. Texas becomes nothing more than a floating, lumbering, massive AA battery. New York doesn't even have that.

-Warspite: Getting to secondary range is exceedingly dangerous.

-Massaschusetts: Getting to within secondary range is exceedingly dangerous.

-Alabama: STAY AT RANGE, or you will get clobbered.

-Amagi: Loses some of its resilience. While as a battlecruiser it's not supposed to be a huge issue, Ashitaka and Kii which (iirc) lack torpedo bulges will be tougher (ironic, considering those two premiums are known for being really fragile).

-Ashitaka/Kii: becomes tougher than Amagi, ironically, due to their lack of reachable torpedo bulges (most of the bulges that do exist are underwater near the bottom)

-Dunkerque: Angling is of much less use.

-Yamato/Musashi: These ships will be able to overmatch the bulge armor of everything now, which makes their infamy for penetrating everything even more pronounced.

-Most German battleships: They get buffed by proxy, because their bulges are underwater near the bottom.

 

Thanks mate!

Yeah cause low tier USN BBs are too strong... (Sarcasm)

I like the tanky metric shifting from Amagi to Kii, however I love Amagi and the last thing any T8 BB needs is to lose tankiness...

Yamato has big torpedo bulges though... Wonder how this will affect her survivability

[HobartAWD]

15 hours ago, TD1 said:

-Warspite: Getting to secondary range is exceedingly dangerous.

For those that don't know, Warspite is also modelled in game very poorly and sits way way too high out of the water. As a result she is showing a lot more of the torpedo bulge above the water line than she would at wartime displacement. Known issue for a long time but WG never listen and never fixed it. Plus Warspite is a T6 almost always facing T8 HE spam ships. She isn't going to fare well.

[Lowyat]

9 hours ago, S4pp3R said:

Thanks mate!

Yeah cause low tier USN BBs are too strong... (Sarcasm)

I like the tanky metric shifting from Amagi to Kii, however I love Amagi and the last thing any T8 BB needs is to lose tankiness...

Yamato has big torpedo bulges though... Wonder how this will affect her survivability

even though i have the kii i think having amagi losing its tankiness is appalling. i like the difference of playstyle which is worth to paywall buy imo.

[humusz]

so the question was, will Torpedo buldge can be damage saturated ?

if it was, doesnt dmg saturated section result in 0 penetration dmg ?