Today, well be talking about changes to the post-pen effects for APHE shells used by ground vehicles that we plan to introduce into the game. Were ready to show you what we have planned here, and at the end of this news post you can participate in voting for or against whether therell be changes or not all depends on your vote. Lets take a look!

Preserving fragments in the head part of the shell

First off, wed like to tell you about a change that we consider necessary and will be implemented into the game without any vote. This change relates to maintaining the integrity of an APHE shells head after armor penetration. When an APHE shell explodes, its warhead is not subject to significant fragmentation and can cause substantially greater damage than the scattering fragments of the case and base.
Fragments of a 75mm M61 shell after it exploded. Note how intact the warhead is The fragment of the shells warhead is significant in mass, can penetrate armor of considerable thickness, and at the same time also form secondary fragments when penetrating armor. This change will allow the warhead to better hit enemy crew members located behind internal partitions, such as the engine compartment bulkhead, as well as other modules along the shells flight trajectory that cannot be penetrated by small fragments generated from the shell exploding.

Increasing secondary fragments and high explosive damage

Due to a number of technical reasons, secondary fragments from APHE shells differ and are worse compared to fragments from regular, solid AP shells. When reworking fragmentation fields, well enhance the secondary fragments of APHE shells to the level of solid AP shells. The high-explosive damage from APHE shells will remain it causes relatively little damage, affects the crew and modules inside the tank and has a damage zone in the form of a sphere around the detonation point of the shell. The diameter of the damage sphere of high-explosive damage is noticeably smaller than the scattering zone of secondary fragments.

Implementing fragment areas

Here are the changes that wed like you to vote on, whether theyre introduced or not will be determined by community vote: scattering sectors of fragments from APHE shells. When a shell explodes, three main fragmentation areas are formed, shown in the image below:

• The remainder of the shells head and its fragments.
• Fragments from the base of the shell.
• Fragments from all sides of the shell (the case).

When a shell explodes inside of a tank or armored vehicle, the shells head acts as a small solid AP round and may penetrate more internal modules. Alongside this, smaller fragments from the shell casing form a fragmentation cone and hit the crew and modules around the explosion point. We plan to implement both of these to the game.
*Translation (Pic.113): Scattering of the APHE shell fragments on impact At the moment, we use a simplified fragmentation pattern for APHE shells in the game without segmentation into different areas. If we were to implement the proposed physically reliable sector fragmentation patterns for APHE shells, the post-pen effect of APHE shells will be more realistic. However, when hitting protruding modules, such as the commanders cupola, the probability of crew damage would be reduced.
Damage probability from the explosion of a BR-412D shell behind armor with the current fragment distribution
Damage probability in the same scenario with the proposed fragment spread Reworking the post-pen effects of APHE shells can change the tactics of the game, making protruding weakened areas less vulnerable. However at the same time, post-pen effects after penetrating the hull of a vehicle due to the preservation of the shells head after the shell explodes will be increased.

In-game examples of the described changes

Heres some screenshots of how damage to ground vehicles will be altered with the changes implemented. Before post-pen effect when penetrating the center of a tank without preserving the head of the shell:
After post-pen effect when penetrating the center of a tank while preserving the head of the shell:
Before post-pen effect when the commanders cupola is hit by a spherical spread of fragments from a shell explosion:
After post-pen effect when the commanders cupola is hit with a physically reliable sectoral scattering of fragments from the shell explosion:
Wed like to hear your opinion on this share it in the comment field and vote Yes or No for the changes to post-pen effects in the poll! Were planning to give players the opportunity to test these changes in a special game event, as well as the Protection Analysis menu, before applying these changes to all APHE shells in the game. However, preparing this testing will require some significant time from the development team, so today we want to collect your opinions on whether youre interested in switching to a more detailed damage model for APHE shells. So, shall we test it? ADD YOUR VOTE HERE If youre interested in testing, well start preparing it and will host another voting on this change based on its results.