Side Armor Bounces

Hello everyone. Long time lurker, I think this is my first post, but I'm not sure.

Overall I'm very pleased with how CoH2 has evolved over its life span.

I think the balance is probably better between the factions then it ever has been.

However, there has been something that has bothered me incessantly and it's only increased since the Developers at Relic have stated that they want to reduce or remove as much "Un fun" RNG in the game.

That something would be flat-on side armor bounces from weapons that 100% should penetrate the side armor.

Relic has included the side/rear armor bonus damage to reward players who work to flank enemy armor with their own.

However, nothing is more infuriating when I'm using something like a couple T-34/76's to flank a Panther, actually pull off the flank, and then proceed to watch my shots from the 76mm cannon, at around 30m away... proceed to bounce off side armor that is thinner then the shell being fired at it.

Same with a StuG flanking an IS-2 and harmlessly bouncing off its side.

Has there been any explanation for this mechanic?

In my mind, the only time a side shot should bounce is if it's being fired at by an entirely different, lower class of vehicle.

T-70 firing at the side of a Panther? Obviously, bounces should happen.

But T-34/76?

RNG is a fact of life in this game, and the mitigation of how much it effects you is part of the skill of this game. I accept that and I'm ok with that.

But when the RNG is occuring on something that physically shouldn't even be occuring (shells larger then the armor they are being fired at, bouncing on flat surfaces) it is nothing but pure frustration when I actually am trying to outplay an opponent.

Does anyone else get frustrated by this occurrence?

There is no side armor in this game, only front and rare (50/50 or 80/20 of hitbox). And there are technical difficulty to adding it, so it's very low chance that it will be added to the game.

There is no side armor in this game, only front and rare (50/50 or 80/20 of hitbox).

So does side armor count as rear, or front?

Or does this mean that depending on where the RNG decided to fire the shot at a part of the "side" armor of the vehicle, it could randomly be calculated as hitting the front?

So does side armor count as rear, or front?

Or does this mean that depending on where the RNG decided to fire the shot at a part of the "side" armor of the vehicle, it could randomly be calculated as hitting the front?

There is no side armor.

Half of the tank is front, half is rear.

So does side armor count as rear, or front?

Or does this mean that depending on where the RNG decided to fire the shot at a part of the "side" armor of the vehicle, it could randomly be calculated as hitting the front?

Imagine box as a tank, 50% of it will be front armor, 50% will be rare (or 80% front/20% rare for some of tanks). And yes - it's RNG dependent which part you will hit.

Oh my god.

That's so much worse then I thought.

50% of the side armor of the Panther, for example, is being treated as 140mm effective armor when in reality it was 58mm...

That's absolutely absurd.

Has their been any explanation for this god awful mechanic?

Why would it be hard for them to assign side armor values when they can obviously assign front and rear?

Oh my god.

That's so much worse then I thought.

50% of the side armor of the Panther, for example, is being treated as 140mm effective armor when in reality it was 58mm...

That's absolutely absurd.

Has their been any explanation for this god awful mechanic?

Why would it be hard for them to assign side armor values when they can obviously assign front and rear?

This is a strategy game and not a world war 2 simulator. Almost everything is different to what it was in reality.

"Because it is hard" is the official explanation, but that's not necessarily the reality.

In the early days they advertised that there would be side armor, and there were tooltips that referenced side armor for the longest time, and may still be in game, so I understand why it could be easy to assume it exists.

Since it hasn't existed for so long the game has been balanced around it not existing. Implementing side armor wouldn't be a challenge, but having to adjust everything to accommodate the changes in vehicle armor would require a lot of time, energy, and therefore money.

Considering how loathe Relic is to chance simple numeric values more than every few months, changes and improvements to core mechanics are kind of a pipedream.

There are mods that are developing not just side armor, but angle as well. It is very possible, just too big a task for Relic's plate.

This is a strategy game and not a world war 2 simulator. Almost everything is different to what it was in reality.

Cool story.

This isn't really about the game simulating WWII armor values. I just listed them for reference.

The core issue for me, is flanking an enemy vehicle, and because I'm 91 degrees off its front, all my shots still count as hitting the frontal armor, whereas if I was 2 degrees off set in the other direction, all the shots would of been rear.

I just don't get why they had to make the rear armor line directly at the 90 degree angle mark on the side of the vehicle.

All they would realistically have to do is move that line up and the instances of you being directly on someones flank and experiencing ridiculous shell bounces wouldn't occur.

I'm not even looking for bonus damage.

I just don't want shells with 130+ mm's of penetration bouncing on 40-50mm thick side armor, because that's not rewarding me for flanking.

I could care less if it was simulation quality.

If you were to implement side armor, you would need a deeper system which takes into account the position of both tanks (angle).

By simply adding side armor, you would end up with a worst system than now. Take into account that while you can have a face to face tank engagement, if the shot lands on the rear side, it counts as a rear shot even if you are completely showing the front.

Adding side armor will make this just way more RNG based.

If you were to implement side armor, you would need a deeper system which takes into account the position of both tanks (angle).

By simply adding side armor, you would end up with a worst system than now. Take into account that while you can have a face to face tank engagement, if the shot lands on the rear side, it counts as a rear shot even if you are completely showing the front.

Adding side armor will make this just way more RNG based.

Not really.

All they have to do is make it instead of a perfect line down the middle, make it a cone in front of the tank that represents frontal shots.

The only thing that would change is when you are perfectly side on, your chances of magically still hitting something considered frontal armor, when firing perpindicular at the side of the vehicle would be relatively non-existent.

Basically, all I'm asking for is this.



What this would do:

1. Less guessing if the game is going to consider your flank a flank.
2. Shots that hit the side armor from that cone would actually make sense bouncing, due to high AoA.
3. Rewards tactical play even further.

I personally can't see a single thing wrong with this.

The core issue for me, is flanking an enemy vehicle, and because I'm 91 degrees off its front, all my shots still count as hitting the frontal armor, whereas if I was 2 degrees off set in the other direction, all the shots would of been rear.

Actually no. It's not about where your tank is in relation to the enemy tank but about where the shot lands. You can be 10 degrees off the front of the tank and land a rear shot because the shell hits the back half of the tank. Remember, there's a scatter value. Your tank doesn't shoot at the center of its target.

I just don't want shells with 130+ mm's of penetration bouncing on 40-50mm thick side armor, because that's not rewarding me for flanking.

I could care less if it was simulation quality.

Why do you keep bringing up armor thickness then?
You may not want a rear shot to bounce but that has nothing to do with how the game is coded.

The Panther has 320.0 frontal armor and 110.0 rear armor.

T34 has 120.0/100.0/80.0, near/mid/far penetration values.

The chance to penetrate the rear armor is 120/110, 100/110, 80/110 at their respective range. Those are pretty good chances.

But remember that unless you're facing the Panther squarely in the rear, your shot can actually end up hitting the front half of the tank which would yield much lower penetration values.

Actually no. It's not about where your tank is in relation to the enemy tank but about where the shot lands. You can be 10 degrees off the front of the tank and land a rear shot because the shell hits the back half of the tank. Remember, there's a scatter value. Your tank doesn't shoot at the center of its target.



Why do you keep bringing up armor thickness then?
You may not want a rear shot to bounce but that has nothing to do with how the game is coded.

The Panther has 320.0 frontal armor and 110.0 rear armor.

T34 has 120.0/100.0/80.0, near/mid/far penetration values.

The chance to penetrate the rear armor is 120/110, 100/110, 80/110 at their respective range. Those are pretty good chances.

But remember that unless you're facing the Panther squarely in the rear, your shot can actually end up hitting the front half of the tank which would yield much lower penetration values.

Ok this makes more sense. I keep bringing up armor values simply because I can't help it. I know this isn't a simulation, but I can't help but get irked when a 76mm shell hits appears to hit 45mm's of armor and magically bounces off. I realize they don't have those values in game, but the psuedo-historian in me can't help but identify it.

If I understand you now correctly, that shell placement is the factor and not tank positioning, my same idea would still work to provide more consistent flanking rewarding, and prevent strange side bounces.

I don't see any real problem making it a cone instead of 2 uniform boxes.

If I understand you now correctly, that shell placement is the factor and not tank positioning, my same idea would still work to provide more consistent flanking rewarding, and prevent strange side bounces.

I don't see any real problem making it a cone instead of 2 uniform boxes.

1. The current model doesn't take direction into account, so a cone would not change anything unless I missed something.

2. If I was in charge of Relic, I would not want to spend money redesigning the damage model at this point knowing full well I would have to spend even more further down the road to balance it. I would save that for another game.

1. The current model doesn't take direction into account, so a cone would not change anything unless I missed something.

2. If I was in charge of Relic, I would not want to spend money redesigning the damage model at this point knowing full well I would have to spend even more further down the road to balance it. I would save that for another game.

1. In my mind, it would make the Sherman that is directly on the Tiger's flank much more likely to be actually making flanking shots, then somehow hitting "front armor" when it is perpendicular on the side of the Tiger.

2. I'm not sure how this would be a redesigning of the damage model. It would simply be shifting the "If/When" check that is made when a shell hits the armor forward, so that it more accurately actually represents shells striking the frontal armor, rather then shells striking the side of the tank being considered striking the front of it.

1. In my mind, it would make the Sherman that is directly on the Tiger's flank much more likely to be actually making flanking shots, then somehow hitting "front armor" when it is perpendicular on the side of the Tiger.

2. I'm not sure how this would be a redesigning of the damage model. It would simply be shifting the "If/When" check that is made when a shell hits the armor forward, so that it more accurately actually represents shells striking the frontal armor, rather then shells striking the side of the tank being considered striking the front of it.

The main problem with implementing side armor is that the only factor in which armor value is used for the penetration check is the location at which the bullet makes contact.

If you move the armor threshold further up, so that say 90% of the sides count as "rear armor," then it's very easy for a skilled player to attack ground at your sides if you aren't facing 100% straight towards him, and even if he isn't doing that then there's a good chance that RNG will direct shots towards it anyways. This heavily negates front armor and makes correct facing far, far harder to achieve, and would probably be a major indirect nerf to all heavies. You wouldn't even need to rush in to flank a Panther, you could just have two T-34s engage it at once at perhaps a 20 degree angle to the front, and you'd get "rear armor" crits non-stop.

And of course you don't want to move the threshold further back, because now it's even more impossible to get a successful flank.

I agree that it would be awesome to have side armor in this game, but unfortunately it would require an entire reworking of the ballistics and penetration calculations to fit it in. Penetration would have to take angle into account, otherwise one could hit side armor from the front and get reliable penetrations at an extreme angle. We couldn't just compare locations of the two tanks either, since there's scatter and tanks tend to move a lot during combat, so they'd have to write a script to calculate the angle between the shell and the armor.

It also would make it harder to figure out penetrations for artillery; as it is now it's fairly straightforwards: an artillery shell has a penetration value, and you check it against the armor value of whichever half of the tank it lands on. If you add side armor then what do you do? Divide the tank into four cones for artillery? That seems more or less arbitrary, and at that point just to keep consistency you'd probably have to add top armor as well.

Can direct fire shells hit top armor if they scatter up? If you're shooting from a cliff down onto a tank and hit it in the front, do you check against top armor or front armor? Suddenly dips in the ground become far more dangerous. What if a tank is cresting a hill and get's hit in the bottom, do we add bottom armor now?

See, there are many other matters which must be considered before one can "simply" add side armor. Putting it in would require a great amount of effort from Relic, and they would have to call in team members like Designers and Coders which probably wiped their hands of CoH2 long ago to work on future games. It simply isn't worth the investment of time and money.

But if there's no side armor in CoH3 then there's no excuse.

I agree that it would be awesome to have side armor in this game, but unfortunately it would require an entire reworking of the ballistics and penetration calculations to fit it in. Penetration would have to take angle into account, otherwise one could hit side armor from the front and get reliable penetrations at an extreme angle. We couldn't just compare locations of the two tanks either, since there's scatter and tanks tend to move a lot during combat, so they'd have to write a script to calculate the angle between the shell and the armor.

I'm sorry, but I really don't agree with this.

Angle, penetration calculations, none of those would be required for a decent side armor system.

We currently have two things in game.

1. Front armor. Chances of bounces or regular damage on hit.
2. Rear armor. Bonus damage, negligible chance of bounces (if any?).

The idea that we would need new angle calculations, penetration calculations, I think is a farce.

All that realistically would need to be done is add a third armor check.

3. Side. NO bonus damage, but negligible chance of bounce.

I'm sorry, but I really don't agree with this.

Angle, penetration calculations, none of those would be required for a decent side armor system.

We currently have two things in game.

1. Front armor. Chances of bounces or regular damage on hit.
2. Rear armor. Bonus damage, negligible chance of bounces (if any?).

The idea that we would need new angle calculations, penetration calculations, I think is a farce.

All that realistically would need to be done is add a third armor check.

3. Side. NO bonus damage, but negligible chance of bounce.

Did you read the rest of my post? I specifically addressed that: you can and often will hit the sides of a tank from the front. If you don't take angle into account then front armor is way too easy to negate front armor without actually flanking.

I literally spent half of that post discussing why you can't just add side armor. Please respond to my individual points before you sweep aside my entire argument.