Armour 103 - HEAT, HESH and ERA Tutorial, From the Depths
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- Опубліковано 29 чер 2024
- So many acronyms!
Armour 101: • Armour 101 - Armour Tu...
Armour 102: • Armour 102 - Armour Bl...
The Armour Tutorial Playlist: • From the Depths - Armo...
Time Stamps:
0:00 - Ze Beginning
0:35 - How HESH Works
4:36 - How to Counter HESH
9:45 - An Extra Note on Spall-liners
12:05 - How HEAT Works
17:18 - Block Penetration Metrics
19:07 - Advantage of HEAT over HESH
19:38 - HEAT Counters
21:36 - Why ERA is Useless
24:50 - Intermission: Slopes and Poles
26:13 - ERA vs. Fragmentation
31:31 - The Magic of Ducts
BorderWise Facebook page: - BorderWise12...
BorderWise Twitter: / borderwiseweta
BorderWise Discord: / discord
BorderWise Patreon: / borderwise
Outro Music: : Different Heaven: OMG: • Different Heaven - OMG...
Other music used:
Dan Bodan - Bike Sharing to Paradise
Doug Maxwell - Baroque Coffee House
Sir Cubworth - Party Waltz
Sir Cubworth - Simple Sonata
Chris Haugen - Campfire Song
Dan Lebowitz - The Opening
Silent Partner - Strolling Through
Unicorn Heads - Rocking Chair
From the Depths on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/26...
I had nothing to do with the development of this game. All rights to From the Depths belong to Brilliant Skies Limited. Please do not upload this video elsewhere without my permission.
#FromTheDepths #Tutorial #Armor - Ігри
It's happened! ERA and Ducts have been fixed in Update 3.2.9:
"Ducts
- Ducts no longer absorb HEAT damage. They are treated like ‘structural blocks’ for the purposes of HEAT.
ERA
- ERA no longer explodes below 50% health. ERA also no longer actually kills projectiles near it when it dies.
- ERA rewrote. Projectiles (other than CRAM) have their explosions triggered by touching an ERA. An ERA-triggered explosion has 20% HE/FLAK damage/radius, 20% HESH thump damage, and 180° fragment release angle. The first HEAT jet or HESH implantation to interact with the ERA panel will be stopped in its tracks (HESH must be implanted onto ERA for there to be an effect). Kinetic hollow point damage will not take place if the shell explodes. Kinetic/hollow point damage of a kinetic shell that has not exploded at this point is reduced by 2500 to a minimum of 100 (this includes CRAM). EMP and smoke effects happen as usual."
Here before the crowd gets arrives, so I can get get the good seats.
I wish all rambots here a good evening, morning or afternoon whethever they're at
So apparently the tooltips for HESH is outdated and that's not the formula works anymore. Lovely.
New formula is:
AP of spalling fragments = average AC of all blocks the thump passed through. So after passing through a layer of metal + wood, the fragments would have an AP of 24.
That'll teach me for trying to learn about a game by reading what's in the game itself. >_>
Anyway... time stamps!
0:00 - Ze Beginning
0:35 - How HESH Works
4:36 - How to Counter HESH
9:45 - An Extra Note on Spall-liners
12:05 - How HEAT Works
17:18 - Block Penetration Metrics
19:07 - Advantage of HEAT over HESH
19:38 - HEAT Counters
21:36 - Why ERA is Useless
24:50 - Intermission: Slopes and Poles
26:13 - ERA vs. Fragmentation
31:31 - The Magic of Ducts
What is the current, in-date, HESH formula and how does it work?
@@thegamingcat3202 The AP is apparently equals the average AC of all blocks the thump passed through. So spall-liners still work, thankfully.
@@BorderWise12 ok
@@BorderWise12 but would that make spall liner less useful unless you had more of it, since if you have around 3 or more metal blocks in front of the spall liner the wood wouldn't bring down the AP as much? And does that mean you could put the spall liner somewhere in the middle of the armor wall?
I remember the formula counting the last block thrice, like --> APmetal+wood = (APmetal + 3*APwood)/4
That was, when the APS overhaul happened or did it get changed again?
For efficient armour placement, you want strong armour on the inside with a couple layers of weaker armour on the outside to take advantage of armour stacking.
HESH is the counter to that, you need to do the opposite in order to effectively protect against it, you need spall liner. And even that might not protect all the squishy components like AI so you'll need another layer of armour after an air gap to catch the spalling.
Even passive armour is as complex as advanced Cannons these days.
P.S: I wonder if they would ever give rubber the property where it doesn't make fragments? Or maybe it absorbs a portion of HESH shockwaves that pass through it? Just a thought on how to make rubber more useful.
@@DeepInsideZettaiRyouiki comparing absolute armor values for the single outermost layer of armor means nothing, and I have the suspicion you chose such a silly metric purely out of laziness.
Better arguments in favour of such an armor scheme include higher total effective health (the smaller stacking bonus isn't enough to offset the much higher health of HA), greater ability to deflect kinetic shells and stop pendepth shells early, greater ability to resist explosions and lasers...
Rubber could definitely use a few more interesting characteristics. For example, one would think shock-based damage like HESH and thump would be heavily mitigated by it even though it would be heavily damaged, a sacrificial block kind of like a surge protector for shockwaves.
@@DeepInsideZettaiRyouiki Which means heavy on the inside has a sum total armor of 112, while metal on inside produces 108. Meaning the weak outside strong inside is still superior against anything that would go through both layers, only being an issue with heavy armor being a poorer spall liner.
@@DeepInsideZettaiRyouiki take your meds, lol
@@asrieldreemurr5029 For real, I think he might be on his period...
I think ducts nullifying HEAT makes sense since real tanks use those fence thingy to protect against RPGs and the closest analogue we have in FtD are those ducts.
IRL tank use "fence" to deform the heat shell before that the triggeing tip hit anything, so when the shell explode the cone that create the heat effect isn't a cone anymore. So if ducts the closest analog of that "fence thingy" it shouldn't work as a second layer of armor, but in the video it does.
Nah, applique is much closer.
@@spac3drunk283 That is incorrect. What you're referring to is slat armor whose primary function is to cause explosive projectiles or charges to prematurely detonate. Secondary functions is to stop them from working optimally (AKA going off while hugging the hull like HEAT) by damaging detonators/fuses or causing them to flip/twist.
Right now, it unfortunately doesn't make a lot of sense because the disconnect from real life and FTD is too great, mostly to the 1x1 meter block logic it uses.
Realistically to penetrate say, 5 meters of metal armor, a HEAT round would have to be at least 1 meter long. Currently in FTD, you can penetrate like 20-40 meters of armor with 1m rounds, regardless of diameter.
Tip, can't believe i didn't comment it before, because its not the first time i thought of it...
In you ACB you use to fire in these tests, set it to listen to a key, like T or Arrows, or whatever, and place yourself near a complex control block
then you can just hit a key on the keyboard to fire the gun without having to scroll back and forth from the acb and the test target.
haha, dense subject
Alternative title: BorderWise learns about the advantages of ballistic air
High performance tactical ballistic air
That duct part at the end makes me wonder what happens when you have rubber or glass on the outside of the craft. It appears the duct functions the same as those blocks did, it's just much tougher and able to take the damage from the shell.
airgaps also help with monster thump
Another thing to point out about heat and hesh- they are chemical wheels, instead of kinetic, while still tearing through armor, meaning low-velocity howitzers can use both to great effect, and they won’t overheat aps guns nearly as quickly because of the fact you don’t need lots of gunpowder casings, or really any at all.
As for ducts stopping heat shells- Bar Armor/Slat Armor/Cage Armor is used on tanks as a lightweight form of armor for stopping HEAT shells, so the bars on the front of the duct is probably intended to mimic that. If that's the case, then it's a feature, not a bug.
ERA is actually the best spall liner vs HESH due to it's low armor. A layer of structural ERA, not the oblique kind, in place of empty space will stop HEAT and practically nullifies HESH (low AP frag does no damage).
Empty space is usually better because ERA is very specific in what it does/counters, it is also HEAVILY countered by explosive damage which is pretty common in FTD. Not to mention that empty space is lighter, cheaper, less CPU intensive and counters explosions.
If ERA was faster/cheaper to repair (is prioritized in repairs ?) it would be a decent option.
ERA also "deletes" projectiles (APS shells and fragments) when it detonates (it detonates from HEAT stream or when reaching 50% HP) in a small zone in front of it. In my testing it seems to work but is very buggy/unreliable. I didn't find any practical applications so it doesn't make ERA that much better.
I hope they rework ERA to bring even more Depths to armor in the game.
I think ERA is partially glitched. I remember messing with railguns and using slow-motion. Was using Sabot head kinetic rounds when I hit a piece of decorative ERA armor and the railgun shell was instantly evaporated. I tested more with ERA and it will utterly eliminate shells when hit with time slowed down to at least 30%. I haven’t tested with explosive shells but if explosive shells still activated and destroyed ERA, and ERA kept this property at full speed this would be a game-changer. Based off of this I can deduce that ERA is intended to stop most shell types upon impact. Explosive damage and proximity frag would be the only counter to ERA as they would use it up. It would become standard technique to put ERA around your AI and ammo, although the devs would have to bump up the price so it wasn’t abused.
BorderWise what do you have to say to people that simp over you (they like you a bit too much)? 🎤
Probably something like 'Thank you, but please calm down'. XD
I feel like there will be a war here soon
HESH was updated some time ago to use a more complex AP calculation to reduce effectiveness of spall liners, but the devs forgot to update the UI accordingly.
Yup. I've been told of that, and I'm less than thrilled that they didn't manage to change a few words of text and save me and others some embarrassment...
Duct armor. An unintentional feature, but a surprisingly somewhat balanced one with their lack of beam bonus and armor stacking. We should really have armor plates though, which are just ducts but they don't let exhaust through. Just because duct armor is kind of dumb
Well that would explain why i have been seeing a couple of designs that use ducts as armour.
ERA actually reacts to any sufficient impact or concussive force in real life - not just Heat or Hesh shells. They aren't as effective against kinetic munitions, but it does reduce their efficacy somewhat
Some modern ERA have significant effectiveness against some APFSDS. Kontakt-5 for example was very effective against older APFSDS munitions.
I misunderstood how HESH works and thought it was op. Thanks for clearing that up. ERA is technically a structural block with less armor than wood so using it as a liner after a layer of wood can be beneficial. Need both because ERA can be popped by tiny heat shells but it will stop those large shells as well. Just wondering if ducts take the damage or just delete it because then its not so bad.
I think ducts just take the damage, yes. Still an issue if you just spam HA ducts, seeing as they have the armour to be highly resistant to fragmentation.
my general armor scheme is usually metal, metal, wood, applique, heavy armor. With Stone used as a structural bridge the gaps at certain spots to hold the outer layer in. Has good EMP resistance that way.
Sometimes I'll have slopes inside bigger air gaps to help deflect penetrating shots away from vitals.
The ducts from what I understand in real life comparison would mostly work as intended but would take more damage. A real example is Sweden Stridsvagn 103 (Strv-103 B to D) equipped with a anti-HEAT slate armor with look like my barbeque grill.
inspired by this video I made my own tests : it appears that ERA act as a full structural block (despite looking like a half block), so if you put it on the inside of of the armor layer it can act as a way to drastically reduce the AP of HESH spallings. The cost-efficiency is kinda awful though
Thanks for testing and sharing! There have been a few people suggesting that. 👍
I have found using metal poles inside your turret cap improves their survival rate significantly.
@BorderWise So I just did some testing with HESH and the new applique, and got some interesting results. When HESH hits applique through other armor with no gap, the spalling is triggered before and hits the applique, rather than coming from the other side of the applique. This is true regardless of how the applique is placed. HOWEVER, if the applique is placed with its back facing out (the direction the HESH is coming through), it takes more damage than if it is placed front-forward. I tested this several times in each position, to make sure of my findings, and it was consistently the case.
My best guess for how this works is that if the HESH shockwave hits the visible half-block of empty space first, it triggers without using the applique panel's armor in its AP calculation. If it hits the half-block that the panel is visibly on first, it does, and is more dangerous.
If I got this right, this should mean that using a layer of applique to defend against HESH is still good, and has no downsides so long as you place your applique correctly.
The other possibility however, is that the half-block of empty space is simply allowing the spall fragments to spread out their damage to neighboring applique panels a little. Which would still be good, but not as good.
Aaand I think I figured out what is actually happening, and why the fragments are hitting/getting stopped by the applique. I think the whole "applique counts for HESH fragment AP now" thing is only a problem when the shell hits the applique directly to start the shockwave (and immediately trigger it), because if the applique is merely in the way of an existing shockwave it triggers the spalling first.
Last reply to self, the last conclusion seems to be accurate. Placing applique facing correctly behind armor is good for getting the fragments to hit multiple panels. If the shell hits applique directly its spalling has extra AP (though will also have more hull to go through), but the shockwave otherwise triggers before hitting the applique regardless of orientation. Applique as spaced armor for HESH is still as good as it always has been.
It is best used inside as catcher and as reinforcement for inner HA.
Also good as AI compartment in ships: Applique - Rubber - AI and on the outside some surge protectors; bottom is HA for protection against torps.
One of my favorite secondary shell types is HESH-AT; a shell that is half HESH, and half Secondary Heat warhead. Secondary because i am partial to large caliber APHE
Now i gonna switch all the airgaps with ducts
random person here, and this is my understanding of heat and other explosively forged penetrators:
the explosion of a shaped block of explosive sends a shock wave that forces some metal into an armor piercing projectile
edit: feel free to correct me if I'm being an idiot
also i think era is supposed to go on the outside
Edit2 thanks for the detailed explanations of heat vs efps
If ERA goes on the outside in FtD, it gets shredded in short order. XD
@@BorderWise12 this is why it gets ceramic facing IRL. Makes it resistant to small arms fire (12.7mm, etc.). But yeah, anything 20 mm and up will strip it. The key in real life is ERA is cheap and stupidly easy to replace on land vehicles.
Ships? Not so much.
What happens with a HEAT warhead is that there is a cone-shaped cavity in the block of explosive, with the open end of the cone facing the target. The cone is lined with a metal liner, usually copper. As the explosion is initiated from the base of the projectile, it progressively collapses that cavity, putting the metal liner under enormous pressure. Under such pressures, the metal behaves like a liquid (it doesn't usually actually melt, the stresses involved are just orders of magnitude greater than its mechanical strength), and a part of it is basically "squirted out" at a velocity that is several times greater than the velocity with which the liner is being collapsed. Real-life shaped charges can easily reach jet velocities of 10 km/s.
An explosively forged penetrator, on the other hand, uses a cavity that has the shape of either a shallow dish or a shallow cone. There, there is no squirting out of a jet. Instead, the liner is formed into one solid projectile (thus the name), usually a mostly cylindrical lumped with a flared-out base, kind of like a shuttlecock, which travels at a much lower velocity - about 2 km/s is typical, similar to the largest feasible muzzle velocity for chemical-propellant guns, and for the same reason: Both are being pushed by the expanding gases from an explosion.
EFPs, while they are much slower, put the entire mass of the liner into the penetrator - the jet of a shaped charge is only a fraction of the liner mass, while most of it ends up in a much slower slug. This also means that a HEAT jet fragments to the point of being useless within a few meters, which is why HEAT warheads must be detonated close to the enemy armour. An EFP, on the other hand, can, due to it being a solid lump of metal with an aerodynamically stable shape, travel for hundreds of times the diameter of the original charge and still retain useful penetration.
How I understood it is that a shaped charge surrounding a copper (no idea why copper in particular, guess it just had the right chemical properties) slug would detonate on impact, super-heating it and instantly melting it, after which the shock from the explosion would force the molten metal into a thin stream that penetrated armor with both kinetic energy and thermal by melting the steel. The crew in the tank would either be killed by the force of the copper spall or burned to death since they basically just had lava thrown on them.
I've seen a video of a HEAT RPG warhead detonating, you can definitely see the yellow-hot molten metal getting through the armor layers, so the copper isn't just deformed by the explosion, it's liquefied.
@@BorderWise12 yeah I figured that, but irl it goes on the outside so the explosion, which disrupts the stream of copper, does this before the armor and on the outside of the tank
I think the air duck part make sense if you think of it as a grill type armor attachment, which is used to defend against rpg type chemical penetration.
So from what I can gather from this is: HESH will get through a lot of armor but the effectiveness of the frags behind it depend on the armor it has gone through
HEAT: you will always get the same frags at the end but it is a bit of a gamble because they might not make it to the other end,
Awesome video, the explanation on how to counter it is great as well
I would say era is good to save volume. I use it in combination with spaced armor to quite a decent effect.
Awesome video as always mate. One question I do have though what difference would slopped armor make in these examples?
Sloped armor on it's own does nothing against HEAT and HESH. The only times slopes (and poles) are relevant when talking about these shells is if you're using them as free-volume airgaps/spall-catcher. :)
@@BorderWise12 thanks mate I was just wondering if there might be a chance they weight deflect them away or a chance too like they do for tanks
@@andy84denham That's a fair point actually. Why should explosive CRAM shells have a chance to bounce, but explosive APS shells always detonate on contact with the enemy ship? JUSTICE FOR CRAMS!!!
@@Argonwolfproject ahahaha yeah, I'm not entirely sure why HEAT and HESH don't deflect, but that could be because it's effectively an HE head, and from what I remember, those explode on impact as well. Correct me if I'm wrong.
Hmmm now I'll actually have to test the armor of my last battleship. The inside of the outer belt and the outside of the *inner* belt (if that makes sense) were both made of slopes, pointed in opposite directions. With the idea that you have your layers of armor "touching," but still have a pretty decent airgap the whole way.
Sadly it no longer counts as attached, but oh well.
Try using vertical metal poles in place of the slopes, they have more HP and since they aren't a full block you can place them between full blocks and they will act as spaced armor. You could also save space as you would only need one layer, replace both layers with cross-hatched poles for extra effectiveness, leave a void in one layer for buoyancy and extra spaced armor, etc...
Modern spall liner is often the same (pickup) bed liner you'd find at an autoparts store. Even so its hit or miss if even the richest nations use spall liner on a vehicle because everything is heavy and expensive prior to bed liner which just makes it cheap. Lining a APC with kevlar blankets is a difficult choice.
Also modern tanks use various spaced armor so there is rarely a single armor layer between the crew and your shell. As an example the T-72 moved to armor that is many thin metal plates with airgaps that either scatter heat jets or pinch and snap sabot penetrator rods. Provides the equivalent armor thickness of a solid block of metal without being the weight of a solid block of metal. The outer hull is thicker steel to keep things like autocannon rounds from chewing up the delicate innards. Western style composite armor is supposed to work on comparable principles but uses different materials to assist in the breaking up of whatever is penetrating it.
T72 uses reinforced plastic filler called "stekloplastika," rather than air gaps.
The air gap method is used in western chobham armor but it only protects well against shaped charges and HESH. It is not as efficient as its thickness RHA vs APFSDS.
They could totally make ERA worth it by letting it absorb any non-explosive attack entirely. Let a single tile of ERA absorb an effectively infinite amount of damage from a single projectile (except explosive and sufficiently-hardened armor-piercing, though the projectile's own health should be reduced by an immense measure as if it'd been hit by a very powerful anti-munition weapon), without conducting EMP and at least halving, possibly quartering thump damage. I think that's a fair trade. Even a piddly little machine gun could wreck it if its on the outside of a ship, and as an inner layer it's still vulnerable to repeated attacks, but acts as a soft counter to virtually all high-damage single-projectile/beam attacks.
Not a bad idea! It would be nice to have something like that as an option against ridiculously strong railguns or huge missiles. :D
@@BorderWise12 I thought so anyway, and it's not a far stretch of the imagination that a directed explosion could deflect or disintegrate a variety of projectiles before they can inflict their damage.
_totally make ERA worth it by letting it absorb any non-explosive attack entirely. Let a single tile of ERA absorb an effectively infinite amount of damage from a single projectile [...] acts as a soft counter to virtually all high-damage single-projectile/beam attacks._
A) how would that work, as in what kind of physics is that? Nothing in the world is impervious to all possible projectiles, form, material, mass, speeds and income angles?
ERA is basically 2 plates with a sheet of explosives in between. It is using the Misznay-Schardin effect (the blast expands directly away from and perpendicular to the surface. With a substantial heavy back on one side, most of the blast go to the other side. The Claymore mine also works on that principle (except that it is arced to throw the payload over an arc).
B) That makes ERA completely overpowered. What other armour is about impervious to any single shot from a whole range of weapons?
Examples of counters in FtD:
Smoke is a good soft counter against lasers --- but you have to limit your speed. Making you so much more susceptible against CRAM shells ...
Chaff and flares and co degrades firing solutions and tries to lure rockets targetting you. That does not work against non-radar/non-IR detection systems, nor against beam riders --- or torpedoes.
Armour can be a good counter to many weapons but no matter thickness and material, it does take damage.
Shields are great against projectiles or lasers, if they have enough power, but missiles don't care and inertial fuses cause the warhead to explode and that too can take out the shield generator. Also needs a lot of power.
Speed and/or evasive action, especially against slow shells.
Flying/being on land is a hard counter against torpedoes, being under water is a hard counter against missiles without torpedo secondary.
Warping may possibly be a counter against PACs, lasers --- and certainly against shells if you warp far enough.
Light blocks are the only exception, being not really there, but also being susceptible to explosions and being really explody themselves.
ERA is a hard one-time counter against shaped charges (and "heavy ERA", with thicker plates and more explosives, can disturb APFSDS projectiles), but a second hit where the ERA is now gone, will go through --- so tandem warheads (a first HEAT to kill the ERA, a second one to punch through) have been around since the mid 1980s.
So what other hard counters similar to the proposed ERA exist that have a similar broad spectrum?
@@Argonwolfproject _it's not a far stretch of the imagination that a directed explosion could deflect or disintegrate a variety of projectiles before they can inflict their damage._
It's not much a stretch at all ... look up the AMAP-ADS.
* no moving parts
* can be directed to attack a specific part of a projectile
* no shrapnel or fragments from the counter-measure
* uses explosive countermeasures
* directs an explosion against where the projectile will be at about 1m from the object.
Y'know what they say: If it quacks like a duct, you can fucken shoot it - even if it ain't a duct.
a really fun way to protect from fragments is using shields
i actually did this to protect the insides of a large ship that i build
Do ring shields have any effect on the heat and hesh fragments as far as their penetration abilities?
Huh. I'm not sure, I'll have to test that. Definitely worth noting whenever I make a shield tutorial.
it just goes to show how fast this game is changing and developing when theres several armor tutorials made within weeks of each other. (i say weeks but its probably longer, time has lost all meaning)
It seems like armor is completely useless when not knowing which exact weapons your opponent is going to use... imma just go too fast.
ERA is pretty effective against fragments.
I have a large frag missile with cone angle set to 1, it has a lot of modules and it’s capable of penetrating the thickest armor there is. It’ll have no problem going through multiple layers of heavy armor but it got stopped by 3 layers of era.
Interesting... I'll need to test that. Thanks for mentioning it! 👍
Professor Borderwise, I have several questions:
1. How do HEAT and HESH behave when hitting a nonstructural block first, like detection equipment or a barrel?
2. Can I use applique panels to deal with HEAT or HESH and where?
1. HEAT triggers instantly, HESH just delivers explosive/thump damage.
2. Yes, you can. Either on the outside of your craft as ablative armour or as internal space-filler.
Also, fun fact - Sloped armor changes the direction of the -Heat and- Hesh fragments - they will raytrace perpendicular to the impact surface, regardless of the angle of incidence. Thus, it is possible to construct armor in such a way as to prevent -Heat and- Hesh from doing anything significant to things directly behind it with some clever combat geometry - a spike-covered box, for example, would just spit fragments out the other side of the spikes.
Edit: Heat actually doesn't deflect like this, and does appear to be largely unaffected by slopes.
Another armor tutorial? Don't mind if I do.
DDEEEEVVVSSS BUFF ERA!!!
While I understand your dislike of ERA (I don't use it ether), it is the best for stopping large HEAT rounds. Stuff that would shred your inner layer of armour and destroy vital components will instead be stopped dead. And when the ERA is used up you still have an air gap in it's place.
I personally think a better test would have used 8m shells that were mostly HE.
True, but I reckon 8m shells that are mostly HE are best stopped with a LAMS anyway. 😅
I'd also use larger air gaps if I'm up against shells like that. Even very strong HEAT doesn't do much if the fragments spread out too much to focus on single blocks.
a HEAT shell works mostly like an injeccion
it has an inverted cone of copper or other metal whit low melting point inside
upon impact a explosive charge detonates and thus creates a jet of heated super sonic copper
Thanks for all the info :)
I have a couple of further questions:
1. Why not use slope-blocks as spall-liner? They are cheaper after all. Would they change the angle at which the spall emerges?
2. Does the armor bonus from armor stacking affect HEAT and HESH penetration? (i.e. is the pen needed for a double layer of metal sqrt(48)+sqrt(40) or just 2*sqrt(40)?)
3. Why would you ever need a HEAT shell that can pen 8 blocks worth of heavy armor? What kind of insane craft uses this much armor? Shouldn't 2 to 3 blocks of heavy armor or maybe 5 blocks of metal be enough for any sane case?
1. You can use slope blocks, but since they have half the health of beams they're vulnerable to being destroyed by ricocheted fragments.
2. Nope, armour stacking does not affect HESH and HEAT penetration.
3. There are late game craft which have the functional equivalent (due to angles of engagement) of 8+ layers of HA, particularly GT and SD craft. Max-pen HEAT can prove useful against them.
@@BorderWise12 Thanks, I didn't think of the increased effective thickness of armor when hitting at an angle.
The duct thing might be sort of like those grill things they put on tanks?
Maybe? It wasn't intentional, though, since their HEAT-blocking properties have been patched out.
Hello borderwise, today I decided that I wanted to make a custom campaign, do you have any ideas for any factions (besides CRAM and canoes)?
Try to distinguish them aesthetically as much as possible? Various color schemes, hull shapes, decorations etc.
Try and make a submarine-only faction, that could be fun.
@@BorderWise12 I shall call the submarine bois the BulkHeads.
ERA is supposed to be placed as the first line of defence, not as a liner between layers. It’s supposed to take the blow before it gets to anything behind it.
what's the current role of applique panels in armor. I remember them being useful as a spawl catcher and having some interesting properties with HEAT/HESH.
It's basically ablative armour. It's a high AC block you can dump on any surface you want some all-round protection on, or used to fill in internal spaces if buoyancy isn't an issue.
I use it as last inner layer.. to stop fragments and other which pen the outer layers and as reinforcement for the inner HA layer.
What about applique against those shells?
Also putting ERA around ammo storage saves surroundings from ammo explosions... maybe it's useful if heavy armor is too heavy or expensive for craft
Applique can work, but doesn't really have enough health to stand up to more hefty HEAT/HESH shells. ERA does nothing against HE damage, so it does nothing for ammo explosions.
@@BorderWise12 oh, i swear it used to mitigate explosions by substancial ammount... maybe i just dreamt it
Regarding ERA, how often is there two shots coming to the exact same 1x1 area at the same angle?
Good question. I might've overemphasized that point in the video, but there's still two considerations there:
1. You could be up against a 10RPM HEAT gun, in which case the chance is almost nil... or against a 2400RPM gun, in which case it's extremely likely.
2. HEAT is probably not the only type of damage coming at you. HE, thump and kinetics rip right through ERA much more easily than other means of HEAT defense, which means using ERA is compromising your defense against other forms of damage as well as being questionable HEAT defense in the first place.
Why not have an interior lining of ERA so it leaves an air gap when it is destroyed and not immediately taken out with HE
Sure, why not?
Is there a way to tank large torps on the hull? I have at least 5 layers of metal and 1-2 torps = big hole.
Active defences > armour when it comes to large torps. But if armour is what you want, then spaced armor works better than thick armor: a torpedo can only blow up one layer of armor at a time if its payload can't actually reach the second layer. The downside is that requires your hull to be a LOT bigger and be able to have its buoyancy survive the resulting damage.
duct are op for stopping ap shell
Heat Spam will never not be effective especially against tanks or other compact vehicles.
Compact vehicles are fucked anyway lol.
Those ducts tanking heat like nothing, remind me when applique panels where first added, they used to be completely immune to heat. Thank god they fix that applique panels nonsense.
What would be the best way to defeat multiple air gaps? A mixed Heat and Hesh pounding?
Kinetic penetrators... which will be covered in the next armour tutorial. 😉
APHE shell
Fudge your heat shell my 6 layers of HA with 2 air gaps and then another one layer or 3 layers of heavy armour will stop all dead in tracks
Also ring shields
Borderwise, which from the depths faction represents you the most?
Building-wise? Probably the Steel Striders, since they build an array of weird boats and prefer guns over energy weapons.
Spiritually? I like to hide in my corner of the world and be content, so that would be the Onyx Watch or Gray Talons. XD
@@BorderWise12
What about LH, I don't think they have any enemies outright and just sit there accumulating materials
@@CreeperDude-cm1wv The Twin Guard and the Steel Striders both hate them with a passion. They attacked and stole tech from the TG and are allied with a faction of psychotic murderous death cultists.
fun part is HESH exists irl simply to deal with highly angled armor
which this game basically doesn't calculate
FtD calculates angled armor, that said I have no idea if HESH is better against it like irl
what is the difference of kinetic damage vs thump damage?
Short version: kinetic shells penetrate multiple layers of blocks in a straight line, whereas thump spreads its damage outwards.
12:50 thats only true in FTD, as in real life its copper that goes true armor creating spaling and damaging the armor both in the outside and in the inside, its just a supersonic jet of very thin coper passing true armor like a hot knife true butter
Hold up, if ERA was considered a structural block, and only has 3 armor, didn't that make it a better spall liner than wood (which has 8) at the time this video came out? Obviously not anymore, with the changes to ERA in place that specifically make ERA die against any HESH shockwave that's already going, but it would have been interesting to try.
Not really? It had so little health that it would get destroyed by riccocheted spalling framents.
@@BorderWise12 Good to know, I guess. Thanks for satisfying my curiosity :)
you know you can program an acb to activate when you press q on it, os no need to enter ui all the time
aslo you could set up a complex control button for that acb
Lol I did wonder why he didn't just put the cannon ACB on its own little platform adjacent to the test target.
HESH is really bad today against over 3m HA beam. Because the HESH's frag spread way too high angle, it normally won't hit any important component. Rarely use for Godly endgame craft now. rail-gun Hollow point with sabot body is more dangerous.
Hears borderwise talking about tank shells...
*~weird tank nerd noises~*
HEAT, hollow charge or a more descriptive name shaped charge just focuses the chemical energy into a point or shape you need.
Nothing magical or advanced about it. You can even use a simple bag of water between a wall and charge to knock a hole using very little explosive
The British and Indian armies are the only countries that use HESH ammunition in their tanks, but even the British are going to end that. The British and Indians retained rifled tank barrels specifically because they wanted to use HESH, but standard HE (NATO) or HE Frag (Russian) does the job nearly as well and smoothbore guns are just as cheap. Accuracy does not suffer bc smoothbore guns use fin-stabilized rounds. Even the Indians only use HESH on old Chieftains and the shit-tier Arjun MBT, but they are disappointed with those and ended up just buying T-90s and T-72s from Russia.
Yeah, so HESH is on its way out. It was a good round for many decades, but advancements modern armor have made them worthless for anything except destroying structures which, again, is done almost as well with standard HE. The Challenger 3 will be joining the rest of the world by using a smoothbore gun.
Wouldn't that make ERA the best spall liner because of it's lower AC and being a full structural block?
Arguably... but wood is cheaper, buoyant and comes in bigger beams.
Wood is ugly and has limited uses. 😁
ERA is more protective against many different incoming fire.
Does rubber nullify thump damage?
It used to, but not anymore. It works against collisions with other craft and terrain, but not against weapon-based thump damage.
@@BorderWise12 Wow, so in other words they removed a perfect feature. How silly of them.
@@Argonwolfproject Well... was it perfect? I don't really have an opinion either way, but it did feel a little ridiculous to cover a ship in rubber to protect against 1700m/s 500mm HP railgun shells. Rubber isn't generally bulletproof, after all. 😅
@@BorderWise12 Oh my bad, I was assuming it behaved like another comment I'd made in that it was kind of like a surge protector for thump, absorbing an unusually large amount in the process of being destroyed rather than completely ignoring it.
duct? you mean *-ahem-* caged armor?
Yall have armor?
They should update ERA to have the hability to destroy the shells midair without detonating them. I mean, that's what they do in real life, isn't it...?
No.. it's one use. you will find quite some videos here about era
Wait, hold up... if ERA armor is a structural block with lower armor than wood, not counting material cost, wouldn't that make it better spall liner than wood? As spall liner, it would then also have the niche use of protecting against 180* FRAP shells (AP frag) for hull integrity. Granted, with cost included, ERA is still rubbish. But if cost was no objective, theoretically, wouldn't this be true?
You have a point, I didn't think of that or test it. But wood is so much cheaper than ERA, buoyant and comes in 4m beam variants that I reckon that overall it's still a better material to use.
@@BorderWise12 Admittedly yes on the cheapness factor. You could cover five times the area for the same cost. But if it still stops HEAT dead when placed on the inside of a craft, that would make it ideal for small craft like tanks to deal with HEAT and HESH simultaneously in confined space where airgaps are not possible.
@@shawnreed343 Yes, ERA is arguably more useful for them... except that internal HA poles and slopes still work better for that. 😅
@@BorderWise12 Fair point. XD Seems ERA needs a price reduction. :P
imagine how 🅱razy it would be if his highness mr smart man adds more niche armor solutions like ERA but actually useful
Would be cool to have armor blocks that slowly repair themselves by sharing damage with adjacent blocks, allowing damage from a direct hit to be slowly dissipated over the whole surface of continuous armor blocks.
@@Argonwolfproject a solid version of smoke defense could be interesting but it might be too much of a hard counter
@@wackodestroyer8864 Perhaps. Since shields and smoke can stack to leave a laser at like
Why have 1-2 air gaps within your armour, when you can have 1-2 thousand in front of it - structural blocks are the worst armour
So... let me get this straight. XD
Air gaps are good because shells don't usually hit the same spot multiple times but instead spread out all over the ship. So in spite of the damage done being permanent (in the scope of the battle) until the block is actually destroyed, this spreading-out makes normal airgaps a very good strategy despite being incredibly bulky and creating structural issues in some cases.
ERA is _bad_ because shells might hit the same one twice in a row and it doesn't work at all against the second one.
So aside from the obvious double standard here (one is good because shells don't hit the same spot twice; one is bad because they still might on rare occasions), am I the only one who's noticed that once the ERA block is gone, _the space where it was is now an air gap?_
Not to mention, ERA is extremely quick, easy, and cheap to repair, and I believe I saw an option somewhere to prioritize it.
I think the entire FtD community is stuck on an old notion that ERA is useless. I don't think it is anymore. Its "uselessness" was based on ideas from a time when ERA represented a gap in the armor stacking chain while certain blocks like poles, allowed stacking to continue through them while still acting as air gaps. That totally isn't a thing anymore. When I'm back on FtD, I'll have to do some objective testing for whether ERA really is as useless as common wisdom says, or if common wisdom has forgotten to update with the changing landscape as I suspect.
Just anecdotally, I've had enemy ERA ruin my day thoroughly many times, even if just used primarily decoratively on the outside of a tank. Even if two shells hit the exact same block twice in a row, the ERA is often repaired before the second one can land! And that's without a particularly long refire rate.
Edit: Okay, that's just not fair. ERA would go _in between the two layers of metal_ if used properly, and _be_ the airgap. The question isn't "can ERA completely negate the need for an airgap?" It's "Is the extra defense against HEAT/HESH ERA presents as the armor _in_ an airgap worth the cost vs just air, or better/worse than the usual angled beams for its cost?"
1. "So aside from the obvious double standard here..."
It's not quite a double standard, because air gaps/slopes/poles still survive being shot twice better than ERA does. My phrasing certainly could have been better, but that point still stands.
2. "...am I the only one who's noticed that once the ERA block is gone, the space where it was is now an air gap?"
You are so far the only one to miss in that in that specific example, the air gap was not between two layers of armor but between the armor and the wood representing a vital component. If you're relying on destroyed ERA leaving an air gap, you might as well save on block count and have a full gap or armored slopes/poles in the space instead.
3. "Not to mention, ERA is extremely quick, easy, and cheap to repair, and I believe I saw an option somewhere to prioritize it."
It's still more expensive than not needing to repair blocks at all (like if you use methods that spread out damage so it doesn't destroy any blocks), and there is no such option for repair bots as I mentioned in the video.
4. "I think the entire FtD community is stuck on an old notion that ERA is useless. Its "uselessness" was based on ideas from a time when ERA represented a gap in the armor stacking chain while certain blocks like poles, allowed stacking to continue through them while still acting as air gaps. That totally isn't a thing anymore."
The community is still right in this case. Poles and slopes (especially HA) can still hold up better to HEAT than ERA, even with the armor stacking changes. Ducts render it almost entirely superfluous.
5. "When I'm back on FtD, I'll have to do some objective testing for whether ERA really is as useless as common wisdom says, or if common wisdom has forgotten to update with the changing landscape as I suspect."
So you have not done recent testing, but you still feel qualified to comment now? Were the tests I demonstrated in the video not sufficient?
6. "Just anecdotally, I've had enemy ERA ruin my day thoroughly many times, even if just used primarily decoratively on the outside of a tank."
I will admit that ERA is far more useful on smaller craft like tanks, where large airgaps are less feasible. It mimics real-life in this instance, where it's often used on tanks but never on ships. If you have the luxury of bigger size, ERA is outclassed by other forces of defense,
7. "Okay, that's just not fair. ERA would go in between the two layers of metal if used properly, and be the airgap."
It's perfectly fair. If you have to sandwich it between two layers in the place of an airgap, you might as well stick slopes or poles in there instead.
7. "The question isn't "can ERA completely negate the need for an airgap?" It's "Is the extra defense against HEAT/HESH ERA presents as the armor in an airgap worth the cost vs just air, or better/worse than the usual angled beams for its cost?""
In my opinion it is not. It is extra block count and material expense for a generally minor increase in defense that's basically useless against all other forms of damage.
In contrast, true air gaps, poles and slopes are useful against explosive, kinetic and thump damage as well.
ERA only starts to outcompete gaps/poles/slopes when dealing with very powerful HEAT shells that are likely best dealt with by being shot down by a LAMS instead.
To conclude: ERA might not be entirely useless, but it's considerably less useful than other forms of defense.
@@BorderWise12 Well, I played extensively as little as two weeks ago, and in general I have often found on my own testing that what the community "knows" is simply incorrect. Therefore I tend not to take people's word for it unless it's backed up by math or testing; and no, the tests you demonstrated in the video were not, in my opinion, sufficient.
What I would do myself would be to compare build cost, maintenance cost, and "uptime" of an ERA-filled airgap vs. a metal 4m beam slope filled airgap at sufficient range that hits on precisely the same block twice in succession are fairly unlikely.
By "uptime" I mean... if a HEAT shell comes in that would deal, say, 1,000 damage to metal were to hit a 4m metal beam (with 1680 health), it would leave it with 680 health. That damage, within the scope of a battle, is permanent; neither repair bots nor the Rambot can fix it until the block gets destroyed, or the craft is pulled from play and put back into play. So the next time that block gets hit with another HEAT shell _at any time in the future,_ some damage will get through. Then the beam will take some time to repair. Let's say that's nominally 20 seconds. Even a relatively slow gun firing at 15 RPM would thus get several more chances for a shell to hit there again, this time with no mitigation whatsoever. If the gun is set with a long enough single-block targeting scheme, that might even be relatively likely.
Comparatively, the ERA block in line with that first HEAT shell would simply mutually delete the HEAT stream and itself. It can then be repaired up to full health. If that only takes, say, 3 seconds, then provided a repair bot or the Rambot is focused on repairing it, that same 15 RPM gun gets _zero_ chances to hit that same spot again without defenses in place.
In this scenario, the ERA would be objectively better against HEAT and HESH. Yes, it would be twice as expensive as 1/4th of a beam slope and have nowhere near the health, but in some ways, that lack of health is an advantage. If every other shot that hits the beam slope destroys it and it must then be repaired for 5 materials, the ERA is also cheaper to maintain in the long-run if it costs less than 2.5 materials to repair (I think it costs 1, but that could well have changed at some point).
Does that make it worth using? Ehhhh... probably not. But is it a conversation worth having? Yes, absolutely.
You're probably right that ERA is more useful on very small vehicles. But I do think it could have a place in critical component defense on larger craft, protected from non-penetrators by other layers of armor, just there to prevent "lucky hits" on things like turret bases, turret necks, mainframes, or single-block lines of AI connectors running a large cluster of detection. I don't think some off-hand tests, not using it in its optimal use case, in an unrealistic test scenario with pinpoint accuracy and no repair, are worthy of declaring unilaterally that "ERA is worthless except for being pretty".
Also, I think your test of ERA vs. Frag wasn't what was meant. I suspect ERA can simply delete a fragment that hits it, but that isn't what your test checked for. You had the ERA on the outside, so it was hit first by the shell's kinetic impact, which destroyed it. Then its explosion destroyed the ones around it. Then the frags spawned and destroyed the wood behind it. Instead I'd like to see something like a single layer of metal, then an airgap, then ERA, then another layer of metal, then internals. That way the metal takes the kinetic and HE damage, the frags spawn, finish destroying the metal, then get deleted.
To me, ERA isn't completely useless... and in your reply here, you seem to have concluded the same. I _definitely_ don't think it's useful as part of a ship-wide armor scheme. It's also _definitely_ not useful for an endurance-based armor scheme as the outer layer. It's definitely not useful as the only thing between main armor and internals. Yet those are exactly the three scenarios you tested in order to demonstrate its uselessness.
Where I think it does have a use is on small, nimble craft like tanks and hovers that don't get hit often, and don't carry enough materials to do _lots_ of repairs, but can do _some_. Those occasional hits could be repaired quickly and cheaply to have it ready to take another occasional stray hit. I also think they probably have a use protecting truly vital components, deep within the structure of a larger vehicle behind many other layers of defenses, as a stop-gap against those "lucky shots" that HEAT, especially, is usually searching for. That time when the first shot fired in a battle hits a corner of your armor layout just right to penetrate all the way through, and shears off a turret cap or even an entire turret could very well be worth just going, "Nope, you didn't happen, DELETE" to for 5 materials. But since "everybody knows ERA is useless", nobody that I know of has tried such use cases for it.
This is compounded by the fact that faction craft can't really make proper use of ERA since they're not allowed to repair. I could perhaps see a more expensive but also more effective version of the wood+repair armor scheme, with a lattice of ERA and metal struts perhaps, or even wood struts. Of course, that could be completely worthless. But we won't know until we test it.
Finally... of course duct cheese completely outclasses ERA. It outclasses everything right now. Not only is it good as an uber-tough "airgap", it's also stupendously good to just spam as your outer layer, as it has very low drag regardless of what's behind it. I totally agree with your assessment that ducts are going to be patched any day now. The way they're behaving right now cannot possibly be intended behavior. They almost certainly (this is FtD after all, so only "almost") do not intend little grates of metal to be both the best armor in the game and also allow a flat brick wall to fly faster than a streamlined needle. It's gonna be fixed, so I don't consider that to be any kind of evidence against ERA at all.
Anyway, I didn't mean any disrespect... I apologize if it came across that way. I often post links to your videos in the #ftd-help channel on the official Discord when new players are asking for help with fundamental concepts that take a long time to explain over and over again as people come and go. You're a pillar of the FtD community... I just think you jumped the gun a bit on this video on the HESH thing, and didn't give ERA a fair shake (which to be fair, nobody does).
@@BorderWise12 Oh, also, I just forgot I meant to point out...
In my mind, ERA is simply not competing against metal. It's competing against _wood._ It has a higher up-front cost, but the same operating/repair cost (I believe), and a little less durability, but in exchange it's (I believe) even faster to repair, and has some added functionality that makes it _actually_ perform the spall liner job that wood used to before the HESH changes.
I think, in fact, it may be best used as the _innermost_ layer. Which is, of course, completely contrary to both real-world usage and in-game description, but if we were to list all the ways in which FtD isn't just non-realistic but actively anti-realistic, we'd be here a long while. XD
P.S. I could swear I saw the ability to prioritize ERA repair, or that it's automatically prioritized somewhere. Maybe it was in some deep dark menu or tooltip buried in the game... maybe it was in a patch note. Or maybe I'm just remembrinventing it, I dunno... but I distinctly remember thinking, "Oh, _that_ could be a game-changer. I need to re-investigate ERA sometime in light of that."
Eh, fair enough. Still don't reckon ERA is worth it 99% of the time, but the great thing about FtD is that I keep getting surprised about people manage to pull off in it. 😄
ERA is worth in 99% of time.. it can replace (heavy) armour and is cheaper and much quicker repaired.
.. but in FTD you must place it inside (your airgap and with a few rapairbots).
Most used armour in FTD is "old school" .. and poking around little numbers 😉
The best armour ist the one which is not needed... Also heavy battleships are outdated (but cool).
I build just up to destroyer class and use:
alloy (slopes) - ERA (with some repairbots and surge protectors) - alloy - rubber (where needed) - applique - HA (where needed, quite often slopes) .. the craft is lighter, needs less power, more agile, is cheaper to build and run.
As addition potent CIWS, AM, AT, ECM, baits and projectile avoidance and 2-3 mainframes.
Together with an decent offence strike; there is not long incoming fire .. and not much armour needed. 😊
War thunder Tank RB Players be like:
Well ... i‘ll guess i die!
War Thunder Tanker: *watches video*
...
*puts large metal poles into turret*
Well shit, here I go replacing all of the rubber in my fleet.
I though it worked because it would make sense but nope.
Still the best option for stealth. Especially now that the stupid ECM jammers only affect wireless connections and don't jam sensors.
HEAT IRL doesn't "morph" it's way through armor or explode on the other side.
The easiest way to visualize a HEAT round is imagining someone taking a garden hose, pressing it against a piece of metal and cranking it up to 500000%. It is going to piss the worst concentrated stream of metal pee you've ever seen, composing in parts of the internal liner from the projectile and the armor itself that was in the way but neither of them is going to be "melted". Just quite hot from friction.
Contrary to what many people think, thermals have nothing to do with the actual penetration aspect as HEAT would then not work at all on most ceramics or sufficiently large armor plates as most metals have good thermal conductivity. This is seen every day in the civilian industry on how you need different welders to work on thicker pieces of metal because they're just too good at distributing thermal energy quickly.
.. a shaped charge/HEAT will melt truh armour.. it's an chemical "welding torch."
You will find quite some IRL videos here. 😉
@@meRlinX1980 .. I literally just explained in detail what happens and again, thermals have little to nothing to do with it.
Like, seriously. Do you know how much heat you would need to melt through a giant ton-weighted slabs of steel? They have such good heat conductivity, you're basically limited to stick welding the things with 100+ Amp.
Some of those calculations seem random
Your test for Eras vs heat was kinda unfair, Having Metal - era - Wood is 3 thick while your next test was metal -gap-metal-gap wood 5 thick as we all know size gives big advantages in ftd. I also think your not considering the fact that once the era is destroyed it still acts as an airgap in the worst case scenario meaning no matter what its better then just an airgap, only question there is is it worth the cost. Now regarding using slopes instead its seems that they are about even to me, era will stop even the strongest heat shell but will be wasted to smaller ones while a slope would stop a lot of the weaker ones but once they get strong enough it would be butter. Also for the frag test I think what was happening was the shell broke the first era with kinetic then the frags were able to spread out, i would like to see an airbusrst test to see if they are more effective at that.
thick armour isn't actually all that much of a defence because inverse square root scaling is pretty lousy. four times the thickness to half the damage, sixteen times the thickness to quarter it etc. probably not worth it most of the time