AP use confusion

[Imp]

Originally Posted by jp10

Not to argue against the many fine points made here, but in the decade after WW1, during the 'Infantry Tank verses Cruiser Tank' debates, the AP function of the gun was more for an anti-material role (especially bunkers) than shooting other tanks. Some designs had a small bursting charge to explode if the round failed to penetrate.
My point being, with these early small bore or infantry support role tanks, maybe the AP function should be considered for short range shots at fortifications and light vehicles, not tank battles.
I don't suppose the ability to 'turn off' selected weapon systems on a unit could be tweaked to allow an ammo type to be not used, allowing a player to select a particular ammo for whatever reasons they foresee?

In the rare cases like this one it would make no diffrence HE would be used against bunkers to.
Selecting ammo has been covered before & is unrealistic the game does a very good job using the right round most of the time. Modern tanks with hunter killer capabilities are realisticly probably the only tanks that can do that consistently.
There are rare occasions when it uses a a sabot or heat round to destroy a target it could possibly have used an AP round on.
If that tank has a low loadout of sabot or HEAT rounds you do need to take that into account when playing if your AP is not up to the job. Restrict range use oppfire filter or make sure if placed in an opfire position it will only fire at one target so the shots improve in accuracy.

The tank discussed here has no real AT capability whatsoever, it would probably need to get lucky just to knock a track off. Using to supprt the infantry & let them assault even just with grenades could work better.
If possible arty strike then several squads, tanks tend to need to be suppressed for a grenade to work & if hit hard enough might even bail out.
Think this works with Japan most countries this era it wont the infantry will suffer a high ratio of tank panic.

[KV7]

The Soviet T-28 M1938 seems to never fire its 10 AP rounds; even though the main gun does 6 pen for AP and only 2 for HE.

I tried kludging it by giving it two guns; one only with HE and one only with AP so the user can select the firing round by turning off the relevant fire slot (this trick can be nice for gunships too to allow select fire for the rockets - as you can choose to fire HE rockets to button the tank then come in close to use the AP)

This fixes the unit as it can now fire the AP and kill flimsy early war Polish/Finnish/German tanks.

For some reason the BT CS tanks manage to fire their AP rounds and to good effect.

[Mobhack]

Just ran a test - both tanks use the same gun, and both fired HE since the HE was deemed as good as the AP.

That's wrong, and needs to be investigated further - the code that determines which ammo type is picked seems a bit too biased towards HE over AP (The former is less reliable than the last, so if evens, AP ammo should be the natural pick).

[KV7]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

Just ran a test - both tanks use the same gun, and both fired HE since the HE was deemed as good as the AP.

That's wrong, and needs to be investigated further - the code that determines which ammo type is picked seems a bit too biased towards HE over AP (The former is less reliable than the last, so if evens, AP ammo should be the natural pick).

Yes I see you are correct about the CS BT - however the CS BT used to (some or one mod ago) fire with the AP. Early game the AP round used to be pretty useful.

[Mobhack]

It'll just need a tweak if APpen==HEpen, go for AP - not HE as it does at present (HE being ammo type 0, and AP 1, the lower number currently wins, this needs reversing)

[KV7]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

It'll just need a tweak if APpen==HEpen, go for AP - not HE as it does at present (HE being ammo type 0, and AP 1, the lower number currently wins, this needs reversing)

It is not so good that the algorithm judges them to be equally good; 6 vs 2 is a pretty large gap. I don't think I have ever killed a tank with the HE round from that gun actually.

Even if it was say 6 vs 3 or 5 vs 3 I would still want to fire the AP; and the fix you suggest might not work as it may judge the HE to be superior.

I suppose the best case would be to base it on the median effect in the armor calc.

[DRG]

Happily, in this case, we know exactly where this needs to be tweaked