Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

Hello,
Maybe I'm not good for that but I can't find any To hit/kill formulas anywhere in the html doc or the paper manual. I vaguely recall having seen something for basic SP (or maybe it was SPWaW ?) but don't remember anything precisely !
Is this info available somewhere ?

BTW, I wonder how does the game can determine impact angles on AFV hits, as armor angle is not modelled in the vehicle data ?

Re: Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

BTW, I wonder how does the game can determine impact angles on AFV hits, as armor angle is not modelled in the vehicle data ?

A vehicle on level 2 terrain being fired on by a weapon on level 0 terrain is going to generate an angle.

Re: Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

1) You will not see any to hit/kill formulae, since these were to be kept secret as SSI proprietary information, as part of the deal where the code was haded over.

2) Armour angle is modelled for the horizontal angle-off of the firer to the target. That is based on the relative angular position of shooter and target. A strike at an acute angle on the side armour of a tank facing you can result in a greater effective thickness than a flat-on frontal strike for example.

Cheers
Andy

Re: Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

Oh, I didn't know the formulas were still secret ! I find this a rather weird idea also, now we have every tool to make new weapons/units but still don't know how the values actually works...

About angles, taking into account firer/target elevation difference without knowing the base armor angle give good or wrong results depending on the basic angle : a shot from a 30° angle (from horizontal) due to elevation on a 0° (ie vertical, Tiger front plate for example) armor actually advantages the target with a final angle of 30°, whereas the same shot on an 40° angled armor (T-34 hull...) advantages the firer lowering the angle to 10°...
Things are even more complicated when firing from below target, because here the angles can go up quite high (to 70°+) but there's also a chance to hit the AFV soft "bellow" (bottom armor)...
Well, that's not a very important factor dur to game scale, but taking it "halfways" into account is not very satisfying.
(yes, I'm a grumbler, I know.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif )

Re: Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

It's that or a visit from the MIB *nods* [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon27.gif[/img]

Re: Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

If you want that kind of modelling, you should look at SPWAW, as they changed the armour penetration formulas from the original SSI formulae.

In any case, if you want this level of detail, then there is a lot of things that should be changed or added, including for example, ammunition types. AP reacts differently form APC which acts a bit differenctly from APCBC which acts differently from APBC which acts differently from APCR which acts differently from APCNR which is almost like APDS. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

As for taking into account vertical angles, you really need a system that can place both firerer and target in a 3D enviroment that takes into account their relative positions and the slope of the armour (which is not listed separately in this game). Which basically amounts to a new game engine, IMHO.

The comparatively simple data and formulas used in SPWW2 works surprisingly well and certainly well enough for a game of this scale.

As for making new units, what is the problem? If you know the thickness of the armour and the angle at which it is sloped, you just do what has already been done with all the other armoured targets in the database: Convert the armour thickness to LOS thickness by this formula (which is no secret and has been posted on either this or the SPMBT forum previously):

Y/cos(Z)=X

- where Y is the thickness of the armour plate (in the T34-front 45mm), Z is the angle of the armour, with vertical=0 (in the T34-front 60 degrees) and X is the effective thickness of the armour.

Then your new units works exactly like any other unit in the game.

Claus B

Re: Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

cbo,
I agree, SPWW2 doesn't need penetration angle calculation, and we can do away with ammo type as well. For that I have Combat Mission that do it quite correctly.
Then why make it halfway (or rather 5%-way) by including a "crude" elevation angle and not all the rest?

As for the need for formulas we did not need them for armor calculation, I know it's just a 0° equivalent thickness.
But if I want to add some weapon or infantry unit I just can guess about a whole lot of parameters or copy some from similar weapons.

Re: Formulas for To Hit/Kill chances ?
 

As I recall from playing the game, if the firer is higher, there is an increased chance of top hits.