Apcalc

[Kiwikkiwik]

I found an odd number in APCALC
In the Italian OOB wpn 61 best HE is 45

I dont know if this is an issue or not but HEAT penetrations shown in Mobhack are not the same as in APCALC.

Italian OOB wpns 245 mobhack HEAT Penetration is 5 but 4 in APCALC
Italian OOB wpns 247 mobhack HEAT Penetration is 10 but 8/9 in APCALC
and several others that I looked at.

AP penetrations seem to match exactly in both applications though.

[scorpio_rocks]

My understanding is that APCALC gives the average and best figures from 1000 "rolls".


AP is affected by range and angle but is not itself (very) variable so average will be very close, HE, HEAT, HESH, etc is unaffected by range but has a large amount of variability so the average will be further from the given theoretical number.


(I Think!)

[Mobhack]

weapon 61 has warhead 44 - an obvious error that contributes to the penetration. Likely a double tap of 4, many years ago. Something to fix for the next release.

HEAT (and AP) are an average of 1000 shots per range bucket. HEAT is very variable - look at best HEAT as an example (best shot of the sample of 1000). HEAT can use fail or not fully develop, especially WW2 vs MBT HEAT ammo, and in rare cases can over penetrate. So a reliable figure of 4 for that weapon is well within the bounds.

[DRG]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

weapon 61 has warhead 44 - an obvious error that contributes to the penetration. Likely a double tap of 4, many years ago. Something to fix for the next release.

Now corrected. Error traced to 2016. certainly the result of a double tap of 4. WH size had been 5 and should have been 4

[Kiwikkiwik]

Actually this is not caused by variation, which I hoped to show with the AP results comparison.
Anyway,
If you look at the first 10 HEAT weapons in the German OOB you get this. These are weapon number, apcalc HEAT penetration value and mobhack HEAT penetration value,
21,3,4,22,3,4,23,3,4,31,4,5,32,4,5,33,6,7,35,2,3,3 6,6,7,41,8,9,42,4,5.
Yes there it is, the Mobhack value is always exactly one more than the Apcalc value, and again for every one of these weapons with an AP penetration the AP penetrations match perfectly in both applications.

To me it appears that one of the applications is right and one is wrong.

So again I don't know if this is a problem, but the chances of this being random are, well pretty unlikely.

[DRG]

APCalc does not have a help file becasue there has been no need for one.....up until now but becasue it's been in the game unchanged for years we forget that everyone doesn't know how it works

Please note that it has HEAT Pen and BEST Heat pen. AP calc is solely based on game code and that shows the range of penetrations possible AVERAGED on 1000 samples for those HEAT weapons and if you click from one to another enough times you will see that those values can change slightly as the randoms built into the code come into play.

So your first example for German weapon 21--4.7cm PaK 177i in MOBHack has a nominal HEAT pen of 4.....but the IN GAME range of HEAT penetration for that round can be anything from as low as 3 to as high as 7.

There is no bug or error. What you are seeing is the normal variations for HEAT weapons in both games. What that perhaps should be named is minimum HEAT PEN ( assuming penetration occurs ) and Maximum HEAT pen possible

[jivemi]

Originally Posted by DRG

So your first example for German weapon 21--4.7cm PaK 177i in MOBHack has a nominal HEAT pen of 4.....but the IN GAME range of HEAT penetration for that round can be anything from as low as 3 to as high as 7.

There is no bug or error. What you are seeing is the normal variations for HEAT weapons in both games. What that perhaps should be named is minimum HEAT PEN ( assuming penetration occurs ) and Maximum HEAT pen possible

Which goes a long way to explaining why my precious T-90As with frontal armor against HEAT of well over 100 get damaged by Javelins with minumum PEN of 90. Didn't you say this game was unpredictable ?

[Mobhack]

Javelins are top-attack missiles, so they get more than the average top armour hits - therefore the front armour is usually irrelevant. The thin roof armour is what gets attacked. Also note what I said above - HEAT can (like solid shot) also over-penetrate as well as having fuse failures (0 or so pen). penetration is a bell-curve distribution, statistically. Bigger HEAT (and AP) will do overall due to size (WH) than little ones, and little ones like 40mm grenades, are penalised since they may make a little hole and blow out the ear-wax of the crew, but unless the teeny jet hits something vital, they are firecrackers. Bigger bang (WH) is better, especially for chemical energy rounds.

[Kiwikkiwik]

This time I went through the entire German OOB about 74 Heat Weapons. Same pattern.
For every weapon except 1 the APCALC Heat penetration value is LESS than the Mobhack value. For 1 is is the same. If the diffence between Mobhack and APCALC were random then wouldn't you expect at least 1 APCALC value to be MORE than the Mobhack value in a sample set of 74? it never is.
The one exception is the weapon 83 flamenwerfer, but weapon 108 Flamenwerfer is like the rest one less than Mobhack, this may give you a hint as to what the discrepency is caused by.
Also interesting is that for 10.5 cm and above the difference becomes 2 less in APCALC than Mobhack. A couple of very large warheads consistently got less 3 in APCALC than Mobhack.

[Mobhack]

Mobhack is not a calculator - its an editor. The value there is the base AP value.

APcalc is a calculation, based on 1000 rounds "fired" via the game code. Its an average of the 1000 rounds, so the value won't be the same as the base value, since HEAT is an unreliable chemical munition. The 1000 shot average therefore is quite likely to fall below the nominal value shown in Mobhack. the "best" figure for HEAT will show the best round out of 1000 with no saying whether 1 or 5 or so rounds achieved that score.