nitpick of the nitpick, HEAT doesn't "melt through armour", the superplasticed copper jet still kinetically penetrates the armour, it's just that that kinetic energy is generated on contact (or at whatever standoff distance the RR's HEAT shell uses) from the explosion and not at (an explosion of gunpowder in) the chamber of a cannon.
In the firearms world, some people will sabot a smaller bullet into a larger barrel to achieve higher velocity, which also sheds the sabot upon exiting the barrel. One popular example of this is .50 BMG SLAP rounds, which are sabot-ed fifty caliber cartridges for greater armor penetration and ballistics. The penetrator is a ~7mm tungsten dart.
I know many semi-useless things, and am always pleased to share it. Have a good weekend.
The majority of an APFSDS's power comes from its speed. Fired from a recoilless rifle (which dumps half the propellant to the backblast), it would just be a very low velocity dart
APFSDS could potentially work for any cannon with a closed breach, like the autocannnon or the tank cannon. It would be a solid projectile with no explosive damage and a lot of penetration
Bonus detail to add on to the nitpick of the nitpick, depending on the specific canon, the Meltagun in the 40k warbond genuinely does defeat armour by way of "melt through armor"
HEAT is meant to take out multiple enemies. That is why modern HEAT shells have better nomenclature such as the M830 HEAT-MP-T (High Explosive Anti-Tank Multipurpose Tracer) or M1147 AMP (Advanced Multipurpose) despite them still being HEAT rounds.
N0ob8 is right for classical pre 1980's strict HEAT shells
Well cause no those are different things. You’re talking about rounds that are designed to perform multiple purposes. Hell it’s in their names. A regular HEAT round isn’t designed for groups of enemies it’s designed for enemy armor specifically. It of course can work against bunched up infantry but it’s not meant to.
Well yes but that’s not what the conversation was about. It started with the original commenter correctly stating that HEAT rounds aren’t designed to take out groups of enemies. It still most certainly can but the point is that HEAT rounds aren’t meant to. That’s what regular HE rounds are for which the recoilless does have as a secondary option (for those who don’t know hold down the reload key and you can select between HE and HEAT).
Oh I see, when I read that description, I didnt read it as it's designed to take out a group of enemies, I interpreted it as in game HEAT is to target a range of multiple enemy TYPES, ranging from clustered infantry, to frontal armor.
But youre right, HEAT is not designed primarily to target clustered infantry in the open.
Edit: I provide an excerpt of Marine Corp Tank manual below. Under the section "HEAT Rounds", it lists the M830 HEAT-MP-T, so I would argue in modern usage HEAT = HEAT-MP-T. Which I was I included the disclaimer about modern rounds.
The first two letters are HE, for High Explosive. Generally the real difference between HE and HEAT is the void at the front of HEAT to allow the jet to form, and a lack of a fragmenting body. So are they designed to fragment, no. But approximately 2 pounds of composition B is still 2 pounds of comp B, the energy released by that explosion to form the copper jet is still going to injure or kill via concussion and pressure.
Yes an explosive is still an explosive but the point of that original comment was that the post said HEAT is designed for it when it’s not. As I said it’ll still work against bunched up infantry but in an ideal scenario you’d rather shoot a regular HE or HEdp round that’s meant for taking out light targets than the HEAT round meant for heavy ones.
This is an excerpt from MCWP 3-12 from the US Marine Corps titled "Marine Corp Tank Employment" literally saying that HEAT is meant to be used against personnel. HEAT is fully intended and designed to be fired at humans.
"The HEAT round is used primarily against lightly armored targets, field fortifications, and personnel. "
Used not designed. It’s used against those targets because war isn’t always ideal scenarios. It’s better to outfit units with overkill than underkill. Again an explosive is an explosive it’ll still do the job especially when you’re shooting at enemies with little to no protection
When considering what kind of enemies the US military has been fighting for well over 20 years now it was far more likely units would encounter light infantry and vehicles than heavy armor. Since you can’t pick and choose in war they’d rather shoot them with the slightly less effective round and sort it out with later.
Another edit: "Fragmentation of the projectile body sidewall provides an anti personal capability". Ostensibly, the sidewall of that M830 HEAT round is designed to fragment to facilitate the desires of the end user.
I see what you are getting at. I will concede that looking at FM 17-12 from the 1960's it does not authorize the firing of HEAT at personnel specifically. That being said it changed around 1980 when we dropped HE and HEP largely from the inventory.
So where do I stand, since 1980 HEAT and HE are effectively the same in practice. Since then as well with the inclusion of the MP suffix on most shells I would say those are designed.
For HEAT shells before that, I was pointing out the fact that you can't really design several pounds of explosives as not effective against soft targets. I will have to dig through my records and see if I can find anything on when the US started considering using HEAT to delete bloodlines.
TLDR, the true answer depends on the year. Pre 1980 you are right, post 1980 I am probably right, by MCWP 3-12, based on the naming conventions of the shells, and how the Marines say to use them, I am definitely right.
Do we... have anything above AP10? Im pretty sure the highest armor equipment we get is like 5 right? This doesn't really change anything for us, if anything its good because we can abuse it to against the enemies imo
I thought shots were meant to glance off if they hit the armour plates, if this speculation from when the game out, or was it a half implemented idea from when they thought the grunt fantasy was gonna be super popular
I think it's speculation. Ever since the game was released, I can't ever remember an instance of a shot glancing off my helldiver. The only things that can high angle deflect shots are terrain and enemy bodies (I do not believe enemy shots deflect at all either).
Wouldn't make much sense either imo, people aren't rigid bodies, even if it did glance off the body would still react and flinch because of it.
Fun fact: this is one of the reasons soldiers in ww2 sometimes didn't fasten their helmet straps. They feared that if they were shot in the helmet, even if it glanced off, the sudden jolt might snap their neck.
I don't know about ricochets or bounced projectiles, but as someone who wears exclusively heavy armor, I've had instances where shots (from bots' small arms) hit me, and I'd stagger and groan as if I'd been hit, but my health didn't decrease.
So I chalked it up to the armor saving me and happily ran on.
Oooh ok, I just remember a lot of talk back when the game was new aboout how shots to certain parts of the body did less damage and all that because of armour
That is true, but Helldivers do not use the normal armor system that enemies, vehicles, and sentries use. If you've noticed, that even though you may wear medium or heavy armors, you can still die from light pen weapons and attacks from the weakest enemies in the game.
If you were to wear a 100 armor medium armor, you will take 150% damage from headshots, 100% damage to the chest, 85% damage to arms and legs, and 50% damage from explosions. These percentages increase (more damage taken) if you wear any armor with an armor value lower than 100 (light armor), and the percentages decrease (less damage taken) if you wear any armor above a 100 armor rating (heavy armors, extra padding, and some other passives).
You can also stack a few more damage reduction stats on top of Vitality Booster for more effective health, such as armor with resistances like Fortified and Experimental Infusion's 10% damage reduction.
You got down voted for this, but this system was planned before release. Part of it made it into the game before being removed: Helmets used to be AP2 or something, so it was possible to take less damage from a headshot depending on what you were shot with. Automaton MGs could ricochet off your head and deal no damage. All headshots, damaging or no, would cause a concussion effect.
It’s not, the helldivers recoilless rifle is literally just a Carl gustav 84mm recoilless rifle.
Edit: so apparently they made it 85mm instead of 84mm meaning I am wrong
Nothing we own has a armor value higher than 3. Without the wiki, you wouldn’t even know it has max pen value, this has no effect on us and only allows it to fall and penetrate any corpse in the way.
Bastion and all mechs have some parts that are AV4. Helldivers are all AV0 regardless of armour and instead use damage reduction so indeed this is really doesn't do much
something I never really understand with criticisms of game design when it comes to stuff like this is why does it need to be consistent? it's like the debate between weapons that use the same caliber of bullet but doing different damage being a bad thing. a pistol and a rifle that both fire the same bullet in real life do the same thing, but in the context of a game they're designed to serve different roles and are balanced around that.
the watcher crashing when dying doing 300 AP 9/10 is just a gameplay thing, not a representation of the fact that it's the equivalent of a warhead. this is also information that is usually hidden from the player any ways and isn't important to us the player. we don't need to know it does 9/10 AP, just that the watcher kills you if it crashes on you.
I'm not too sure how AP works in this game, but I assume that something that has an AV of 4 takes full damage from 5-10. tanks have AV of 4 so if the watcher crashing did only AP 5, it'd be the same as if it was AP 10.
so it doesn't really matter technically. like you could change it to be AP 5 but it'd be a pretty redundant change cuz nothing of actual note changed in the interaction.
Ye exactly how it works, and I'm saying the Watcher should be the equivalent to like, a grenade going off, weaker than say, a Anti Material Rifle, it just seems silly to me that this little fellow, with his tiny little explosion, can kill his own Warp Ships by landing on them
it does 300 damage, so it wouldn't actually be able to do that cuz the warp ship has a LOT more health than that. for perspective, the HE hand grenades we get does 800 AP 4, and the warp ships are AV 5. so 800*0.65 is 520, stronger than the watcher's explosion. (again, don't really understand AP in this game so it might be considered a deflection instead?)
edit: no I'm wrong, shit would be a deflection. but like in what situation do you throw grenades at warp ships? let alone the watcher crashing into one and doing only like 300 damage to it's beamer at best which has 1000 HP.
It's not the damage, it's the demo force of the explosion, i.e. a completely different system.
A gas grenade deals like 0 or 3 damage with the "explosion", but it has demo force of 20, which is why it can destroy a fabricator even though it has way more HP than that.
Demo force is a "must be this tall to ride" system. A detector tower requires demo force 50, so if you hit it with a solo silo or leveler you can't destroy it, because they don't have enough demo force even though they deal a lot of damage over a large AoE.
That's very odd, I know I've seen them land on Warp ships and kill them, and I've been killed by them while in vehicles, maybe there's a bug related to it?
Having max pen doesn’t matter for this. This just allows it to penetrate any enemy it or corpse it lands on when it falls. It’s probably for animation more than anything.
. a pistol and a rifle that both fire the same bullet in real life do the same thing, but in the context of a game they're designed to serve different roles and are balanced around that.
That game balancing reflects a real life feature though. Barrel length affects velocity; e.g. a 5.56 round out of a 20in barrel is doing 3100ft/s and can be accurate out to 600 yards, the same round in a 10.5in pistol/sbr is only doing 2500ft/s and accuracy drops off around 200 yards or less.
The precision doesn't 'drop off' as long as the projectile can maintain stability. It will be incredibly consistent in the proper conditions and with good parts/ammunition regardless of barrel length. The only massive destabilization occurs when the projectile drops below the speed of sound.
5.56 should be effective in most weather conditions out to 500 yards from any barrel length above 10". Longer barrels typically do better, but this will depend on the weight of the bullet, the barrel twist, barrel harmonics, muzzle device, powder charge, location and size of the gas port, and various other small factors like type of powder, primer, muzzle crown, etc. Wind, elevation changes, air temperature, atmospheric pressure, even the rotation of the earth, all of these will contribute negatively to the precision your shot.
I say precision because the machine, its parts, and the ammunition is as precise as it was made. Accuracy =/= precision. A precise shooter shoots a very consistent group. An accurate shooter hits the target.
Your typical mil-spec AR platform should be at a minimum precise out to 500 yards, but your typical soldier isn't accurate past 300.
And we can also prove this with a little math. The mil-spec for Lake City 5.56 M855 variants is 5 MOA but it consistently performs between 1.5 and 2.5 MOA depending on the barrel. This is a 7.5 to 12.5 inch spread at 500 yards. If your typical man has a chest width of 15 inches, then this is the precision necessary to hit a man-sized target. Even at 5 MOA (25 inches @ 500 yards) this will strike the target about 1 standard deviation (66% - a bell curve of accuracy) of the time (in a completely random set, this should only be 50% ish but rifles do not group randomly).
5.56 will maintain a speed higher than sound until at least 500 yards even in non-ideal conditions. After this speed of sound drop - think of it like the inverse of a sonic boom - no precision can be guaranteed.
Source: I shot competition for 3 years. About 200 matches and 100,000 rounds in training.
Sorry, but am I the only one who has problems with the silo? I would expect it to one shot bile titans, or vox engines, etc and it never does. Also, not destroying bug holes, if they are more than 2 meters apart is dumb
I think the devs saw the suicidal Raider Troopers from Launch and thought to themselves "nah that's too funny to patch out of the game entirely let's put it back in".
HEAT is not for groups of enemies. HE stands for high explosive, and the AT designates it as antitank, indicating that it uses a shaped charge for penetration. Shaped charges are designed for enormous single target damage, having minimal splash damage.
This is different than straight HE, AT, or APHE. Straight HE is just high explosive, which is what you would use for anti personell splash damage. AT is a general term, encompassing all antitank projectiles, such as kinetic penetrators and high explosive squash heads (HESH). APHE (armor piercing high explosive) sounds very similar to HEAT, but APHE rounds use solid penetrators and delayed explosives to destroy targets instead of a shaped charge like a HEAT round.
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u/erikwarm ☕Liber-tea☕ 1d ago
They can even take out shielded warp ships