What does "BE" mean in "Hull Hit BE" ?

[jdb]

I see logged hits appended with B and BE and * but I don't know what it means! Could someone please point me in the right direction?

This game is tremendous, btw. Goodbye Sunday!

[akosjaccik]

I've drawn this image to illustrate my ongoing AAR, so it isn't quite purpose-built for your question, but disregard most of the crap on in and I might be able to show the basics. These markings should be consistent both in the ship designer and the battle logs.

The most important answer to your question is that these abbreviations correspond to specific (generally armored) sections on your ships. If they do get an asterisk such as this for example: B*, this means that the shell not only hit-, but also penetrated the armor. (On very rare occassions some funky stuff can happen even without penetration, such as armor plate dislodging due to rivets shearing off and such.)

B - Belt - This is the vertical armor plate on your ship covering two main sections, the machinery and the magazines. The B parameter itself in practice can take up two different values at once if you employ "Magazine box", in this case the design value will protect your magazines and the machinery will get only half of that thickness for the overall weight reduction. You can also incline the belt for additional ~10% protection, after you have unlocked the tech.

BE - Extended Belt - This is a bit funky, because while yes, you can imagine this as the extension of the belt armor, this pretty much covers anything that is "vertically protected surface, but not machinery or magazine". This is why you can see shells hitting the armored uptakes for example also protected with "BE value", but according to Fredrik's Tidbits, perhaps the steering is also protected with this.

CT - Conning Tower - Unfortunately I can't recall off the top of my head, perhaps you might even lose control over your ship temporarily if this gets penetrated (or perhaps I'm dead wrong), but your crew will very likely have to fight with a negative modifier for the remainder of the battle (so "CT*"). You can see a wide variety of approaches regarding CT on player designs, as it doesn't eat up much weight, but neither is probably the most important.

D - Deck Armor - Fairly straight-forward, protects the same area as the belt, but horizontally. Important against plunging fire and bombs, but hits to vertical surfaces can send fragments down trough this indirectly as well. (You'll see in these cases something like "Hull hit BE*, D*, machinery damaged" or something)

DE - Extended Deck - You get the pattern: Deck armor that protects anything but the vitals.

T - Turret (face) armor - Simply speaking, when you see a single T, this means a horizontal armor surface on your main armament - generally the log specifies which turret is in question, for example "T* Turret A".

TT - Turret top armor - If "T is the B of turrets", then "TT is the D of turrets", so the (roughly) horizontal plates. This is supposedly not absolutely horizontal, so you can see turret top hits up from close range as well, sometimes in even surprisingly large numbers. Of course, angling should apply in these cases, so usually no biggie.

SEC - Secondary armament armor - Once again, self-explanatory on the surface. I've shown casemate armor on the drawing, but naturally, this goes for secondary turrets as well, if and when you use those. The community usually goes with anti-fragmentation armor (2") for non-heavy secondaries, but for heavy secondaries (>6") be aware that flash fire is a thing, requiring more serious protection.

I believe, if I didn't screw up that's pretty much all of it. I didn't want to go too deep into detail (armor schemes and such) to not over-explain something that you might already know, but feel free to ask if anything requires further clarification.

[garrisonchisholm]

& welcome to the Forums. We're glad you enjoy it.

The accompanying docs are really worth a read/skim, as everything is laid out there, but in short 'BE' stands for Belt Extended, the part of the armored belt that extends fore and aft of the main belt. Likewise, DE is Deck Extended, with the same rationale.


( Ninja'd! )

[jdb]

Thanks, akosjaccik! You're brilliant!

And thank you too garrisonchisholm for the welcome!

P.S. I just found the SAI manual. You're absolutely right, it's all in there : )