Post by barleyman on May 22, 2023 17:32:20 GMT -6
Doing some googling I can see this has been discussed a couple of times for both RTW and RTW2. But no real consensus was reached as far as I can tell.
I know they are supposed to be "50-70%" of the penetration of the real AP slugs and then go "boom", like APHE writ large.
But the problem is that the game doesn't really give you, well, ammunition to figure this out in an informed way - Should I outright throw away HE when SAP becomes available? Should I put some minor amount (10-20%) to SAP as a special shot, but does the AI then stop shooting outright when it runs out? Does the SAP shell actually go "boom" if it hits but doesn't penetrate or we presume it bounced away? The ginormous HE shells certainly would have some AP of their own as well. The gun data gives you AP charts and only AP charts, no SAP or HE there.
The doctrine screen gives you "all-or-nothing" pick on what to do with these shells. Has anyone actually worked out reasonable values for the different gun sizes vs targets vs distances? I know the performance improves over time, but there's no easy way to evaluate this, you can't plonk one of your designs as a target and get charts for different distances vs gun sizes. That of course would very much depend on what quality of gun, how many AP science beakers have you invested what kind of steel is being used, what's the armor scheme and so on.
To add insult to the injury, there's a "auto ammo selection" tickbox, which has apparently been there since RTW and still doesn't do anything as far as I understood. Or perhaps it's a mis-understood tick-box that lets AI do this decision on the fly?
I know they are supposed to be "50-70%" of the penetration of the real AP slugs and then go "boom", like APHE writ large.
But the problem is that the game doesn't really give you, well, ammunition to figure this out in an informed way - Should I outright throw away HE when SAP becomes available? Should I put some minor amount (10-20%) to SAP as a special shot, but does the AI then stop shooting outright when it runs out? Does the SAP shell actually go "boom" if it hits but doesn't penetrate or we presume it bounced away? The ginormous HE shells certainly would have some AP of their own as well. The gun data gives you AP charts and only AP charts, no SAP or HE there.
The doctrine screen gives you "all-or-nothing" pick on what to do with these shells. Has anyone actually worked out reasonable values for the different gun sizes vs targets vs distances? I know the performance improves over time, but there's no easy way to evaluate this, you can't plonk one of your designs as a target and get charts for different distances vs gun sizes. That of course would very much depend on what quality of gun, how many AP science beakers have you invested what kind of steel is being used, what's the armor scheme and so on.
To add insult to the injury, there's a "auto ammo selection" tickbox, which has apparently been there since RTW and still doesn't do anything as far as I understood. Or perhaps it's a mis-understood tick-box that lets AI do this decision on the fly?