no splash damage calculation for direct HE hits

[sethipus]

I've been noticing this issue for a while now, but usually in the context of 30mm or 37mm cannon hits.  I've seen it in tanks before too, but a sortie two nights ago really brought this issue to the fore in my mind, so here's a post about it.

When an HE round goes off, it does some amount of "splash damage" to other vehicles around it.  This is why I've killed hundreds of planes with my T34 by shooting an HE round into the ground right in front of me as a plane passes over at very low altitude.  This is why I've killed planes that were 10 feet off the ground by putting 30mm rounds into the ground right under them.  This is why we kill acks on bases by putting a couple 20mm rounds into their general vicinity.

Now, what happens when we actually hit the target directly?  I don't know, because I haven't seen the code, but I can say one thing about it.  It's not the same as the splash damage calculations that are done for other vehicles in the vicinity.

Two nights ago I was shelling an airbase with my T34-85 from atop a ridge overlooking the runway.  I very commonly get aircraft kills just by putting HE rounds onto the runway "close enough" to the airplane as it's trying to take off.  On this sortie, I had two magnificent shots, one a direct hit into the wing of a plane that had just taken off with an HE round from about 2000 yards, the other a direct hit into the wing of a plane that had also already left the ground with an HE round from around 2800 yards.  I'd post film of this if my film viewer wasn't broken since the recent updates.

Unlike planes that I just hit near, these didn't blow up.  Instead, the wings broke off.  One of the planes was high enough off the ground that he died when the plane impacted.  The other one came to a rest on the runway and towered out.

Why do ground hits with HE rounds 20 or 30 feet away from a plane usually blow up a plane, but a direct hit with that HE round on the actual plane just breaks a wing?

I've observed the exact same symptom in other ways.  I was shelling a vbase and killed two M-16s by putting HE rounds onto the ground next to them.  Then I hit an M-16 in the side with an HE round and he actually drove off and went behind a building so I couldn't shoot at him anymore.

I've actually killed myself in a Yak-9T by snapshooting a plane that was passing right in front of my plane.  I was so close to it that my pilot got killed by the splash damage.  Yet we hit planes with the Yak-9T's 37mm cannon all the time, and mostly the pilots don't die, they just break important things off and fall from the sky.  Why is it that my pilot takes enough splash damage, right through the armor glass and engine of my Yak, from 20 feet away, but the pilot in the plane I hit doesn't die from the 37mm round going off in his wing 10 feet to his unarmored side?

See what I mean?  They are calculating splash damage in one way, and they are calculating the effect of an HE round hit on a vehicle in another way.  And it's a way that doesn't really make sense to me.  It potentially results in the vehicle you actually hit absurdly taking less damage than the one that's merely near a round that goes off on the ground.

[Krusty]

You may have something there... I landed a B-25H 75mm HE round onto the outboard wing of a lancaster once, with no effect.

I've also wondered how we can do so much splash damage to ourselves, but not to enemy planes?

My thinking, however, was not that the splash damage on the plane in question was wrong, but my thinking was that splash damage to OTHER things was way too high.

So, same issue, but I thought it was the other way around.

[Motherland]

I've been noticing this issue for a while now, but usually in the context of 30mm or 37mm cannon hits.  I've seen it in tanks before too, but a sortie two nights ago really brought this issue to the fore in my mind, so here's a post about it.

When an HE round goes off, it does some amount of "splash damage" to other vehicles around it.  This is why I've killed hundreds of planes with my T34 by shooting an HE round into the ground right in front of me as a plane passes over at very low altitude.  This is why I've killed planes that were 10 feet off the ground by putting 30mm rounds into the ground right under them.  This is why we kill acks on bases by putting a couple 20mm rounds into their general vicinity.

Now, what happens when we actually hit the target directly?  I don't know, because I haven't seen the code, but I can say one thing about it.  It's not the same as the splash damage calculations that are done for other vehicles in the vicinity.

Two nights ago I was shelling an airbase with my T34-85 from atop a ridge overlooking the runway.  I very commonly get aircraft kills just by putting HE rounds onto the runway "close enough" to the airplane as it's trying to take off.  On this sortie, I had two magnificent shots, one a direct hit into the wing of a plane that had just taken off with an HE round from about 2000 yards, the other a direct hit into the wing of a plane that had also already left the ground with an HE round from around 2800 yards.  I'd post film of this if my film viewer wasn't broken since the recent updates.

Unlike planes that I just hit near, these didn't blow up.  Instead, the wings broke off.  One of the planes was high enough off the ground that he died when the plane impacted.  The other one came to a rest on the runway and towered out.

Why do ground hits with HE rounds 20 or 30 feet away from a plane usually blow up a plane, but a direct hit with that HE round on the actual plane just breaks a wing?

I've observed the exact same symptom in other ways.  I was shelling a vbase and killed two M-16s by putting HE rounds onto the ground next to them.  Then I hit an M-16 in the side with an HE round and he actually drove off and went behind a building so I couldn't shoot at him anymore.

I've actually killed myself in a Yak-9T by snapshooting a plane that was passing right in front of my plane.  I was so close to it that my pilot got killed by the splash damage.  Yet we hit planes with the Yak-9T's 37mm cannon all the time, and mostly the pilots don't die, they just break important things off and fall from the sky.  Why is it that my pilot takes enough splash damage, right through the armor glass and engine of my Yak, from 20 feet away, but the pilot in the plane I hit doesn't die from the 37mm round going off in his wing 10 feet to his unarmored side?

See what I mean?  They are calculating splash damage in one way, and they are calculating the effect of an HE round hit on a vehicle in another way.  And it's a way that doesn't really make sense to me.  It potentially results in the vehicle you actually hit absurdly taking less damage than the one that's merely near a round that goes off on the ground.

Out of curiosity, when was this? I've noticed this in the past, however in the version notes they say they've made a change to the way splash damage is delt.