HE ROUND PERFORMANCE?
(14 votes, average 4.14 out of 5)
Written by DOC   
Thursday, 10 December 2009 11:53

DOC: This subject comes up quite frequently in the Barracks and Motor Pool, and, frequently, assumptions are made about how it works that are not quite accurate. I'd like to give you all a brief overview of how High Explosive rounds work in our game in comparison to real life (not according to Hollywood).

 
Small HE rounds of the less than 75 caliber range are not effective in an anti-personnel role at all. The British routinely didn't bother supplying 57mm (6 pdr.) gun crews with HE because it was so anemic as a high explosive round. The same could be said of the German 50mm HE round. Guns of an even smaller caliber than that (like the 20mm class) only really had HE for it's effects against lightly skinned vehicles and wooden building structures. Against infantry it wasn't considered a good optiol, although you would use it for suppressive roles if it's what you had on hand at the time. Suppression in a game is not very effective when people do not fear losing a leg or an eye and that sort of "reality" of life.
 
Now let's talk about the larger 75mm and up class of HE round. These have at least some ability in terms of area effect and hurting infantry within that area. To be honest, in real life a lot of that effect was the terrain deformation and debris, not to mention the structure debris (bricks, splintered beams, flying tiles etc.) which currently the game engine is unable to render, although the day that we are able to get it to do that will be a wonderful day, make no mistake.
 
It's important to note that to test something like this accurately you must remove the user error that is so prevalent in players claims from combat situations in a battle. Often they will think they landed a shell right next to an infantryman when in fact they probably misjudged because there is no effective way in a battle to be certain of impact ranges.

 

KILLER and I did some testing with the 75mm class of HE rounds and found the following:

We lined up some enemy infantry along a wall where we could without doubt or error in judgement determine that the HE round explodes at a given range from the infantryman. By exploding the round against the wall we could eliminate overshooting or undershooting, and then we could measure the effective range from the infantryman by lateral relocation of the point of impact along the wall.
 
The 75mm and up rounds averaged a kill or serious injury range of 5 to 8 meters. This is without any terrain or building debris at all, because they are not able to be included by virtue of the non deformable terrain. This seemes to be fairly realistic since we're just talking about shrapnel hits and concussive force.
 
Could it be improved ? Why sure, and it probably will. When we can add the effects of things that might be included, like building or structure debris, HE rounds will become a lot more effective. Without deformable terrain however, firing some HE "into a bush" means you're going to not see perhaps as much as you might expect. Remember that infantry in a lower stance (kneeling some, prone lots) are realistically much safer than infantry that are standing up.
 
A lot of times reports that "I landed a HE round right between his feet" are generally inaccurate assesments of what actually happened. A 75mm HE round "right between his feet" does kill infantry in the game. The smaller HE rounds from the tank and AT or AA guns in the game (6 pdr., 50mm and smaller in this case) were in fact less effective than fragmentation grenades, and in real life WWII fragmentation grenades were not as effective as they are in the movies.
 

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Comments (9)
1 Thursday, 10 December 2009 14:47
Seth1231
Yeah grenades in movies are so overdone. A grenade will just go bang and spray shrapnel everywhere instead of causing a huge fireball.
2 Thursday, 10 December 2009 20:25
Spamurai
So why outfit units with so much HE when it isn't capable or effective in game? (EI: STUG B) Why not just outfit the units with the type of munitions that are proven useful in gameplay by how the game is actually played by the population?
3 Friday, 11 December 2009 02:41
christianr
Well couldn't you make it for powerful to "simulate" the debris from the ground? So it will kill them now, and we wont have to wait for however long it will take for deformable terrain?
4 Friday, 11 December 2009 20:30
abraxis
Yeah how do you feel about just "turning up" the damage radius to compensate for super unrealistic HE engagements? For god sakes free our intantry support tanks.
5 Saturday, 12 December 2009 01:53
sabianx
so now on to doing the same with atg crews. i dare ya :)
6 Sunday, 13 December 2009 01:27
hanky
Just make it where, if you hit a brick wall it will increase the kill radios to "simulate" flying bricks every where. Diff objects have Diff Radios to simulate flying debris and shrapnel. Dont have to see a deformed wall, just simulate it.
7 Sunday, 13 December 2009 05:45
Fearny
Spamurai: CRS try to keep the game as realistic as they can, hence why the inclusion of HE rounds, which actually work wonders if used correctly. The StuG 3B was a poor example, it carries a 75mm gun, which as DOC states is very effective.
8 Sunday, 13 December 2009 22:33
Tempest
Currently, many of the smaller (50mm and less) class weapons yield massive, bright explosions that perhaps give the unreasonable expectation of huge carnage to follow?
9 Friday, 18 December 2009 22:40
imsneaky
I agree with the suggestion to just up the amount of shrapnel. i would imagine that there is some sort of data stating average amounts of shrapnel created by said shells. It seems a reasonable compromise.
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