How does armor work in CoH2?

Is there any randomization factor?
How can AT gun (170) penetrate elefant's frontal armor(400)?
(of course not always but quite often)

Try reading Ace's post here:
http://www.coh2.org/topic/4478/conscript-range/page/2

I don't know if that is how it actually works but it sounds very feasible.

it's the penetration value divided by the armor value then multiply by 100 to get the percentage value for chance to penetrate.

In the case of an AT gun vs an elephant its 170/400 = 0.425*100 = 42.5% chance to penetrate.

What a stupid formula. Common sense dictates that the difference, not the ratio, matters.

No, because the numbers aren't even shown to anyone ingame so it's not like common sense enters into it. All the stats are behind the scenes so they can be as complicated as they need to be.

No, because the numbers aren't even shown to anyone ingame so it's not like common sense enters into it. All the stats are behind the scenes so they can be as complicated as they need to be.

Exactly. It is a little counterintuitive that a player needs to know how good his chances are to penetrate only by experience, but it is a good formula nevertheless.

I really wish there was some sort of simple feedback to know your chances since a single patch can really change things around, and its a whole new digging operation into CoH-stats and memorization instead of simple feedback (I hate to reference MoW here, but it has a somewhat good system, even a color based one would be decent: red, yellow, green).

I would also support a sort visiual feedback for players to see how the weapon actually performs.
But you have to devide between small arms and tank guns here.

For small arms it is pretty simple. As I said small arms have a standard penetration of 1, so only the armor value of the infantry unit actually matters. So Grens, Pgrens, Shocktroops and Guards have higher basic armor and vet in general adds armor. A little icon like a shield or something to indicate their resilience against small arms would be good.

For the bigger guns this is different, since here also the penetration value varies. Relic already categorized the armor groups a little: Vehicles, Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor.
So you have to define a somewhat "standard armor" for each group, like:

- Vehicles 5 - 30 -> 15 standard
- Light Armor 50 - 80 -> 65 standard
- Medium Armor 100 - 200 -> 150 standard
- Heavy Armor 200 - 400 -> 300 standard

Then you have to say what actually is a good, decent and bad chance to penetrate? Let's say 60%+ good, 15% till 60% decent, less then 15% bad.

Then the there could be a small list in the unit description like the one in COH1 showing icons like you said Muffin, indicating the weapon performance against each group of armor.

Regards
ace

I would also support a sort visiual feedback for players to see how the weapon actually performs.
But you have to devide between small arms and tank guns here.

For small arms it is pretty simple. As I said small arms have a standard penetration of 1, so only the armor value of the infantry unit actually matters. So Grens, Pgrens, Shocktroops and Guards have higher basic armor and vet in general adds armor. A little icon like a shield or something to indicate their resilience against small arms would be good.

For the bigger guns this is different, since here also the penetration value varies. Relic already categorized the armor groups a little: Vehicles, Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor.
So you have to define a somewhat "standard armor" for each group, like:

- Vehicles 5 - 30 -> 15 standard
- Light Armor 50 - 80 -> 65 standard
- Medium Armor 100 - 200 -> 150 standard
- Heavy Armor 200 - 400 -> 300 standard

Then you have to say what actually is a good, decent and bad chance to penetrate? Let's say 60%+ good, 15% till 60% decent, less then 15% bad.

Then the there could be a small list in the unit description like the one in COH1 showing icons like you said Muffin, indicating the weapon performance against each group of armor.

Regards
ace

Its a possibility, but it if it could be implemented, I'm guessing it should be fast and readable in your aiming cursor. So including something like, anything below 40% is red (low chances of penetrate, don't bother usually), a low range of 40-60% is yellow (it will penetrate, but don't expect it to be reliable all the time) and anything above 60% is green, giving you good chances to penetrate.

It takes some coding to make it work, which I don't think is feasable right now, though.

Well, I took the good old science way.

Hypothesis:

We all know Relic got rid of the target tables, which I think was game-design-wise a good move to get a the game easier to look over and balance.

There are instead 2 new stats: Penetration for weaponary and Armor for units. So instead telling a weapon how its chances are to penetrate every single type of armor (-> target tables) now the chance is somehow determind by these two values.

So let's say we have a 50% chance against an abstract "standard armor" target, then this is 50/100, right?
Then the "50" is my penetration factor and the "100" is the Armor factor of the target.
But now we can not only vary the penetration but also the armor factor, so we get "penetration/armor".

For T34/76 76mm gun vs Pz4 fornt armor the chance to penetrate would be 75/160 = 47%
For a Pz4 74mm gun vs the T34/76 front armor it would be 110/115 = 96%.

Because small arms weaponry also have penetration values and regular infantry has armor values instead of target tables, all this also goes for infantry engagements.

A Grenadier Kar98 vs a Conscript would be 1/1 = 100%
A Conscript Mosin Nagant vs a Grenadier would be 1/1.5 = 66.6% (2/3).
(Since basicly all small arms have a penetration of 1 you can see it as a quasi constant for small arms fighting)

So only 66.6% of the bullts of this weapon that hit actually "penetrate" the grenadier and deal damage, the remaining 33.3% are "deflected" dealing no damage, just as it work for tanks.

That's why I was talking about the 2/3


Proof:

Cause I say so!
q.e.d


No, seriously I checked the numbers on inf and vehicles and couldn't find anything that would make this assumption a fail. On the contrary it perfectly balances out the described matchup of Conscripts vs Grenadiers we are talking about.
Furthermore it just makes sense, at least to me.

Regards
ace

Confirmed by pqumsieh

1/1.5 = 0.66

ie 1/3 of the shots won't deal damage.

Thanks for the info ace, that's actually extremely helpful.

I don't suppose you know how the firing cooldown + aim time mechanics work too? :-)

Sweet!

Actually I think I do, at least the important facts.

I seems to me the weapong firing machanic is the same as it used to be in CoH1.

It is basicly...

Firing -> (Cooldown -> Firing)* Reload Frequency -> Reload

with a little difference regarding single fire and burst weapons in terms of calculating the DPS.

So a formula to define single fire DPS:

(Reload frequency + 1) * damage * accuarcy
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(cooldown + Windup + Winddown) * reload frequency + reload duration


For Burst weapons:

(Reload frequency + 1 ) * Brust duration * rate of fire * damage * accuarcy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
brust duration + (cooldown + Windup + Winddown + burst duration) * reload frequency + reload duration


E.g. Grandier Kar98 (Far):

4+1 * 20 * 0,3
----------------------------------- = 1,41 DPS
4 * (2,2 + 1,625) + 6

Then there are some things called fire aim time, Post firing aim time but iirc they only occur once you enter end leave an engagement.

Don't rage me if I am wrong, that's just what I remeber back from modding/messing around with CoH1.

Regards
ace

EDIT: I think Fire Aim Time is before every shoot/burst. Gonna change that asaic.

one addition: if the game calculates a penetration chance of 3% or less, it is reduced to 0% (as in never penetrates).

This complex armour mechanic formula was one of my few complaints about CoH1.
And they have not simplified things at all?

i mean stuff like this ruins the visceral feel i have playing an RTS

For Burst weapons:

(Reload frequency + 1 ) * Brust duration * rate of fire * damage * accuarcy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
brust duration + (cooldown + Windup + Winddown + burst duration) * reload frequency + reload duration


i hope they create a more simple armour mechanic for a balance patch or later expansion.

This complex armour mechanic formula was one of my few complaints about CoH1.
And they have not simplified things at all?

i mean stuff like this ruins the visceral feel i have playing an RTS

For Burst weapons:

(Reload frequency + 1 ) * Brust duration * rate of fire * damage * accuarcy
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
brust duration + (cooldown + Windup + Winddown + burst duration) * reload frequency + reload duration


i hope they create a more simple armour mechanic for a balance patch or later expansion.

It really is not complex at all. Sure, it aint a straight 1+1=2 but its not even high school math.

CoH has some wonderful stuff: accuracy, suppression, critical hits, scatter, cover, amongst other things. If you want those things to work at all, then it needs to work at something a little more complex than 2 vs 1: 2 wins.

You DO NOT need to calculate DPS every time to be effective with a unit. DPS is an advanced calculation to give you more precise data, but it sure as hell will not make your unit positioning, your situational awareness or your critical thinking any better, and I'm willing those three things will make you flat out better at CoH (or any other RTS) than any other thing. APM, micro and macro come with practice.

In the end, trial and error is better than knowing all of the stats by heart.

If the "near" range is 0, does that mean everything counts as "Far"?

If the "near" range is 0, does that mean everything counts as "Far"?

Near range mean "minimum" range.
Some weapons has near range. (not 0)
so they can't shoot too close enemy.

Typically, Rifle grenade has long near range.

I think there are also no longer range zones (near, medium, far) like in CoH1 but the accuracy scales in a linear manner instead. Is that what you meant Adder?

Sort of. Most infantry weapons have "near" of 0 and a "far" of ~35.

If their "near" accuracy is .3 and their "far" accuracy is .6, and the shot it at at distance of 20, what does that mean the *actual* accuracy is?

This is why I was asking.

I'm sure there are a lot of issues with it, but I figure it's a good start.