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A Players guide to the Wikinger Armor Overhaul

This guide is to help you understand the changes that have been made from patch 2.0 onwards and how the new armor overhaul will change gameplay for a more realistic WW2 experience.

Armor and Penetration Values in Wikinger

The Relic game engine for COH2 only has 2 armor values, front and rear, basically each tank is a cube split down the middle to decide whether it is a front or rear hit. However as you know in real life all Tanks and AFV’s have multiple angled surfaces of varying thickness. So how do we bring more realism to Wikinger so we can get closer to recreating WW2 tank combat?
1/ Relative Armor thickness
We are using relative armor thickness to give a more historically accurate experience. In line penetration at 90 degrees gives us the relative width of the armor as demonstrated below:
Relative armor calculator credits from Panzerworld website.
Using relative armor values gives tanks that used sloping armor like the T34 and Panther their true armor value and starts to replicate their effectiveness on the battlefield.
2/ Using historical armor data and schematics we have vastly improved on the COH2 damage system by modding both the maximum and minimum relative armor width for the front of the tank, and then also the maximum and minimum relative armor width for the rear of the tank.

What this means in-game

  • if a weapons penetration value exceeds both the maximum and minimum armor value it will penetrate that armor every time.
  • if a weapons penetration value is lower than both the maximum and minimum armor value it will never penetrate that armor.
  • if a weapons penetration value exceeds the minimum armor value but is lower than the maximum armor value then you have a percentage chance of a successful penetration. That percentage is based on how much over the minimum your penetration value is.

Penetration Calculations

Many hours of research has gone into getting the most accurate penetration data possible by cross checking multiple sources, below is just some of the factors that have helped us to come up with what we believe is a realistic penetration value for each weapon in Wikinger:

Considered

Definition of penetration differed from nation to nation. Example: 50% of fragments through the plate was considered a successful penetration for German testing while the Soviets required 75%.

German, British and American testing was all done with a 30 degree angled plate but Soviets did most of their testing with a 90 degree upright plate.

Not considered

Plate type and quality, a common argument with some merit but it is quite simply immeasurable.
Combat reports and veteran accounts, far too many cases of mis-identification of the target to be considered a measurable source.
Side armor values, it is not possible to add these due to the limitations of the game engine at this time.
We want to create a realistic but also measurable experience for the player when engaging armor in Wikinger.
To help with this all armor and anti-tank units will display in their U.I the following information:
  • Relative Armor Front max/min
  • Relative Armor Rear max/min.
  • Maximum penetration value (close range = 100m) , for each ammo type. (some secondary ammo may not be modded yet)
Example below:
We are only providing you with the maximum penetration amount in the U.I, so you will still need to use your own initiative in combat. If your weapons close range max penetration is only slightly higher than its targeted armor then there’s a good chance you wont be able to penetrate at medium or long range. Ballistic data shows as a projectile’s velocity drops over time to target, so does the amount of armor it can penetrate.

Range Calculation

For Armored Combat

Due to the way Relic has coded COH2 we only have 3 range values to work with in the game engine. So that means each vehicle has a close range, mid range and long-range value.
In Wikinger these will translate to:
Close range   100m (maximum penetration)
Mid Range     500m
Long Range  1000m
We are using the following ranges for two reasons:
  1. these particular ranges give us the most data from post war armor penetration testing.
  2. studies have shown that the average range of tank to tank combat in the ETO was between 500 and 700 meters.
 You now should have all the information you need before going into combat as to how your armored vehicles will perform.
I hope this guide has also helped you to understand our Armor Overhaul and the amount of work involved, every single weapon has to have its values modded against 4 different surfaces of every single vehicle ingame, and then tested to make sure it performs historically. This has been a monumental effort by our Project Leader Olhausen and I’m sure once you give the new Armor Overhaul a try you will join me in thanking him for his efforts.
Kind Regards
MeatShieldNZ
Co-Designer & Historical Adviser
NB: While all this data has been carefully researched we are still human and make mistakes. After reading all of the above if you feel that any particular value is wildly inaccurate please let us know and we will take a look at it.