Advanced Armour - nrlulz/ACF GitHub Wiki
Hi! I'm not a total expert on ACF, but this is what I know. If you know anything else, please add!
Hi this is red. I'll add what should be released. Some things shouldn't be public knowledge.
This tutorial continues from the principles in the Intermediate Armour tutorial. If you haven't read that first, you might miss some important context.
Sloping v2: Slope vs Weight
On one hand, a tank without much slope can usually optimize the armour protection the best. It's easy to fit components into a tank like this, since they tend to make easy geometric shapes. Armor is easy to adjust, and there's a clear line between front and side and rear and top armour. For tanks well-oriented to taking fire from every angle, this is the way to go usually.
On the other hand, a tank with lots of slope can take advantage of larger plates for more health, ricochets, and more efficient use of armour itself. The top and bottom armour required is usually less, since the sides and front take up some of that volume. Conversely, more weight is then required for the front and side armour because more of the tank's surface area now consists of those plates. It's harder to put as much ammo, fuel, and engine into a heavily sloped vehicle - most components are cuboidal in shape, which don't fit well into non-cuboidal spaces. These vehicles aren't well rounded, and only excel at tank-on-tank combat, usually with specialized tactics that optimize the slopes. Tanks with large, sloped surfaces are vulnerable to artillery and low velocity, high-angle shots: these shells come down from the sky and actually penetrate sloped armour easier than flat sides due to the lower hit-angles.
Often, a well-balanced tank will incorporate heavy frontal armour which is sloped, but flat sides which optimize internal volume and simplicity of construction. This also allows a large turret and basket to be fitted, which means in turn a larger gun with more elevation, and more optimized internal volume.
Layering
All of these armouring schemed are specialized against different types of damage. To learn more about the types of damage shells can inflict, visit the Shell Library.
Applique
One can add armour plates over existing vehicles to increase their weight class and protection easily, as a stop-gap for making a new vehicle. For instance a 10 ton could have another 2.5 tons added, and become a 12.5-ton tank. Note that the transmission, engine, and suspension have to be able to take this added weight. To be effective, the type of applique added to the vehicle should depend on the kind of damage it is most vulnerable to. For example, a tank which makes heavy usage of fragile armour would benefit the most from ductile applique. A sub-type of applique is ablative armour. These are plates of incredibly fragile armour which are designed to defend against the most penetrating shots. These plates typically last for one or two direct hits, and are incredibly vulnerable to explosive damage. Best used on fast tanks, where the enemy is unlikely to score several hits in the same place.
Spaced Plates
By adding a layer of thin, ductile plate spaced away from the tank's hull, explosive shells can be detonated further out. While this adds a weight penalty, it can decrease the effect of these shells against the armour underneath. This armour will defend well against all explosive damage, but AP shells will not be defended by this. APHE shells are a good counter against this - they can get caught between the plates before exploding, causing damage to both the spaced plate and the underlying armour. HEAT shells will have their explosive damage negated by the spaced plate, but their penetrating core will continue almost unphased.
Composite Armour
Fragile armour is weak to explosions, and ductile armour is weak to piercing. What happens if we make armour composed of them both? Layering certain varying types of armour can have different effects, from increased overall durability to near-imperviousness from certain types of shell. Experiment with it and see!
Ricochet Guttering
All of the armouring schemes discussed so far are concerned with mitigating direct hits. Armour also exists which makes use of ricochets to negate damage. Making sharply angled plates spaced from your hull which deflect shells away from the vehicle can spare you some direct impacts from HE and HEAT rounds. The same concept can be applied within a vehicle's hull to ricochet penetrating shots away from critical components.
Armoring tips&tricks!
These are mostly for tanks, but they can be applied anywhere.
Most of there are for getting the most out of your contraption by saving weight.
Effective Plating(?)
A single, big plate, is usually better than a bunch of small ones. The reason behind this is, if you use alot of small plates to make up your glacis/turret front, for example, a skilled player will notice this and direct all of his fire to a single plate, thus making the rest of the plates useless, since a bunch of smaller ones provide less health than a bigger plate.
Your turret sides don't need so much armor & ductility!
Most of the time when you're fighting other people, be it either a 1v1 or a deathmatch (rip server), you'll always be facing the turret at the general direction of the enemy. So unless some asshole gets behind you or to your sides (where he'd shoot your side armor anyway), you'd only need a dozen mm of armor (30 or so) to resist possible small arms fire from people's coaxial MGs or, if the server has them, infantry weapons.
Always armor your top in such a way to bounce glancing shots at 15 degrees and ALWAYS, ALWAYS give it -99 ductility.
"-99 ductility? Woah, that's abit extreme" Believe it or not, the most shots that land on your top are always in such extreme angles that they should bounce, and you should panic if one shot like that happens. Regardless, the point being is that the chance you'll get shot on the top armor are miniscule, and you should try your best to avoid being shot there.
Sides and rear should have less ductility than the front.
You should always be facing your front, which, by now, should have a fuckton of armor, at the enemy and never let him get your sides. You just gotta armor the sides to resist explosions and the occasional glancing shot(Excluding the rear), same for the rear. If your enemy succeeds in getting to your sides or rear to get a clean shot, then good job, you didn't maneuver enough.
Your "structural" components don't need as much weight as you think
I've heard of people weighing their bases 10k and turret bases 2x of the gun weight and i think to myself "what the fuck?". The thing is, you don't need so much! All you need is usually 4t base in the most extreme situation for a 40t tank, and 1/5th of the gun's weight as your turret base. Yes, it sounds insane, but if you add some advanced ballsockets, you'll be juuuuuuust fiiiiiine. This isn't much of an armoring tip, but it helps people get to their desired tonnage easier.
Never armor your trackguards - Tanks only.
If he wants to shoot your tracks, he'll do it with his god damn cannon. That extra 5-10mm you put on your trackguards won't save you from that, only from building your tank properly. Enough said.
Don't armor details, no one shoots those.
In general, what should be going through your mind when you armor is this: "Will armoring this protect my acf components and/or my pod?"
Appropriate armor for tonnage classes:
10t: Enough to resist a bunch of 50mm cannon shots (120-140 effective) Enough to resist 75mm shot(s) (160+ effective with lower ductility to help you out)
20t: Enough to resist a bunch of 75mm shots (170+ effective) Enough to resist 100mm shot(s) (215+ effective) Enough to resist at least 1 120mm shot (260+ effective, low ductility to help you out)
30t: Enough to resist a bunch of 100mm shots (230+ eff) Enough to resist 120mm shot(s) (265+ eff) Enough to resist at least 1 140mm shot (310+ eff, low ductility to help you out)
40t: Enough to resist a bunch of 120mm shots (265+ eff) Enough to resist 140mm shot(s) (320+ eff)
(Can someone please fix the formatting of these? Too lazy to figure it out)