Explained by Strike Witch Tomoko.
for a summary of this
before, AP was bouncing of citadel and exploding in ship for full dmg when it SHOULD have done 33% (error was cause game detected it touched citadel)
now, they fixed it so it does 33% dmg if it explodes outside the citadel. and 100% if IN citadel.
so you will get less citadel hits, cause u need to PEN THE CITADEL to do 100% dmg
you can no longer bounce off the citadel and do 100% dmg.
The 0.5.1.0 update brought some great changes to the game. However, as you probably noticed (especially if you’re a Battleship captain), the 0.5.1 update also brought some significant changes to the Armor Piercing shell damage model.
We received a large amount of feedback from all regions on this matter immediately after update deployment on the live servers. Based on the feedback we launched an investigation into the issue and our dev team started working tirelessly to find what caused such a big difference in gameplay, considering the obvious intent of fixing an issue, not causing a new one.
In the 0.5.1 patch notes there is a line stating:
Improved how shots ricochet when they hit armour joints.
To give some background information, in case you are not aware – the World of Warships damage model of every single ship is extremely complex and is based on every ship being divided into several parts. The most critical and at the same time usually most heavily armoured part is the Citadel.
Technically all ship parts have some armour from all sides – it can be the real armour, some hull plating or even “dummy” 0 mm armour, which is needed only for correct functioning of the game mechanics. There is no room without a wall, so to say.
As you can see on this simplified, but explicit picture, there are two layers of armour covering the joint of citadel, casemate and bow of the vessel. There is both real Armor and dummy armour. Real Armour thickness depends on the ship, but as stated before, Citadel is the most armoured part of the ship. Dummy armour, on the other hand, is just 0 mm and does not play any actual role in ship survivability.
Unfortunately, there was a bug in this mechanics and it was addressed in the 0.5.1 update. The bug was quite simple – the mechanism mistakenly considered shots with Armor Piercing shells ricocheting from armour of the citadel as if they actually had penetrated the real armour of the Citadel and made its way into the critical and fragile area of the ship.
On the second picture, an Armour Piercing shell penetrates Casemate armour and goes into the armoured deck. But due to sharp angle, it ricochets, arms and explodes inside the Casemate.
It is obvious that in this case the damage should go into the Casemate – where the shell has actually exploded. But because of the bug mentioned before, Citadel suffered the damage.
As you can see the bug was quite critical and it basically neglected the role of internal armour layers. As soon as we discovered it, we started working on fix, and this fix appeared in 0.5.1 patch.
It was anticipated that the change would only impact calculations and the impact on the feel and battle performance of ships would be minimal. Unfortunately the rule “if it isn’t completely broken, don’t fix it” applied. As a result of the fix, two things worth highlighting happened:
- The impact of the change became really big in regards to battle performance of vessels relying strongly on Armour Piercing shells.
- There is high probability that during this fix, something else was broken in the damage model as well. We’re currently investigating the chain reaction as well.
These two issues combined have resulted in situation we have now – it has become a way more difficult to damage the Citadel. The survivability of many ships has greatly increased.
We believe that going back to the 0.5.0 damage model is not a good way out of this situation. One serious bug was fixed, and it is a good thing. However, we also do realize that the highest priority now is to check the rest of damage model and to make all necessary fixes, so we can all relax and play for fun and pleasure.
To sum up, we owe you an apology for harsh and unannounced change to game mechanics. The intention was not to impact your experience, but to improve the game.
Thank you for the patience and your timely feedback on the issue. We’ve put considerable resources into investigating every aspect of damage model that may have been broken or altered and we will do our best to make it right as soon as possible.
To address a comment that will most likely appear in just a few moments – yes, we could launch a guess-fix almost immediately. Keep in mind that we do not want to make matters worse and we are working hard on testing a solution and hope to deliver it to you in the quality we wish it to be delivered.
We will update you on the progress, so stay in touch.
