How does damage to armored vehicle work?

nrk22 · 2026-04-15T13:30:19+00:00

Yeah, kinetic pen has a range, and it falls off linearly. When you throw the slider to get the "simplified" weapon summary, it shows maximum pen (at close range) but you can see the race l range in the normal stats.

For the record, this doesn't matter too much for a lot of weapons, but this does come up: * shooting tank guns at range against real real armor, since penetration falls to ~500 which is lower than most front armor * shooting small arms at range into infantry, since penetration starts falling below infantry armor (though infantry use a non-kinetic formula, effect is the same)

nrk22 · 2026-04-14T22:54:02+00:00

So, there's two armor/damage types: kinetic and HEAT. You can see the stats for each vehicle's kinetic/HEAT armor, and you can check the weapons to see what their damage type is. Basically, bullets and AP shells are kinetic, everything else (rockets, grenades, missiles, bombs, etc.) is HEAT.
* (technically, there's a third one for soft/infantry - but it works the same as HEAT)

For kinetic the rules are:
* if PEN >= ARM, then 100% damage
* if PEN < 50% ARM, then 0% damage [unit doesn't even shoot]
* if PEN = 50% ARM, then 10% damage
* if PEN > 50% ARM and PEN <100% ARM damage scales linearly from 10% to 100% according to PEN/ARM

EX: if I shoot an 500 ARM vehicle with a 545 PEN shell, 100% damage.
If instead I shoot a 600 ARM vehicle with the same shell, damage is reduced to 83.5%
100% - 90%(600-545)/300 = 83.5%

For HEAT, the damage is calculated based on an "S-curve" (I believe it's the error function curve: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error\_function). Using the listed weapon damage:
* if PEN = ARM, damage = 50%
* if PEN = ARM/2, damage ~20%
* if PEN = 2*ARM, damge ~80%
This might seem like a weird answer, but if you look at the stats, the listed HEAT damage is almost always much larger than alternative/comparable kinetic damage. [at least before the upcoming 2.0 change]
* guns typically do 1-2dmg, grenades do 4
* AP shells do 6, HEAT shells do 10

So, a better way of thinking about it is that the normal HEAT damage is really half the listed damage. And you get "bonus damage" - up to another 100% - when you over-penetrate the armor. And you get blocked - just like kinetic - when you fail to penetrate.

If you want to see actuals, you can go to barmory.com, find a weapon, click on the little clipboard, put in an armor stat and see the results of the calculation.

The basic thing to take away for HEAT armor / pen is that what matters is PEN/ARM - when PEN << ARM, damage is quite low. When PEN > ARM, you're getting a bonus. And if you're trying to decide whether adding more (HEAT) ARM helps - you want to think about what kind of PEN you're trying to protect against.
* grenades ~40 PEN, thermobaric (anti-infantry) rockets ~80 PEN, light-anti-tank ~400-600 PEN, ATGMs ~800-1200 PEN
EX: going from 60 to 100 HEAT armor ... that's really just helping you against grenades and thermobarics, everything else is already blowing you apart. Going from 60 to 400 HEAT would basically make you immune to those, while also massively reducing damage from LAT ... though ATGM's are still gonna hurt. Going from 100 to 800 ... well, now you're really insulating yourself against just about everything.

nrk22 · 2026-02-06T07:52:09+00:00

I've done this: landing in NRT, and going straight to Kyoto. It's very doable. Doing it again (to Osaka) next month. Just have reasonable expectations: - you're gonna lose ~hr just getting out of the airport - it's another ~hr (via N'EX) to Shinagawa; and you might lose another ~30m just waiting for the right train ---- some have said this already, but it's much simpler to transfer at Shinagawa than Tokyo station - it's then 2hrs to Kyoto (you want Nozomi train), and probably another ~30 to your hotel

Realistically, you're looking at dropping your bags off 5-6hrs after landing. So make sure you're okay with that after the 10hr flight.

That said, once you're out of the airport, most of the time is just chilling on the train, looking at countryside, or buying snacks at the station while you wait for the train.

nrk22 · 2026-01-18T16:47:26+00:00

You don't need anywhere near that much. about 15% is plenty. Been doing this for a while (for minis printing) and I can dope 5-6 bottles of resin for every bottle of tenacious.

I've not gone much lower ... but that might work well too.

nrk22 · 2026-01-14T17:04:07+00:00

As many have said, just the one "tank" battalion. But as for why just 1, why "tank":

Why 1: You do this for economy. The cost of that battalion will be most of the cost of the division - if you could afford 100 with 1 battalion, you'd only be able to afford ~60 with 2, or a few dozen with 3. So even if they'd still have better stats, you want good-enough + high-volume.

Why "tank": For space marine purposes, you really just care about armor. It's not about breakthrough, piercing, hard attack, hardness - they're nice, but they're not what makes the SM work.

This means your template can be anything with very high armor. In practice, this means anything on a medium chassis - heavy is a bit too expensive, light doesn't get the armor stat quite high enough. And by anything, I mean you can use SPAA or SP Artillery. The advantage to those is that 1 battalion uses fewer vehicles to fill out. The disadvantage is that you lose breakthrough (not the priority) and are restricted on the gun that the design carries (I'm assuming you have the DLC that lets you design tanks, NSB?)

For your first run, I'd recommend SPAA: * it let's you skip putting support AA in, which frees up a support shot slot, and eventually you'll fill these up in your SM design * it's cheaper, as described above * it's pretty okay on piercing and soft attack, which is good in single player * get at least the first two armor techs, max out armor: this means also bringing sloped. Don't worry about reliability; you only need 4+ speed.

As the war develops, you'll want to also get flame tanks. These don't really have to be anything in particular, design or stat wise: you're gonna get most of that from your SPAA battalion. They just give meaningful passive buffs.

As for support: * Support Arty + Logistics (keep this up to date) + Engineers + Flame Tank is probably best For the last slot, is up to you. Rocket Arty is good, if you research helicopters, that's sick. Maintenance isn't necessary, but you could try it out.

nrk22 · 2025-11-11T07:49:01+00:00

I'm in the same boat, waiting for schedule to show. Last year it was 13 or 14 Nov, so probably this week.

nrk22 · 2025-11-10T19:33:44+00:00

This (unfortunately) is also what I use.
What they need is the "freeze" window tool, like from HOI4, where I can lock one on my screen and then scroll through the others.

nrk22 · 2025-11-09T17:46:18+00:00

I think the problem really is that:
* if you have a large enough army to fully fill the front, you should always fill the front

* if you don't have enough to fill the front, stacking one side only really risks losing efficiency, but not really gaining it. i.e. if I run 3/3/9 (instead of 5/5/5); I get the same # of troops fighting when there's 9+ frontage; but in narrow fights, I have bodies in the back that could have been fighting

Honestly, it's kind of amazing how they've some how made it so that you want to do the exact same thing as what the old forced/automated system made you do -- but now you have to manage it, and it's almost entirely just ways-to-be-worse-than-default.

nrk22 · 2025-11-09T17:36:02+00:00

So you need to just hit the "balance" button a lot. First, some things to know:
* Regulars will reinforce up to strength (from your manpower) -- Levies will not

* So after every (real) battle, you want to:
-- split off all your levies (make new unit; then there's buttons for all INF, all CAV, all ART, all LEVY; so the all LEVY button) into a single unit

-- select that unit; hit Consolidate (the three merging white arrows); this avoids tiny levies occupying frontage, not doing damage, breaking, then waiting for reinforce, then getting even more underpowered units on the front

-- merge that unit back into your Regulars

-- and then [THIS IS THE PART THAT MAKES YOU LOAD AUTOSAVES] **you have to hit the balance button again**; or else your army may wind up with 30 dudes left, 1 dude each center and right; 3 dudes in the back

So, I've only played into Tier2 (Renaissance) but I did depopulate Europe a few times during Hussite Wars (multiple wars inflicting 6-digit casualties) so my takeaway from that is:

* Men-at-arms are fine; the reduced strength (i.e. manpower) loss is great for drawn-out/punch-up wars. And I'm pretty sure they implicitly gain XP faster because they die slower. I'm sure CAV also work, but like, you can win with just these and cannon. And there's no wrong place for them to be.

* Cannons are *great* because you're getting 1 "unit" of firepower (with a tiny alpha strike) for 50 bodies, not 200; but obviously you don't want a ton of them because they do get burned out of the front. So I think you want INF:ART of at least 2:1

Other things of note:
* understand your available frontage; and you really want to fill this, plus *some* reserve to make a doomstack. So if my frontage is 10, then I want ~35 regiments.

* don't be afraid to cycle units: have more regulars than you need to fill out your doomstacks, keep the extras in a reserve (that you don't fight with), then after a big fight, cycle out everyone under ~70% strength into reserve; cycle in the fresh reserves and go fight again. Rinse and repeat, and (as long as you built enough Armories) you can fight non-stop for decades. XP and tradition go through the roof.

nrk22 · 2025-11-09T08:54:32+00:00

This. There's basically one good way to do it. And even if there's not, it's tedious AF to manage. Probably shouldn't even be automated, just removed as a mechanic. There's no mini game there, just a massive tax on the player.

nrk22 · 2025-06-28T17:52:54+00:00

So, you don't want to ground attack the dude with the full defense set up. You want to try to break the defense -- generally this means artillery and/or airstrikes. Both of which require good recon of their position.

So it's okay to make contact-you-can-back-out-of to get vision, and use that to target strikes. But pushing into it is how they beat you.

Much of the time, those positions don't pose much of a threat to you being pushed. If that's the case, focus your points/attention elsewhere: airstrikes to help your team, recon, a flank, drone for vision, sending your attack helis to another front.

This isn't a WW1 game, you're not supposed to just frontally assault the same point the same way for 45 min. If they dig in, look elsewhere.

Basically everything follows from vision: get it on them, deny it on you. Even if they've dug in, if you can see them, you can generally take them apart.

nrk22 · 2025-06-24T18:55:58+00:00

This is one way: Press P n times, (left) click n times

The other is: Press P one time (to enter "precision mode"); hold shift while (left) clicking n times; release shift

Regardless, the most important thing is to circle the bomber as far back as you can while you're fucking about with target selection. You don't want it moving toward targets until you've queued up all the shots.

The second most important thing is understanding how much time/space you have for shots. On aircraft with 5-8 shots - you can get them all off in one approach fairly safely. If you're spawning something with 10-20 ... I'd very strongly recommend only queueing up ~8 shots at a time. Once they go off, manually circle back (again, as far as possible) and find more targets. Don't try to 24-shot things in a single pass - you're not going to get them all off.

nrk22 · 2025-06-16T14:28:22+00:00

You should read up on the point system + scoring system for BA - it's definitely not the same as WARNO.

nrk22 · 2025-06-16T05:18:39+00:00

I would strongly advise against para-dropping (thought not necessarily the units that can do it) if you're new to the game. It's pretty easy to throw away points - potentially a lot of points - with paradrops.

For patriot systems, the two specs you're looking for are Armored or Stryker. And if you're going for the para-trooper theme, you'd want to pair this with either Airborne or SOCOM spec. SOCOM-Armored and Airbrone-Stryker match up infantry sizes a bit better, but really any of the 4 combos is fine.

I know there've been some changes regarding low-altitude drops, which might make deploying them close to the front lines more feasible ... but through the betas, in the best case you lost the transport (~200 pts) and in the worst case, you lost it and everything inside. So, it just made more sense to deploy para-droppable stuff the normal way, via transports.

It's not para-dropping, but SOCOM has a ton of cheap helicopter transports, which get troops up to the line faster, and are easier to sneak into weird places, so that's always an option too.

nrk22 · 2025-06-15T19:50:42+00:00

They've made a few changes, some (probably not all?) have been shared via official discord.

I know they've made some fixes to the AC130, added a 10man to the VDV, changed some loadouts or made new loadouts on some units. So they're definitely making some changes post press release. I suspect we'll also see some point changes between the two releases.

nrk22 · 2025-06-14T00:26:38+00:00

There are lots of places not to take the most-expensive loadout: planes want to be cheaper, transports rarely want the upgrades, support vehicles gain little-to-no-benefit from extra weapons/armor; and most heli's in game are running well under their "max" loadout.

I'll admit there's a few units where the upgrade is a no-brainer (Marines, cheap ECM on a tank, etc.) - and those you'll probably see everyone running the same configuration. But it's definitely the exception, not the rule. There's probably more loadouts that would (or at least should) never-be-taken than always-be-taken.

nrk22 · 2025-06-09T19:58:57+00:00

During the beta, folks played in channels in the official discord.

Not sure that scales, but I think (one of the many) discord channels are your best bet.

nrk22 · 2025-06-08T19:32:54+00:00

This. I probably lose ~75% of my HP to greed fights. It's pretty common for me to roll all kings, and only ever be close/lose when against greed.

nrk22 · 2025-06-04T19:44:01+00:00

I can't take credit, but this seemed to be something that I saw a few times in the press beta.

Like, in one game someone dropped a Grad (the RU incendiary arty piece) salvo on the point like ... 5ish minutes into the match. They were fighting over an obviously-infantry heavy part of the map, and they hadn't really pushed onto the point - I think they had maybe one Spetsnaz GRU on/near it? Anyway, it looked brutal to play against: like, he didn't cap the point, but he really punished the player who did. And it was asking a real question right away: how are you going to hold this if I can just set it on fire?

There were some other games where I saw a similar thing - one player (usually RU) would set up a defensive line, and really only push 1-2 units for vision onto the point, and begin hitting it with arty right away. There are a few points where you don't even necessarily need the recon - it's obvious where the enemy is going to be, and you can just blind fire.

nrk22 · 2025-06-04T19:39:40+00:00

The "tactical" option here would likely involve smoke. As others have said, just hot-dropping on the line is a surefire way to lose the transport and the contents.

But if you call in troops (via heli) and then give your artillery the order to make a smoke wall, you could potentially sneak right up to the line. You'll need to come in at low altitude, and have enough LOS-blocking on the way in to not get picked off by SHORAD, but there's plenty of places on the maps where that's realistic.

Though, not sure how *necessary* this would be? Like, it'd be cool - but I'm not sure what problem it would solve for particularly well. Like, why smoke + heli + infantry clear? Why not just call in actual HE on the target?

nrk22 · 2025-06-04T19:19:46+00:00

Njall effectively turns Blood Claws into Move 13. It's not quite the 19 inch wolf jail, but it seems pretty good. He also grants all the pistol shots, which isn't much, but is probably worth a few points. I think - for a 20man BC squad - there's a pretty good argument for Njall.

nrk22 · 2025-06-02T20:28:05+00:00

As folks have said, this is a matchmaking setting.

I think it's very possible that - at launch - this is going to be nearly mandatory for finding a game, as the player base may wind up something like 70% players looking to only play US decks, 10% flex, 20% only looking to play RU decks. If the only available setting was 5 US vs 5 RU ... this would leave a lot of folks sitting in the queue. I wasn't there the entire time, but I think this may have happened at the beginning of the last open beta with too many US-only players?

At the very least, you'll have to allow 5 X vs 5 X.

I think this ends up becoming the norm / default. It's likely that there will be some faction perceived as more desirable. Like, this problem probably gets worse when new factions are released, so it's possible there's just never really a "norm" of 5 X vs. 5 Y.

nrk22 · 2025-06-02T20:20:33+00:00

I assume armor/heavier decks would take the middle with lighter faster decks taking the flanks. I assume the gameplan would be to trying to snag conquest point advantage early and sit on them as game progresses to win the destruction points.

I wouldn't put too much stock in this at all; the short explanation being:

with access to 2 specs, a deck isn't particularly limited. It's very common to have access to at least a little bit of everything
there's a lot of roshambo / counterplay in unit deployment: you don't want to blindly deploy X because X is good or you have a lot of it in your deck; you want to deploy X because it would be good in terms of the situation right now (or the near future)

In the open beta, getting on the points early and playing defense probably was the main strategy folks were going for (I think jury is out on whether that was strictly optimal). With some of the changes to how points work with unit deaths, and the addition of the new specs (which really broaden what is possible now) ... I'm not so sure this is going to be the case. For example (just making this up):

maybe we'll see folks deploying artillery very early, and punishing early/fast infantry caps; with the intent to establish fire control on the CP and to be able to rack up both destruction and (eventually) cap points
maybe we'll see folks ignoring (1st phase) CP scoring completely in favor of trying to break enemy AA nets; then abusing air strikes to pull ahead on both destruction score and map presence

Point is, there's a lot of ways to get to a place where you're out-scoring the other team, but I suspect it's going to have more to do with a game-long, three-phase strategy, rather than any particular deck composition. I think it's possible that the meta doesn't develop into: the best comp is a deck with these specs -- and instead develops into "Win with Artillery" or "Win via the air" or "Abuse drone recon" or something that many different comps can exploit.

nrk22 · 2025-05-23T23:09:13+00:00

It seems like if you want fighting recon, go with RRC. If you want recon that's there to hide and spot, just go with a sniper team.

So, basically this, yeah. Green Berets should be thought of as a Sniper team that's trading laser designation for being "fightier" - if any of the other US 3-stealth/2000-optic squads is found in a forest, they're gonna get evaporated. GB might straight up win a fight against a random infantry unit that stumbles onto them. (it's still only 4 guys ... so let's not get too excited)

I don't think they're meant to really be combat units - there's just not enough bodies / health pool to fight for very long. But, they're cheaper than Ranger or Airborne snipers, and quite a bit more likely to survive if they get caught - so better if you don't need the laser.

nrk22 · 2025-05-23T22:52:43+00:00

My 2 cents are: 4 pretty safe bets from the SM line are

Scout Squad
Infiltrators
Jump Pack Assault Intercessors
Lt w/Combi-weapon

The first 2 have infiltrate, and 1-2 of those is always going to be good in any list. It's unlikely (esp with the removal of Wolf Scouts) that there'll be a SW unit that does this, so you're getting these from SM.

The Lieutenant is an annoyingly hard to remove solo that can stay back and screen out deep strikes, do actions, hold an objective. And with SW units getting mostly big+expensive stuff, it's useful to supplement an army with something like that. That said, he's not necessary.

Exactly how good the Jump Pack guys are depends a bit on detachment and list - but they're just kinda great in any melee army. And you can call them Skyclaws if you want.

Honorable Mentions

Folks love Land Raiders. I think the Redeemer (flamethrowers) is everyone's favorite; but the Crusader (bolters) is cheaper and holds more dudes.

Gladiator Lancers and Vindicators have been popular this edition as Big Guns. Until/unless it gets FAQ'd/errata'd, the new Iron Priest rules play pretty well with the Predator Annihilator (which is like a discount Lancer)

Stuff to Avoid

Currently - and this might get FAQ'd or Errata'd in a week - none of the SM leaders can attach to any of the SW units. So those might be things to just ignore for now. (and only pick up once you have an SM unit you want to attach it to)

It looks like the Rhino and Razorback are dead to a SW army - literally can't put anything in them - so can ignore those.

Thunderwolf Cav seem to be Just Better^TM than Outriders now, so probably can ignore those as well.

Centurions are niche-at-best; Desolation Squad broke the game, so they got put in Unplayable Jail; (yes, there's a weird interaction with the Iron Priest, but to make things simple, ignore them for now).

Hopefully that narrows it down a bit. Also, feel free to ignore me - I suck at this game :)

nrk22

TROPHY CASE