“Using poles as armor” Now i cant get the image of a bunch of polish people being used as armor out of my head lol
@user-xh9pu2wj6b2 жыл бұрын
It's a common knowledge that any polish person can deflect an AP round up to 150mm off of their bare skin.
@jannikheidemann38052 жыл бұрын
Appliqué infantry.
@samm42582 жыл бұрын
i had considered this many times when building heat proof tanks, and in practice there tends to be an astronomically low/never happening at all chance that a heat/hesh shell will land a perfectly perpendicular hit on your pole. the slightest, most minuscule, nuance in angling of your craft will steer the shell out of that 1 pixel threshold. poles are extremely practical for heat protection, and have never let me down, as a person who always has the projectile effects debugger on for this very purpose.
@samm42582 жыл бұрын
what i mean to say is, you should still recommend poles for heat protection, they are as good as condoms at preventing pregnancy and as good as hand sanitizer against most germs, 99.9% success
@scribblesmcgee9672 жыл бұрын
Poles have a much larger flat area than just 1 or so degrees. Its actually closer to about 1/2 of the block that is flat and has no airgap.
@OhmIsFutile2 жыл бұрын
The chance may be minuscule but HESH always travels perpendicular to the surface it hits, which makes angles meaningless when hit by that... sure, it's lottery, but the other problem is poles don't benefit from stacking either, unlike slopes.
@Vivicect0r2 жыл бұрын
@@scribblesmcgee967 How can that be when test clearly shown that even slight deviation by accuracy at 20m is enough to make the airgap work?
@bright_lego2 жыл бұрын
@@OhmIsFutile The HESH shell would still need to hit the centre of the block, which is unlikely, in order to not pass through the air gap.
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
So apparently horizontal beam slopes are the best air-gap filler, and you really only need one air gap 'cos armour stacking through multiple layers is a thing that still kinda happens 'cos of FtD physics. I didn't test them properly. Armour is hard. Sorry about that! ✌ Edit: ...and apparently poles CAN benefit from armour stacking, just along the very fine lines that HEAT can pass through. Armour is TOO hard. >_
@siskinedge2 жыл бұрын
Please test beamslopes. They have the same healthpool as 4m slopes but they have a 45 degree angle which affords much more kinetic damage reduction. Ideally orientate the beamslopes horizontally in craft, slope pointing up so they angle more steeply when factoring shell arc and airborne frontsiders.
@GTalon52 жыл бұрын
I think a thing being forgotten here is that shells don't always hit the center of a block. with poles being rounded, the further off center the shell hits the more 'angled armour damage reduction' you get. So basically you're rolling the dice with every hit. Having them vertical, you almost always have a flat surface facing the enemy, but there's also a chance they'll hit the side of the pole. Something to consider is having them horizontal. you only have a flat surface facing the enemy if they are perpendicular to you, and you always have the chance of hitting the side of the pole.
@Tachyon_772 жыл бұрын
Solution: cross-hatched poles
@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks65442 жыл бұрын
@@Tachyon_77 still let’s 1/9 of shells straight through… rapid fire HEAT will murder anything relying on that.
@Tachyon_772 жыл бұрын
@@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks6544 Yes, but that's better than a single layer of poles.
@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks65442 жыл бұрын
@@Tachyon_77 still worse than a single layer of beam slopes
@Tachyon_772 жыл бұрын
@@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks6544 Wait... have one set of slopes facing down and another facing upwards...THE PERFECT HEAT DEFENCE!!!!
@MrBobcanoosh2 жыл бұрын
As simple as it seems, testing and interpreting results is remarkably easy to get wrong.
@Tachyon_772 жыл бұрын
7:56 From my experience, both APS shells and CRAM shells spawn 2-3 meters away from the muzzle of the gun. This test might be a little off since the shell spawned in the middle of the last pole. If you want to test, fire it while the game is paused (F11) and it loads in the shell and the barrel recoil animation, you'll see what I'm talking about.
@Tachyon_772 жыл бұрын
On a side note, if I were to be fighting an enemy ship or something and a HEAT shell landed in that few-pixel solid spot on my ship, I wouldn't even be mad.
@SuwinTzi2 жыл бұрын
Yeah there are no circles or spheres in games, everything is a polygon or triangle. The devs could use more sides to make the pole rounder but that'd drastically increase the burden on the PC.
@jannikheidemann38052 жыл бұрын
You can use trigonometry to avoid using straight up polygons, but due to precision error you still won't have a perfect circle. Also game engines have polygons figured out better than hardcoded continously bent shapes.
@comet.x2 жыл бұрын
this is on purpose. it used to be pixel perfect with the poly corner on the side, but it was changed because poles were way too good at being air gaps
@bits360wastaken11 ай бұрын
@@jannikheidemann3805 Very late semi-correction on a comment you probably dont remember making: You cannot rasterize non-triangles without an enormous amount of fun shader tricks.
@DSIREX_2 жыл бұрын
10:15 Wedges: am I a joke to you?
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
... that would have been better, yes. XD
@ARK_Angler2 жыл бұрын
One of the big things about wedges and slopes in general against kinetic damage is the damage reduction due to the angle applies to the shell from the point it hits the angle to the point that it enters another air gap. This means that multiple layers of solid beams behind a wedge all take reduced damage from a high pen kinetic shell so although beyond 2 layers do not increase armor stacking, they can make a significant difference if all stacked behind a wedge rather than spaced out.
@juanordonezgalban22782 жыл бұрын
I did not know that. Cool
@OhmIsFutile2 жыл бұрын
Hey BW, good to see you testing things for yourself. Good video overall. I know I always do this when I comment so I hate to be that guy again, but how do you think armour stacking works? Around 24:30 you mention it only works for two layers, and that's true, you don't get more benefits from stacking multiple layers, but what do you think happens to the layer behind when the first gets blown off?
@stargege27382 жыл бұрын
The layer behind the first have armor stacking only if there is another layer behind itself so there choices between "armor stacking every layer" or "i need an air gap screw AC for one layer"
@littletimelord27552 жыл бұрын
20:00 poles had 2 blocks left afterwards, just like beams. Slopes had only one block of armor left afterward. Hmmmmm yes, slopes better than beams. Besides that though, great video, very informative. Keep up the amazing work!
@shawnreed3432 жыл бұрын
I appreciate the part where you did the test on a spin block- people do tend to forget about angle of incidence and often just test flat-on. But with enough angle, a regular beam can bounce a shell that a slope wouldn't, because the slope would be more flat-on to the projectile trajectory. One armor scheme that I enjoy, though I admit to it only functioning as intended -most- of the time, is instead of a slope layer, two layers of vertical wedge backs, alternated. Depends on where shells hit and at what angle, of course. Always does. Doing armor testing on a spinblock is a really nice way for helping determine, for instance, what angle you might want your vehicle to approach at depending on its shape/armor scheme. :) Also as far as HEAT goes- HEAT travels straight through armor from point of impact and comes out at the same angle. HESH on the other hand, exits at the angle of the armor it exits from. So, for example, if it enters flat on a metal beam and the exit point is a 1m slope, the exit angle should be 45* from the entrance angle. In tank design, this can be really handy to angle HESH away from vital components and deflect it back outwards from the tank. ~ Thank you conversations on Arena discord for this one.
@kazoo33542 жыл бұрын
19:53 it seems to me that the slopes didn't actually do better than the poles, since the shell only went through 4m with the poles, and 5m with the slopes Having a kinetic shell go straight at it, the pole has 1318*40=52752 HP*AC The slope has 41561 HP*AC (accounting for armor stacking and the damage reduction from angle of incidence) also, I'm willing to bet that if you hit the pole off-center, it will end up having more than 0-1% damage reduction.
@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks65442 жыл бұрын
Yeah the pole has better hitpoints but if you want hitpoints just use a normal beam. If you want HEAT protection it’s mostly useless
@kazoo33542 жыл бұрын
@@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks6544 There is still an air gap around most of the pole; the only places HEAT and HESH can pen are the exact edges where the pole touches the surrounding blocks (the risk seems to be rather small)
@comet.x2 жыл бұрын
slopes should be angled pointing straight at the gun for best effect against kinetic. Also use wedges for even higher angle and a very funny damage reduction
@ecklesezekiel98042 жыл бұрын
No matter what discord writes these videos are nice for folks who want some condensed info on one subject and personal testing is at least a sanity check to verify conclusions. You did miss the most popular schema though, which are beamslopes backed with a 4m block. They have good angles, protect from heat/hesh, and the 4m block backing provide them better net durability than other combinations. The downside is they only come in 4m configurations and need to be backed by that 4m block. That means Poles do have a niche though, and that's in light armor schemes. Beam Slopes would need [INSIDE-Block-Slope-Block-Block-OUT] or 4 blocks minimum. Poles can do it in 3 with less protection. [INSIDE-Pole-Block-Block-OUT], although I'm unsure how that compares to [INSIDE-Block-Block-Applique-OUT]. Maybe that's worth testing too :shrug:
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
Cheers! But I thought I did show beamslopes backed with a 4m blocks...
@ecklesezekiel98042 жыл бұрын
@@BorderWise12 AFAIK you showed slopes and wedges, but those are not beam slopes. Beam slopes can be found in your video at: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nq2jbNN8zsy7qGQ.html in the bottom left corner. Slopes and wedges can be 1->4m inclusive, beam slopes can only be 4m. Could I have missed it?
@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks65442 жыл бұрын
They really aren’t condensed, this is a 30 minute video to show something very simple. Borderwises entire thing is not being condensed
@ecklesezekiel98042 жыл бұрын
@@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks6544 If you're new to the game and don't want to take things at face value or actively search on discord seeing someone do the basic testing is useful. Maybe codified instead of condensed should've been used. It's one thing to read or look at the picture of the meta armor scheme and another to see it work and how much dmg each scheme takes as angles increase. You could look up the formulas, but once again... some people have to see to believe, aren't active in discord, or can't actualize a formula on a wiki.
@ddssrr16142 жыл бұрын
Thanks for this info on armor & going into depth with the explanation. Helped heaps with understanding armor.
@kethrian2 жыл бұрын
Your damage reduction test at angles is flawed, as you are only firing down the centre line of the block, because you are firing at a target on the same construct and using the same block grid. A pole rotated at any angle on a spin block (on the same construct) will always present a flat face at the centre of the block where the shell contacts. A beam will present the same angle as the spin block is rotated to, and a wedge will provide a slightly greater angle (due to the additional slope). In reality you will almost never hit a pole on the sweet spot, so will produce a contact angle between 0 degrees if you hit it dead centre of the block, taking full damage, and 90 degrees if you hit it on the edge, substantially reducing the damage. You will never be able to get a comparable test when firing at targets on the same construct as you will always tend to hit towards the centre of the block where poles receive negligible damage reduction.
@randomxm-18752 жыл бұрын
Also this is off topic but borderwise you should make ships similar to the swedish costal defense boats /pocket battleship the hull shape is not hard to make very similar to a canoo (edit I forgot to mention you can make very easy realistic ish hulla and good relstic ish battleships/cruiser
@jarednamlooc5893 күн бұрын
If you rotate one layer to be horizontal the airgap problem becomes virtually nonexistent
@R4lf84-Productions Жыл бұрын
8:02 Hmm interesting …. But which craft fires a Heat/Hesh shell directly in the middle of the block at point blank range…. And if it happens i tend to stick wood or light alloy (wegdes) after the wegdes or slops i use either heavy armor or metal and the wood or alloy again! (Depends on the ship typ i am build and the bugdet)if it happens it doesnt ruin my day . But very very interesting
@xt6wagon2 жыл бұрын
One thing is slopes are a fraction of the weight and cost of beams. So if you are building on cost instead of volume they look way better than a straight 1 v 1 comparison. and weight is a pretty huge thing for flying craft.
@xt6wagon2 жыл бұрын
Also how about trying this with wood being a inner liner before the airgap. The math says heat/hesh should be nerfed hard. Not sure its worth the cost/volume increase.
@jannikheidemann38052 жыл бұрын
@@xt6wagon I know spalling liners help against HESH, but can you explain how they help against HEAT?
@blazingbl2gamingop7942 жыл бұрын
That pun was a-pole-ing
@PHAS712 жыл бұрын
I found the best way of protecting from HEAT is to place ERA blocks onto the inner side of the armour layer, then a spall catcher layer in case the same spot gets hit twice. By placing ERA blocks behind the armour, you are protecting them from being hurt by the shell explosion, so one shell only destroys one block. This anti-heat layer of armour should be a heavy armour(AHA) layer, also meant to stop kinetics. This makes it work against AP-HEAT as well. This armour doesn't guarantee your ERA blocks will be safe from HESH, though (haven't tested it yet), so it's a good idea to add an outer layer that can survive the thump damage from HESH, to trigger HESH before it reached the anti-heat layer. So, my most impenetrable armour setup against HESH, HEAT, APHEAT, and AP is: metal->wood->wedge/slope->ERA (4 meters in the smallest configuration, I recommend double metal and HA blocks behind slopes - 6 meters)
@asrieldreemurr50292 жыл бұрын
Your apology is far less accurate than your original claim. Testing with the gun perfectly perpendicular to the target is completely unrealistic, and moving the target a bit further (still much closer than normal combat ranges) doesn't really compensate for that. Poles being made of a lot of flat surfaces doesn't make much of a difference compared to perfectly round poles: for any possible incoming projectile angle there's only a small area that will take full (or almost full) damage and a much wider area that will be angled enough to take significantly reduced damage, while beams are going to behave the same way across their whole area.
@tekoimming19432 жыл бұрын
Something I want to add here: You said that armorstacking works with two layers, so one should stack 2 beams and then a pole or a slope and so on. With beam = B and pole/slope = S something like BBSBSB. But that's not really optimal because the additional air gap also disrupts the armor stacking while not yielding a noticeable advantage against heat or hesh. In numbers, a stacked metal beam has an armor of 48 a not stacked one 40. With that BBSBSB configuration you have a mean armor value of 44 and a total health of 5 times beam health. A more optimal version would be BBBBSB with a mean Armor value of 45.33 and a total health of 5.5 times beam health. If shot at with an armor piercing value at or below 40 the second configuration withstands 13.3% more punishment than the first, if the armor piercing value is between 40 and 48 the effectiveness ranges between 13.3% and 10% and over or at 48 armor piercing the second one is 10% better. Tldr, one air gap is good, more not so much.
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
Good point, hadn't thought of that. 👍
@major0noob2 жыл бұрын
pole's health are better vs HE, laser, thump, melee, etc. pretty much everything where angles don't matter. in testing they should be only slightly more effective than slopes, in practice they leave smaller scars on your ship. when a games soo complex it has thesis and counter thesis lawl
@juanordonezgalban22782 жыл бұрын
Agaings those damages you might as well use beams
@Galvin096702 жыл бұрын
Very interesting, but makes sense. I'm no professional at the game by FTD standards (1250hr playtime), but I have noticed one of the hardest parts about testing weapons/armor in FTD is the semi-random way things can be angled, and/or at different distances, and/or moving at different speeds etc. which all impact performance of said armor or weapon being tested. To work around this, I'd advise setting a block of armor up and having it held as a subvehicle above another moving vessel in a tractor beam then using enemy simulators so the ai can aim your weapons, also affecting overall performance (assuming your not using automatic detection, probably should though for just testing armor busting ability). What are y'all's opinions?
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
Just shooting at a block of armour above a rotating spinblock might yield the same results, maybe.
@Gxaps2 жыл бұрын
Hitting a shell on a vertex like that is virtually impossible. It's not even one pixel, it's less than that.
@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks65442 жыл бұрын
For poles you don’t have to hit the vertex. From any direction the centre third of the pole counts as solid space.
@meme__salad2 жыл бұрын
I literally just finished my medium cruiser with a layer of poles in the hull a day before this video came out lol. Good info update tho
@donaldpetersen23822 жыл бұрын
I'm very happy I subscribed
@lillysmith61232 жыл бұрын
I thought poles were modelled as octagonal prisms for physics. The range effect is probably due to the bullet spread?
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
Yup and also yup.
@Wicc3R12 жыл бұрын
I do my weapon and armor testing about 1 km. But it's probably is because i tend to use bigger ships further away and use small attack planes or subs to keep enemy not shooting my main ships...
@crgkevin65422 жыл бұрын
Interesting, guess I won’t be refitting any of my battleships with poles. (Especially since they were likely going to be horizontal, which I suspect is not how it’s supposed to be arranged.) I’ll stick with the largish air gap that’s partly filled with resource or power storage instead then.
@Debbiebabe692 жыл бұрын
For a 4m thick armour belt, which one would you prefer - from inside to out, metal beam/metal pole/HA beam/metal beam, or metal beam/HA pole/metal beam/metal beam? (this is assuming for cost/weight reasons you only can afford one layer to be HA, and you dont have any room for air gaps.) The first has the advantage of the HA passing its stacking bonus to the outer armour layer, the second has the advantage your HESH/HEAT protection is more secure.
@juanordonezgalban22782 жыл бұрын
I'd go for Metal Beam - Metal slope 45° - HA Beam -Metal Beam. One of the heavy armours advantage is it's high armour staking bonus, and if you use it as a pole you waste it. Also the 4m 45° slope gives more consistent damage reduction and benefits from armour staking, altought it has slightly less health
@redeemerofthesun Жыл бұрын
This game, and all its tips and tricks... I might never emerge... from the depths...
@monkie41252 жыл бұрын
dont tell me im the only one who can hear spiffing brit during the intro
@goomdon38192 жыл бұрын
Thanks, this video was very helpful to learn about armour a bit more.
@BaRtJuHh083 Жыл бұрын
This way of testing defeats the purpose of the "slopes" on a pole because you hit them on a 90 degree of the pole so your testing the worst case for a pole a slope doesnt have that problem a wedge has the same problem on a wedge you can fix it by aiming the gun up a bit on a pole you could rotate the mantlet by 90 degrees and then change the angle by 1 or 2... i played ftd for a long time and in all the battles ive played i probably never had a gun aiming from exactly 90 degrees. Thanks for all the work though i did learn alot from watching your videos keep up the good work👍🏻
@Tehn00bA2 жыл бұрын
I still wouldn't dismiss poles as bad since their health compensates their lack of armor stacking compared to slopes. Also slopes can only attach from some sides while poles attaches from any side, so things wont fall off when other blocks are destroyed. As for the difference in effect point-blank vs at distance, its probably because the shell end up spawning inside the armor too. I can see poles being usefull in compact armors that dont have the luxury of having airgaps because of space. And, at least some, HESH spalling can be partially countered with aplique panels on the inside of the craft to absorb the fragments. Overall, i dont think your first unbiased impressions of poles were wrong. At worst, it was slightly romantized. XD (and i cant blame you for that since we all have favourites)
@jaymorrison24192 жыл бұрын
So it sounds like poles are still good. A very small chance to fail against Heat and hesh, and more raw HP against HE then slopes?
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
Armor-stacked slopes are better HE defense. Poles having more health means they're better for very high AP shells where armor doesn't matter anymore. They're still ok, but they're not as good as beam-backed slopes and they're not as good as I previously thought.
@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks65442 жыл бұрын
1/3 is not that small, and against HE in particular armour class matters significantly more than hitpoints
@ZackHab2 жыл бұрын
If it hits the side of the pole it really reduces it
@Vivicect0r2 жыл бұрын
Frankly speaking I still don't see an issue with slopes. Yes, there is a thin line of "non-gap" there. However, the same line is present with slopes too at the slope's beginning, it simply was not tested since its a real pain to catch. Yes, no stacking but nearly twice the HP. Its important against thump damage that top tier ships like so much, explosions too.
@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks65442 жыл бұрын
There is no non-gap area with slopes. Like literally none. Poles have a very thick line of non gap.
@Vivicect0r2 жыл бұрын
@@whwhwhhwhhhwhdldkjdsnsjsks6544 This is not true. I have done extensive tests and like I said, there is a non-gap area at the begining of the slope. Its very small, smaller then the beam has, but its there. Kinda easy to find. I have used gun on piston to have best positioning control.
@no3ironman111002 жыл бұрын
You should try to use 4m beam slopes, better choice.
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
Yup, people have told me that. 👍
@randomxm-18752 жыл бұрын
I find poles only really useful for small craft larger craft just use slopes with ducts behind them
@vaelophisnyx98732 жыл бұрын
wasnt duct armor nerfed?
@Shudson-wm1xx2 жыл бұрын
Ducts were nerfed they are no longer water tight meaning they will flood air and helium pumps
@randomxm-18752 жыл бұрын
@@vaelophisnyx9873 yes but there still useful with a hollow heavy slope or metal circle made with beam slopes tho I make my tanks boats and some planes very different to normal it's things
@TheMudDragon Жыл бұрын
Have you tried putting two layers of poles, one horizontally, one vertically?
@BorderWise12 Жыл бұрын
No. What is that supposed to do?
@TheMudDragon Жыл бұрын
@@BorderWise12 Well, there's always this slight chance of that "line of pixels" of poles touching one another to allows for something passing through; putting them in a lattice would reduce this pass-through surface greatly, wouldn't it? (from pole to pole, at least, not pole to beam. If poles are destroyed, I'd also assume the hole left behind to be smaller, allowing for less projectiles to pass through unmitigated as well.
@ameerkhan32572 жыл бұрын
wait armor stacking only works for 2 layers? was this always the case?
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
Nah, it used to go up to 8. It was changed a while back, to make thinner armour and smaller craft more viable.
@ameerkhan32572 жыл бұрын
@@BorderWise12 whoa that was fast XD. Does that mean armor got nerfed overall? or did they increase health to compensate?
@american44052 жыл бұрын
How is it that we join this discord? I'm still very much learning about this stuff and would love a place to discuss with others and share ideas.
@teche65642 жыл бұрын
While the discord isn't hosted by Borderwise himself, there is a server hosted by fellow FTD youtuber "Ohm is Futile" if you go to their channel and check their community tab you should be able to join. You may or may not experience a short wait time.
@teche65642 жыл бұрын
( Can't post the link directly since youtube erased my previous reply with it )
@american44052 жыл бұрын
@@teche6564 thanks! I really appreciate it!
@coffeezombie2442 жыл бұрын
Wow this was rough. Just the inconsistency of testing was brutal how hard is it to do one set with slopes in the same position as poles. Just set a wall up at like 40 meters do some consistent tests.
@obake62902 жыл бұрын
So why are poles bad again? From the tests conducted in this video I'm not seeing it. I mean, yeah, in the scenario you get shot at from 1m away at a 90 degree angle it isn't good. But how often does that happen in practice? Literally never. VS kinetic rounds they seemed roughly on par with the beam and slope combos. And poles are just easier to build with because they connect on all sides. Build your slopes just a little bit wrong and watch the entire side of your ship fall off because you lost a couple anchor blocks. Been there. I'm sure there's ways to get around that and I just built it wrong, but the point is that with poles you just don't have to worry about it.
@BorderWise122 жыл бұрын
They not bad per se, but they're still worse than proper slope/wedge/beam usage. Their geometry does make them slightly more likely to let HEAT streams through, they do take more kinetic damage on average and they can't benefit from armor stacking like slopes can.