Wyldhunt wrote:
vict0988 wrote:
Baragash wrote:Wyldhunt wrote:Hmm. Still not sure I follow you. Say I shoot at a glass window. A nerf dart will bounce off. A rock fired from a slingshot may go through the glass or merely crack it. A bullet from a gun will probably go through it pretty reliably. So the bullet has better
AP than the rock, but the rock is still more likely to make the glass fail a save than the nerf dart.
That's not really how weapons and physics of work.
For a given gun, firing a given type of ammunition, the force applied at impact will be pretty consistent. A given type of armour will either be penetrated or not by that amount of force.
That's not how physics work. A given gun firing a given type of ammunition will have a different impact based on range and weather and a given type of armour will provide more or less protection depending on where the bullet hits.
Probably a bad example on my art. Still, it seems like armor penetration isn't necessarily a binary thing. It seems like a weapon could reasonably be good enough at getting through armor to be good at rapidly eroding the protection offered or piercing weaker portions of the armor, but not so good that it's guaranteed to punch straight through a marine's breastplate head on. I can believe that a dark reaper's reaper launcher is good enough at getting through power armor to be an effective counter to it but not so good that the marine never survives a glancing hit. A marine doesn't want to get hit by a plasma weapon, but I buy that his armor is so darn thick in some places that the hit might not be lethal; but that doesn't mean the plasma is *bad* at getting through his armor.
we are starting to go down a rabbit hole of how armor penetration actually works in the real world, and eventually that will lead to the point of, well how do we determine the armor penetration of a laser gun?
I will say from a real world perspective, you are right, and wrong. If we are talking steel, you can shoot a steel plate all day with a round that's rated to not go through it and that steel will hold up to it like nothing, we can sub steel here for space marine armor, and a round that is not rated to go thorugh it like a stubber or a bolt round.
You shoot it with a round rated to go through it, and it will punch through it like butter, think space marine armor vs plasma.
You shoot a concrete and with enough rounds its going to eventually erode it.
You can shoot ceramic armor plates, most modern body armor, with enough rounds and yes it will eventually go through it.
In terms of steel, its very much a all or nothing binary thing, either a round is going to have enough force and power to rip right though it, or crumple against it and do nothing. To be fair you can do this with steel, too but you looking at weapons that are not something that your average person would be carrying around, in terms of in game, think auto canon or heavy bolters.
In terms of ceramic or whats called "soft armor" on top of an all or nothing, you can shoot it enough times to rip through it, IE rending.
So in real life, you could have a weapon that is capable of shooting through NIJ rated level III armor with out issues, but if you used taht same weapon against steel that is rated at NIJ Level IV, you can shoot that weapon at that Level IV steel all damn day it will never go through it.
