BF2 does not take into account angle of penetration. We have gone through this before several times in the past. I am about to just give up and go find another game engine to mod. You guys are killing me and I feel as if I am just spinning my wheels.
If you arbitrarily inflate the entire area for mass of armor.. ie.. the entire front of a tank to try and take into consideration angles, thickness, etc. Then you have to model the collision mesh to be the exact replica of the tank areas that you are trying to give a specific property to.
ie.. Make it so that the cuts in the triangles/polygons match with the actual areas that you are trying to code to a specific value. This way you could apply the material to the exact area.
This is impractical and not something easily done. Therefore, armor values for a lot of the tanks are setup or were setup to be a value of the entire area in general.
If you notice on your tank picture.. You would understand that fenders and fender skirts are not 120mm thick, nor is the track underneath. If you want realistic values, then we should and could just code the parts more exact in nature so that when someone shoots the fender in the front, you lose half your health or just explode. As that is a weak area of any tank.
Better yet, just make it so the shot passes through the fender and hits the weaker track then you lose half your health or explode. More realistic?
However, we do not do that, as that would be just as unrealistic as well. Therefore, we take an average of it all and do the best we can with what the game engine limitations give us. Granted, it is not perfect and it will never be so. Each tank has a weak spot upon it. It is just how the game engine rewards or does not reward us.
Take for instance the shot trap underneath the mantle of the Panther. Weak spot. We reward the player who happens to shoot that area. Take the King Tiger. The gun mantle is the weaker link there and if you check the armor specks. Should be a little weaker to some degree than the rest of the armor in the gun area.
When I code up the armor values of the tanks. I use real world values and try to take into consideration thickness on a sloped angle as best I can, however, the triangles and polygons of the collision model, still dictate the best course of action as a whole.
These things are what they are. The game engine we work with is, what it is.
