Ok, played lately. A SU hit a Tiger two times in the back, the distanc was ~50m, the Tiger did not have a single scratch.
You probably were firing from some angle, not exactly 0deg from the rear. The Su-76 has currently... let me check.. 81mm of penetration from 50m (and around 82mm from 0m) - some say it's too much already and should be below 80mm. Then the Stug would be completly resistant from the front.
The Tiger has 81mm of rear hull armor (little sloped 80mm) and 82mm or rear turret armor. The penetration is practically the same as armor rating and on each shot can vary few percent up or down, so everything depends on luck... BTW trails on Kubinka proving grounds in April 1943 showed than T-34/76 can't penetrate Tiger's side from 200m with normal ammo. In the mod it is possible (depending on luck) up to about 150m (very rarely 200m) at angle up to 5deg. At 10deg the ranges drop to 100-150m, at 15deg you have to be on 0m to have chance for penetration. At 20deg it's probably impossible at all, as extra 20deg of angle transforms into extra 10% of armor protection.
(edit: The KV-1 and T-34/76 has higher penetration currently, 85mm from 50m (I probably forgot to reduce it from previous version...) so it should have chances up to 300m from the side. Better than in reality most probably...)
Other than that I'm really happy, the Stug is finally pretty strong.
Stug has 82mm of armor at the front, so everything I wrote above regarding Tiger's side, works for Stug front too.
I guess the the passing through of the projectiles causes many engine damages where there should not be any - like being hit on the front.
I'm not sure, as I coulds swear that sometimes a ricocheting (non penetrating) hit causes engine damage in my tank :-/
Only good thing is that engine damage in RO is a joke
P.S. Yes, the captured T-34 is not supported by mut yet, just like Carius Tiger, and old penetration routines are called for them. Contact me with the authors maybe, I can made mod versions then or send them the base mut vehicle code.
The problems with front hits damaging the engine were already in stock RO so should not be related to increased shell velocity - they could only happen more often in mod. Please report in details your problems with collision detection on Orel map, I have too little data currently to diagnose what causes the problem. Were tanks missed completly with projectiles not colliding at all ? Is the bug repetitive ? Was it from short or long range ? Is it range-related maybe (shots fired from some range always bugged?).
In the other case (collision detection on wrong side of the vehicle) the penetration calcs should correct this error and still give correct angle and result in most cases. And such things happen also with reduced shell speed in stock game.
The engine damage is based on projectile PATCH trough the vehicle, not the place of hit. This way a front hit may damage the engine in the rear - but it usually hits the ammo first... What really worries me are non-penetrating ricochets that cause engine damage...
If the projectile hitting front was detected at the back of the vehicle, the path plotted would be either the same, as normally (if traced backwards) or not cross vehicle interior at all (if plotted only forward) - in the first case damage would be the same as with normal hit, in the other engine damage could simply never occur. This is why I'm not sure that increased projectile speed is cause of problems you experienced. But of course if the problem repeats, we'll release a mut version with slowed down projectiles to test it.
P.S.2. I'm considering giving up my own penetration estimates for now and just use penetration values straight from CMBB, which are not always 100% correct but still very very good and accepted. I could focus on the mod code, and return to fine tuning of penetration when the mod is in final stage. Any thoughts ?
