Dilemma of IFHE on the Bismarck 105 mm secondaries

[callumwaw]

As we know, German HE has a better penetration value (caliber/4 instead of caliber/6) than other navies. 

 

So I've been browsing the forum and reddit trying to find out if IFHE enhances Bismarck's secondaries in any way. 

 

There's this: 

 

http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Armor_thresholds

 

According to this table, IFHE doesn't do much to the 150 mm secondaries. They can go through 32 mm plating anyway (which is tier 10 battleship bow/stern). The only change is that with IFHE they can go through 50 mm on the Khaba belt, Moskva plating and Kurfurst deck. But it's just parts of three ships so it's not a big deal. 

 

The table also says that without IFHE, the German 105 mm secondaries can pen 25 mm bow plating (tier 6-7 BB bow/stern) but with IFHE they can pen anything up to 32 mm (which means they chew through tier 10 battleship bow/stern). 

 

If this is true, it would seem like an obvious choice to use IFHE for Bismarck's secondaries, because instead of having 6 x 150 mm guns penning enemy Tier 10 BB bow, you now have 14, which is more than twice as many. In other words, you're doing 2x as much damage with your secondaries (at a reduced fire chance, but that doesn't bother me). 

 

However, while searching the forums, I came across the information that the "German HE pen" (caliber/4) does NOT pertain to the 105 mm guns on the Bismarck and that they have the regular caliber/6 penetration. 

 

No justification or source was given. It was not explained why this particular caliber is excluded. But this information appeared in two different threads on the forum (which may be a case of people repeating hearsay). Both threads were pretty old (from over a year ago). 

 

My question is:  is this true? Do the German 105 mm HE shells have "regular" instead of "German" penetration? If it is true then IFHE does not make any sense on the Bismarck. 

[HaachamaShipping]

As far as I see it, they don't pen anything and have regular pen. IFHE isn't worth it either way though. IFHE memes are for Kurfürst and Gneisenau.

[callumwaw]

@Riselotte  What do you mean by 'they don't pen anything and have regular pen'?  Do  you have a reliable source of information, or is it just your impression from playing the ship?  If you do, can you link the source of this information please?

 

The link I gave is to a table in the Wargaming wiki, where it says that 105 mm German secondaries have the caliber/4 rule, not caliber/6.  It even says so in the table. 

 

Your statement that "they don't pen anything" is only right if you do NOT have IFHE. With it, they can pen much more: 

 

Even if they have the regular (caliber/6) pen, it's worth taking IFHE because it enables them to pen high-tier battleship superstructure and high-tier destroyer plating. 

 

If, however,  they have the caliber/4 pen rule, as it seems from the table, then taking IFHE gives them ability to pen bow-tanking tier 10 BBs. 

 

 

[BeauNidl3]

There's no dilemma, IFHE requires 4 Captain points that are far better value spent in other areas.

IFHE for a few secondary guns to maybe pen a few specific ships should you get in secondary range isn't going to make any significant difference.

[HaachamaShipping]

7 minutes ago, callumwaw said:

@Riselotte  What do you mean by 'they don't pen anything and have regular pen'?  Do  you have a reliable source of information, or is it just your impression from playing the ship?  If you do, can you link the source of this information please?

I mean I'm playing the ship and apart from setting fires they do not deal damage against T8+ ships. If they had German penetration, they'd be shredding high tier DDs hard.

 

[That_Other_Nid]

12 minutes ago, BeauNidl3 said:

There's no dilemma, IFHE requires 4 Captain points that are far better value spent in other areas.

IFHE for a few secondary guns to maybe pen a few specific ships should you get in secondary range isn't going to make any significant difference.

Yup, your captains points should mostly be going into the endurance skill tree. Add somthing like Adrenal Rush if you have a couple points spare, but you can practically nullify fires with the right cpatain skills.

[callumwaw]

Guys, thanks for all the replies but you're answering questions that nobody asked. 

 

I'm not asking if IFHE is worth 4 points.  I'm not asking if 4 points can be spent better otherwise.  I'm not asking if it's situational or not.   I'm not asking what captain build is the best for you. 

 

I'm asking a very simple question:  do the German 105 mm secondaries on the Bismarck have the German HE penetration (caliber/4) or standard HE penetration (caliber/6), and can you give a reliable source of this information, rather than hearsay?

 

 

[BeauNidl3]

5 minutes ago, callumwaw said:

Guys, thanks for all the replies but you're answering questions that nobody asked. 

 

I'm not asking if IFHE is worth 4 points.  I'm not asking if 4 points can be spent better otherwise.  I'm not asking if it's situational or not.   I'm not asking what captain build is the best for you. 

 

I'm asking a very simple question:  do the German 105 mm secondaries on the Bismarck have the German HE penetration (caliber/4) or standard HE penetration (caliber/6), and can you give a reliable source of this information, rather than hearsay?

 

 

 

I've never seen it documented and short of getting a developer giving a direct yes or no on the possible 1/4 pen I doubt it's possible to find out.

Not like you can see damage numbers or pens/shatters/ricochet ribbons from secondaries so there's no way to get proof even if it's confirmed one way or the other by WG staff.

The only way you could test (with current free re-specs) is in the training room at a precise distance on specific targets and do it repeatedly, however the fires being RNG makes test results pretty much impossible without an absurd number of exactly similar test runs.

 

The reason that people have reacted to the question is that blowing 4 points on IFHE for a few of the secondary guns makes no sense at all so the question shouldn't exist in the first place, it's irrational.

[tank276]

4 hours ago, callumwaw said:

Guys, thanks for all the replies but you're answering questions that nobody asked. 

 

 

Actually you are the one asking questions that are irrelevant.

I guess all the post's meaning is that you want to take IFHE skill for your Bismarck captain and if it is worth it.

Well, it is not.

I have no clue if German 105 mm HE shells have normal or "german" penetration, IFHE is a bad way to use 4 skill points on a BB and thats it.

I believe Graf Zeppelin has hydro, would you start a thread to ask if it is worth taking Vigilance on her captain because the hydro is "german"?

[RAHJAILARI]

1 hour ago, tank276 said:

I believe Graf Zeppelin has hydro, would you start a thread to ask if it is worth taking Vigilance on her captain because the hydro is "german"?

 I TOTALLY WOULD!!

 

There, we can count @tank276 successfully trolled for the day. No need to thank me.

[Flavio1997]

You can do an experiment this way: in a training room, put a stationary bot Des Moine bow on ( because it has 27mm bow plating). Then try to kill it with or without ifhe, if there is a net damage increase ( like 2x) then the 105 follow the german rule, if not, they are normal  guns

[callumwaw]

@tank276 Why are you trying to teach my how to spend my captain perk points?  Am I telling you how to play the game or spec your captain? I'm conducting an experiment here, testing a hypothesis.  But even if it were for real, still, yes, I can take Vigilance for my CV, or I can take the torpedo reload perk for my North Carolina that doesn't have torpedoes! If I want to waste my perk points on something that doesn't work or makes no sense, it's my choice, my game and my captains, and I can waste however many skill points I want. 

 

 

7 hours ago, BeauNidl3 said:

IFHE for a few of the secondary guns makes no sense at all so the question shouldn't exist in the first place, it's irrational.

 

Firstly, if those 105 mm guns have the regular HE penetration then giving them IFHE doesn't do crap.  So then, yes, they totally make no sense at all (except as fire starters) and buying IFHE is a waste of points. 

 

But if they have the "German" HE penetration then IFHE makes all the difference in the world: the 105's go from not doing anything to being able to pen a bow-tanking tier 10 Battleship. That's quite a difference, isn't it?  You would have 8 guns doing a total of up to 3200 dmg every 3 seconds. (naturally this is the top value, IRL they won't all hit, but even if only 1/3 of them hit, it's still 8500 damage you get for free in the time it takes your main guns to reload. Plus a chance of fire). 

 

It's eight guns on each side, so I don't think it's, like you said, "a few guns".  Basically it's like having a destroyer glued to each side of your ship :) 

 

Thirdly, I'm checking a hypothesis here, it has nothing to do with being "rational" or "irrational".   

 

 

Now, to finish this off-topic and get back to the actual question:

 

@Flavio1997  that's a very good idea, I also thought about it, but the problem is what @BeauNidl3 said earlier: you will also start fires, and fires will change the damage count completely :(  

 

All I'm looking for, basically, is for someone to actually look at the table in the Wiki: 

 

http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Armor_thresholds

 

and say if it's true what it says. 

[Flavio1997]

2 minutes ago, callumwaw said:

 

 

@Flavio1997  that's a very good idea, I also thought about it, but the problem is what @BeauNidl3 said earlier: you will also start fires, and fires will change the damage count completely :(  

 

All I'm looking for, basically, is for someone to actually look at the table in the Wiki: 

 

http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Armor_thresholds

 

and say if it's true what it says. 

Nope,  in the post game stats you should be able to see where the damage come from ( detailed report section)  so you should the damage numbers change

[callumwaw]

Ah, I forgot about it completely! :D :D  Thanks for pointing this out. I'm heading straight to a training room :) 

[Aotearas]

Pretty damn sure only the 150mm and 128mm secondaries have the 1/4 caliber penetration exception. Think that was also confirmed by datamining, though I wouldn't know where to find that stuff now ...

 

 

105mm with 1/6 caliber HE pen rule means 17,5mm HE pen (not sure if the game rounds up or down). That's just good enough to pen DD hulls tier VII or lower. With IFHE that pen goes up to 23mm, which is enough to damage all DD hulls (except Khaba 50mm trollplating, duh), so that alone is already a pretty neat jump in secondary effectiveness.

 

As another tidbit: there's more ships with 50mm plating than just the GK, Moskva and Khabarovsk. A good chunk of the FdG deck is 50mm, Bismarck/Tirpitz have a large bit of 50mm deck and Yamato has parts of its bow and aft deck covered in 50mm armour.

[callumwaw]

@Aotearas you're 100% right.   And if the 105 mm's have the German penetration (1/4 caliber) then giving them IFHE would mean they could even pen bow armour on tier 10 battleships (32 mm)  That's a huge difference. 

 

Again, it's well worth looking at this table: 
 

http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Armor_thresholds

 

As for the 50 mm plating, unfortunately the German secondaries can't help there, even the 150 mm.  150/4 = 37,5, plus 30% for IFHE = 49 mm penetration :(    You would need 156 mm caliber to go through 50 mm with IFHE. 

 

But another valid point you're making is IF the 105 mm's have regular pen, and you don't have IFHE, then they can't even pen most of the destroyers you come across in high-tier battles :( 

[Sigimundus]

General guide to German secondaries and HE:

    88mm and 105mm guns don't get 1/4 HE penetration in any form, primary or secondary.
    The 150mm secondary guns on Imperial German dreadnoughts fire AP.
    Kriegsmarine-era 150mm secondaries guns fire HE and get 1/4 HE penetration.
    Guns used on destroyers abide by standard rules.
    If the weapon isn't in one of those categories and is German in origin, it has 1/4 HE penetration. That includes Admiral Makarov, which is Nurnberg in Soviet service.

The 105 mm Spr.Gr. Kz. (secondaries on Hindenburg\*, Bayern\*, Friedrich der Große\*, Roon\*, Gneisenau\*, Scharnhorst\*, Prinz Eugen\*, Bismarck\*, Admiral Graf Spee\*, Admiral Hipper\*, Tirpitz\*, Yorck\*, König\*) has 1/6 penetration rule and has penetration 18mm without IFHE and 23mm with IFHE.

So IFHE helps "only" bypass threshold of 19mm plating.

[callumwaw]

@Sigimundus    thanks very much, finally a factual answer!   Do you have a source of this information (that the 105 mm's have caliber/6 penetration)?  Because the table in the Wiki clearly shows that German 105 mm secondaries have the caliber/4 penetration rule (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Armor_thresholds).    It's a bit surprising.  Is it just a mistake in the Wiki? 

 

I've done some testing in the training room and the results are baffling. 

 

With IFHE, my 105 mm's don't even seem to pen the superstructure on the enemy Bismarck and Roon, (which they should easily do even if they are caliber/6).   Are the 105 mm there just to look nice if they don't do anything? 

[tank276]

30 minutes ago, callumwaw said:

@tank276 Why are you trying to teach my how to spend my captain perk points? 

You started a thread with the word dilemma on the title, that means you need help/guidance in taking a decision.

So, yeah I am trying to teach you cause you asked for it

Am I telling you how to play the game or spec your captain?

No, you dont cause I never asked you to. You did ask in a public forum

 But even if it were for real, still, yes, I can take Vigilance for my CV, or I can take the torpedo reload perk for my North Carolina that doesn't have torpedoes!

You can take air superiority in a Gearing too

If I want to waste my perk points on something that doesn't work or makes no sense, it's my choice, my game and my captains, and I can waste however many skill points I want. 

If it is your choice, why do you ask other people's opinions in the first place?

 

 

@Flavio1997@BeauNidl3

 

 

[Redcap375]

Glad that is cleared up chaps 

 

Being a BB brawler kinda guy i have done many training room experiments.  Yes i'm that kinda guy.  Stats can go to hell, i wanna see it for myself. 

 

Each German secondary build with or without IFHE gives you different results, simple as that.  It then up to the captain to figger out if 4 points are worth it?  This all depends on the kinda targets you wanna blow up.

 

If you get really P***** off with DD's then IFHE on the Bismarck is a good call as you can now pen them for direct damage.  Also means you can pen most BBs with 150 mm.

But.....Your fire chance goes down and that is a big factor when shooting all those 105 mm at them.  So it's up to the captain. 

 

Did the Massachusetts IFHE training room yesterday.  Mixed results and all depends on the targets you wanna aim for.  But it melts cruisers like you wouldn't believe. Which is great as it leaves you big hitting guns for the Big boys.

 

 

 

[Sigimundus]

7 minutes ago, callumwaw said:

@Sigimundus    thanks very much, finally a factual answer!   Do you have a source of this information (that the 105 mm's have caliber/6 penetration)?  Because the table in the Wiki clearly shows that German 105 mm secondaries have the caliber/4 penetration rule (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Armor_thresholds).    It's a bit surprising.  Is it just a mistake in the Wiki? 

 

I've done some testing in the training room and the results are baffling. 

 

With IFHE, my 105 mm's don't even seem to pen the superstructure on the enemy Bismarck and Roon, (which they should easily do even if they are caliber/6).   Are the 105 mm there just to look nice if they don't do anything? 

 

The situation with german secondaries was always confusing and even patch 0.6.6 do not clear it enough.

The 105mm secondaries are "exception in exception" and have 1/6 penetration rule.

 

Info can be found here (in rusian)

https://forum.worldofwarships.ru/topic/87806-требуется-компетентное-мнение-по-механике-правил-143-и-6-калибров-по-бронепробитию-и-рикошетам/?page=3#comment-3578275

 

or english translation

https://thearmoredpatrol.com/2017/06/07/wows-qa-7th-june-2017/

 

 

And here is table of all guns and IFHE HE penetrations

https://www.reddit.com/r/WorldOfWarships/comments/5ordcb/datamined_list_of_ifhe_penetration_changes/

 

 

[callumwaw]

@tank276 clearly, you don't understand the word "dilemma".  It doesn't mean: "please teach me how to spec my captain".  It means "a situation where a difficult choice has to be made between two or more alternatives" (as per OED definition, and I don't think you'll find a better one). 

 

The two alternatives are: is it calibre/4 or calibre/6.  The choice is difficult because there are sources that back up either of these claims. 

 

8 minutes ago, tank276 said:

You did ask [how to spec a captain or play the game] in a public forum

This is an outright lie, mate.  You're lying. I never said I needed advice on that. I didn't even say I was considering IFHE for my  captain.

 

I specifically asked:  'My question is:  is this true? Do the German 105 mm HE shells have "regular" instead of "German" penetration?'

 

This is a quotation from my original post. 

 

How hard is it for you to answer a simple question without coming up with a whole illusionary story of me supposedly asking you to teach me things, and you answering questions that were never asked by anybody in this thread?

 

How hard is it NOT to go off-topic? 

 

10 minutes ago, tank276 said:

You can take air superiority in a Gearing too

Of course I could if I wanted to, or if I was conducting an experiment...

[Redcap375]

11 minutes ago, callumwaw said:

@Sigimundus    thanks very much, finally a factual answer!   Do you have a source of this information (that the 105 mm's have caliber/6 penetration)?  Because the table in the Wiki clearly shows that German 105 mm secondaries have the caliber/4 penetration rule (http://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Armor_thresholds).    It's a bit surprising.  Is it just a mistake in the Wiki? 

 

I've done some testing in the training room and the results are baffling. 

 

With IFHE, my 105 mm's don't even seem to pen the superstructure on the enemy Bismarck and Roon, (which they should easily do even if they are caliber/6).   Are the 105 mm there just to look nice if they don't do anything? 

 

But they do mate.  They pen DD's, something of which the Bismarck hates as it has a crap torp belt compared to most. 

 

As for the BB superstructure the secondary on the German ships tend to be flater than the Amercian ones.  Meaning the close you get, the less effective it is as the lazy sods cant reach the deck and bounce off the sides (which it cant pen).

 

I wouldn't even think about the 105 mm with IFHE being a weapon again BB's.  It needs to hit the superstructure exactly and they arent accurate in the first place, and that's not including a moving target and such.  Cruisers are even harder.  It's a DD killing machine that the IFHE brings.

 

Try it against a LoYang in training with and without IFHE and see the true power of the force! 

 

[callumwaw]

@Sigimundus  thanks so much, mate!  Finally the answer I've been looking for. 

 

It's kind of weird, because the table in the Wiki says the opposite.   Also, only the tier 10 BB has 128 mm secondaries.   Did the Bismarck use to have them in the past? 

 

With the 105's only having calibre/6,  they cannot even penetrate high-tier DESTROYERS, which means they are absolutely useless for anything else than an occasional fire. 

 

If you get IFHE, you can pen 19 mm, which means you can finally pen destroyers and theoretically  battleship superstructure, although my tests in the testing room showed that even with IFHE the 105's are not penning superstructure!

 

So in fact the 105's seem to be even worse. 

 

It's all very strange. 

[tank276]

Just now, callumwaw said:

@tank276 clearly, you don't understand the word "dilemma". 

Dilemma is the English translation of the Greek word διλημμα and since my native language is Greek I understand the word better than you do.

I never said I needed advice on that.

And you start a thread with the particular theme...

 

Of course I could if I wanted to, or if I was conducting an experiment...

If u specced your Gearing captain with air superiority, the only safe conclusion of the experiment would be that you are not very bright