Penetration AP

[XING06]

A tank's cannon only has around 9A energy levels, but it has immense penetration especially when using the APFSDS round.

I think we should add into the profile that it is capable of damaging at least High 8C to possibly 8B based on Alakabamm's calculations (User blog:Alakabamm/Durability Required to be Completely Bulletproof).

Thoughts? We do do this for some of the other fictional profiles as well so it shouldn't take that much work just link it up to Alakabamm's calc for justification.

 

[FanofRPGs]

I have said this before, but we need revisions on stuff like this as it seems inverse square law and area is being disregarded for many real life things.

Anyways, 8-B piercing makes no sense. Perhaps you can say, "9-A, but piercing let's it go through 8-B level objects?"

 

[Antoniofer]

Piercing stuff had to do with pressure, and with don't deal with that in any of our system; we can't neither convert pressure to energy, unless is overpressure.

 

[XING06]

@ FanofRPG

Yeah that's what I meant thanks for making it even clearer.

@ Antoniofer

I think the calc explains why it works. Its the difference between the two surface areas that he uses to find what level of actual durability you need to be bullet proof by scaling the energy. Something like that I'm not good at explaining it does it at the bottom.

 

[Celestial_Pegasus]

Pretty sure this is the same issue with slicing stuff, in that by slicing things you can sort of ignore their durability as it's focused energy on a small area or something like that.

We have characters on here who can survive a certain level energy/blunt force, but get hurt by slicing attacks below what they have shown they can tank in blunt force, it's treated as some sort durability negation to my knowledge.

 

[XING06]

@Celestial Pegasus

Yeah but that's a big problem for Real Life profiles, because most of the stuff there focuses on penetration. We don't actually know how much the penetration can affect something with the profiles right now, so I think we should add penetration values for specifically the real life profiles b/c that's how they deal the most damage. The fiction profiles are a lot more varied in terms of firearm power/effects so we probably shouldn't do anything to them.

 

[Kaiser_Kōnt]

Am I allowed to bump this or is it a necro?

 

[Mand21]

My comment and calc

This might be a necro, but the whole idea of being invulnerable to bullets is actually not rare on this wiki and I'd like to mention that the guy used the ENTIRE human body area as a standard when not even explosions take the entire body (they actually cover a much wider area from which the human body "absorbs" a fraction equivalent to its frontal area).
So I calc'ed it based on a fist because the rest of the APs seem fist-based. This made me conclude it takes a reasonably higher end of 9-A durability to view the highest-notch bullet impacts like punches, so anyone with 9-A+ or 8-C durability should be able to ignore any bullet from a weapon that's not a cannon in a vehicle with scratch damage or less.

Tank weapons and their many inches large cannons might still cause damage, though. I might some day pay closer attention to pixel scaling and do more calcs about this.

 

[XING06]

Technically, your calculation is more consistent, but based on site rules, durability applies evenly throughout the body for blunt impact hits as we can basically ignore the pressure difference b/w the fist and body area, b/c with similar energy durability, melee attacks are generally too slow/spread out to actually penetrate anything (If we go by your method, base humans are actually proof against 9B impacts which isn't true - 1.9/0.0077 [haymaker fist area - most common punch] = ~245. 245x100 = 24500 J.).

Also, explosions do generally cover the whole frontal body area; you're thinking of the fireball not the shockwave which is where the majority of the energy actually is.

You are basically correct though. The consensus is that small arms = 9B and .50 BMG = 9B-9A (armor piercing bullet).

 

[Antvasima]

I linked to Alakabamm's old calculation at the bottom of the durability page.

 

[Mand21]

Technically, your calculation is more consistent, but based on site rules, durability applies evenly throughout the body for blunt impact hits as we can basically ignore the pressure difference b/w the fist and body area, b/c with similar energy durability, melee attacks are generally too slow/spread out to actually penetrate anything (If we go by your method, base humans are actually proof against 9B impacts which isn't true - 1.9/0.0077 [haymaker fist area - most common punch] = ~245. 245x100 = 24500 J.).
Also, explosions do generally cover the whole frontal body area; you're thinking of the fireball not the shockwave which is where the majority of the energy actually is.

You are basically correct though. The consensus is that small arms = 9B and .50 BMG = 9B-9A (armor piercing bullet).

What do you mean we can basically ignore the pressure difference between fist and body area?

By scaling to the fist area, you get what's necessary for the attack to be felt like a punch without piercing capability but tolerable blunt impact, right? Sorry, I'm not sure if I understand my mistake. =\

And I know explosions cover the whole frontal body area, not the entire surface area. No attack really does that.

 

[XING06]

Like I said your calculation is perfectly consistent, but it doesn't quite work like that in real life. So you're scaling the fist area, so you can get what's necessary for the attack to be felt like a punch without piercing capability but blunt impact, right? That wouldn't work; see as an example, a fist or a forearm strike have massively different pressures but have around the same energy and does around the same amount of damage. This is b/c melee attacks on a similar tier of durability just don't have the speed/pressure to really actually penetrate something. Basically, in most blunt impacts on similar tier AP/durability, pressure doesn't really play a role. You would recieve and feel around the same amount of damage regardless of the pressure difference between say a body check and a punch (Ok this is a bit of a simplification b/c in real life a punch would do more damage, but that's not really b/c of pressure it's b/c of higher impulse). So your method is incorrect, as blunt impact with a fist is exactly the same as over a much larger area.

I think you're right about the surface area used being too large though. It's really only the presssure on the half of the body you get hit in so I'd say 0.95m2 would be better? Like you said there's pretty much no attack where you get hit on all sides at once and your durability is the same front or back so you'd find the pressure on the side you get hit on. I'd have to ask Antvasima though cuz that might just be a quirk of site rules or Alakabamm made a mistake.

 

[Antvasima]

Calculations are not my area, so I am not of much help. Sorry. Perhaps you could ask DontTalkDT to make a new version of Alakabamm's calculation, if necessary?

 

[XING06]

Yeah I will discuss it with him, especially the issue with total surface area vs surface area of one side (which I feel is more accurate)

 

[Antvasima]

Okay.

 

[Mand21]

I see. :c This might be doable, although it still feels weird to see a High 8-C character being potentially not invulnerable to bullets and an 8-B character taking damage from powerful enough cannons.

I get your reasoning, and yeah, we should discuss that with DontTalkDT.

 

[XING06]

No a base 8-C character is already invulnerable to bullets and low caliber cannons (.50 BMG is 9A. I'd say a 30mm AP round could damage a 8-C character).

High 8-C would be anti-tank weaponry with a possible maximum of 8-B with the largest.

These are just estimates but yeah. Basically, if you're building level you are bullet-proof as anything larger than 14.5mm counts as a cannon.

 

[Mand21]

No a base 8-C character is already invulnerable to bullets and low caliber cannons (.50 BMG is 9A. I'd say a 30mm AP round could damage a 8-C character).
High 8-C would be disposable anti-armor/multipurpose warheads like M72 or AT4 or RPG-7 with lesser penetration (0.2-0.5m of steel armor).

A 8-B character should really only be threatened by dedicated anti-tank weapons (penetrate 0.7-1.3m of steel armor).

These are just estimates but yeah. Basically, if you're building level you are bullet-proof as anything larger than 14.5mm counts as a cannon.

What are you basing this off if my calc method is invalid? Dude's method on the blog post had a round which is probably baseline cannon being 8-B. Not even anti-tank (the anti-tank round I calced at 8-C+ would be at least 8-A, maybe Low 7-C with his calc method).

 

[Antvasima]

DontTalk doesn't seem interested in this, but I will move this thread to the calc group forum. Perhaps you can invite some of the members to participate.

Executor NO might be an idea, for example.

 

[XING06]

@Mand21 - Like I said he doesn't take into account bullet squash/deformation, so the tip area shouldn't be used unless its an AP round (which still deforms just a lot lot less). I used the penetrator tip area for M829A3 [1] (not the ballistic cap) b/c its self sharpening so it should remain around the same area even with the blunting. And I thought your idea about only using one face was correct so I went with 0.95 m2.

@Antvasima - OK thanks. If DontTalk isn't interested I'll make a new blog and have people review it instead.

 

[Antvasima]

It is probably better to ask some skilled calc group members if they know how to calculate this instead.

 

[DontTalkDT]

To just quickly say something regarding this. What I commented below Alakabamm's calc was

Before we upgrade Hidan no Aria Characters to City Block level for wearing bulletproof uniforms, let me say that while the idea of Energy/area exists for AP it usually is not used. It is not wrong, but it is more or less is an approximation better than we use, as you can see by the fact that no calc really involves it. (and it is by far not the only simplification we use when it comes to calculating destruction, like the fact that we judge heat or freezing in the same terms as kinetic impact)

As Alakabamm answered on that comment he himself didn't intend the calc to be something that is actually used for the wiki.

So to reiterate: Our AP system is based on energy, not energy/area. Using an idea like "get the energy/area and calculate what AP it would be if the energy is applied over the whole human" means nothing but to use energy/area with extra steps. (you would have to do that for basically every attack smaller than a human and technically even downgrade attacks larger than a human)

Something like the justification that the character can actually tank bullets all over his body wouldn't work either, as we don't stack the AP of seperate attacks unto each other.


To make that clear, I am not saying the idea of that is in principle wrong from a physics perspective (though it actually is way more complicated than that. There is a reason you pay an engineer if you want to make sure something is sufficiently durable), but due to the history of net vs debating and, even more important, practicality our system uses a strongly simplified approach, in which the AP of a bullet will really only be its kinetic energy.

 

[Mand21]

But our question isn't really that, but what durability it takes for a character to withstand bullets on their skin.

Or do you mean we should basically be extremely careful with scaling characters from tanking bullet rounds?

 

[XING06]

@DontTalkDT - Yeah pretty much just like you said. We'd have to get into hardness/anti-penetration properties/projectile momentum/penetrator length/etc. (eg. Master Chief is 9A but his armor can tank AP 50mm rounds which should be able to penetrate higher; same with real life tanks) to properly scale and that's pretty much impossible to set up a simple enough system for. I mean we'll still bring it up when it might be relevant (eg. gun users), but each bullet type has its own unique penetration level so it's even harder to generalize into a accurate system.

We were really just looking for the level character where they would generally be total bulletproof (should be around 9A (estimate - .50 BMG AP is around there) so 8C is totally BULLET proof) and complete real-life weaponry proof (this is where I'm going to try to do a calc).

PS Hidan no Aria was actually a bad example; their bulletproof uniforms are only 9B-ish (similar to real-life ballistic vests) as its explicitly stated a powerful sniper round can blow through it. Also technically, the round he used counts as a cannon as it's a converted 20mm round.

 

[Mand21]

We were really just looking for the level character where they would generally be total bulletproof (should be around 9A (estimate - .50 BMG AP is around there) so 8C is totally BULLET proof) and complete real-life weaponry proof (this is where I'm going to try to do a calc).

PS Hidan no Aria was actually a bad example; their bulletproof uniforms are only 9B-ish (similar to real-life ballistic vests) as its explicitly stated a powerful sniper round can blow through it. Also technically, the round he used counts as a cannon as it's a converted 20mm round.

.50 BMG AP is low-end 9-B. I must once again ask what is your basis for this calc.

 

[XING06]

@Mand21 - No I meant in terms of penetration for .50 BMG AP (energy is low wall level ~17-20 kJ). I revised Alakabamm's method based on the parts I pointed out would skew the results. Here's how I did it:

0.95 (body frontal surface area) / 0.000127 (bullet base area - this is a low end for an AP round b/c it normally doesn't deform to that much) = 7480.31

Wikipedia gives most powerful .50 BMG to be 20,195 J.

20195 x 7480.31 = 151,064,960.63J

 

[Mand21]

I see, so you're using the base area for most of them.

Is the anti-tank round I calced still 8-A, though?

 

[Antvasima]

Thank you for helping out DontTalk.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

To be fair, our old blog on durability required to be bulletproof was actually high balled. It was calc'd using composite sniper rifle combining the highest muzzle velocity recorded with the heaviest bullet ever fired from handheld firearms. Which in reality, the former used a tiny/shallow bullet and the latter had a slow muzzle velocity. And penetration was calc'd comparing a rather small volume for bullet standards (which would assume a high balled density if compared to the bullet mass mentioned above) to the entire body of a human. Would have been more reasonable to compare to the volume of a fist, which would only get the old result 9-A.

And I agree with DonTalk on the rest. We shouldn't assume a character to be any higher than 9-A let alone 8-B solely based taking zero damage from sniper rifle bullets without any sort of calcs or feats putting their physical durability that high regardless.

 

[XING06]

@Mand 21 - The M829A3 would be around High 8-C-8B? Hard to say using base diameter it's High 8C+ but its an self-sharpening AP round so we can use the approximate area of the tip of the penetator which is smaller (do not mistake penetrator tip with the steel tip used to defeat reactive armor which is even smaller but the steel tip is made to break off). However, the government hasn't released M829A3 projectile cutouts (demonstrating how the projectile is constructed) so we can only use the estimates on what the projectile tip is like. Therefore, I'd actually suggest we go with the M829A1/2 which are just solid DU penetrators, leaving out the guess work.

@DarkDrago - Oh yeah definitely. That wasn't even a sniper rifle anymore; technically, that's a cannnon shell (It's a necked down 20x110mm round) with the velocity of .22 Swift (fastest bullet - not fastest cannon though [Mach 5 is the top speed for tank guns]).

I already talked about why we don't calc using the fist method though; Mand21 already brought it up and that's also not totally accurate. You are correct that we still shouldn't use the total body surface area; only the impact face so around 1/2 of what Alakabamm used.

Still yeah though, we can't assume durability based on penetration feats b/c penetration is also dependent on a lot of different factors of the target + the bullet (eg. a Real Life M1 Abrams - can tank at least High 8C level penetration but is only 9A against impacts), so yeah I totally agree with DontTalk too.

 

[Antvasima]

If no useful calculation blog is going to be created about the subject, by a skilled calc group member or other mathematician, I am not sure that continuing the discussion seems particularly productive.

 

[XING06]

I can make one I guess just so we have the 9A reference?

 

[Antvasima]

Well, it would have to be thoroughly evaluated by the calc group before we can use it.

 

[Mand21]

@Mand 21 - The M829A3 would be around low 8-B ish? Hard to say using base diameter it's High 8C+ but its an self-sharpening AP round so we can use the approximate area of the tip of the penetator which is smaller (do not mistake penetrator tip with the steel tip used to defeat reactive armor which is even smaller but the steel tip is made to break off). However, the government hasn't released M829A3 projectile cutouts (demonstrating how the projectile is constructed) so we can only use the estimates on what the projectile tip is like. Therefore, I'd actually suggest we go with the M829A1/2 which are just solid DU penetrators, leaving out the guess work.

I calc'ed it using the "main" tip of this image and obtained a result of 8-C+ when comparing it to a human fist. Dude up there said the most fair comparison was to a human fist and that seems to be what is getting the most accurate results, though I dunno. Like Antvasima said, we'll probably need a skilled calc group member or a mathematician/physicist to forge a formula for the rest of us, so that we can create a chart giving the level of durability for each level of resistance to bullets.

I can picture the kind of calc that can be done to simplify it (calc the pressure exerted by the bullet, compare to a fingerflick or punch and multiply by the ratio, perhaps? Or even just compare it to the 2 MPa needed to cut or pierce through human skin so that we can know how much stronger than human level is our guy) but even then I might be wrong and do not have the necessary knowledge to try.

We should contact the best calc members (given how often the "immune to bullets" subject is brought up) and wait. That's probably the best option for those who don't have the knowledge themselves.

Meanwhile, a good standard might be 9-B for your average bullets, 9-B+ or 9-A for armor-piercing bullets (9-A if they're top-notch, lol) and 8-C+~High 8-C for anti-tank weaponry.

 

[XING06]

@Mand21 I think HIgh 8C-8B for anti-tank though cuz remember I explained why the fist area isn't really relevant in terms of melee/penetration so we should use the frontal body area instead. DontTalk agrees especially as our site rules also can't work like that. So yeah I don't think the fingerflick/punch idea is good.

Still we're really only doing this to establish a general reference for bulletproof ability and we already generally have that in 9A, so I'm not sure if we actually need to keep doing this especially as penetraiton is quite tricky to scale, even in real life not even mentioning fiction.

In the case of your calc you should have used the tip of the light gray section instead (that's the main DU penetrator the stuff ahead of it is designed to snap off). The problem is that we don't actually know if that's the proper placement/tip size (the drawing is a civilian analyst theory of how it's constructed - the government hasn't released any actual cutouts of the projectile). I said this earlier but if we're going for tank round penetration we should probably use M829A2 as that was a solid DU projectile so no guesswork.

 

[Mand21]

Uh, sure. I'd then probably use High 8-C as that's the energy for completely destroying M1 Abrams, so anyone who tanks it might as well tank an antitank projectile, I guess? Would feel weird to have guy be able to casually obliterate a tank but still not be able to tank an attack that can also damage it.

 

[XING06]

Yes that does seem a bit weird when you think about it at first, but then again real-life weapons mainly depend on penetration so it's not too suprising, even a dinky .22 pistol can penetrate a grizzly's skeletal structure.

Rough Calc: 4.6 x 1670 x 1670 / 2 = 6414470 J (Muzzle energy M829A1) Wikipedia gives Rod diameter as 27mm and the tip looks at least 1/2 of that so area of the tip is 1.43×10-4 = 0.000143. 0.95 / 0.000143 = 6643.35. 6643.35 x 6414470 = 42,613,569,274.5 so High 8-C+. So yeah High 8-C, which is close to 8B but not quite there yet.

Again though like I said; this is a generalization b/c both fiction and real life has qualities that make it harder to penetrate (eg. manufactured/natural armor - this really only applies to unarmored fleshy foes - eg. humanoid characters - and even those only apply generally)