How to See the German Turtleback & a Look at Citadel Protection

[GoldPile]

For the longest time I've tried to find the turtleback armor scheme in the armor to no avail, turns out I was just looking in the wrong places. Now if you've seen any other turtleback implementations such as the Nagato you will find the slopes to be on the citadel. Likewise you may assume it's like that for the Germans too.

While searching you might stumble upon this problem:

That sure doesn't look like a turtleback to me, you're telling me that's what's causing the magic? Well change a parameter (show casemate armor) & the camera angle & you get...

Why that looks like a turtleback! The citadel is actually hidden behind an external armor turtleback scheme. But wait, some other battleships have turtlebacks too, why are Germans much better? Let's take a look at the Nagato.

First thing of note is that the angle is steeper, at close to mid range engagements it's most likely not enough. Some other people on the forums have done the math before but you can visually see the difference. The second reason is because the turtleback slopes are incorporated into the citadel hitbox. On German battleships the slope is part of the external armor, not the citadel. That means in a German battleship you have to chew through at least 2 external armor calculations before it reaches the citadel rather than just 1 layer like the Nagato. Here take a look:

With the Nagato, if a shell penetrates into the turtleback it becomes a citadel. With German battleships, there's 1 last line of defense if a shell manages to slip past the angling, which is uncommon unless it's long range. Since I can't see what's inside of there because of how the armor viewer works I can't accurately gauge how much armor is actually there. But even if it's bad, it's still a smaller hitbox than having a turtleback as part of the citadel & you get more external armor. But the big takeaway is the angle of German BB turtlebacks, I think that's what influences citadels the most.

Now of course these conclusions are based off on how I understand penetration mechanics work & if you feel I made an error somewhere, by all means you're free to correct me.

[bfk_ferlyfe]

Well written.

[GoldPile]

This is the first thread that I've made where there was more up votes than replies before getting buried. 

[gloom13]

35 minutes ago, GoldPile said:

This is the first thread that I've made where there was more up votes than replies before getting buried. 

Here is one more of each :)

Nice for finding the viewing angles to show the turtleback - it is hard to see it in armor layout in port.