This is the first of a series of posts about the mechanics of Intervention. By exposing our design choices, we want to help players to understand how the game is put together and why we have decided to model the dynamics in the way we have.
We had a query as to how armour penetration and armour class works so we thought we'd start with that...
Armour and Penetration
When manufacturers design vehicles and weapons they do so to a particular specification. For example, a country requiring a new IFV will stipulate that it must protect from 23mm rounds from the frontal arc for instance and 7.62mm from the sides and rear. Similarly a weapon manufacturer will design with the ability to defeat the armour of a given class of vehicle or family of vehicles in mind.
There is also a cost associated with greater protection or penetration. While the most obvious cost is financial, there is also often a weight, reliability or capability cost that leads to trade-offs elsewhere. This means that manufacturers will do what they need to do to hit the specification but won't generally over-engineer the product.
We have taken advantage of this natural 'capability clustering' to create an armour class system that groups levels of protection and uses a scale that goes from '-' (no armour) to '5' (MBT frontal armour). Obviously this isn't an even scale, armour 4 is not twice as good or twice as thick as armour 2 - it just indicates an increased level of protection relative to the attacking weaponry.
Below is the Intervention table of indicative armour values. When designing units, this table is used as a start point to get vehicle armour into the right ballpark.
If penetration equals the armour value it counts as a glancing hit and the attack receives a penalty. Similarly, particularly tough armour (of a given class) provides a bonus to the defender.