At that point, that section can take no further damage. The third threshold is when a section's hit points are completely depleted, and it goes all black. At the second threshold, it turns a little blacker, and additional hits do even less damage. At the first threshold, the section turns a little black, and additional hits start doing reduced damage. As a section take damage, that section's individual hit point pool is reduced. Each of the four sections of a ship (aft, forward, amidships, and superstructure) has its own hit pool separate from the ship's overall hit point pool.

If you do that often enough, this data can help lead you into more specific shell selections against certain vessels.Īnother thing for ammo selection is to be aware of damage saturation. At good measure of experience fighting these ships and analyzing the results on the end of game data screens is also probably a good idea. Knowing what these exceptions are requires that you learn about the capabilities of the guns you are using and a good working knowledge of the ships you are likely to engage in battle. These are just rules of thumb and they will generally work better than just firing one shell type all the time and like all rules of thumb, there will be times when the rule doesn't work. This requires you to know the armoring scheme of the particular vessels you are engaging or just a lot of experience firing AP at a ship and wondering why you aren't doing much damage. Against those kind of vessels, it may be better to use HE against them as well. If you are firing against a very lightly armored cruiser or a cruiser which has really no armor at all, your AP shells will tend to go in one side, and out the other without exploding or causing much damage.

There are a couple of potential exceptions however. At what distance should I switch to AP? My sense is that I'm waiting too long so I'm not doing as much damage as I could be.Ī rule of thumb is that, in a cruiser especially those armed with guns of 6 inches or smaller, you should generally only use AP against other cruisers and use HE against everything else.

I tend to start with HE so I can deal with the DDs that pop up plus I will start hitting other cruisers and Battleships at long distance and setting them on fire (high arcs). Playing Tier III and IV American and British cruisers.

World of warships cruiser he vs ap