[Mobhack]

The other contributing factors include maximum range and also warhead size (calibre, shell weight etc).

2 weapons with say 10 pen basic pen at 1 hex, with say ranges of 20 and 40 will show significantly different penetration curves. Make 2 test guns in an OOB in mobhack, then open up APCalc and look at those 2. The shorter ranged round "draws down" faster in effect as range increases.

Remember that sabot has its own pen and range. Sabot rounds usually have lesser max range than the AP round (in WW2, in MBT it can be the other way for real APDS)). WW2 sabot is typically APCR/HVAP which keeps the light alloy shroud and so has less mass plus the same air resistance, so is subject to the "shuttlecock" effect whereby it slows down rapidly compared to a standard full-body shell.

Warhead size will add to the basic penetration, especially with longer ranged guns. A base pen 10 gun with WH 3 will have less pen overall than one also with 10 pen, but WH say 10, given the same AP range. Thus some guns with lowish base penetration but huge shell size can be fairly nasty at range - say the Soviet 152mm since the sheer mass of the round keeps it trundling along to deliver a fair old whack of energy. Warhead size is a signifiant contributor to HEAT ammo - bigger is definitely better with HEAT. Again - make up some test weapons in Mobhack and examine the APCalc result.

Nope - we cannot tell you the precise formulae involved due to the non-disclosure agreements we signed with SSI, along with the fact that the formulae are only a starting point in the AP result - there are several complex code functions involved, which you would have to be able to read C to interpret and manually run trough with a set of dice several hundred times to get an idea. Hence APCalc, which shows the result of a few thousand sample rounds for each range cell.