Shell Types

There are three types of player-loadable ammunition in World of Warships: Legends: high explosive (HE), armor piercing (AP), and semi-armor piercing (SAP). Understanding how the shell types behave and when to use them is important to achieving optimum results in battle. This article focuses on which ammo to select in a given situation.

There are three main parts to a shell: a casing, an explosive charge, and a fuse to set off the charge. Varying these components changes how the shell performs when it smacks into something hard.

HE shells

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How It Works: HE Shells

High Explosive (HE) shells have a relatively light casing, are packed with high explosive, and are fused to explode on contact.They are not expected to punch through heavy armor but to create a blast volume of concussion, flame, and fragments, perhaps penetrating structure or light armor and wrecking things like modules within the blast volume. These shells can also start fires.

The performance of an HE shell is determined by two things: the caliber of the shell (and thus the amount of high explosive it contains), and certain national attributes (e.g. IJN HE will do more damage than other nations, and KM HE less.)  In summary, HE shells:

• can penetrate light armor for direct ship damage;
• do not ricochet;
• do not overpenetrate;
• do produce Shatter ribbons, but these are No Penetration hits that may well do blast damage;
• explode on contact (with anything) creating a blast volume in which lightly armored modules can be damaged or destroyed, even if the shell does not hit the ship itself;
• can start fires;
• glow yellow in flight.

Direct damage to the ship is inflicted only if the shell penetrates the part of the ship it hits. Blast damage and fire may be inflicted whether or not it penetrates. Modules protected by 76mm or thicker armor are immune from blast damage so larger main gun turrets are safe, but most if not all secondary and AA batteries and torpedo launchers are vulnerable, as are engines and steering gear. A blast might even ignite a magazine.

HE shells can be used in different ways, depending on the target. For a very lightly armored target like a destroyer, AP can simply blow right through it without fusing, doing little damage, while HE will always explode and usually penetrate. For a very heavily armored or angled target, incapacitating modules can be important but setting fires is the main purpose of HE. While the penetration damage of a light cruiser's HE might be negligible, multiple and repeated fires are a real danger even to behemoths such as Yamato.

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AP shells

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How It Works: AP Shells vs. Armor

Armor Piercing (AP) shells trade some explosive for the ability to punch through armor. The nose of the casing is a pointed, high-density metal cap that, at least in theory, forces its way through armor plate. Because of the mass of the penetrator (the metal cap) a smaller amount of high explosive can be carried. An AP shell carries a time-after-impact fuse, to provide a short time (typically 0.033 sec) for the shell to penetrate before exploding.

The intention of the design is that an explosion inside a critical (and thus well-protected) area of the target ship is more effective than a larger explosions in a less critical area. AP shells carry out that intent well — in the right situations. Other characteristics of AP shells:

• can shatter;
• can ricochet;
• can overmatch;
• can penetrate heavy armor in the right circumstances;
• can over-penetrate;
• can damage or destroy modules by direct hit;
• do not start fires;
• have a special damage limit for large calibers against destroyers;
• glow white in flight.

The interaction of Armor-Piercing shells and heavy armor is quite complex.

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SAP shells

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How It Works: Semi-Armor Piercing Shells

Semi-armor-piercing (SAP) shells combine the features of both AP and HE shells. The nose of the casing is thickened to form a penetrator cap, of a sort, with less high explosive than HE but more than AP shells can pack in. SAP is fused with a short delay, like AP.

Like HE shells, SAP armor penetration is not a function of shell velocity or angle of incidence. Penetration depends on the caliber of the shell and the nominal thickness of the armor. The shell penetrates and deals damage if the penetration value is higher than or equal to the thickness of the armor. The value for each caliber appears in the chart below.

SAP shells:

• often have a higher maximum damage than the gun's AP;
• can ricochet but have very favorable ricochet angles — even better than those of American and British AP;
• can overmatch like AP shells;
• can penetrate thicker armor and cause greater damage than HE shells;
• cannot penetrate multi-layer armor;
• do not over-penetrate;
• do not generate a blast capable of damaging modules;
• do not start fires;
• have a special damage limit for large calibers against destroyers;
• glow red in flight.

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Guns and their shell types

Main guns

• Most ships can fire HE or AP shells from their main batteries.
• These ships can fire only AP shells: Tier II-VIII tech-tree British light cruisers, Legendary Tier British cruiser Minotaur, Tier VI British premium cruiser Tiger '59, Tier VII British premium cruisers Hampshire and Plymouth and Tier VII Pan-American premium battleship Atlântico.
• These ships can fire HE or SAP shells: Italian tech-tree destroyers and Tier VI Italian premium destroyer FR25.
• Tier VII American premium cruiser San Diego only has access to AP and SAP shells.
• Tier II-VIII tech-tree and premium Italian cruisers as well as Tier VIII Italian premium battleship Marco Polo are all able to use HE and AP, but can be equipped with a module that replaces HE by SAP, at the cost of a main battery reload time nerf.
• Tier I cruisers can only fire HE shells.

Secondary guns

• Most secondary battery guns fire HE shells.
• Tech-tree Italian battleships, Legendary Tier Italian cruiser Napoli (B), Legendary Tier Italian battleship Cristoforo Colombo and Tier VIII Italian premium battleship Giuseppe Verdi have their secondary batteries equipped with SAP shells.

Anti-Aircraft Guns

AA ammunition is not directly modeled in World of Warships: Legends. The effects of shell size and type, rate of fire, etc. are collected into the concepts of AA auras and flak barrages.

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Result of Impact by Shell Type

Action	HE	AP	SAP
Overpenetration	No	Yes	No
Start Fires	Yes	No	No
Ricochet	No	Yes	Yes
Damage Citadel	Yes, rarely	Yes, frequently	Yes, rarely
Damage Modules	Yes	Yes	Yes
Shatter	Yes, but may cause fire	Yes	Yes

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