A quick guide to spall liner

Use vents instead.
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Oh, you really do want to use spall liner? Ugh okay then.

What does spall liner do?

The primary purpose of spall liner is to reduce the damage you take from HE, and Premium HE shells. HE damage is calculated using this equation(I know maths is boring and all that);



Spall liner increases the spall coefficient, which will reduce the value of the actual damage dealt by HE shells when the calculation ends. Note that it doesn't actually add any armour, so if you have 60mm of side armour, and the HE shell has 60+ penetration, then it will still penetrate dealing its full damage(+-25%, RNG you know).
No spall liner gives the spall coefficient a value of 1. A light liner will give a value of 1.2, a medium 1.25, heavy 1.3 and super-heavy 1.5. So lets make up some numbers and plug them in. Sound good? Nah, sounds boring, but whatever.

Lets say we give our imaginary tanks 100mm of armour at the front, and they each get shot at by an artillery HE shell with 900 damage and a 4m splash radius, and that it lands 2m away from each of them:

• Tank A: 0.5*900*0.5-1.1*100*1=115
• Tank B: 0.5*900*0.5-1.1*100*1.2=93
• Tank C: 0.5*900*0.5-1.1*100*1.25=87.5
• Tank D: 0.5*900*0.5-1.1*100*1.3=82
• Tank E: 0.5*900*0.5-1.1*100*1.5=60

When do you use spall liner?

Now this is the problem with using the liner. Its not that the spall liner itself is a bad choice; for one equipment slot you get three decent boosts to your survivability. The trouble lies in that it has stiff competition with much better choices that help you to deal more damage(indirectly anyway). Rammer, vertical stabiliser, Enhanced gun laying drive, vents, optics, binocs and even camo net make for better choices to fill equipment slots than the spall liner. Only a very select few tanks should run spall liner; either because they have the speed+weight to be a ramming tank, or that they have good enough gun handling/view range to not need to equip such pieces.

Here is a list of tanks that I think should run spall liner as standard equipment. They are colour coded so that you know if a tank can be used as a ramming tank, or needs spall liner to sponge damage. There are also some tanks where the spall liner is optional, but other choices for equipment should be considered first:

• Tier V: Panzer V/IV, KV-220, AT2
• Tier VI: VK 28.01, TOG II*, T-150, AT7, Churchill VII
• Tier VII: Aufklärungspanzer Panther, KV-4, Black Prince
• Tier VIII: KV-5, 8.8 cm Pak 43 Jagdtiger
• Tier IX: E-75, VK 45.02 (p) Ausf B, Tortoise, Jagdtiger, E-50, T95
• Tier X: Maus, E-100, Jagdpanzer E-100, E-50M, G.W. E-100
  

Spall liner isn't useless and should be used on specific tanks. Feel free to discuss and improve this guide, since I'm not the most knowledgeable player ever.