Ballistics and Armour Interactions in Escape From Tarkov

General Overview

Escape From Tarkov(EFT) is a survival, extraction, first-person shooter, but that doesn’t quite cover the complexity of the game. EFT is a realistic warfare game where there is an emphasis on surviving over fighting everything in sight, but what happens when you have to fight, in this article we will be looking at how the ammunition in the game paired with the armour mechanics of the game can completely shift the gameplay and outcome of scenarios.

Throughout this article there will be a primary focus on how using different ammunition can yield varying results and how the ammunition interacts with the armour or unarmoured parts of another combatant.

Armour Material Breakdown

Above is a basic chart to display how different armour materials in EFT interact with damage from bullets, and then damage from explosives. These destructibility values are factored into the damage that the armour takes when hit but also how much is passed through per bullet. ?From least destructible at the top to most destructible at the bottom.

Armour in EFT works by completely stopping bullets if the round does not penetrate, weather the round passes through the armour is down to a lot of factors that will be discussed in this article.

Every piece of armour in the game is made of one of these materials, but also have a value called “Armour Class”, this value is basically what measures how defensive the armour is. The higher the number the harder it is to penetrate, this Armour Class is on a scale of 1-6, 6 being the strongest.

Moving forward in this article, this chart will be referenced when discussing how specific bullets interact with the given armour.

The two armours being compared:

The first is a class 3 ?aramid armour that covers the thorax and stomach, the PACA soft armour(PACA):

The second is a class 6 ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) armour that covers the thorax, the 5.11 Tactical Hexgrid Plate Carrier(Hexgrid):

Ballistics Breakdown

This first chart just explains how the round interacts with the different armour classes, mostly disregarding other variables such as material and durability of the armour.

Lets look at a random round to breakdown what information we need:

Whilst there are a lot of different values ignoring, accuracy, recoil, and any bleed chance percentage, this is because they are all effects to the player either firing the round or getting hit by the round, and focus mainly on how the armour stops or allows bullets to pass through.

Fragmentation chance is a percentage chance for the round to fragment and deal more damage, this dice is also rolled when a combatant is hit.

7.62x51mm?M993

The values for the M993 round:

Within the 7.62.51mm calibre, the M993 variant is the highest penetrating round.

If the M993 round is matched up against the PACA armour, we can see that it would usually ignore the armour completely as seen by the charts, meaning that damage passes virtually straight through to the target, whilst at the same time dealing damage to the armour. It is quite unfair to place this high tier of a round against a starting armour, so let’s compare it to the class 6 Hexgrid.

Even though the Hexgrid is of higher class the round will still most likely ignore the armour when hitting it, technically due to the Hexgrid having a more destructible material that its composed of it should take more percentage damage against this particular round. In this scenario of combat either armour would be virtually ineffective against protecting the combatant with the armour on.

7.62x51mm?M80

The values for the M80 round:

Whilst in terms of the entire game the M80 round is a well performing round, within its calibre it is the middle of the range. Similarly to the M993 round it will virtually ignore the PACA class 3 armour as you can see on the right, but this is where the scenario changes, the M80 round does 13 more bae damage compared to the M993 round, this is where sometimes overkill isn’t the best route. If both combatants where wearing the PACA class 3 armour but one was using M80 and one was using M993, the lower tier less expensive round would win, this is a general trend over all the calibres, the lower the pen, the more base damage the round does.

Putting the M80 round up against the class 6 Hexgrid , is very different to the M993 round, whilst the M993 usually ignores the armour, the first shot of the M80 round will have a low-medium chance of penetrating the armour, whilst the chances increases afterwards due to the armour durability decreasing as it absorbed the round, the Hexgrid will still absorb up to 5 rounds of the M80 ammo, this means that compared to the M993, this is where the M80 round falls short.

General Ballistics

Using the information above the data can generalised that all calibres are like this, there are resources that have been used such as the EFT Wiki, and the Tarkov After Midnight website, that breakdown all of what has been discussed in more detail.

Using the data shown, it shows that when a round is fired at armour, lots of different variables are considered before the round does damage to the combatant. Factors such as the armour class, the remaining durability percentage, and the rounds penetration value. After all these calculations are done there is a chance that the bullet will penetrate. Values can fluctuate when the round penetrates armour as some damage can be mitigated depending on how closely matched the round is to the armour so not all examples will be as clean cut or as simple as the ones discussed in this article.

Conclusion

There is a lot more to this topic as this article is only scratching the surface of the calculations that take place when all these events occur, different pairings if armour and ammunition, and extraneous variables such as fragmentation and different armour durability percentage. ?

There are so many different talented people who have already covered this topic on youtube and on the Escape from Tarkov Wiki, so if this topic interested you there will be links below to the resources I used and other places where the information is available.?

Sources and Links

Ballistics data (Escape From Tarkov Wiki):

https://escapefromtarkov.fandom.com/wiki/Ballistics

Armour Data (Escape From Tarkov Wiki):

https://escapefromtarkov.fandom.com/wiki/Armor_vests

Tarkov After Midnight Armour Penetration and Damage Breakdown:

https://tarkovaftermidnight.wordpress.com/