What is Overmatch and How Does it Work? | World of Warships

This video was requested from a large number of viewers on both twitch and youtube, and here it finally is, an explanation on what AP overmatch is, and how it works in World of Warships.
World of Warships Wiki Link: wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ship:Ar...
This is actually a recorded video, and not taken from twitch. :D
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:48 What is Overmatch?
01:44 How to calculate Overmatch
05:33 Practical Examples - Montana - 27mm Overmatch
08:10 Practical Examples - Ohio - 30mm Overmatch
09:33 The Overmatch Table from the World of Warships Wiki
13:41 Can cruisers overmatch certain cruisers?
15:50 How to remember what overmatches you in the middle of a match?
20:49 How to learn overmatch?
22:20 Conclusion

[@Gopher31]

Torpedo aiming guide? When?

[@mercurytheweaponsdealer945]

(2)

[@gameover_477]

(3)

[@danh7411]

(4)

[@MalteseKnight]

Lmao Guys XD

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

white line. always white line

[@zacharytresidentdigimonenj3397]

Thanks for making this video. My brother is getting into the game, and he'll find this very useful.

[@MalteseKnight]

I hope it helps out!

[@nautalyst2996]

I think a key point missing is that after a certain caliber, while you over pen a DD anywhere, you'll only ever get 10% damage, even if the shell somehow arms. So in effect, cruisers with big guns like Alaska and Stalin might be able to pen the DD at every angle, using he might end up doing more damage

[@MalteseKnight]

I didn't include that in overmatch, cause idk I just didn't see that really relevant, I can include it in a future video on a related but different topic, but thanks for mentioning it. :)

[@Posilepton]

That's because of fuse time. Some ships can both arm on DDs and have the fuse time to detonate inside the ship such as British light cruisers and destroyers as well as the Japanese gun DDs.

[@nautalyst2996]

@@Posilepton Not quite. On DDs, shots of calibers over 283 are hard coded to do 10% damage, even if they were to full pen otherwise

[@jedpratte]

Also french DD's with there saturation mechanic built in sometimes at low health depending on your gun size AP could be the way to go.

[@TheSanco26]

​@@MalteseKnight Yes, if this is this ominous saturation mechanic, PLEASE explain it if you find the time. Found this video easy to understand and good explained for a beginner like me.

[@mcbrite]

I watched a bunch of these and what I've boiled it down to is: "Overmatch means the shell calculations of AP ignores the angle of the first surface it strikes." Edit: What you can do if you don't play AS much: Go to shiptool, filter Level 10 BS, AP, sort by Overmatch -> Print that list once for every ship you are interested in -> just mark the lists (ideally with colored highlighter) so you have a quick visual indication of every ship capable of overmatching you in your current ship. - Also you can use those sheets to put other stuff on there, like your build, modules, flags, or my favorite: Your own armor layout, like Malta says in the video...

[@duke223_]

This is by far one of the best videos covering an important topic which might be heavily missunderstood. Thanks for the video Malta o7

[@MalteseKnight]

Thanks for watching! I hope my explanation was alright!

[@windwardsailor6427]

Thank you very much for sharing this, I never quite understood this until now!!

[@CarbonIce]

Great video, thanks Malta

[@MalteseKnight]

Thanks for watching!

[@DaneCypel]

Solid explanations. Thank you!

[@MalteseKnight]

I hope it was good and enjoyable, big fan!

[@wtfdude7585]

A video about healing would also be amazing, for example cits cannot be healed and pens can partially be healed,… what about fire, flooding HE damage?

[@treeherder42]

If I remember rightly that changes based on the heal and sometimes nation. Like Salems superheal is not as good as Minotaurs because mino gets some citadel healing (or is it conqueror? I'm sure one does). We might also be seeing a unique upgade/legendary mod for halland that will increase the healable damage taken from HE. Then you get things like the warspite and massa/Georgia heal that is better than average or reloads a lot of faster.

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

Yea, Jock Jock's point is spot on. Malta could explain how "standard healing" works. Then show a list of all the exceptions. There are so many now.

[@MalteseKnight]

Good Video idea for the future!

[@vasyanyasha6430]

It depends on what ship you play. Usual bb heal is 10% citadel, 50% pen damage 100% fire/flood damage. For cruisers its the same but 33% for citadel What those numbers mean is if i for example hit BB in citadel for 10k, he can heal back 1k. If i hit bb with usual pens for 10k, he can heal back 5k, if i hit bb with fire damage, he can heal back 10k. This is one of the reasons IFHE is good even if you deal same or less amount of damage. Pen HE damage is MORE vakuable than cheap fire damage. But obviously if you kill someone before he uses all heals, fires are better haha. And remember, you cant heal oneshot!

[@Pragaths]

Excellent video Maltese!!! Very objective and very well explained. Maybe you can, in the near future, make a video explaining the mechanics of OVERPEN. This has happened a lot in my games and it would be interesting to talk about it. Greetings and big fan.

[@Pepega_Ch]

Thanks for the valuable lesson, maltese! Big fan!

[@michel0775ify]

Great video realy helpful to understand this

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

Great vid. You did a good job of explaining. This stuff is always confusing if you don't have it memorized, which is most people who don't play every day. I haven't seen one of these types of vids since iChase made a series sometime around '04 about gun mechanics. Penetration angles and auto bounce would be a good topic for a follow-up to this vid. For the exceptions (DM, Pedro Pavlov, etc) show the list on the wiki of the exceptions to keep it simple, like you did in this vid. You may want to use the navigator mod to show ship to ship angles for a vid like that. btw guys, if you have trouble remembering the numbers, you can keep your calculator up on another screen. when you run into a situation in game you can hit pause "F4", do the calculation to know if you will overmatch, then unpause, and continue to play. 💯

[@calimaa09]

Thank you sir. It helps lots.

[@jedpratte]

Great video. I now have one to send to new players so they can understand overmatch!

[@varanzmaj]

It's a actually a fairly simple mechanic, unfortunately there are a LOT of ships in the game and it is important to remember which caliber guns are found on which ships. This is kind of hard to do, especially for newer players. It takes time and experience to get this right. As a fairly new player I have trouble remembering which caliber guns I am using on my own ship, let alone what the enemy carries so the best way of dealing with this is to assume that EVERYTHING at your tier, or a tier higher overmatches you and play accordingly. I play a lot of cruisers, especially light cruisers and a lot of DDs and this has served me well. Only recently have I started making mental notes of specific ships and their specific dangers to me, but this is more related to their "special" abilities (like radar, smoke or ability to soak up damage) rather than their caliber guns.

[@odinsrensen7460]

Thank you, that's a lot more useful.

[@nytek9]

This is a must watch! Especially by the HE only BB players.

[@MalteseKnight]

Haha, thanks, feel free to share it if you want! :D

[@kroppsomvandling]

Great video. I would love a breakdown over weak spots for battleships for different tech three lines. Like where to aim on the german bbs in different situations, the russians and so on. I think that such a video would tie in to this video. Do the biggest guns overmatch battleships of same tire?

[@mcbrite]

I don't know why, but there is nothing like this for wows... Like Armor cheat sheets, overmatch and he-thresholds and so on... Not even shiptool works for most of that...

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

It would be a good vid if he taught us how to figure it out for ourselves, probably. That way we wouldn't have to memorized ship by ship, ya know? For example, teach us to what to look for in the armor scheme in port such as below water citadel, turtleback armor or Soviet icebreaker bows. Of course, these are strengths. You are asking for weaknesses, so he would need to explain the opposite :)

[@tristanjones7217]

5:57 look at how tight that dispersion is!

[@cristianmicu]

i was just smiling at the start of the video, there's the yamato in port, front and center , on this topic :)

[@Lperez3829]

Big fan!

[@mcbrite]

Malta, quick question: I got the Ragnar recently and currently looking at Colbert or Yolo Emilio, with the coming 2x research reset: Is it fair to say the Colbert plays a bit like the cruiser version of the Ragnar? - From the videos I watched, the type of gameplay seemed similar! Of course you are not as much an anti DD as the Ragnar with Radar, but the shooting over islands, open watering by dodging shells at longer ranges all looked a LOT similar?

[@mondrianbogert6835]

Would love a video going over when and how to use various DD AP against other DDs. Arming threshold, autobounce angles, fuse arming time etc.

[@MalteseKnight]

You should use HE, in my situations, unless you don’t pen enemy DDs with HE, then you use AP

[@anthrax2413]

I don't know if this is also the case in WoWS because I didn't go far too deep into the mechanics, but in WoT people would often confuse overmatch with autopen. Many would think that overmatching a thin layer of armor was the same as penetrate it regardless of its effective thickness. I'd often see in the forums people crying that they didn't penetrate a armor that they could overmatch and the game was broken for that. Overmatch is a mechanic that disregards auto-ricochet angles, but the shell still requires to penetrate the effective armor or it may be still bounce off the armor plate.

[@athras8822]

It's a little different, I'd say. What Malta was talking about in this video is really only regarding the outer layer of armor, and it's the mechanic that only checks for auto-bounce or not. Just because it can overmatch the nose armor, there could still be another layer of armor behind that can cause bounce or shatter; a good example would be the Kremlin/Slava hull, where Yamato can overmatch the upper part of its nose, but there's a 40mm (?) angled armor under that will prevent citadel damage, as that is not overmatchable. Also, like the example Malta showed with the Des Moines on the Ohio, just because you overmatch the nose, doesn't mean it's automatically pen damage, since at Tier 10, you need at least 51mm of armor to actually arm the AP shells, so even if you overmatch the 27mm or 30mm armor, you hit something beneath that you can't pen, it will still be a shatter; a good example is why Smolensk is notoriously hard to citadel in battleship at close distance.

[@lubossoltes321]

No, to my knowledge once you overmatch you cannot shatter on that same armor. Effectively ovematch only counts the nominal thickness of the armor not the effective one. What you can shatter on is the next layer of armor after the overmatched plate.

[@anthrax2413]

@@athras8822 AFAIK, the game has effective armor calculations, based on angle of armor vs angle of impact. Because we are talking about things that has like 400mm, 600mm of penetration, it might not make much difference against a 32mm plate, no matter how angled it is. But maybe there could be a situation that a high caliber shell can overmatch armor, but still not have enough penetration to actually punch through the effective armor. Maybe it could happen with some shitty ass ship like Adm Schroder, which has tier III guns

[@ayayaybamba3445]

Can you explain the precedence order between penetration checks (shatter), overmatch, and autobounce? It's something that I always think I understand until the game throws me for a loop.

[@thepaperbagmask]

big fan!

[@MalteseKnight]

Big Fan!

[@fruitdog]

big fan

[@rustybronco85]

so the only layer of armor that matters is the most outer layer? I see some ships you cover have much thicker armor on the citadel or other internal bulkheads but that doesn't matter?

[@matthewcasady6276]

If a person want to excel at a task, most people need to study it.

[@tsuaririndoku]

And Overmatch can also apply to World Of Tanks too. BUT, WOT you need to use Armor x3

[@gorkarullan]

how do you open a training room like this ?

[@zenicwave3696]

How do you get the training grounds?

[@totallylegit4852]

Cant find the vid now, flamu did some years ago where Eerie can bounce Yamato shells, is it still a thing? Aslo why cant they add this to AP stats of the ship (overmatch up to #) like they have with HE?

[@MrSchwabentier]

Yamato overmatches 32mm. So if you have 33mm armor or more you can bounce Yamato shells. To the second question: Knobody knows. WG would probably say the don't want to overwelm players with info...

[@CanadianCowHauler]

Probably sound like a potato here, but I'm pretty sure its kinda new like within the last year 🤔. What's the button to change from "normal view" to "spotter plane view" and can u do it anytime or just when spotter plane is up?

[@MalteseKnight]

When your spotter plane is on, you press C whilst zoomed in to change the views.

[@pummychaudhary4755]

Hey malta can you review agincourt

[@tijger5353]

Question: how do I stay alive in my des moines/ worcester?

[@odinsrensen7460]

Hug islands, I guess. Don't be the first to open fire on the enemy, so you're not the first thing they decide to shoot at.

[@EvoraGT430]

One area that is not clear is how likely a citadel is after a ship is over-matched. How does it work?

[@MalteseKnight]

Since you pen the nose, you can go through the flat front part of the cit, it’s almost as if it’s broadside you can take a look at the internal armour in port!

[@729060]

That's based on shell speed, arming time, and the line the shell is passing through the ship.

[@EvoraGT430]

Thanks guys; that does help. I was wondering if the shell arms on the over-matched armour first; I guess it should. But as @720960 implies, then the arming time kicks in.

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

@@EvoraGT430 Malta's reply points out the most significant reason for the power of overmatching the bow: the front of the citadel is often, if not always, completely flat which makes the shot equal to a perfectly broadside shot.

[@Lperez3829]

But malta, did you know that IJN DDs have high alpha

[@ironharvest8458]

Click for Big Damage!

[@MalteseKnight]

Legend!

[@123ikubuf]

Aiming guide as DD gunboat please my aim suck especially when I'm using a DD

[@stevepodleski]

what is diff between overmatch and overpen?

[@MrSchwabentier]

overmatch is penetrating armor regardless of angle. It depends on caliber and armor thickness. overpen is the shell not arming in time and flying through the ship without detonating.

[@stevepodleski]

@@MrSchwabentier it seems to me that overmatch is the same as overpenetration but damages the ship which does not make sense. Overpen is a physical phenomenon but overmatch seems to be game design creation.

[@MrSchwabentier]

@@stevepodleski no, they're not the same. actually they're completely different things. As I explained

[@stevepodleski]

@@MrSchwabentier what I am trying to say is that one actually happens in battle while the other is artificial game generated.

[@MrSchwabentier]

@@stevepodleski both happen. If I shoot a Yamato shell at your 20mm armor it will definetely penetrate, no matter what angle you're at. The value 14,3 is of course just arbitrary. But so is everything in this game

[@zane660]

Ah I guess we wont see any HE Yamatos anymore from now on right? right???

[@MalteseKnight]

Probably not XD

[@rockyhudson]

How do you hit anything in game??? Holy smokes...

[@MalteseKnight]

What do you mean? XD

[@rockyhudson]

@@MalteseKnight MoNtAnA struggles to hit the water...

[@Flobb1t]

Overmatch is negated by YT commentors.

[@MalteseKnight]

Lmao

[@suburbanview]

ME: he is bigger than me, so better shoot and then hide or run. Im bigger, so wait for the right shot, when he turns around and show his belly. LOL, you know, the normal way LOL

[@michaels9739]

How can small caliber guns pen Yamato's cheek? Doesn't it still have to pen the 32MM plating covering the cheek?

[@MalteseKnight]

No, that depends on the angle, if you’re showing enough angle and have enough pen you can go through the armour. Overmatch is something that can completely ignore the angle.

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

The concave curve of the cheek creates a flatter angle compared to a "normal" bow. for example, a ship without the cheek, your shells may hit at a 45-degree angle, which you small caliber shells might not pen. but the concavity of the cheek reduces the angle to 30 degrees, for example, which your shells can now pen because the armor effectiveness is thinner. The flatter the angle, the less armor there is to penetrate. A shell hitting at a steeper angle has to penetrate not only the armor thickness but also travels diagonally through more armor, effectively making the armor thicker for the shell = non pens.

[@eaglesix6585]

bold of you to assume that this dented player base want to learn the game.

[@MalteseKnight]

It’s a question I get asked a lot, not an assumption I made out of thin air XD, if people want to learn, that’s up to them at the end of the day! :D :P

[@EvoraGT430]

The kind of guys who watch videos like this always want to learn more. However there are a lot more players who don't watch......

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

@@EvoraGT430 It would be nice if all the players watched. wows KZbinrs views would skyrocket. $$$

[@MohammadRashadyandere-sama]

first cruiser to get cruiser overmatch is herny IV actually not golaith

[@MalteseKnight]

I show in the video it's Goliath and explain why and show the table, it's Goliath, it can overmatch minotaur. 234mm / 14.3 is over 16mm which is minotaur armour.

[@Iceman-ly4it]

Overmatch is negated by player skill

[@MalteseKnight]

Lmao

[@alblup6860]

overmatch is negated by player skill

[@picric4191]

Do you want to hear the hard truth? Overmatch is negated by player skill.

[@iGhost]

Too much hassle. Idont even bother remembering all those numbers. I just play. win or lose doesnt matter. its just a game. come on

[@MalteseKnight]

But people ask me questions, and the video is there to help answer, if you're offended that I made the video it's fine, but people do want to learn, and there it is.

[@soffici1]

This training room exercise fully demonstrate the futility of precisely aiming your BB guns in WoWS when your dispersion circle is far larger than the tiny targets you need to aim for to score citadels. Mostly, it’s RNG (i.e. pure luck) Also, if Yammy’s guns can overmatch any cruisers’ bows, how come I still get bounces from cruisers’ bows?

[@EvoraGT430]

The bounces must be coming from other areas, e.g. the side plating.

[@sarpkaplan4449]

aiming is not absolute, its more like a suggestion so aiming for parts will get you more hits on that part ON AVERAGE ( unless you have below 1 sigma but no ship has that)

[@TheFuzzypuddle]

It's not entirely accurate to say Yammy's guns can overmatch any cruisers' bow. Moskva and other Soviet ships have an icebreaker on the lower half of the bow. This is a plate of I think 50mm armor (not overmatchable). However, the upper part of the bow is similar to other cruisers, so it is overmatchable. So you could say a ship like the Moskva has an overmatachable bow if the shells land in the correct place. Kremlin also has the same armor scheme. Part is 32mm and the icebreaker below is thicker. You can look at the armor scheme in port to see it better than my explanation.

[@soffici1]

I’m aware of that, my point is that unless you are blessed by RNG with very tight salvoes, we’re just splitting hairs, as the shells fall nowhere near where you aim the guns

[@MalteseKnight]

You can still bounce is the heavily armoured belt, as shown in red in the armour viewer.

[@beyond560]

Back 2 years ago when I started playing wows I was in my omaha and wondering how I was getting clapped, Ive learned the hard way