[Glossary](/glossary.md)/[Armor](/glossary/category/armor.md)

# Normalization

The few degrees a shell turns toward the perpendicular on impact, reducing the effective armor it has to cross.

Also known as shell normalisation, normalisation, shell normalization, two caliber rule.

On contact the [shell](/glossary/shell.md) rotates slightly into the plate before penetrating, which shortens its path through the steel. [Armor-piercing](/glossary/armor-piercing.md) and [high explosive](/glossary/high-explosive.md) shells normalize by five degrees, [APCR](/glossary/apcr.md) by two, [HEAT](/glossary/heat.md) not at all.

This is why APCR is worse against sloped [armor](/glossary/armor-thickness.md) than its raw [penetration](/glossary/penetration.md) suggests, and why a HEAT shell has to defeat the full [effective thickness](/glossary/effective-armor.md) of a steep plate.

Large shells against thin plates get considerably more of it: past roughly twice the plate thickness the normalization bonus scales up with [caliber](/glossary/caliber.md), which is what makes big guns so effective against light armor at an angle.

## Related terms

[Effective armorThe thickness a shell actually has to defeat once the angle of the plate is accounted for, which is what penetration is compared against.](/glossary/effective-armor.md)[OvermatchThe rule that a shell with a caliber at least three times a plate's thickness cannot ricochet off it, no matter the angle.](/glossary/overmatch.md)[Armor-piercingThe standard solid shell: reliable damage, moderate penetration, five degrees of normalization and a ricochet beyond 70 degrees.](/glossary/armor-piercing.md)[APCRA lighter, faster shell with higher penetration than AP, less normalization and a steeper penetration loss over distance.](/glossary/apcr.md)[HEATA shaped-charge shell with high penetration that ignores distance entirely, but is defeated by tracks, screens and any spaced armor it detonates on.](/glossary/heat.md)

[Every World of Tanks term](/glossary.md)

## Navigation

- [unicum.gg](/index.md)
- [Discord](https://discord.gg/Hqbfb8YPbU)
- [GitHub](https://github.com/unicum-gg/unicum.gg)

## Indexes

- [llms.txt](/llms.txt): the API, the MCP server and the other machine-readable surfaces.
- [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt): the same, with every endpoint's parameters inline.
- [sitemap.md](/sitemap.md): every section of the site, down to the individual pages.