The current state of British late/post-war tanks and changes to be made (5.3 to 7.3).

[TasteTheTea 3,122]

Hello all,

 

This is not another discussion about the BR changes taking place for the vehicles mentioned in the title as there are so many of them already. Rather this is a topic to discuss the current state of these vehicles and the changes that can be made to improve/balance these vehicles.

 

First of all, lets start with the issue that is usually brought up first by opponents of British vehicles:

 

Armour-piercing-discarding-sabot
 

⚠WARNING⚠: Sizeable amount of text ahead:

Spoiler

We first see this round as the apex ammunition for the A34 Comet and A30 Challenger (77mm and 17 Pounder respectively) and the complaint from opponents is usually due to to the high penetrative capability of this round compared to their own standard armor-piercing ammunition (Usually APBC or AP/APC/APCBC). Quite a few of these opponents have their own APCR ammunition with similarly high penetration - however this round pales in comparison to APDS in terms of damage and angled performance. While this means that these two British tanks give British players a superiority in penetration, they also lose out in terms of armour compared to their opponents meaning that the enemy can generally penetrate them just as well - leaving the only remaining advantage as mobility.

 

We see 17 Pounder APDS again on the Centurion Mk 1 and Black Prince, with a much more in terms of armour this time but less in mobility (especially for the Black Prince) and while they're much more capable of taking a hit, their higher BR means they still very much penetrable by their opponents and they must rely on their APDS much more to do the same.

 

Then we get the infamous 20 Pounder APDS (first of all on the Charioteer) with its much higher flat and angled performance compared to the 17 Pounder. This round will cut through almost any armour it faces although it still lacks in damage compared to standard AP or APHE ammunition. For tanks like the Charioteer this presents a familiar situation in that it allows this tank to penetrate anything - while everything else can penetrate it - leaving the only advantage again as mobility. For tanks like the Centurion Mk 3, Caernarvon, FV4202, Centurion AX and now hidden ◎Strv 81 (RB 52) however, this gives them the ability to penetrate everything while they themselves can be tough nuts to crack in certain situations thanks to their (as of the time this was posted) complex and thick turret armour - although lacking now in mobility compared to their peers.

 

Then of course we have 120mm L1A2 APDS available on the Conway too (later available on the Conqueror) providing us with a tall, somewhat well armoured tank destroyer capable of penetrating absolutely anything but lacking mobility (owing to its Centurion basis) and the armour is nowhere near as good as the Centurions.

 

 

A general theme here with all of these APDS (77mm, 17 Pounder, 20 Pounder, 120mm L1A2) rounds is that they're all over-performing and under-performing at the same time! They're missing a large amount of flat penetration and they have too much in terms of angled penetration. This issue has been reported before:

 

 

Once we even came quite close to seeing the performance of these rounds corrected in-game during the 1.87 dev server:

We were told that these changes were still being worked on and weren't being abandoned:

Spoiler

 

These changes would do a lot for balance in my opinion, APDS would struggle more against well angled armour while being extremely effective against flat or slightly angled armour - essentially meaning for example:

 

"King Tigers and Panthers! You can show us your hulls all you want but you better angle your turrets!"

 

Perhaps @Smin1080p could let us know whether these changes are still in the pipeline?

 

Dual-Axis Stabilisers

 

Spoiler

 

The next thing usually mentioned by opponents of British vehicles, this unique ability allows most of our 20 Pounder equipped vehicles to be able to fire on the move at their full speed unlike the vehicles with the earlier single-axis stabiliser such as the Sherman series. This means these tanks generally have the the upper-hand in engagements thanks to being able to acquire and shoot a target much quicker than those who must stop and wait for their gun to settle before firing.

 

There are those who suggest that the stabiliser for these vehicles may be over-performing and I agree they most likely are, however I haven't seen any evidence presented that could be used to create a bug report but if evidence is found it would certainly help the balance if we could make these stabilisers a little less perfect.

 

 

"Trolly mantlets"

 

Spoiler

This really only applies to the Centurion Mk 3, Caernarvon and ◎Strv 81 (RB 52) as they are the only ones with actual mantlets. The FV4202 and Centurion AX are "mantletless" designs and rely instead on angled turret armour - which means that currently they are actually weaker in armour protection compared to their mantlet-equipped counterparts. This is especially true for the Centurion AX with its 98mm turret cheeks - although it is not certain that the armour values for the FV4202 or AX turret are actually correct. The turrets are located at Bovington and would need to be examined thoroughly and perhaps converted to volumetric armour in-game.

 

This is in-part due to the recent introduction of volumetric shells: shells can no longer squeeze through any gap that is smaller than the diameter of the shell itself which means that the complex, multi-plated construction of the Centurion's mantlet can easily block these shells:

 

There is also the added bug of two connected plates creating an area that combines the thickness of both plates:

 

These mantlets were always "trolly" however, especially when the Centurion and Caernarvon mantlets were erroneously modeled as being 200mm thick! In-any case, it would definitely help if Gaijin prioritised converting the Centurions and Caernarvon (luckily it uses the same turret anyway) to volumetric armour leaving no oddly mixed and over-performing plates while retaining the toughness of the mantlet armour as seen here:

 

Spoiler

 

Odd one out - The Tortoise

 

Spoiler

Stuck at 6.7 with only the FV4005 to support it, this tank would still be worth a play if it weren't for its own under-performances and weaknesses, the armour isn't as thick in places as it should be and that doesn't seem to matter anyway since one APHE round to any of its weak points (MG port, Cupola, under the gun etc) seems to be quite able to take deal critical damage or even instant destruction to the tortoise despite its spacious interior and crew of 7.

 

There don't seem to be any definitive sources around that give an accurate depiction of Tortoise's armour but many sources seem to indicate that its supposed to be thicker than what we have:

This would certainly help to keep out APHE rounds but the cupola issue still remains, perhaps a solution could provided in the same manner that it was for the T95?

 

This vehicle also doesn't have access to any APDS ammunition, relying solely on its APCBC round - which is only a small cut above the 20 Pounder APCBC round in terms of penetration. There was APDS ammunition made for the 32 Pounder, however it was never issued to the Tortoise as a service round (not even the HE was in-face) so whether to add that round to our in-game Tortoise would be a point of debate in regards to historical accuracy vs balance.

 

 

Discuss! (without turning the thread into another explosive mess about the impending (at the time of this post) BR changes please)

Edited February 1 by TearsOfTea

[Sarcastic_Bullet 664]

IMO the huge issue which I would put as a priority over the rest, is the proper modelling of the volumetric armor for the brit turrets. Basically this whole BR movement is done based on a bug (double armor at plate seams) and I'm willing to bet everything that, when this is going to be fixed the whole lineup will still stay uptiered, conveniently forgotten for months or years.

 

 

 

[TasteTheTea 3,122]

Just now, Sarcastic_Bullet said:

IMO the huge issue which I would put as a priority over the rest, is the proper modelling of the volumetric armor for the brit turrets. Basically this whole BR movement is done based on a bug (double armor at plate seams) and I'm willing to bet everything that, when this is going to be fixed the whole lineup will still stay uptiered, conveniently forgotten for months or years.

I'm not so sure, when the Centurion Mk 10 was 7.3 everyone complained about its gun and stabilizer. The turret however was and is still far weaker than the Centurion Mk 3's.

[Shrike142 1,428]

5 hours ago, TearsOfTea said:

Hello all,

 

This is not another discussion about the BR changes taking place for the vehicles mentioned in the title as there are so many of them already. Rather this is a topic to discuss the current state of these vehicles and the changes that can be made to improve/balance these vehicles.

 

First of all, lets start with the issue that is usually brought up first by opponents of British vehicles:

 

Armour-piercing-discarding-sabot
 

⚠WARNING⚠: Sizeable amount of text ahead:

  Reveal hidden contents

We first see this round as the apex ammunition for the A34 Comet and A30 Challenger (77mm and 17 Pounder respectively) and the complaint from opponents is usually due to to the high penetrative capability of this round compared to their own standard armor-piercing ammunition (Usually APBC or AP/APC/APCBC). Quite a few of these opponents have their own APCR ammunition with similarly high penetration - however this round pales in comparison to APDS in terms of damage and angled performance. While this means that these two British tanks give British players a superiority in penetration, they also lose out in terms of armour compared to their opponents meaning that the enemy can generally penetrate them just as well - leaving the only remaining advantage as mobility.

 

We see 17 Pounder APDS again on the Centurion Mk 1 and Black Prince, with a much more in terms of armour this time but less in mobility (especially for the Black Prince) and while they're much more capable of taking a hit, their higher BR means they still very much penetrable by their opponents and they must rely on their APDS much more to do the same.

 

Then we get the infamous 20 Pounder APDS (first of all on the Charioteer) with its much higher flat and angled performance compared to the 17 Pounder. This round will cut through almost any armour it faces although it still lacks in damage compared to standard AP or APHE ammunition. For tanks like the Charioteer this presents a familiar situation in that it allows this tank to penetrate anything - while everything else can penetrate it - leaving the only advantage again as mobility. For tanks like the Centurion Mk 3, Caernarvon, FV4202, Centurion AX and now hidden ◎Strv 81 (RB 52) however, this gives them the ability to penetrate everything while they themselves can be tough nuts to crack in certain situations thanks to their (as of the time this was posted) complex and thick turret armour - although lacking now in mobility compared to their peers.

 

Then of course we have 120mm L1A2 APDS available on the Conway too (later available on the Conqueror) providing us with a tall, somewhat well armoured tank destroyer capable of penetrating absolutely anything but lacking mobility (owing to its Centurion basis) and the armour is nowhere near as good as the Centurions.

 

 

A general theme here with all of these APDS (77mm, 17 Pounder, 20 Pounder, 120mm L1A2) rounds is that they're all over-performing and under-performing at the same time! They're missing a large amount of flat penetration and they have too much in terms of angled penetration. This issue has been reported before:

 

 

Once we even came quite close to seeing the performance of these rounds corrected in-game during the 1.87 dev server:

We were told that these changes were still being worked on and weren't being abandoned:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

These changes would do a lot for balance in my opinion, APDS would struggle more against well angled armour while being extremely effective against flat or slightly angled armour - essentially meaning for example:

 

"King Tigers and Panthers! You can show us your hulls all you want but you better angle your turrets!"

 

Perhaps @Smin1080p could let us know whether these changes are still in the pipeline?

 

Dual-Axis Stabilisers

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The next thing usually mentioned by opponents of British vehicles, this unique ability allows most of our 20 Pounder equipped vehicles to be able to fire on the move at their full speed unlike the vehicles with the earlier single-axis stabiliser such as the Sherman series. This means these tanks generally have the the upper-hand in engagements thanks to being able to acquire and shoot a target much quicker than those who must stop and wait for their gun to settle before firing.

 

There are those who suggest that the stabiliser for these vehicles may be over-performing and I agree they most likely are, however I haven't seen any evidence presented that could be used to create a bug report but if evidence is found it would certainly help the balance if we could make these stabilisers a little less perfect.

 

 

"Trolly mantlets"

 

  Reveal hidden contents

This really only applies to the Centurion Mk 3, Caernarvon and ◎Strv 81 (RB 52) as they are the only ones with actual mantlets. The FV4202 and Centurion AX are "mantletless" designs and rely instead on angled turret armour - which means that currently they are actually weaker in armour protection compared to their mantlet-equipped counterparts. This is especially true for the Centurion AX with its 98mm turret cheeks - although it is not certain that the armour values for the FV4202 or AX turret are actually correct. The turrets are located at Bovington and would need to be examined thoroughly and perhaps converted to volumetric armour in-game.

 

This is in-part due to the recent introduction of volumetric shells: shells can no longer squeeze through any gap that is smaller than the diameter of the shell itself which means that the complex, multi-plated construction of the Centurion's mantlet can easily block these shells:

 

There is also the added bug of two connected plates creating an area that combines the thickness of both plates:

 

These mantlets were always "trolly" however, especially when the Centurion and Caernarvon mantlets were erroneously modeled as being 200mm thick! In-any case, it would definitely help if Gaijin prioritised converting the Centurions and Caernarvon (luckily it uses the same turret anyway) to volumetric armour leaving no oddly mixed and over-performing plates while retaining the toughness of the mantlet armour as seen here:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Odd one out - The Tortoise

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Stuck at 6.7 with only the FV4005 to support it, this tank would still be worth a play if it weren't for its own under-performances and weaknesses, the armour isn't as thick in places as it should be and that doesn't seem to matter anyway since one APHE round to any of its weak points (MG port, Cupola, under the gun etc) seems to be quite able to take deal critical damage or even instant destruction to the tortoise despite its spacious interior and crew of 7.

 

There don't seem to be any definitive sources around that give an accurate depiction of Tortoise's armour but many sources seem to indicate that its supposed to be thicker than what we have:

This would certainly help to keep out APHE rounds but the cupola issue still remains, perhaps a solution could provided in the same manner that it was for the T95?

 

This vehicle also doesn't have access to any APDS ammunition, relying solely on its APCBC round - which is only a small cut above the 20 Pounder APCBC round in terms of penetration. There was APDS ammunition made for the 32 Pounder, however it was never issued to the Tortoise as a service round (not even the HE was in-face) so whether to add that round to our in-game Tortoise would be a point of debate in regards to historical accuracy vs balance.

 

 

Discuss! (without turning the thread into another explosive mess about the impending (at the time of this post) BR changes please)

The mantlet is a lot thicker (from the front) than 6". Compare it to forward roof slope 50.8mm (2") and the upper turret face at 152.4mm (6"). Scaling from that, the mantlet is ~250mm (9.8") thick in the centre and ~89mm (3.5") at the top. The issue is that it isn't solid, it's a complex 3D shape with hollows for the recoil buffers and breech, thus will always overperform until modelled volumetrically.

 

 

[TasteTheTea 3,122]

2 minutes ago, Shrike142 said:

The mantlet is a lot thicker (from the front) than 6". Compare it to forward roof slope 50.8mm (2") and the upper turret face at 152.4mm (6"). Scaling from that, the mantlet is ~250mm (9.8") thick in the centre and ~89mm (3.5") at the top. The issue is that it isn't solid, it's a complex 3D shape with hollows for the recoil buffers and breech, thus will always overperform until modelled volumetrically.

My thoughts exactly, with volumetric modelling its still going to be very tough in the areas it should be and weaker in the areas that should be too.

[Sarcastic_Bullet 664]

5 hours ago, TearsOfTea said:

I'm not so sure, when the Centurion Mk 10 was 7.3 everyone complained about its gun and stabilizer. The turret however was and is still far weaker than the Centurion Mk 3's.

 

The main complains that I see now are lolpen round (which is BS) and invulnerable turret. I expect anytime for them to throw the vickers in the same bowl of soup with the others and say that it is invulnerable.

 

Also, APDS shattering seems to be on the rise since the damage on the APDS was "fixed".

[TasteTheTea 3,122]

59 minutes ago, Sarcastic_Bullet said:

I expect anytime for them to throw the vickers in the same bowl of soup with the others and say that it is invulnerable.

That would be very laughable when it has less armour than a Leopard 1

 

59 minutes ago, Sarcastic_Bullet said:

Also, APDS shattering seems to be on the rise since the damage on the APDS was "fixed".

I haven't noticed that myself... but I have noticed modules absorbing APDS spall very well.

[MrBosticator 76]

I'm at a loss to see how the Tiger 2 and Tiger 2 Sla16 remain at 6.7 when the Centurion 3 etc got moved up to 7.0. The Tiger 2 is a one shot machine from my experience, where as your Cent 3 like the Cent 1 is a one crew member at a time killer. The recent slew of BR adjustments to the British line up, have left me p#ssed of with the game and I've not played since the winter event. The British tech tree has been seriously overlooked for many years, you only have to look at the Black Prince to see this.

[Muzlie 7]

Really good post there @TearsOfTea, there was a post a while back and another similar one on reddit with the work of Killa Kiwi about penetration problems:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qc7TWt9TJ80Jlm69V8mpqxEUMO-6Vi8uexnREPK4110/edit?usp=sharing

Which essentially takes us through the penetration calculation errors in WT, specifically the underperformance of APDS and Serious underperformance of APCR against flat surfaces & the lack of differentiation between sharp nose and blunt nose APDS. Which cause a multitude of problems, a can of worms that I don't think Gaijin want to touch (and I don't even judge them for it, sort of)

In terms of the main problems, the biggest player base in WT is Germany, and of course the historic infamy of the Tiger and Panther series, this also filters down to the Panzer IVs, a great deal of German tankers have no clue what they are doing.

I have recently been playing a lot of US 5.3 to see why the US Sherman's are so high tiered considering their relatively low penetration power, & apart from the obvious advantages of the short stop stab, German players will just roll out into the open and expect to be invulnerable. I had 2 +10 kill games the other night & the vast majority of games were a win, against arguably better tanks.

I switched over to GER 5.3 to try and get some perspective and it was considerably harder, allied teams are just that much better, or should I say axis teams are just that much worse....

This one of the biggest issues at this BR bracket I believe, hopefully with the new mixed BRs it will remedy this or at least provide some better statistics.

German players are essentially being pandered to in their constant BR decreases and it doesn't teach them to 'get good', whereas allied players have to deal with poor armour and poor guns and poor line ups (with a few exceptions), and by the time they reach 5.3 they are more skilled. Allied players, especially Brits, play with the mindset that the best armour is not getting shot in the first place, and this teaches quite a meta game play.

Being an allied main, specifically British, I am constantly seeing German players park their tank in the open, taking no cover, or not even angling some times. On Maginot line you get King Tigers driving out in the open on a full up tier, and getting salty when they get yeeted across the map by APDS or an ATGM... What do you expect??? The KT can be one of the best hull down tanks if its played properly...

The Germans need some tough love and the BRs need to be decompressed desperately.

And I want historical teams back for WW2, doesn't feel right fighting in my Cromwell with Panzer IVs against Shermans... But I will give Gaijin some time to test mixed matches...

 

[TasteTheTea 3,122]

5 hours ago, Muzlie said:

Really good post there @TearsOfTea, there was a post a while back and another similar one on reddit with the work of Killa Kiwi about penetration problems:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qc7TWt9TJ80Jlm69V8mpqxEUMO-6Vi8uexnREPK4110/edit?usp=sharing

 

As yes I remember, it's a shame historical sources aren't really as important as they used to be now we have the catch-all calculator.

 

5 hours ago, Muzlie said:

Which essentially takes us through the penetration calculation errors in WT, specifically the underperformance of APDS and Serious underperformance of APCR against flat surfaces & the lack of differentiation between sharp nose and blunt nose APDS. Which cause a multitude of problems, a can of worms that I don't think Gaijin want to touch (and I don't even judge them for it, sort of)

Yeah, fixing APCR would help a lot too! Turning it from a sort of last-resort to an actually viable ammunition type.

 

They did touch on correcting APDS during the 1.87 dev server but ended up messing it up further (allowing 20 Pounder APDS to go through the Tiger II's UFP)  I really would like to know whether those proper fixes have been abandoned completely though...

 

5 hours ago, Muzlie said:

In terms of the main problems, the biggest player base in WT is Germany, and of course the historic infamy of the Tiger and Panther series, this also filters down to the Panzer IVs, a great deal of German tankers have no clue what they are doing.

Agreed, I can't believe how quickly you can grind to the Tiger really with no real heavy tanks to practice with beforehand.

 

 

Mixed battles is certainly proving to be interesting so far, especially now the Germans have Brits covering their flanks when they over-extend   I will say that the teams before weren't really all that historical though (it was just UK being bound with US all the time) since we'd often have matches of UK+US+Japan vs Germany+France+Sweden and all sorts.

 

BR decompression is definitely a must, especially with the technological leap of the immediate post-war period. Centurion Mk 3s perhaps should not fight Tiger IIs (A tank 5 years its junior) but they also should not have to fight Leopard 1s (a tank 17 years its senior!).