Puma’s armor is better only when you completely isolate it from outside factors, i.e the match, i.e the vehicles it actually has to face (~130mm of KE protection in the grand scheme of things is, when you actually insert the vehicle into a realistic scenario, no different from having the 50mm that 2S38s armor offers), 100% of MBT grade projectiles have absolutely zero issues with making it seem like it doesn’t have any armor. The only vehicles that can and will struggle with it are IFVs with cannon calibres below 35mm and don’t shoot APFSDS, so ye, Puma has armor against most IFVs (only from the front), it doesn’t have armor against anything else, and MBT make up (from my experience) at least 80% of the enemy’s team composition. On the other hand, some IFVs also have ATGMs that make Puma’s armor absolutely irrelevant.
If you compare how effective their armors are against each other, its whoever fires first, as 2S38 has more than enough penetration for whatever protection Puma’s armor can offer, but in exchange it cannot deal with Puma’s 30mm either.
If you compare them based on what they face at 10.3, neither armor matters. What matters there is reaction time (gun-handling) and firepower, both of which are in 2S38s favor as its horizontal aiming speed is +/- 60 degrees per second (in comparison to 45 for the Puma), and obviously 3UBM22 is far superior to PMC287.
So you can remove that “more armored” from your post, and let “faster” stand alone. In any case, Puma and 2S38 being at the same BR is a mistake, and either Puma has to go down (not really), or 2S38 needs to go up (more preferable).
You have to remember that I didn’t come to a conclusion on Puma vs 2S38 cause I don’t find them comparable.
It should be Puma vs BMP-2M and other low-caliber weapon systems such as the new Japanese wheeled vehicles.
And Puma should probably be a lower BR than BMP-2M, while higher than the Japanese vehicles.
It’s possible decompression among low-caliber vehicles should occur.
@Matthgame231
Stryker is not a tank, and it’s power to weight ratio makes it slower.
Mobility, ammunition [which includes post-pen], and optics.
Everything else it’s on-par except for thermal generation as that’s the only thing where HSTVL’s age comes as a factor.
2S38 has better optics having 4.0x-9.4x while HSTVL has 2.0x-8.0x zoom.
Also has 6x more ammunition.
Nothing is on par.
HSTVLs post pen damage is almost non-existent
For anti-tank, reloads lower than 2.0 when penetration is over 200mm just flat out doesn’t matter. Either you pen on first shot or you don’t, and follow up shots take out the rest of the vehicle.
2 > 4 for minimum zoom, and 8/9.4 is effectively the same for maximum zoom.
Ammunition count matters for aircraft.
2S38’s post-pen is less than half of that of HSTVL’s, so any take you have on its post pen, your take on 2S38’s is still going to be that 2S38’s round is worse.
I adopted the “penning is better than relying on post-pen” attitude in 2019.
So yeah, I don’t care about post-pen personally which is why most of my posts in 2023 has me not caring about people focusing so much on post pen cause I was unintentionally being a tad rude forgetting to take into consideration their preferences in that regard.
I bring APCR in the 90mm tanks cause they’re the best pen, and penning to frag a cannon breech, ammo, or gunner is more important than bouncing with an inferior penning round.
90mm APCR are the only APCR with more pen than APCBC.