So all of us who aren’t hopped up on the copium are well aware that Russian tanks are artificially overperforming and NATO tanks artificially underperforming (most obvious example, loaders can be killed but autoloaders are not modeled as destroyable components).
This was virtually inevitably going to happen as soon as gaijin added the basic M1 and the T-64B back in 2018, the 1979 was as overpowered or more vs the T-64B in 2018 as the T-80BVM is now. The T-64B even with better armour and firepower was no match for the M1. This is probably the period where Russian players were complaing of “American bias” unfortunately for them the “American bias” was eminently realistic.
It’s at this point gaijin realised they would have to gimp the crap out of NATO vehicles even more than they had already lowballed the basic M1( low end estimate for armour, M774, regen steering, spall liner) if there was to be any chance of maintaining parity between NATO vehicles and Russian vehicles.
So gaijin cumulatively gimps NATO and overbuffs Russia to keep the treadmill of new top tier additions going on and on. This method of artificial balancing worked fine for a while to maintain parity but it was always going to end in disaster as we see now.
I get why you do it, if you treated the attributes of all NATO vehicles in the same manner as you currently treat those of Russian vehicles( actually realistically), then in the next patch the following scenario would be very much a thing:
T-80BVM comes over a hill, spots “Click-bait” premium facing him at about 1500 metres, T-80BVM gets the first shot, fires 3BM-60(Russia’s top round for this tank) strikes the lower front hull and bounces(it’s now a much more realistic/russian 560mm thick), “click-bait” returns fire with M-829A4 (the Americans top round for this tank) and lolpens the upper glacis through the relikt (both are no longer overbuffed), hits the ammo, kills T-80BVM(ammo now cooks off when hit, only blowout panels will save you if it’s hit).
Naturally this would piss off Russia mains to hell and back, and basically require NATO tanks BR to be at least 2 steps higher than 20 years newer Russian tank variants. Russia tree ends at rank 7, BR 11.3, only Armata is viable as a rank 8.
But please can you just come forward be honest about this kind of thing being the case and at least bring things back to parity.
It 's fine that you pull the armour values of Russian tanks and ERA out of a magical wish fulfillment hat just make the values for NATO vehicles somewhat believable mildly low ball estimates instead of insultingly bad jokes. ( You expect us to believe the USA when they learned of the T-series tanks possessing 125mm guns at the height of the Cold War decided to be “sporting” and leave the Abrams with armour that can’t even resist their own advanced 105mm ammunition across half it’s frontal profile? How on earth where they able to withstand Iraqi T-72s 3BM-15/22 then?)
(This is my new account if you wonder the lack of top tier, I used to have 4 Chally 2s but lost the email to that one)