Because many of us prefere a more fresh looking vehicle. IRL crews dont let the vehicles look like scrap. They would even get punished by that.
Whats the problem of a tank looking more fresh? My country operates the Centauro 2 since 2024 and i have seen them recently. They still look brand new… We already have mud and dust textures when you join a battle. I dont play vehicles that look like crap. Take a look in the 8.0 M60 or both M1 abrams or even some early soviet heavy tank. Some of them got new models because they was so ugly… i dont play vehicles that looks like they came from a scrap yard.
Lore or not, there’s zero excuse for tanks, aircraft, boats or ships to be given ammunition that’s straight up worthless at tier or not given even basic countermeasures like chaff or flares.
Have you tried to kill an enemy battleship with HE, for example?
Not even that, I never found any source from their PR etc that said this. It seems to be a rumour back from when the game was in beta and not something that was actually pushed as lore. Besides, it would make no sense with the BR system, not to mention the historical maps.
If one really needs a headcanon for WT, go with “it’s a sports league that practices balance by performance, we’re all firing paintball rounds at each other in arena maps with arbitrary competition rules”. A mix between F1 and war games.
In any event, the question of war torn vs brand new should be up to the player with the cosmetic slider. The problem is simply that the slider doesn’t do much for many vehicles. Sometimes you turn it all the way up and the vehicle still looks rusty like it’s been exposed to the elements in a depot with no maintenance for months; and sometimes you turn it all the way down and the vehicle still looks showroom ready.
Not to mention, there is no slider for aircraft and some look crazily neglected with entire patches of paint peeled off (something that’s often missed in this discussion is that wear and tear from combat does not look identical to neglect. A bent fender is the former, a massive rust patch is the latter)