B1 bis buff?

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
1

Simple question, can we get some sort of a buff for the B1 bis ?
Sure, it has ok armour, but that’s about it … it also has very big weakspots that are easy to aim at.
The main 47mm gun is a joke, it has terrible pen, bad accuracy and, even if it manages to pen, literally no post pen damage. 2 out of 3 times you end up against Stugs, buffed Pz III, M4A3 and other tanks that you just cannot pen at all.
The 75mm is no better because even though it has post pen damage, the penetration is even worse than the 47 and you can’t use it without exposing your main weakspot…

So can we maybe get at least a better main gun ? Idk, something like better penetration or a beginning of post pen damage ?
In its current state, the B1 is just a big punching ball

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2

B1 is just a tank you play because you need it to get the next rank up. I don’t think this tank specifically requires change, maybe the trouble is the ammunition type and how poorly it performs.

3

Yes but that’s sad and why are there tanks that are good to nothing except moving to the next level ? Especially a tank like the B1, which really existed and was very effective.
Personally, I love this tank and play it for fun so i’m quite bothered by it’s performance.

Yes the problem is definitely the ammunition that doesn’t perform at all … otherwise the tank is fine. Yhe problem is that you can’t play a tank that has no gun …

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4

It is impossible to pierce anything with a B1 (apart from light tanks) because a 75mm gun with disastrous penetration and ballistics, I did some research on the gun and the shells used, he says a lot of thing but does not speak of penetrations so I deduce that the one chosen by Gaijin and be false be he has access to documents that I do not know. However, it is very similar to the 75 mle 1897 gun. In all guns, the 75 gun is seen to be a wonderful anti-tank weapon, it was even used by the Germans during the Battle of France. to deduce that it had good anti-tank shells (and therefore shells that could penetrate the thickest armor for the time), this gun was also used as anti-tank guns in barracks on the Maginot line. Gun used in the navy, in short a good anti-tank gun theoretically.

As for the 47mm gun, it was literally intended FOR anti-tank use, it is even described like this "Its ballistic qualities, both in precision and in perforation capacity, make it one of the best guns most powerful of the time, capable in particular of destroying all the tanks then in service. and here it is technical capacity:
The 47 mm armour-piercing projectile (47 × 380R) model 1936 has a mass of 1.726 kg and an initial speed of 855 m/s.

IRL:

French tests it pierces 106 mm at 100 m, 89 mm at 500 m, 72 mm at 1,000 m, 57 mm at 1,500 m under 0°.

German tests give 57 mm at 100 m, 50 mm at 500 m, 42 mm at 1,000 m and 36 mm at 1,500 m under 30°

In games:
At 30° at 100m 47mm, 500m 38mm, 1000m 29mm,1500m 22mm.

At 0° at 100m 59mm, 500m 47mm, 1000m 36mm, 1500m 27mm

So be Gaijin (and I’m leaning towards this hypothesis) we voluntarily Nerf this Shell (so is this gun) which would be unfair or he has access to docs of which I do not have knowledge.

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@ehj78 I enjoyed the B1 Bis for a while. Like many vehicles, I have an expert crew on it, to improve overall performance and crew vitality. To be fair, it is only BR 2.3 so its sole purpose is to act as a bullet-sponge, which soaks up the ammunition of new players.

I just posted in another thread to say that I have a dozen rank IV British vehicles researched, but no SL to buy them all (unless I pay). Meanwhile, I’m still trying to level up the comet and challenger tanks, which are so boring to me by now. Every tank I play becomes less interesting after a few weeks. I figure I should just coof up the money to advance and stop caring about the older stuff. Last year I put camoflagues on some of my rank I and rank II Italian vehicles, because that was the rank that I was most comfortable playing. Now I play at rank IV, and the vehicles with paid camoflagues are not so fun.

When it’s school holidays in america, I’ll bring out my weird low tier vehicles to troll the kids. Especially the b1, just for the lols.

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Exactly. Even if the pen was bad but the accuracy was good, i could get over it, but no. You have to aim precisely for the gunner with a gun that wants to shoot the tracks …

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A generall post to this whole topic, its skill issue.
And you have multiple errors in here.
The 75mm gun is a greadly shortened gun, with shorter barrle of just L/17,1 and case of 241mm, its nowhere near performance with with the 1897 gun, which also wasnt all that much used by the germans, they had other field guns such as the 7,5 cm FK 16 n.A. L/36 with greater velocity of 650m/s and german ammo, only after france they modified them and used Heat ammo in them.
The 47mm on the Bis is the SA 35 which is a far weaker gun than your described 47 mm Model 1937, the SA 35 only had 660 m/s with also a shorter case of 193mm
And penetration cince long isnt directly based on documents but instead calculated with diameter, weight, velocity, weight of explosive filler if there is one, and if it is fittet with caps.

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Ok well, do you have any data on the penetration of the 75 and 47 shells then?

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https://wiki.warthunder.ru/New_formuls_for_calculating_of_the_armour_piercing

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Very interesting … however, the B1 was a very potent tank killer and there are many examples of how good it was. But anyway, the real life performance doesn’t matter here.

There is no “skill issue” the 47mm is terrible and needs a real buff to be competitive. The 75 is ok I guess but you’ll never use it against an ennemy whos gunner isn’t knocked out.
I often have very good games with my B1, but you need a masters degree to drive that thing while on many other tanks you just have to point and click.
I like that the B1 requires skill, but the lower French tech tree already has enough terrible tanks … at least let the one tank that was powerful irl to perform a bit better ig

11

There is Skill issue here, with 64mm pen at 2.3 the 47mm gun is perfectly adequat and the 60mm armor when angled is very capable, in an downtier quite a lot of tanks cant pen it, while it can even when the enemy is angled. shure in an Uptier it will stuggle against M4, T34, Stug III, Pz III, but many Tanks struggle in an uptier.

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12

The 47mm currently doesn’t have APC bonus as some other rounds do, which would increase the penetration by 10% to ~70mm.
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/v0koikhagpUR

The gun and the tank is fine. My main problem is that solid shot is kinda garbage. You can basically reduce the max. penetration by 30% because if you don’t have that much penetration left, the damage is almost non existant. Can’t even detonate ammo with direct hits >_>

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It is quite a survivable tank, to be fair. It can be used to sit on a capture point, and it will blow up any light vehicles with easy thanks to the explosive shells. I don’t play the game in any vehicle, with the expectation to get kills. I frequently knock out the enemy’s tracks and hide, or injure their crew and run. I’m about tactics and overall strategy rather than KD ratio. B1 Bis isn’t a bad tank.

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My bad, the probelm isn’t the pebetration, which is correct, but the post pen damage, which is unexistant.
Even a direct hit to the ammo will only make them go orange at best.

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Never said it was bad, I said that it was underperforming.
The tactic your are using is correct I guess but my problem with it is that the gun is so weak that you have to break tracks and run in a heavy tank … that’s not how it’s supposed to work …
The tank is fine and I love it, but I just want it’s ammo to be buffed because right now, even if you pen, your shell will just scratch the gunner …

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Thats not a problem of the B1 bis, but instead of how gaijin made the detonation chance in game (see other topics, wait no their on the old forum) of how different nations have different chance going from very small (on russian) to about 50% (american mostly) and about 75 (on german) about other nations idk, only have seen the 3 mentioned. And in general how they have modeled solid shot.

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17

The ammo was just an example. Same goes with the crew; a direct hit to the gunner via the mantlet of a Pz III / IV (but mostly IV) will very often only injure but not kill him, which is stupid.
I know it’s a problem for other tank with small caliber solid shells, like the British, but since I only play the B1 I made this topic about it specifically.

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18

I love the B1s but now they are in a pretty bad BR, for being good again the B1 Bis should be 1.7 or 2.0 and B1 Ter 2.0 or 2.3. They are some of my favourite vehicles IRL and they were incredible machines in real life, even germans wrote how good B1 Bis was.
In game they were one of the few fun to play low rank french vehicles before their BR increase and sweden vehicles, it’s a pity how they perform nowadays.
I still play them sometimes, I get really good battles using mainly the 75 mm gun, but mainly because I know really well how to use them and because most of the enemies are novices.

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19

Exactly and that’s what I meant earlier on. To be good in this vehicle you need to be a really good player and even then it performs just about average

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