Vehicles with slower turret traverse rates (or no turrets at all), vehicles with larger gun calibers, vehicles with larger muzzle brakes, and vehicles with glacial hull traverse are leagues more susceptible to being barreled than most others.
A T95 literally can’t NOT make its barrel tip a target. No amount of “just play better” works there with a gun that large and a muzzle brake that wide when most maps are city knife-fights. Same is true for a Maus, TOG, Tortoise, T32, IS-3, or anything else in that tier with serious armor.
Like, when Phly made his video on the Turtle, I’m surprised his distorted clickbait thumbnail wasn’t just the muzzle brake on tracks, with a tall cupola. Because it may as well be that.
Its other way around. Every vehicle has exactly the same chance of barell-knocked. If you have mathemathical proof that its not the case feel free to present it.
Heavy vehicles are not invincible nor they should be. If barrel is weak point so be it. Every vehicle has weak point.
This all comes from people not seeing the difference between what is the reality and what is their understanding of it.
If You were to play a vechicle with very strong frontal armor all the time, of course You would think that You get barell-knocked far too often.
The difference would be for a player playing a tank with not as good armor as no one would bother for aiming at the gun when just shooting the tank anywhere means that it gets destroyed.
People don’t get that there are universal tactics for destroying certain vechicles and player using them, should be aware of it.
We should make it so .50 cals should take out barrels again.
On a serious note, you are acting as if a heavy in a downtier ISNT scary. It is almost entirely regardless of the tank and BR, with the only exception I can think of being the Tier 1 premium heavies and maybe the Jumbo 76 (maybe). Vehicles like the Jumbo, KV-1s, Tigers, and all, are very scary in downtiers. Even I find them terrifying when played right, and I have, as many people do, years of experience.
Also, on your point of slow heavies, they are slow for a reason. Because they are practically immortal from the front as it is. Last I checked, getting someones barrel does not mean they are dead. Unless Gaijin magically changed that, that is simply the truth. Especially for heavies at distances or on narrow streets, the only thing that taking their barrel does for you is prolong your death.
Overall, if you play your heavies with the right mentality (not the “I’m invincible and can’t be penned anywhere at any distance” mentality), and understand their strengths and weaknesses (gun barrel included), you will notice that gun barrel knock outs are only an issue when you have already lost significantly and/or your team fails to be helpful. So.
Edit: and before someone says “well Heavies irl were meant to tank close shots, and have been made functionally useless by the bounds of the game (which is a half truth)” or anything like that, yeah. Sure. You know what else? Sights weren’t attached to the end of barrels. You can’t fix an engine in 40 seconds. You can’t fly a plane in third person. Things are done for balance. Just like being able to knock out barrels. So.
And >90% of maps force short-range engagements. So guess what - when spading my own T95 I all too frequently would run into someone at such short distance that they could carelessly delete my barrel.
Changing an entire game mechanic because you spawned a niche tank into a bad situation is a you problem, not a we problem. Some people can make it work, that doesn’t mean you should do it. There’s a reason the T95 was never used, it was a failed design. Tanks without mobility are naturally hot garbage and will play as thus.
I do seriously think that as long as we have garbage close quarters maps so frequently, barrels should be invincible, and heavy armor should intentionally not go up in BR because of said fact. Period. A heavy in a downtier should be threatening. And some, if they are slow enough, intentionally and literally immortal frontally, since otherwise they’re effectively worthless. Like the T95.
Getting a downtier shouldn’t make your tank scary, having someone in it that knows how to use it is. Maybe we should get rid of shooting tracks, too, because tankers only go for center mass in real life? The justification for this is so shady, and it’ll just go to a meta of spamming high-penning rounds even more if you got your way. I think your line of thinking is dishonest about the nature of the game and looking at your own stats in RB I think your own experience flies in the face of your argument.
Generally speaking, of the TD’s and Heavies your play the most, your K/D is 1.5-2.0 to what you are managing with your medium and light tanks, which sits closer to 1.0-1.5. For example, your most played light tank is the M18 GMC which is sitting at a 1.2, but your most played TD, the jagdpanther G1 is getting 1.7. Neither of these tanks would be considered bad at their tier, in fact they’re both great at what they do. If casemates and heavies are getting barrel-tortured like you say, I’d think the results would be opposite.
I do not see barrel damage as “balans” in the slightest. If you don’t have a round capable of frontally penetrating the actual armor of the opponent, you should have no means to prevent that opponent from deleting you when it was your fault for carelessly stumbling out in front of him, especially since in most cases whatever you’re using is likely faster and more maneuverable than that armor monster.
If maps were large enough, and objectives were not smothered by buildings or comical boulders, it would be little more than an occasional annoyance.
The game forces heavies, especially slow late game armor monsters, into effectively being battering rams for the team, but then gives those battering rams one “weakspot” which makes playing such machines damn near insufferable. Even though with the proliferation of rounds that carelessly pen armor making it no longer necessary.
Removing barrel damage (or forcing usage of actual gun sight positions in RB to make barrel shooting a rarity) would enable heavies to become the short-range battering rams the game is clearly trying to make them be. Then if they get overconfident, someone will spawn a 6" HE derp gun and send said battering ram to kingdom come.
Currently heavies are playable, but only just, and only if you play them like fat mediums with the armor solely as a last resort, which flies in the face of what that “armor” is for.
It doesn’t matter what specific heavy tank or heavy TD it is, man. I had similarly frustrating barrel-repair-simulator experiences in the T95, T28, T32, T32E1, T34, KTH, KTH 105, IS-3, IS-4M, Conqueror, Object 268, Jagdtiger, Maus, and Ferdinand. All of them are effectively punished for having big guns and slow turret traverse (or having no turret at all) even though the long reloads should be punishment enough. And now we have all the HE derps in the mix for every nation, making barrel-knocking damn near completely redundant save for placating the whining of “BUT MUH FULLY UPTIERED JUMBO!!!”
No, because tracking a tank doesn’t disable its ability to shoot back. Tracks can be hidden in a hull down position. You can’t hide a weak barrel tip, especially not in the city maze maps that are >75% of the map rotation. Clearly the game is intending heavy tanks and armored TDs to be “battering rams” that soak shells for squishier vehicles.
Removing barrel damage would indeed be unrealistic, but it would be compensation for a whole host of other equally unrealistic features so deeply baked into the game that removing them is unthinkable.
Of course you try and stat shame me. How typical. Most of those stats are the result of me playing every heavy like its a glass medium with dead weight. Catching idiots off-guard not expecting to see a Jumbo Sherman on a flank route or a T95 on the map edge gives such results, but it goes totally against the means which such things are meant to be played.
The M18 GMC stats date back many years ago when I was much worse at the game, and was for a small while partaking in the whole “cap & fly” shenanigans to deal with the then-new IS-6 before HVARs were nerfed. The Jagdpanther G1 has the mobility necessary to not be reliant on its armor, and is not really part of this discussion at all.
The intended things being discussed are the heavies and heavy TDs which do not have the mobility to pretend to be mediums - Turtles, Tortoise, IS-3/4M, Maus, E-100, Ferdinand, Elefant, Jagdtiger, Black Prince, T32, T32E1, 268, etc etc.
That’s complete BS. Yes, you may not have round to pen tank frontal armor but there are always some weakspots in the front and barrel is one of them. What it you turn around a corner with your heavy tank and face opponent you cannot pen? You just let it kill you. Well you can play like that if you want.
That is one of the worst takes I have seen here. You shouldn’t be a free kill to someone just because they have armour, and came around a corner at the right time.
You should 1000% have a chance to fight back. Barrel damage allows that, and it allows low pen guns to be effective in combat. Barrel damage is even possible to avoid if you wiggle the turret. It is also the only way to disable certain tanks frontally.
In that case, if you spawned a heavy in a significant degree of uptier, or got too gutsy with something you know full well has a weak cannon (Jumbos, Churchill VII, Churchill I, 3" Gun Carrier), and you run into something you cannot pen, welp that’s War Thunder luck of the draw that city maps cater to.
Having barrels be “weakspots” unfairly punishes machines with large-caliber weapons, or machines with gigantic muzzle brakes/fume extractors. And shouldn’t most of those machines already be balanced by long reload times between shots, and therefore having exceptional weakness to barrelling be overkill?
It’s not your fault if there is a tank around the corner - but it is your fault if you know he’s there and push out anyway.
Turret wiggling WoT-style is not really practical for the machines with large-caliber guns and big muzzle brakes/fume extractors. And some of the late game armor monsters have no turrets at all and poor to okay at best hull traverse - barring exceptional stupidity at the enemy’s part they can’t really wiggle well at all.
We already have enough counters to late game heavy armor in the form of HEAT, HEATFS, sabot, occasionally darts, derp HESH, and derp HE. Barrel damage is no longer necessary now that every nation without fail has all the tools to build proper uptier-proof lineups. Time to turn up the difficulty and expect the average player to actually USE the tools they now have available.
If a heavy tank can be frontally crippled by literally anything it comes across, that “armor” becomes little more than dead weight, barring stupidity on the opponent’s part. If a light tank stumbles in front of a heavy it can’t pen, it should die if it can’t reverse into cover quick enough, simple as that.
Its irrelevant what you think how it should be. Muzzle breaks or gun barrels would be damaged when hit in real life as it was demonstrated above. They try to translate all real life weakspots into the game and gun barrel is one of them. So are tracks or machinegun spot or drivers hatch and so on.
Yea, lets not get too excited about making huge changes and forcing things on players.
Let me start with barrels. Is it realistic that barrels can suffer damage? Yes. Is it realistic how easily it can be done in Warthunder? No. Does it make sense from a gameplay perspective? Yes. Does it make sense with near true to life models with damageable modules like engines, breaches, ext? Yes. Does it make sense with repairs? Yes. Your barrel argument could be applied to tracks or engines when it comes to casemate vehicles. Is it fair that you can track a Strv103 when it can’t turn or return fire? Yes it is, especially when you can repair that damage. If repairs didn’t exist, and a Jadgtiger could be considered destroyed by taking off a track or destroying an engine and being left there for the rest of the game then things would be different. Repairs make sense from a gameplay perspective and barrel damage makes as much sense as track damage.
The sights next I suppose. Forcing players to use the gunner sight perspective is a horrible idea. This game is for enjoyment, not historically accurate simulation of vehicles. Overcomplication of gameplay is not fun for everyone. This game already has a huge learning curve and enough seal clubbing from veteran players, making it more difficult for newer players to learn the game would alienate the players we need to keep the game alive. Where you may see the gunner sight perspective as “required” there are many players that don’t. I enjoy the accuracy that is provided in this game, but learning the ballistics AND sight characteristics for every tank in the game sounds like a daunting and frustrating task alongside the rest of the information required to be successful. Great for Sim enjoyers, not great for the average player.
And save for tracks, all other weakspots actually require having a round capable of punching through the armor of whatever you’re driving.
The reason I detest barrel damage is because literally anything can disable any other tank’s barrel in one hit when you turn it towards that person to shoot them. I see it as a “built-in cheat” comparable to the kill camera.
Well if someone shoots a barrel frontally, will it not damage it? Yea it will. It can’t be helped that Germany used large caliber guns in WW2, where the US didn’t. No need to change the barrel damage because of historical differences in vehicles.
My complaints are regardless of the nation’s tanks I happen to be playing. Be it the T29/30/34/32/32E1, T28/95, Tortoise, Conqueror, Object 268, Ho-Ri Prototype/Production, KTH/Sla.16/105, Jagdtiger, Maus/E-100, IS-3/4M, M103, or any others.
Armor is rendered semi-pointless if every single machine you could ever come across is able to ignore it and cripple your ability to shoot back anyway.
You realize that losing a track in combat rendered armor pointless too? A drivetrain failure as well. People didn’t stay in their tanks when a penetrating shot ripped into it, they abandoned their vehicle. This is a video game, and it takes many, many liberties when compared to actual tank combat. That is the risk when you use a heavy tank, they are sitting ducks most of the time. Such is life for those vehicles. When I use an M18, I have to accept that I have a low pen gun and if I get hit by any explosives I am done for. It is a trade off for everything.
