I‘m expecting modern vehicles to fight modern vehicles.
If a past-war SPG is not better at fighting tanks than a Brummbär or SU-85, why add it to the game?
What do you mean new useless technology? The British had been using APHE ever since the 1870’s. With the British made Palliser Shell being the earliest example I’ve seen.
The British were making 3-Pdr and 2-Pdr APHE for their tanks right up until the late 30’s. They even continued to use the already produced 2-Pdr APHE in service, because you’re not going to let warehouses of perfectly serviceable ammunition go to waste in wartime.
They did extensive testing on AP vs APHE and determined the increased lethality was not worth the loss of reliability. Nothing to do with the “old guard” otherwise they would have stuck with APHE like their fathers and grandfathers. Going back to increased lethality we’re talking 1 extra dead crew member compared to solid shot, not a grenade going off inside the hull.
Look at this, APHE failing to detonate was a massive issue. 30 rounds, 6 detonations. Yet in WT that would be 30 detonations.
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Iv quickly realised in war thunder there are too many tank destroyers that sit 5 foot tall that cant be penned in the turret by heavy tanks while being able to 1 pop the heavy in the front. Which begs the question, what are the use of any heavies in war thunder?
Heavy tanks haven’t been part of the meta for a good while now. Basically since the introduction of CW era stuff they’ve been on the decline.
The issue with them in WT is exactly what happened IRL: they rely on strong armour and strong firepower to make up for their often lackluster mobility (Some exceptions notwithstanding, such as the French). The issue is that their first strength got outdated because of developments in ammo (HEAT-FS/APDS) and it was also found out that their second strength could be put on lighter medium tanks too. This meant that heavy tanks no longer had any function on the battlefield other then cause delays in any breakthroughs and high maintenance.
We see this development in game too, with heavy tank design peaking in the latter half of WW2, or around BR 5.3-6.7, and dropping off sharply after that because HEAT-FS and APDS become standard on the first generation of CW tanks. Which in WT means those early CW tanks are within 1.0br bracket of said WW2 heavy tanks. While that does make some historical sense (The IS-3 being a main cause for NATO to rapidly invest in better ammo and bigger guns) in game it translates into heavy tanks being very powerful in a downtier, and struggling in an uptier.
SPH just fumbled that already delicate balance further because the very concept of armour does not exist for them. They have only solidified the post-WW2 mobility meta, which due to the way WT balances tanks also seeps into the higher WW2 brackets due to BR compression, and thusly hits most heavy tanks in the game.
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After being shredded by 3 rounds of ruski AA in a tiger 2 iv give up on germany. Its all heavies. Give up.on GB a while back when it took 5 rounds to kill what would take others 1.
Got russia and US left. Days might be numbered lol
You are incorrect.
The m18 may not meet YOUR narrow definition of a TD, but every source I own - or have read - classifies the m18 as a TD. It was designed to hunt and kill tanks, and it’s record of having the highest kill ratio of any US ww2 ground vehicle is a testament to that.
The Hummel, Wespe and Priest are examples of infantry support vehicles.
The Jagdpanther, Hetzer, m18 and m36 are examples of tank destroyers.
The US had a different doctrine for TDs than Germany did, but each country had TDs that ended up performing the same task.
Read it again:
It wasn’t “designed to attack tanks” … “offensively”.
A TD isn’t an offensive vehicle. The whole doctrince was using speed to intercept breakthrough attempts with tanks. To get AT guns where they were needed, quickly.
Except Germany wasn’t in any state to do so on the western front, meaning that US TDs were for the most time not doing TD work but were instead used as SPGs.
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I read it. And you are still wrong.
But you can argue with pretty much every published book / source that refers to m18s as TDs if you want to.
Solid AP was the preferred round of US tanks post WWII until HEATFS became the standard. The US made a put a lot of effort into solid AP. It’s absurd to say solid AP was only used because of poor conditions.
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