That’s the actual source of the problem. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. In Ground RB, tanks are incredibly precise compared to real life.
There’s a reason why so many tanks historically had “weak spots”: not every part of a tank has the same chances of being hit, and the UFP is big and near the center of mass.
Especially if we’re talking WW2 tanks, spotting and hitting your target is actually the first challenge, let alone pixel hunting like we do in WT. A cupola shot is a lethal but not too frequent occurrence in this context (which is why some countries started reducing their cupolas to prevent this issue while others kept them on).
The whole discussion about post pen would be meaningless with a realistic damage model, because in reality one penetration = the crew bails, even if they’re all alive. Jam a tank’s turret ring, and it won’t fight on. Track it, and it’s mission killed.
None of that can happen in WT because we’re shooting at each other two minutes into a match (or less) and with incredible precision and lethality.
So to get a sustained fight you have two options as a game dev.
Option 1: make hitting each other much more difficult. This is unappealing from a gameplay perspective for reasons that I don’t think need explaining.
Option 2: make tanks much more survivable than IRL. In other words, “give them HP”. But if you’re committed to a semi-realistic damage model, that’s just a no go and it echoes that other game. Besides, if every module can be repaired, which effectively means that your tank literally cannot be physically destroyed, what is a death?
Easy solution: a death is when you run out of crew.
And this is why we spend so much time talking about post pen damage, and why everything with low post pen damage defaults to playing “crew whack a mole” unless you hit the ammo (and therefore “boost your post pen”).
Of course APHE is popular, it saves you from crew whack-a-mole. And it’s completely broken because it doesn’t matter what trade offs other rounds bring to the table - winning an engagement will still require killing the crew, not the tank as a structure.
Imho for this reason alone, other rounds need a massive buff to their post pen damage. It also neatly bypasses the issue of the APHE votes.