“Technically, ensuring the equality of protection between the main armor sections (large dimensions, thick steel plates on the outside and a thick base) and the mantlet (required for stabilizing the gun, where it’s impossible to accommodate a large armor dimension) is a very difficult task.”
I want to make it clear that I mean no disrespect to anyone at Gaijin working on this project. I am in no way calling them stupid or incompetent, I only want to form an argument to a statement in their dev post.
It’s clear that they are talking about the balance point of the cannon being right at the pivot point of the cannon. Which is important for the traversing of the cannon, this is something that has been known on tanks since all the way back into WW2 and some from WW1. It would be very difficult to traverse the cannon up and down without the cannon being balanced.
The issue with this point is that they are saying it’s a difficult thing to do in this case, meaning that it’s a difficult thing for them to believe. This is there way of saying “it’s not going to be as much as the turret cheeks”. I don’t think the team doing the research on this case fully understand that the armor can extend towards the inside of the pivot point, providing that extra protection as well as providing additional balancing weight on the inside of the turret. Another problem with their argument is that only having armor on the front of the pivot, is what gives it a proper weight distribution; This would make the cannon very front heavy.
If we look back at the Challenger 1, which has the turret cheeks right up against the cannon; Why would the engineers sign off on creating a giant weak point right in the center of the turret as opposed to the (in War Thunder) superior turret design of the old Challenger?