At the WWII BRs the HEATFS basically just are solid shot but with slightly better damage (which isn’t saying much), but at higher BRs HEATFS become necessary because the APHE can’t keep up penetration-wise. At WWII BRs APHE is better except for the somewhat-niche scenario where an APHE round can’t pen most armor.
There are WWII tanks with HEAT, though, and right-after-WWII tanks that use HEATFS.
Some people want to play at late WWII BRs and some nations (currently) don’t have any vehicles like that, and putting vehicles that deserve to be at WWII BRs up at mainly Cold War BRs would make them unusable. Basically all of Italy’s vehicles from 5.7-7.0 would be put at BRs where they would be unusable.
“High pen” is a arbitrary metric, and not all that important. All that matters is “enough pen to consistently penetrate the tanks it can fight”.
Using the Ikv as an example, there is nothing it can fight that absolutely requires 400mm of pen. And there is effectively nothing it can fight that is immune to every gun but it’s own. Multiple other TDs at the tier also have the capacity to penetrate every single tank they can see, without the downsides of HEAT.
It’s pretty generally true that HEAT is slower than the other shell options (or the average shell at the tier), the only exception is the American 90mm guns with their fast HEATFS and modest APHE.
I’ve been using quite a bit of DF 105 recently, I can say that even 100mm+ guns are not immune to this issue. It only really makes up for it with the 4 second reload.
This is reliant on being able to accurately pick out a target to hit, which is both harder at long range or against moving targets due to the lower velocity, and slows down your reaction time compared to an enemy who can likely point and click.
Overpressure has been pretty inconsistent with HEAT in my experience. Sure, it occasionally bails you out, but I’d generally APHE would have oneshot as well, or at least crippled, so at best you can say it somewhat evens out against some targets some of the time.
Surprisingly consistent in my experience. For instance, the Cargo Port map has chainlink fences everywhere, especially around the B point. Even if you have a coaxial MG to take down the fences first, the time it takes gives the enemy the first shot which almost always kills you in HEAT firing vehicles. If you jump the gun and fire when there’s still a tiny bit of soft cover left, it’ll denotate and you’ll die. If you’re on an angle, and only take out a small chunk of the fence, volumetric will fuse the shell and you will die.
Also worth mentioning that a lot of low tier vehicles with HEAT lack a coaxial MG.
This is true, but it’s quite rare. Pretty much the only examples are the 279, T-10M turret, and the S-tanks. Everything else can be taken out with APDS or HEAT. And several tanks with ERA will defeat HEAT and won’t block APDS, so it goes both ways.
It’s always worth carrying some HEAT when you encounter those tanks, but I’d never main it.
IS-3 can kill the T-32 if his hull is exposed, can hit the machine gun port on the Jadgtiger, and can cupola the T95 at medium/close range. These are not always consistent shots, but they’re far more consistent than the comparative shots against the IS-3.
An IS-3 will only angle if it misplays, there is literally no reason to angle something with a pikenose. Relying on your enemy to misplay is not a particularly useful tactic.
What tank destroyers? All of the American 6.7 TDs will be moved up under your system. In fact, most TDs and high pen guns would be gone from this bracket.
Oh good, a greater reliance on CAS. I can only see this ending well.
We have to consider the effect of the new BRs on the matchmaker. If there’s an exceptionally strong vehicle that’s easy to access, it’s going to be spammed. If you remove one of the biggest counters to these strongely armored vehicles, their proportion in the MM is going to skyrocket, as people will want to play the borderline unkillable tanks. It will never just be 1 IS-3.
They’ll be a lot less good when you remove the soft, squishy vehicles they can easily kill, and replace them with armored target they’ll struggle with, who will not struggle with them in return.
This requires your target to have no backup, and have put himself in a vulnerable position. Assume a squad of three players, all in IS-3s. You’re in a Pershing. For the sake of argument, you have some friendles around you, but not on comms. What can you do to engage them?
You have failed to demonstrate this. If these vehicles are so dominant that they “hurt other eras”, why are your best performing tanks the ones that are supposedly victimized by them?
This would decrease the variety of playstyles. A lot of interesting vehicles with unique playstyles would be put at tiers where their playstyle would cease to be relevant. And the BRs they were removed from will become more static and defensive, especially around 6.7-7.3 as the high pen guns which could dig targets out of solid defensive positions are entirely removed.
DF 105 is a monster. It has high pen, can one shot pretty easily, has 4 second reload, is fast and has scouting. Literally every meta thing for this BR. It only lacks small size.
Stabilizers, laser range finders and thermals are for higher BRs, so they don’t count.
I said it can’t kill them easily, I didn’t say it can’t kill them at all.
May I add from the front. From the side they are all easily killable.
They hurt other eras if you see historical accuracy as something of the same value as balance.
Who cares? we are talking about improving the game for the future with no interest in the past.
The late WW2 and cold war era gets worse as conflicting tech is introduced,its about how much fun the game is to play is for players and it does presume the players have an interest in armour and military history,if they don’t then why bother ? Go play COD or Cyberpunk or something .
If balance is all that matters then paint one team blue and one team red and have the same tank on both sides…treat it like a soccer match instead of a war game…Wait …I just described War Thunder as it currently is .
I think you forget the sheer numbers of people who come here to play WW2.You like Gaijin may also not understand the ages of so many players on here and we grew up on WW2.You have people up to 60 playing this game in big numbers and we have proof of that on this forum where Bruce R1 did a post for squad recruitment and it asked for details on age etc
You mean a tiny amount of people.
So few people that Hell Let Loose, the only realistic WW2 shooter in existence, is one of the least popular shooters on Steam.
Even Post Scriptum, among the more popular arcadey WW2 shooters, isn’t anywhere close to popular.
The majority of players that come to this game want two things: Realism, and authentic vehicles.
This game provides both.
The majority of people that want realistic games don’t want historical reenactment, that’s what film and the actual hobby is for, not video games.
The historical “match making” servers of DCS are among the least popular.
No I mean literally the thousands who play it and the many who could pLay higher up but dont.
The numbers are there no point denying it especially as a paid defender of the GAijin faith : )
Correction it provides the first one and then throws them to the wolves regarding the second ,hence the OP.
No they want to feel part of the scenario they are involved in ,its called immersion and its why we play video games.
Glad you are very slowly getting it Alvis ,with our careful guidance we will slowly educate your tiny and painfully slow operating brain to see the sense.
Maybe soon you will actually see that where WW2 vehicles meet much later vehicles there actually is no balance,if there was then so many long term game payers wouldn’t react so negatively to it all.One day the penny will drop eh Alvis? Keep shaking your head though bro,its good exercise : )
Well yes, a mass produced, cost effective design that was not even supposed to go up against a grossly overweight behemoth is not going to be in the same fighting class.
You didn’t even mention the Pershing or slugger which are dedicated to destroy enemy heavy tanks. In fact the crews on Sherman often took the 75 over the 76 for infantry support
I chose frontally with reason. If the heavy tank player is positioning correctly, and given War Thunder’s maps, and especially if you remove all remotely mobile vehicles from the tier, getting those side shots becomes much harder. Add on a playerbase that will happily sit there, plinking away at things they can’t frontally penetrate, and it’s going to lead to a nightmare. I’ve watched skilled Mauses club entire lobbies in a downtier, and that’s with mobile vehicles and HEAT slingers to keep them in “check”. Remove all of them, and not only will the super heavies run wild, so will the other, more flexible vehicles like the T32E1s.
“Historical accuracy” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, considering the entire rest of the game is in no way historically accurate, and is better for it.
We don’t have to worry about logistics and maintenence, with half the late WW2 German team grinding to a halt as they run out fuel and their transmissions snap in half.
We don’t have to worry about assymetrical battles, where one side surprises another with overwhelming armored forces.
We don’t have to worry about concealed infantry with AT weapons, AT mines, concealed AT guns, realistic scaled artillery barrages or saturation bombing, things which often accounted for more tank kills than other tanks.
We don’t have to worry about the Allies having unquestioned air superiority over the Germans, able to constantly call in waves of planes while the Germans have no answer.
When a critical component like a barrel or engine gets damaged, we can repair it within a minute, instead of bailing out or waiting for a recovery vehicle.
I could go on, but I think you get the point. Making this historically consistent is nice, but as War Thunder is a competitive multiplayer game, balance must always come first.
For a tank to be crossfired, the player must have already screwed up and put himself into a terrible position where he’s vulnerable to being hit from multiple different angles with no backup.
That, or a completely unrealistic level of coordination with the team to swarm something on reload. I can barely convince players to push things that have just shot me on reload, let alone somehow talk them into a flanking manuever.
And if we assume extraordinary team cohesion to make that happen, isn’t it also logical to assume similar levels on the other team, who would see their vulnerable heavy and push up to support them?
LRFs are only an advantage on large, open maps, something that’s rapidly dwindling at this point, and even then it’s not like the tanks that have to fight them have particularly hard to aim rounds.
In fact, LRFs can be something of a crutch that holds people back. I’ve been caught out by players at close/medium range, and still killed them because they took the time to LRF me, while I just snapshot them.
Night vision is only an advantage if you specifically opt in to night battles. Why someone would do that if they knew their lineup lacked NVGs is beyond me.
That’s just a BR compression issue, more of a balance issue than a historical one. And, as pointed out, the C models are somewhat capable of fighting them. Not a fair fight, but a fair uptier.
The Maus is in a relatively OK place at the moment. I’ve managed a 3.0 KD with mine, albiet pretty much only play it in full or partial downtiers. Like all super heavies, it’s devastating when played well in a downtier, but weak in an uptier.