Did some quick testing with the 17lber (needs fixing)

Game Discussion Simulator Battle
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Yep, I’m moaning about Britain being handcuffed again.

I think most people would agree that there’s something not quite right about the 17lber. Its damage is unreliable at best with at times the round struggling to penetrate tanks it was literally designed to (and did) destroy. At almost point blank range it will reliable bounce off of a Jagdpanzer’s UFP and sometimes the round goes wherever it wants for no reason whatsoever. An incredibly frustrating and unfair mechanic considering it’s forced to aim for weak spots on tanks such as the Panther… well that’s if the game decides to let it penetrate even if the round hits said weak spot. This goes for the Tiger too.

Here’s some quick clips to show the lack of damage and ludicrous ways it can bounce or just straight up not penetrate. These were quickly thrown together so apologies for the rough editing.

Yes, you just saw it bounce clean off of a truck window, an Ostwind’s turret and three shots going straight into the side of a Tiger with the shrapnel clearly smashing into one of the crew for absolutely minimal effect, or no effect at all with the first shot (the black crew was caused by another tank).

Now for accuracy. All 3 tanks tested at the same range (Firefly, T-34-85, Panther D) and as predicted the Firefly is awful compared to the other two with its spread being almost the size of the Panther’s entire UFP. The other two which barely even need accuracy due to the broken nature of APHE are practically pixel perfect. The funny thing is off memory I haven’t even spaded the T-34-85.

You aren’t missing in the Firefly because you made an error, you’re missing because the game decided you should miss, at which point you’ll be instantly deleted by whatever tank you’re facing which has APHE. Not only is this completely unhistorical but you can’t even argue it’s fair from a gameplay perspective.

It seems to me like it’s mainly only British guns that are massively affected by crap accuracy. APDS rounds fired by the Centurions and Conqueror are wildly inaccurate along with massively underperforming with the “shell shattering” mechanic.

Here’s a Conqueror shooting at a Ferdinand. After the first shot where I adjust my aim watch how the shell shatters, the 400mm+ pen round stops at the driver and how the gun is so inaccurate that the round can almost completely miss the tank! If that were a T-54 that round would’ve smashed into the ground next to it.

For the love of the snail please fix Britain. If you’re not going to drastically, historically and realistically nerf APHE then there’s zero excuse for British guns to be this terrible. Especially when historically the 17lber was known for being an accurate gun (Britain doesn’t get the APDS while Italy does, wonder why?) and the Conqueror was literally designed to sit at the rear and snipe enemy tanks at range.

As it stands the Conqueror is the one getting sniped. Hilarious isn’t it?

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About the non-penetrations: this isn’t 17 pounder exclusive, any cannon can non-pen even when it should’ve penetrated. Bugs happen.
Also on the first video you aren’t hit by APHE at 0:54, Hl.Gr 39 is a HEAT round, and the explosion managed to penetrate the Avenger’s very weak side armor and damage an internal component, which triggers overpressure.

On damage, yes, the 17 pounder should deal more reliable damage, but again, this isn’t 17 pounder exclusive, a lot of different AP rounds apply. For example, US cannons start with solid shot AP rounds when stock, and those rounds are horrible, they have poor penetration and very poor damage.

About accuracy: the Panther’s 75 mm KwK42 and the T-34’s 85 mm D-5T are more accurate than the 17 pounder because they were actually bug reported with real life documentation.

Bug report for German 75 mm L70 cannons: Community Bug Reporting System
Bug report for Soviet 85 mm cannons: Community Bug Reporting System

These cannons used to be just as inaccurate as the 17 pounder is. It’s just that there’s actual documentation showing that they should be more accurate than that, and these bug reports got implemented. And the same applies to the US 76 mm and 90 mm cannons. Both of these used to be just as inaccurate as the 17 pounder, but the accuracy got bug reported and they became more accurate as a result.

Also:

As far I can tell, this is just not true. The inaccuracy of the 17 pounder is one of the reasons why the US never adopted it, as during US testing the 17 pounder always came up to be less accurate than the 76 mm or 90 mm cannons, specially with APDS, a round that, as the US saw it, was the only one that provided a meaningful advantage in penetration. The 17 pounder APDS was so horribly inaccurate that on one test (which they were specifically testing the dispersion of rounds) they actually just gave up on testing the 17 pounder APDS because they couldn’t get the round to even hit the target.

Now, some people state that the 17 pounder was actually accurate but came out to be inaccurate in accuracy testing because the sheer flash and smoke of the cannon firing made it difficult for the gunner to adjust his aim as he wouldn’t see where the round landed. Some also say that only the early APDS was inaccurate because of problems with the sabot detaching which were fixed later. However, this doesn’t matter, what matters is documentation showing actual accuracy/dispersion values that show the cannon to be more accurate than it has been made out to be, which is something I’ve yet to see. However, I’ve seen testing commenting on the 17 pounder’s inaccuracy multiple times.

If you want the 17 pounder’s accuracy to change, do the same thing that people did to make the Panther’s, T-34-85’s, M4’s and M26’s cannon to be more accurate: bug report it with relevant documents and in game testing that shows the accuracy to be worse in game than what is stated in said documents.

This also applies to the Centurion and Conqueror examples you mentioned.

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I don’t think it’s just a bug with the 17lber, I’ve played for other nations and you’re correct regarding random buggy bounces but they happen with shocking consistency with the 17lber. I’d be willing to wager that I’ve had far less bounces with almost any other gun than the 17lber. British APDS (when it doesn’t BS shatter) when it can actually hit usually penetrates as you’d expect. The 17lber will reliably bounce on the side of a Tiger turret and as mentioned the Panther turret to go with it.

Overpressure is a broken mechanic if that’s the case. The round struck the engine bay, barely damaging the engine and yet somehow killed the crew? Then there’s the second clip which is indefensible.

Only the APDS round was inaccurate and the muzzle flash affected follow up shots, not necessarily the accuracy itself. In regards to it’s actual accuracy during Russian testing it was declared more accurate than the Russian 76mm gun and this was without an actual glass sight. To quote the Russians:

“The penetration, stability, and precision of the 17-pdr gun made it a powerful anti-tank gun that matches modern requirements.” The vast amount of online information I can find about the 17lber inaccuracy is regarding the APDS. Not the AP.

I’ll see if I can get a bug report sorted out as it desperately needs fixing. British tanks are fighting an incredibly uphill battle compared to most other nations.

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I addressed both of these statements right afterwards.

Also, when I say that it was “not true”, I mean purely the part of the 17 pounder historically being known as an accurate gun. That isn’t inherently about if it was or wasn’t actually accurate, more on how it was known. The accuracy of the 17 pounder is right now a fairly debated thing, precisely because of contradicting evidence, some saying it was less accurate than contemporary cannons (basically any US report where the 17 pounder was tested), and some saying it was accurate (like the Russian report you’re talking about).

I will say this though, the Russian source by itself means little. In US testing, while the 17 pounder was less accurate than the 76 mm and 90 mm with normal AP rounds, it still was accurate enough to hit a target, which in a lot of cases is what matters. For the Russians, they don’t provide any numbers on the actual precision of the cannon, and it’s completely possible that the cannon is stated to be precise simply because it’s accurate enough.

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Also, while yes, a majority of reports on inaccuracy come from the APDS, there are still US reports that state that even the normal AP rounds were less accurate than the AP rounds fired from 76 or 90 mm cannons.

The Chieftain has a very good 3 part blog that goes over such a report, where the US compares an M4A3 Firefly (yes, an M4A3 modified to have a Firefly turret just for this test), an M4 76 and an M26 to sort of see which cannon set up was most desirable.

Part 1 of that blog (seen here) contains the part of the report that goes over the dispersion obtained from each tank, including the whole bit I mentioned where they gave up on testing the APDS round.

And again, the AP rounds came up overall worse than the 76 mm and 90 mm cannons. They came to a maximum overall dispersion of 7.38 milliradians horizontally and 7.58 vertically, which is 0.423 and 0.434 degrees respectively. This is actually lower than the ingame value as far as I can tell, but still higher than the Panther, T-34-85, etc.

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There was inherent bias in the US trials. You should be using British, Australian, or Canadian tests.

I’ve got some dispersion charts somewhere. Wildly different than US claims.