Following the Roadmap: Voting to Test our Proposed APHE Shell Changes

[Panter2005]

I watched this video and the other 2 he recommended with translation (they have subtitles in Russian making for a better translation) and I expected nothing less from Russians.

I highly recommend to watch these 2 videos with translated subtitles:

1. https://youtu.be/-ihwW155ugg
2. https://youtu.be/OMJi0N51mok

I also finally watched the video of the Russian CC that told people to vote no in full.

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So apparently the CIS community has been lied to and manipulated in a few ways:

1. They were told that the vote is about immediately implementing these changes on the live server, not about testing it.
2. They were told that this is an APHE nerf, that’s supposed to please the “Johns” (stereotypical western player) and make War Thunder the same as World of Tanks.
3. They were told that Gaijin did this vote during the time YouTube is blocked in Russia on purpose, so that the CIS community will be uninformed and the “Johns” will win the vote (voting for yes ofc).
4. In the video of the Russian CC with high authority that told people to vote no, they were told to mobilize and vote against this change to save War Thunder from becoming World of Tanks and a random mess of inconsistent shots, which is what “Johns” want. It was almost like a speech that would end with “URRA, ZA RODINU”.

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One video of the guy that exposes the situation in CIS region also brought up an interesting point that flew over my head and I forgot about it.

People say that they voted no, because as Gaijin said, preparing the test will consume Gaijin’s resources on something they don’t want it anyway and there are more important issues. However, players put this in the roadmap themselves 8 months ago, so it clearly means APHE is one of the important issues according to players themselves.

Even this thread is called “Following the Roadmap: Voting to Test our Proposed APHE Shell Changes”.

He says that Gaijin made this vote before the testing on purpose, because they don’t want to spend resources on something that might be rejected, even though they promised it in the roadmap and they have plenty of resources. Also it was promised for the Summer of 2024, which is coming to an end, and they may just not be able to meet the deadline.

He says that Gaijin made this vote before the test, so that they can present the changes in a suggestive manner, as they did with the Tiger examples and using a small caliber gun like the one ASU-57 has, so that the community is more likely to vote no.

This leads us to misleading facts, which were told to everyone. Everyone says that we are voting whether we want to nerf APHE or not, but no one accounts for the 2 buffs that 100% will be added.

Everyone sees the images with fragment zones from the explosion, but no one sees the images with fragment zones, secondary fragments and the slug.

Examining the fragment zones change separately, which is what practically everyone is doing even when presenting all the changes, heavily influences people’s opinion.

It’s said that we are voting on if we want to just straight up massively nerf APHE or not and it’s implied that if we don’t, it will stay as it is, because of the images with fragment zones.

You can’t conclude how will the shell will perform exactly, if it receives both buffs and nerfs, that’s why testing is needed.

I will let the video speak for itself: https://youtu.be/OMJi0N51mok?t=104
It’s set on the right time, just turn on subtitles and auto translating.

Or summarizing screenshots for anyone who’s lazy to watch a 45 second clip:

Spoiler

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@Tim_TeaDrinker Let me know if I got anything wrong due to auto translation.

[Panter2005]

@SPANISH_AVENGER

At this point let’s just make it so that any penetration into the crew compartment mission-kills the vehicle and call it a day, since it’s what everyone seems to want now apparently.

That’s already the case with tanks like IS-2 or Tiger I on Pzgr. shells, because of overpressure.

[FlipAllTheTables]

@Panter2005

However, players put this in the roadmap themselves 8 months ago, so it clearly means APHE is one of the important issues according to players themselves.

This is untrue.

Most (if not all) of the ideas for the roadmap came from CC feedback.

Saying “players” put this change in the roadmap is highly disingenuous when a great majority of players had no input at all.

[RunaDacino]

Here’s something I don’t understand about this whole “CIS”/“Johns” thing.

I’m former warsaw pact myself. I do not consume media from my own country.

While blocked websites are certainly a barrier, I have plenty of friends from the CIS region who casually consume youtube and english media without much issue. Granted, they work with computers but that’s not a high bar.

Why is there such a massive separation between western/eastern players? English is a very easy language to learn, and honestly I’ve found it to have far more utility for socialization, entertainment and education than to restrict myself to Hungarian media and ecosystems.

[ZendikarHaven]

@Razielkaine

Aphe fix means tanks armour and crew configurations will mean more and armour meta will be more effective for all nations.

Which will mean they get moved up more.

Which will mean their armor is irrelevant.

[Panter2005]

@RunaDacino

Why is there such a massive separation between western/eastern players? English is a very easy language to learn, and honestly I’ve found it to have far more utility for socialization, entertainment and education than to restrict myself to Hungarian media and ecosystems.

Political off-topic

Because Russians want you to learn Russian, not English.

Language has always been an indicator of who’s a dominant power in the world. During the cold war on the western side of the iron curtain you would learn English and on the eastern side you would learn Russian.

When Poland was partitioned, the Prussians and Austrians tried to Germanize us and the Russians tried to Russify us. That primarily means teaching German/Russian language, history and culture in schools, while banning teaching Polish history and culture as well as banning speaking in Polish, entirely or to some degree, depending on the stage of Germanization/Russification.

You can learn about the importance of language, it’s too off-topic here.

[Razielkaine]

Just leave aphe busted, unrealistic and broken. Totally, just stop fixing the game adding new content because it could all change br’s of vehicles. We should all just keep playing the game just as it is today and never change it. Great idea.

[ZendikarHaven]

Or realize the detrimental impact it will have and buff solid shot, thus fixing all the problems.

[Razielkaine]

It won’t fix the problem. How will buffing the 17pdr stop a 75mm aphe shot from one shotting a tiger through the cupola? How will buffing apds stop tiger 2 nuking t95 in one shot through the cupola? How will buffing 2pdr ap stop t34 one shot ting t-32 through the machine gun port every single shot?

[Axzuel]

Regardless, APHE is gonna be even more OP and the gap between APHE and other ammo types is gonna get even larger if the change doesn’t go through.

[ZendikarHaven]

sigh

Okay.

Let me lay this out for you.

Being able to be killed through weakspots balances heavies, and APHE is a key point in that. Because those weakspots do exist, the heavies can stay at a BR where, minus those weakspots, they are very resistant to shells.

If they no longer have those weakspots they becomr significantly stronger and get moved up to a point where their armor doesnt matter.

Now, if other shells get buffed, the high-pen rounds that people so often complain about (i.e. M51, Ikv 103, etc), get moved up. Because heavies have to face less of them they are better, but are still balanced because of those weakspots.

You cant be both hard to pen and hard to kill.

[AlvisWisla]

APHE is not a key point to balancing heavies; the BR system is.

[ZendikarHaven]

APHE is a key point to balancing them if you want their armor to be relavent.

[ILUVkHUNNY_Prpr]

It’s not busted, it’s literally the way the game has been, seeing that APHE even only matters up till 7.7 or 7.3, there are ALOT of things that have lots of armour, even at 6.3 or 5.0 and above, aphe has worked as a single kill round and the claims that it is OP prob stem from the ability to OSK, but it’s not, it’s just more ideal, similar to solid AP being able to one shot as well, the general idea still applies, don’t be so aggressive and honestly, maiming russia, USA and Germany all together, I still aim for gunners and commanders till I reached 7.3, I’m not interested in Britain but I’ve played their light tanks and they are good, nothing can be quite too strong but honestly they work in their own rights and there are honestly more infuriating things than just the AP damage at that point like CAS, teammates and the map design, anyways, I don’t call AP bad as it’s a play style of its own, aphe’s play style is similar if you don’t want to die by getting sniped, and idk why you wanna let yourself get shot anyways, that’s just bad practice, besides that, APHE is fine as is, what really needs fixing is spall damage on solid AP rounds and the spall itself, like fuel tanks completely eating spall and ammo not detonating when your shell goes right through them, anyways, in most cases they do, and that’s the most reliable way to use APCBC rounds at 6.7, as a heavy tank user of USA, i really didn’t mind the solid AP as I know where to aim, what was more a pain in the ass were the foxes in uptiers and volumetric, if I get shot I expect to die, or be so crippled I can’t do anything to resist getting killed by a subsequent shot, if I’m an open top, the only ergigoous thing is get overpressure by early heat rounds when I get hit on the track and my tank is massive or has proper armour

Regarding play style, I get similar rewards for getting assists and honestly it’s understandable why my AP rounds don’t do as much damage as APHE, but I’d rather take it that if I die to a tank, that’s a skill issue rather than to blame it on something else, cuz I died from being careless, at lower brs where armour weakspot knowledge is essential, I would still give my enemy the satisfaction of being able to beat me in a gun fight when he knows how to aim, regardless of what shell type he is using, cuz one must be the first to shoot to usually win and honestly, I f’ed up bad if I died anyways

[Razielkaine]

Those weaksponts already make their armour not matter and you speculate they will go up, you have no evidence they will. You also ignore they quite clearly state overpressure won’t change so many guns will still be capable just not every gun.

You still fail to explain how buffing solid shot will stop shells one shotting tanks they shouldn’t.

You also ignore your own logic that if the solid shot is buffed they will go up in br… Your logic is broken.

[ZendikarHaven]

Honestly all of the changes here shouldn’t go through and we should have a buffing of solid shot- then we are pretty much golden, as long as HESH becomes decent lol

[ZendikarHaven]

@Razielkaine

Those weaksponts already make their armour not matter and you speculate they will go up, you have no evidence they will.

tank harder to kill, some weakspots become irrelevant and thus useless
natural increase in BR

@Razielkaine

You still fail to explain how buffing solid shot will stop shells one shotting tanks they shouldn’t.

I couldnt give less of a shit about this if you are arguing from a realism perspective tbh.

@Razielkaine

You also ignore your own logic that if the solid shot is buffed they will go up in br… Your logic is broken.

No, it isnt. High-pen rounds tend to be on a minority of vehicles, wheras the majority carry guns that have to aim for weakspots. If those weakspots become useless or much less consistent they will go up in BR.

However, if the high-pen tanks go up in BR, the weakspots still exist, which keeps the BR down.

[AlvisWisla]

No it isn’t. APCR+ does fine and keeps their armor relevant.

[Panter2005]

@ZendikarHaven

Like- I main sweden, and tbh I would have the most to benefit from this. Our APHE tends to have enough to overpressure, and we rely p heavily on HEAT/APDS or extremely fast reloads. Hell, APHE isnt even my favorite shell atm- that honor goes to slpprj m/61 on the 105.

At least for me it is in no way a ‘oh I want to keep my funny sphere of death’, its me seeing massive balance concerns with it.

Or you know that an APHE nerf would mean that all high pen tanks with post-war ammo would go up in BR, because their main justification for being so low - post-pen damage - is no longer as significant of a handicap as it was before. That means a lot of Swedish tanks will go up.

We could craft theories based on literally 2 screenshots and 2 diagrams or we could actually test it. Anyone who claims that this will happen or that will happen has absolutely 0 evidence it will happen.

@ZendikarHaven

True. What we really need is solid shot buff lmao

What we really need is realism. War Thunder has always taken realism when it comes to mechanics very seriously. This is not a wishful thinking concert.

Leave the balance up to BRs or eventually shells each vehicle gets, like top tier jets are sometimes balanced by not giving them the best missiles they had in real life.

[ZendikarHaven]

@Panter2005

because their main justification for being so low - post-pen damage - is no longer as significant of a handicap as it was. That means a lot of Swedish tanks will go up.

lol what

This is completely incorrect, for a number of reasons. They will still be extremely vulnurable- even with nerfed postpen on aphe they are quite literally paper and can be penned anywhere- their BRs are unlikely to change. Heavy tanks, of which we have none, are likely to massively go up.

@Panter2005

What we really need is realism. War Thunder has always taken realism when it comes to mechanics very seriously. This is not a wishful thinking concert.

Leave the balance up to BRs or eventually shells each vehicle gets, like top tier jets are sometimes balanced by not giving them the best missiles they had in real life.

I have quite literally said I give zero shits about realism in this- you can either have viable heavies or “realistic” APHE, not both.