Ground Vehicles **PROPOSED** RB battle rating changes

[Pro_Gamer_Cat]

So One is Geopard that can survive being 35mm by others. and the other can go really fast. And Geopard can be .50 cal to death. So fair right?

[_Renzo]

Having the XM248 a full 1.0 BR higher and the Za-35 0.7 BR higher than the Gepard is indeed German main cope yes.

Can you argue that the XM248 and Za-35 are better against ground targets due to the things you mentioned? Technically yes, but they wouldn’t be better enough to justify those BR differences.

[rainy2000]

0.3 BR at most… which is already reflected by their BRs [8.3 and 8.7 respectively].

[rainy2000]

You can use 35mm APDS to kill XM246.

[Pro_Gamer_Cat]

Yes but if you have time to reload to apds then you could kill it with APHE.

[Pro_Gamer_Cat]

XM249 can tank shots and it’s hull makes it that you need to aim for weak points to one shot it with the 35. And it can tank MBT’s shots to unlike other vehicles. And being 12.7 proof makes it better then the Geopard which isn’t.

[_Renzo]

@Pro_Gamer_Cat

it’s hull makes it that you need to aim for weak points to one shot it with the 35.

A burst to the turret kills or cripples it regardless.

@Pro_Gamer_Cat

And it can tank MBT’s shots to unlike other vehicles

It’s an M48 hull, most 8.0+ MBTs can and will just lolpen that.

@Pro_Gamer_Cat

And being 12.7 proof makes it better then the Geopard which isn’t.

The Gepard has other advantages.

The Gepard isn’t on par with the XM248, but that is perfectly reflected by the 0.4 BR differences.

[UniqueScorpions-live]

Easiest solution is just only give them all default belts.

[rainy2000]

Only takes half a second to switch belts iirc.

[rainy2000]

Default belt still has half API (APHE)

[Pro_Gamer_Cat]

And? You CAN pen it but it doesn’t mean that it will one tap it. Plus the closer gun placement means that it’s better at anti tank shenanigans. And yes a burst to the turret could cripple it, but it will kill you while you just crippled it’s horizontal and vertical drives.

[Pro_Gamer_Cat]

No, they should make the HE belt the default belt and the current default belt the “APHE” belt. But they should keep the apds belt

[UniqueScorpions-live]

Yes I know.

But it’s a 50% reduction.

[rainy2000]

Well, while it would reduce the effective firerate by ~33%, the APHE penetration and postpen effect would still be the same… meaning cupola shots and trap shots are still very much possible and would still be a nuisance to deal with.

So we should still strive to get <=40mm APHE rounds to have realistic APHE mechanics (cone shape rather than sphere), and drastically reduce penetration after ricochets / cause them to shell shatter (to prevent unrealistic / BS trapshots from happening).

[UniqueScorpions-live]

I agree with the second part yes.

But if a belt is APHE HE APHE HE vs a full APHE belt.

It’s a 50% reduction of APHE

[rainy2000]

Yes, but iirc, every 35mm API belt is 3/4th API, 1/4th HEI

[Pvt_Wade]

@Pro_Gamer_Cat

XM249

@_Renzo

XM248

XM246*

[Fourche7]

XM246 is only 8.7 because Gajin wants it to be. That meant denying adding the intended ammunition, such as APDS and HE-VT. It could be around the same BR as the M247.

@STGN

Ammo:

Spoiler

There were 3 types of live ammo, HEI-PD(High Explosive Incendiary - Point Detonating), HEI-PX(High Explosive Incendiary - Proximity fuze) and an “armor-piercing” round.
It used belts of interspersed HEI and armor-piercing rounds. Based on M247 magazines would be 66% or 75% HEI to AP:
In game it would be full HEI, HEI + AP , HEI-PX + AP

HEI-PD round:
The USA adapted the Swiss 35mm HEI but modified it, instead of having a normal point detonating round, it was a delayed point detonating fuze, the difference being that instead of exploding next to the skin of the aircraft the round would travel about 9 inches before exploding, thus delivering its whole charge inside the body instead of outside it like normal point detonating. This 0.03 milliseconds delay gave the projectile a second use, it was now also semi armoring piercing.
The round was produced by Honeywell the delayed detonating fuze was designated XM760 a direct descendent of the XM714 fuze program.

Source

Explosive Mass, 112 g
Total weight 550g
Max flight time is likely the same as M811 as fuzes was developed together so 8.5 ± 2 seconds

HEI-PX:

Same round with a proximity fu ze called the Motorola Proximity Fuze(MPF).
Development of the MPF started in 1974, being designed as a drop in replacement for the normal point detonating fuze. It was different than the M822 for the M247 in that it was “Adaptive” meaning instead of just exploding when within a certain rang it would take the targets flight vector into account to deliver the best fragmentation on the target. This was needed because of the comparatively light shell could not deliver nearly as much fragmentation as the 40mm. Flight time is not publicly available AFAIK but it’s lead-acid battery is considerably smaller than that in the M822 which had up to 21 seconds of flight time. So it is probably similar to the regular round. Trigger radius appears to be at least 7m from public photo(see below)

The Armor Piercing round?
Initially it doesn’t seem like a AP round was planned, the midt 1978 report to the US congress only mentions HEI-PD for the 35mm.

But to defeat IFV’s it was required for the belts to feed a mixture of HEI and AP, but what AP round was it actually?

Was it APDS-T, SAPHEI-T or AP-HEI? Both Hunnicutt and Jane’s reference the APDS-T as a round the gun fires and as seen above Oerlikon advertised two AP rounds with the DIVAD.

APDS-T however has a much higher muzzle-velocity, which means either all the HEI or the AP rounds
would miss if fired together and both uses Tracers which is undesirable and was avoided in the Ford proposal. It could also instead have been the earlier version of the SAPHEI-T, the AP-HEI however OERLIKON stopped advertising at the same time it was selected for the program in 1977. Both of the SAPHEI-T and the AP-HEI had identical ballistics to the HEI round they just only had 22g of explosive and could Pen up to 55mm steel, more than the 40mm M811. So they fit the bill. Another option is that plan was to have a setup like the Gepard with the small magazines carrying APDS-T and the big ones carrying HEI. In the only clip of it firing, we don’t see any tracers:

XM246 Missing historical feature APDS-T
XM246 Missing proper delayed fuze HEI round (SAPHEI)
XM246 missing historical feature HE-VT

---

Would this buff make the M247 redundant? Probably a bit.

But perhaps if they wanted to give the US a proper 8.7 SPAA, they should’ve actually added one, as opposed to artificially gimping a 9.3 vehicle into a lower BR.

[rainy2000]

@Fourche7

as opposed to artificially gimping a 9.3 vehicle into a lower BR.

Isn’t that what they did with the Veak 40 too?

[Fourche7]

It would be on brand, as it does happen all the time, but I’m not well versed on the VEAK. It might not be the exact same scenario.

Ik someone who knows the vehicle better. I’ll talk to them and get back to you when I find out.
Only thing I’m pretty sure of is that the 2-plane stab is fake.