I believe that the current BR of the HSTV-L is unjustified in Warthunder. I get that it is fast and has a fire rate that is quite competitive, but when going against tanks where you have to kill the crews in order to disable the tank, it struggles greatly due to both its insufficient pen against the tanks it faces (besides Russian ammo kegs) and terrible spall (it will take usually a whole round per crew member to kill a Leopard from the side). If it were to get its historical penetration on its current XM885 round which is around 370~mm.
I’d also like to see the fire rate buffed, from in-game 1.5s to historic 1s reload.
Then again, Gaijin doesn’t have a very good track record when it comes to US vehicles, let alone US light tanks.
Case in point, AGS up-BR’ed to oblivion, XM8/CCVL missing blowout panels, Bradley missing TOW launcher control (and just being sad in general), M8 LAC is a rare event vehicle for some reason etc.
HSTV-L’s XM885 should be corrected to M774 levels of penetration AND damage, which is also a significant issue. It should also receive Delta 6 ammo and of course, proximity fuse with target tracking.
If it gets all fixes, like better depression on the front and sides (both currently incorrect), faster RoF, better mobility (it’s rather underwhelming despite the very high HP/tonne, hydropneumatic suspension, gas turbine etc, especially neutral steer and turning is pretty slow), I wouldn’t mind if it goes up a BR or two, but I just want the damn thing to be realistic, and not a completely different vehicle than it is from real life.
Gaijin’s current penetration stats for the XM885 are completely fake. If they just fixed that round the HSTV-L would be in a much better position with about 370mm of pen.
It’s mostly because they used their own calculator, but they put in a completely made up velocity value which is way lower than it should be for a telescopic round such as XM885.
It would be fine if they just make the XM885 do any decent post pen damage, heck i don’t even need the hevt or delta 6 rounds just pls give it more damage (and maybe move it down a bit to 11.0 or smth).
Spookston helpfully pointed this out in 2020 (4 years ago) in a well sourced report, and nothing has come of it. Something tells me they’re well aware of this and can fix it, but don’t want to.
Oh, they definitely can do something about it, they just very much don’t care about US ammunition, case in point being:
T50E1 for long 90 mm, which can’t be added because of the shitty calculator that standardized weapon performance, and due to having the same construction as M82, it would have the same pen, despite documentations stating much superior angled pen IRL.
US AP and APCR rounds still being the most underperforming ammunition type, 9 YEARS after the US was added.
90 mm cannons not receiving early M82 with 200 grams filler which would cause overpressure, because it “isn’t necessary”, but surely, a Maus and E-100 having a fictional APHEDS was necessary, and adding another APHE shell to Tiger 1s was also necessary. Nevermind that every Russian tanks gets 2 or even 3 barely different APHE shells.
For a round that supposedly have the same damage and pens as the M-774, it have no reason to be this bad, also with the new spall liner update the tiny little amount of spalls it does get are basically null.
You have only played 7 matches, and assuming you got an even distribution of kills in those 7 matches, You’ve only destroyed 1.57 tanks every battle, which isn’t saying much.
