If APHE won't get its realistic nerf.. then it's time to unrealistically buff AP

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
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Genuinely the current situation with AP vs APHE is shockingly bad, I’m speaking from my own stressful experiences playing ground SB in WW2 era BR’s for Britain (TL-DR at the bottom).

As it stands right now APHE sadly isn’t going to receive the rightful and historical nerf that it deserves, in my honest opinion this never should have been put to a vote and should’ve been implemented as part of an update.

To explain, APHE at the moment is massively overperforming. The orb of death caused when an APHE round detonates inside of your tank is completely fictional and it causes a lot of unfair crew knock outs and rewards bad gameplay. Historically the added shrapnel from an APHE round detonating inside of your tank should follow the trajectory of the penetrator in a cone of damage. Truth be told the damage shouldn’t be much greater than what AP is causing right now.

Sadly in game as mentioned this is not the case, you can place an APHE round into the engine bay of a tank and the shrapnel can literally travel 90 degrees and wipe out the entire crew. The amount of HE filler also makes almost zero difference, case in point go into test drive with a Russian reserve tank and fire dead centre into the Panzer IV. 9/10 times you’ll one shot the whole crew.

Now to add onto the fact that the abusers of said round like Germany and Russia also have incredibly thick (and dubiously bouncy) armour, higher mobility than expected and in the case of Germany high penetration to go with it… you can see how things can be considered somewhat unfair.

Now lets compare that to Britain and AP/APDS.

Granted some guns are better than others and in the reserve tiers at least the AP isn’t bad, but as soon as you get to the heavier stuff oddly things get considerably worse.

The 17lber gun historically is widely regarded as one of the best anti tank guns in the war. So much so that the Germans would go out of their way to target them in a convoy as it’d turn a Tiger into Swiss cheese. In game however the 17lber is absolutely miserable.

For starters unlike APHE in most scenarios it cannot one shot the enemies it faces whilst they can most certainly delete you no matter where they hit you. Tanks such as the Panther require a minimum of three shots frontally through the turret which takes so much time that before you can get the third shot off his friend has killed you. Or you target his friend and then the Panther repairs to then one shot you whilst you’re reloading.

Even if we ignore the realism aspect, from a gameplay aspect this is not fair at all. Especially when you factor in the abysmal accuracy of the 17lber and British WW2 era guns in general. A funny instance last night was me attacking a Tiger at Tunisia about 800m away, the first shot killed his gunner and yet with the exact same aim point the second shot hits the ground in front of him. This is with expert crew. He of course then kills me with a hit to the turret which explodes in a perfect ball sending shrapnel backwards killing the entire crew.

Jagdpanzers are particularly funny as well. The UFP has the magical ability to bounce the 17lber AP from as little as 100m away. Of course you’re then instantly detonated by his return fire.

Even when the rounds do actually penetrate it’s not uncommon for a driver to eat an entire round resulting in your unfair OPHE demise. The fact you can have an engine eat a 300mm+ pen APDS round at point black range yet it won’t stop the piddly shrapnel from an APHE round from eviscerating your crew is an insult.

So APDS then, more penetration means it’s more competitive correct? No. It’s even worse.

Not only does the poor accuracy persist (whilst other tanks are pixel perfect) but now your shells will “shatter” even when they blatantly shouldn’t. Flat side armour will shatter APDS rounds, the side of a Tiger I turret will bounce AP and shatter APDS rounds with well over 200mm of penetration. From my own personal experience a Jagdtiger’s rear plate (engine bay) will shatter the 300mm+ APDS at point blank range.

It’s funny to me how APDS shattering is a thing and yet if you mention APHE fuses failing to activate (as they realistically did) the playerbase screeches… (Rules for thee… not for me…).

As a side note the map design also hurts AP users, most of the time the maps spoon feed tanks directly into one another due to the small sizes and bad layouts. Flanking isn’t an option on 90% of maps and AP users that have to hit small weakspots are at a massive disadvantage against one-click delete tanks.

So as for how to fix this completely unbalanced situation…

The incredibly suspect APHE nerf vote shows the majority doesn’t want APHE touched unfortunately and we can all imagine the hypocrite screams if APHE fuses failed at high angles etc. So all we can do is unrealistically buff AP to match APHE.

For starters remove shell shattering, it’s buggy as heck and hurts gameplay… if APHE fuses can’t fail then APDS rounds shouldn’t shatter.

Allow AP rounds to bounce and ricochet inside of penetrating tanks to cause more damage. An AP round penetrating the turret should ricochet downwards into the crew compartment potentially killing more crew/detonating ammo racks. This actually happened in reality and is more realistic than the APHE ball of death.

Massively increase spalling causing a much larger cone that grants more common one-shot knockouts. Cause a massive area of the armour that was penetrated to create a wall of shrapnel knocking out crew.

Seeing as we abandoned realism a long time ago there’s no reason why this couldn’t be implemented. It’d make gameplay considerably more fair than what we have now and it’s the only solution until APHE is rightfully and realistically nerfed.

TL-DR: AP is bugged and APHE won’t be nerfed so make AP as potent as APHE for gameplay.

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With the great potential the game had, simply making things realistic and achieving good balance would have made it a fantastic game. But this is what it is. The developers’ neglect of features has left the game riddled with bugs and imbalances, turning players into lemmings with ODL.

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AP is fine, more often than not it trades post-pen damage for higher pen whe conpared to contemporary gun on contemporary tank.

Case example, M48 vs Centurion.

Patton has to switch around between HEAT-FS and APHE, meaning having wrong shell loaded can end up in disaster if you meet the wrong enemy.

Centurion doesnt have such issue, 84mm AP is more than good enough to cut through most armor and those few it cant theres APDS aviable (not to mention centurion will on average get first shot off in encounter since its fully stabilised so he actually can fire off a second shot, unlike Patton).

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In reality, the M48 and the Centurion Mk3 are roughly equivalent. In reality, both the 90mm HVAP and the 20-pounder APDS would have equivalent penetration. After that, both tanks would have their advantages and disadvantages. While the Centurion Mk3 has a stabilizer, the M48 has a coincidence rangefinder, meaning one would have an advantage on the move while the other would have an advantage at long ranges (a difficult feat on the game’s maps). Regarding the M48’s coincidence rangefinder, it’s interesting to note that it was attached to the gun, so once the range was determined, the gun was already ready to fire.

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AP is far from fine. It’s completely unbalanced against APHE, it may have more penetration but considering the tanks that lob APHE have zero issues whatsoever penetrating your tank it’s a moot point. Ask a Tiger II user if he’d sacrifice his/her one-shot knockout ability for 30mm or even 100mm of extra penetration (along with their shells shattering) and see what the answer is.

AP has to aim for small weakspots most of the time to knock out 2-3 crew and that’s if you’re lucky, APHE can essentially hit your tank anywhere and you’re killed in one hit. Even something as massive and cavernous as the Tortoise can be brutally murdered in one shot through the front thanks to APHE.

It’s comically broken, AP isn’t even close.

Meanwhile APDS users are enjoying their shells shattering completely at random and at times doing absolutely sod all damage even with a penetration. I’ve never had an APHE get eaten by my driver without it nuking my entire crew, but now ask how many AP/APDS users have had that experience.

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Unrealistically buff AP?

I’m still waiting for my US AP rounds to get FIXED, and have even a smidge of the realistic sloped performance they should have - like T33 penning Panther’s UFP at 1.2 km which it can’t do point blank.

Or how ridiculous the RNG bounce chances are, go test drive the T54E1, take AP, drive straight up to the Panther, depress the gun so that it goes straight into the UFP and shoot a couple of rounds and then be bewildered how is it physically possible for any round to bounce at that angle (it shouldn’t be). Even worse is that this happens to the M103’s 120 mm AP, which is even heavier with more kinetic energy…

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I would always take solid shot over HEAT

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I mean, since they added commanders callouts, coincidence rangefinder really comes into play only after your commander was turned into fine red paste. But until then, the ability to hit (not talking about penetration right now) is pretty much the same for both.

But I digress.

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I’ll raise you the time an ostwind killed me in my T-34 on the move frontally at 600m. Somwhow went through the side profile of the turret roof hatch, the 30mm api fused and killed the entire 4 man crew.

Start grinding France then. Get a lot of oneshots with my 120mm on the Surbaisse and the 100mm on the amx-50, Lorraine 40T and Somua SM

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Both 7.7 French and UK lineups use exclusively AP, and I do better in both of them than in 7.7 Pattons. Both UK and French have other advantages to HE filler on AP rounds - in case of UK its full stabilization which rewards quick reflexes, in case of France its autoloaded gun and powerful AP shells which allows you to be lenient with shot placement.

Perhaps youre just not employing proper tactics?

There are cases where more penetration is prefered to HE filler.

For example, M48 that was downtiered to face 6.7, that has APHE loaded, cant just click on the Tiger II turret face in frontal engagement, it HAS to go for muzzle brake or gunner optics, both extremely small targets to hit in combat conditions, or risk being destroyed.

Centurion Mk3/Caernarvon just clicks next to the mantlet and its one shot kill in 9 out of 10 cases since if Tiger II is looking directly at you, hit to the right of the gun will at the very least take out both commander and gunner, and more realistically it will detonate ammo in the first stage ammo rack.

you got it backwards. In face of strong armor, both AP and APHE have to go for weakspots. But it is the APHE with lower pen that has to, more often than not, go for weakspots even for less armored foes.

youre third person in relatively short amount of time that implies that they use APDS as their main shell. If thats the case, no wonder you made this post lol.

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Ive recently migrated to French 7.7 and its completly nasty lineup. Somua and AMX 50/100 especially.

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A really bad example

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If I did not already have a girlfriend I would fucking marry the French 7.7 lineup. So many great tanks. Buying the somua is probably the best money I ever spent on a game (apart from maybe buying BG3).

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example nonetheless. If anything, UK and US lineups are one of the few that can actually be directly compared, you have Centurion Mk3/M48 and Conqueror/M103. Thats historical, doctorinal and BR comparison to be made lol.

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Its becoming a problem actually, I dont have enough crew slots.

prolly the same, its in fact so good I managed to convince friend to get it himself only after few games together.

But, to getback to the topic - AP absolutely can work.

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I have bought up to 8 slots just because of the 7.7 8.0 8.3 and 8.7 lineups.

Yeap. I grinded all the way up to the amx-50 back when the only french tanks with APHE were the M10, M4A1 and the B1 hull gun. I never had any real issues with it and even had the M4A4-SA50 as my most played tank for quite a while.

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Ive never had any issue with UK AP ammo either.

If anything, it was the reload speed ive always found annoyingly slow (especially conqueror). And that problem only got worse after I got to experience the beauty of 2x 100mm obus de rupture in span of 4 seconds on some poor Tiger II.

Spoiler

I really need to start watching my magazine with french tanks, its all fun and games till you find yourself with empty gun balls deep in the enemy team. By then, all the time you saved on standard reloading is returned with interest and you are left contemplating your life choices.

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Just play the Surbaisse. Gets a 20+ round rack.

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Ehhhhhhhh…not a fan so far. Maybe once it is spaded. I much rather prefer Somua if its city map or 50/100 if its anything else, likely due to the reload - which again feeds into the problem with ammo managment.

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It’s nothing to do with “proper tactics”. In WW2 BR’s especially you’re at an enormous disadvantage with AP due to the seemingly random shell shattering and at times minimal damage. Tank crews don’t just “eat” APHE shells and the rest of the crews survive, something common with AP rounds especially APDS.

With AP a fair chunk of the time you’re aiming for a weak spot in the hopes of knocking out a couple of the crew. Like I’ve already mentioned a tank like a Firefly can only damage a Panther through its incredibly bouncy/buggy turret… Look at the Tiger II’s small turret cheek weakspot, you might kill the gunner or you might turn him yellow and then he obliterates you with a centre mass shot.

Even if you go heavy vs heavy, lets compare a Tortoise against a Tiger II. The Tortoise should have an incredibly frightening gun but it doesn’t. That massive AP round can penetrate the turret cheek but once again the round vanishes after it kills the gunner. The Tortoise meanwhile is one shot killed by any penetrating round. It’s weaker front plate near the smoke launchers? Dead, the LFP? Dead, even the MG turret? Yep.

Just to confirm the point I’m making here isn’t about armour, it’s about the colossal, unrealistic and unfair damage caused by a round that magically has the power to eliminate every single crew member in a single shot inside of such a massive space.

Then why don’t you use the APCR instead with 300+mm of pen as your main round if penetration is more important? Because like APDS and most AP it’s unreliable when you have a one-click delete round that’ll evaporate everything in the enemy tank even with badly placed shots.

There’s a very solid reason why everyone says Britain is painful to play, it’s not because of the tank itself… it’s because of the solid shot and how broken APHE is. If AP was just as good or was performing correctly you’d see far more tanks using it. As it stands everyone and their dog is using APHE because it’s broken.

No, it isn’t. I’d wager 2/10 of my kills against the Tiger II even with the FV4202 have been the result of that ammo rack detonating, purely because the gunner absorbed the shell and it didn’t even touch that rack.

Meanwhile as mentioned almost any APHE round can one-shot something as massive as the Tortoise. Despite the fact that in reality the damage between AP and APHE was very similar. Don’t also forget that your APDS round has a chance of shattering against that Tiger II turret, yet your APHE fuse will work every…single…time…

Considering APHE can nuke entire crews with cupola shots magically spreading shrapnel all over the inside of the tank I’d have to disagree with that statement. Case in point what would you rather kill a Panther with, a Sherman Firefly or a T-34-85? The Firefly will take multiple shots, the T-34 can annihilate the Panther in a single hit due to magical physics defeating shrapnel.

Genuinely it’s enough to make you go nuts, to people that say they’d rather have high pen over APHE or even thinks for one second everything is fair I urge you to play Sim or even RB and play for Britain.