And yet maps keep being made smaller, and having routes removed or blocked, and with said changes less people are needed to be able to cover off the remaining options.
The Soviets & Russians that, set the specifications for, designed, modify and maintain said tanks, clearly value the torque that the reverse gears provide & acceleration of the existing profiles more, and won’t make the sacrifices needed to provide sufficient room for a larger gearbox / transmission to fix the issue, or reprofile the gear ratios to fix the issue.
Probably because It’d be quite a bit of work, and probably yet another set of hulls they would have to support, though with shrinking inventories, the opportunity cost of such a move is probably significantly reduced these days from what it would have been in the '80s.
The same way Gaijin won’t add DU hull arrays or Spall mitigation features to appropriate M1’s even though there is evidence to support that they do in fact exist or were options at one point in time.
As stated, you get tracked, you lose the ability to rapidly traverse the hull, and adjust the lockout sector relative to the threat until it is repaired, which can easily prevent you from returning fire or covering a avenue of approach that can be exploited, or get caught side on to a threat that you need to rapidly respond to so necessitates rotating the hull.
What exactly are you doing at such short range where this is an issue and rotating the hull towards the threat to increase the rate is not possible?
It has to expose the weakspot that is the doghouse, and upper turret cheeks (which are practically paper at combat distances against most threats), and gun shield so its not like that there is nothing viable to shoot at even if the M1 is perfectly hull down and not also exposing the Turret ring.
Because not all maps and positions are deigned to be useful to all options, with a fleshed out lineup there should be something suitable, to other positions that remain viable, also it’s unlikely that maps do not take some vehicle limitations into account during the design phase.
So care to explain why it can’t go though the T-90A’s UFP? M774 is definitely the outlier for APFSDS performance at 10.7 where its performance means that penetrable zones & angles are far stricter than others.
Does it have sufficient penetration to function, sure. But in order to do so you are putting much more work in to do so.
Two places.
The first is that Gaijin have repeatedly handed out sequential buffs to the M1s; the universal Fire rate from 10RPM to 12 for both 105 & 120mm turreted members, selectively introduced better ammo to various M1s, which we know are actively used as balancing tools to avoid decreasing their Battle rating. Which would indicate that they are an outlier in terms of efficiency, and subsequently their true stats aren’t that good when compared to others.
The second is that; the average player isn’t actually all that good, legitimately what do you think their K/D and KpB is? and as the tree that gets a lot of attention from newer players, the US is likely to be very much on the lower end.
It’s closer to ~5.7 vs 7.1, expecting people to have both maxed and aced crews is not realistic.
It’s more likely that you would use some of that time delta refining your aim after the first shot didn’t kill, and if you were doing things properly when flanking you’d never get into said situation with more than one target since you would sort them for the threat they pose first and foremost, not whatever walks into your sights first.
If it were to become significant issues the BR would drop / be raised, or the offending article be removed, the Rate of Fire reduced, etc… We have a BR system to account for that, so why not use it.
it might struggle, I don’t have any experience using it, so I shouldn’t really comment on it. But you clearly seem to think it would be capable so I don’t see why not, it at least has ammo going in its favor.
Maybe, but many of those situations also have a significant element of risk, because in most cases if you can shoot multiple targets and really se the rate of fire, its likely that they can also shoot you, or someone has wiffed a shot and gives you an opportunity to capitalize, which if you shot first. Or still have a round loaded, and a functional gun still offsets the reload in your favor.
Having a more reliable armor layout is certainly harder to deal with / is more useful for the average player since people need to actively work around; for example the Jumbo(s), wouldn’t be that a whole BR higher than their similarly armed M4 counterparts.
If you die to the return fire due to poor amour, reload rate won’t help. It’s far more important to get the first accurate shot off, which is harder to do if the area you have to shoot is is smaller.