This awfully long thread is created after I decided to spade the 2 tanks so fill up my rank I.
And after playing them both I can say that both are suboptimal, obviously due to the poor balance of 1.0 but one of them is more usable than the other and the other is 1 tweak away to be on equal footing with it.
Now who’s the winner of the 1.0 autocannon duel?
It’s the italian reserve tanks,
But the M2A2 comes in second place with the T-60 crawling behind it.
I will compare them in the next bit to how the M2A2 proves to be a better tank than the T-60 and then where does the T-60 dig it’s grave.
Armament and Gun Handling
Spoiler
On the face of armament, one would expect the higher caliber with faster firerate of the T-60 to wipe the floor with the M2A2, the truth is the opposite, the M2 50cal has a lot more strengths past these aspects that make it a more powerful weapon than the 20mm TNsh of the T-60
One example is penetration, while the most powerful round of the 20mm TNsh is the “AP-I API” seems to have a higher pen at firsr glance by about a 1mm, taking a deeper look reveals a glaring issue, the 20mm TNsh loses speed faster than the M2 50cal, which ends in actually lower pen and harder to aim shots, even to annoy or supress the most vulnerable of tanks.
In terms of belts the M2A2 also wins due to not having any explosive rounds that would result in wasted belt space, while not having any explosive rounds may seem like a loss, the T-60’s explosive round barely has any filler and neither of these tanks can actually engage aircraft decently.
The T-60’s explosive rounds bites again by also being more common than the Incediary round of the M2A2 and being present in the only belt where the T-60’s highest penning round is found, forcing it to either choose either more pen but less reliability due to 1/3 chance of a useless round to fly out, or less pen but a 100% chance of an AP round to come out of the barrel, while the M2A2 incendiary with no pen to speak of is only avaiable on the stock belt and is never seen again.
In terms of “magazine size”, the M2A2 wins by having a 200 rounds per magazine and 7 magazines total, while the T-60 only has 58 rounds per magazine and 13 magazines total.
The T-60 also suffers from a 20 second reload (aced) per magazine, while the M2A2 has a 8 second reload on the same scenario.
On the gun handling side of things, it manifests one of the T-60’s rare strengths over the M2A2, while both tanks share the same traverse rate, the T-60 is the only one with an actual 360 degree cover on it’s main turret, while the M2A2’s second LMG armed turret blocks it’s entire right flank, however the T-60’s depression of 7 degrees loses to the M2A2’s 10 degrees.
The final result is that in terms of armament T-60 loses on ammo pool, reload time, magazine size, gun depression, penetration, belt compositions. Finding itself with a lot of non penetrations, frequent reloads which also come with said reloads taking very a long time and the more common depression issues (but somewhat still respectable to most russian tanks).
We can also add that the T-60 usually empties it’s rounds faster which make it reload even more.
However the M2A2 loses on firerate and horizontal turret traverse angles, which makes the T-60 able to exploit an ambush attack quicker, without needing to turn the hull and firing a lot more lead downrange in a short amount of time, but in the long, the M2A2 will easily defeat it
Mobility
Spoiler
This part of the comparion easily goes to the M2A2, while the T-60’s 5.8 tons is a lot lighter than the M2A2’s 8.6 tons, the M2A2 beats it in every other regard, including power to weight ratio, better reverse speed, faster acceleration and higher top speed.
M2A2
T-60
M2A2 is way more capable of getting into positions where it has easy access to weak armor profiles and maybe even weaker enemies in the backline.
Armor Protecion
Spoiler
Armor is one of the strengths of the T-60, 35mil angled at 31 degrees as the LFP, 15mil angled at 70 degrees[/center], turret mantlet and driver port at 35mils both and 0 degrees and a turret enclosed in 25mils on all sides.
Only 1 small weak spot frontally of around 20mils above the mantlet of the gun.
Side falls off at a flat 15mil and the rear is protected by 2 plates, one above of 10mil of thickness with a slope of 70 degrees and a lower one of 25mil sloped at 20 degrees.
Additionally, a T-60 can angle (preferably it’s right side) to increase armor protection by a lot.
Even with all this armor, the T-60 will still come out as lighter, having less inertia, making it easy to teamates to drag you out of bad situations. (still slower than M2A2 tho)
T-60 Armor profiles
T-60 front
T-60 side
T-60 rear
The T-60 is more likely to bounce a poorly aimed shot and it is inmune to most 20mils unless HVAP like the Italian reserves or Panzer IIs is aimed at the flat 35mil plates, both tanks have flat plates with less than 20 milimeters thick on the sides, making it very easy for even the FCM.36 to pen them.
Survivability
Spoiler
While the previous section demostrated that the T-60 has the superior armor on all sides, it doesn’t point 1 glaring issue…
T-60 has half the crew of the M2A2, even worse, it only has 2 crewmembers, which means, even 1 APCR round is enough to kill the tank in a single try.
T-60’s right flank is somewhat protected by it’s engine, but said engine is very small and is not very likely to block any rounds.
T-60’s transmision is also very thin and very unlikely to eat spall like the M2A2’s transmision.
T-60’s rear is actually pretty strong, since 2 ginormous fuel tanks have the gunner back covered, and from certain angles, both the gunner and driver are safe from spallling, it’s engine and ammo is also safe from this angle while also being protected by the radiator, making it so the T-60 can seek cover, turn it’s turret, kill the fuel fire and try to defend itself. (as long as the shot doesn’t go into the turret)
While the T-60’s crew is very cramped, it also gives the T-60 a very low profile, which means it is easier to hide than the M2A2, however, it’s speed will still make it hard to escape once spotted.
T-60's X-Ray
M2A2 suffers from paper armor, but makes it up in an absurd amount of mobility, making it so its very easy to avoid enemies which the M2A2 can’t pen
M2A2 also has 4 crewmembers, which are far more spread out and aid in surviving spalling, however, said crew usually line up in pairs, so one shot may actually take out 2 members of your crew.
The rear of the M2A2 is protected by a ginormous radial engine, with the gunners barely sticking out their heads, however, the slow turret traverse and the fact that shooting at the engine means the M2A2 can’t escape or turn it’s hull to react faster means that it stands even less chances at surviving an ambush
M2A2’s crew turret crew is very high up and so is it’s ammo, which means a below center of mass shot has a chance of just flying in and out of the M2A2’s due to the thin armor.
M2A2’s ammo is very easy to shoot, unlike the T-60’s ammo found on the floor or sandwitched bewtween the gunner and the fuel tank.
M2A2’s transmision is very large and will probably eat a lot of spall and save a little bit of the crewmembers hitpoints.
M2A2's X-Ray
The M2A2 proves to have better survivability, more crew, more consistent damage, more penetration, more ammo, larger magazine, better depression, quicker reload, better mobility and better reverse.
While the T-60 has better armor, better module placement and more firerate.
Now the T-60 seems very disadvantaged here, but I believe 1 of these weaknesses is the one truly holding the T-60 back, and that’s the reload.
20 SECONDS ACED, it’s absurd, sure IF the T-60 meets an opponent it can pen it will kill them quicker, but having such high firerate doesn’t help when your clip is only 58 rounds, it’s near to 2 seconds of trigger time for a gun that has less pen than a 50cal. This was because the T-60 had HVAP at one point, so it justified the long cooldown because said round was on par with the american 50, but it was removed and the reload stayed, making balance on a counterweight that no longer existed.
I have 3 solutions
First solution is to bring the T-60’s reload to the same as the M2A2’s, since while the T-60 may empty it’s rounds quicker, it will spend a lot more time reloading and will need to memorize enemy weakspots to place it’s short burst. While the M2A2 can keep holding down the trigger and look for a weakspot and once said spot is found, keep drilling on it.
The second one is to make the belt with the most pen be made 100% of AP-I API rounds, which, while still inferior to the 50cal belt, it would make so if the T-60 finds a target, it would more likely actually empty 50 AP rounds instead of like 30 rounds of AP.
The third one, the most prefered by me, is to add up both of the previous solutions, since while the T-60’s armor is scary, almost all reserves except japanese and French reserves can still easily penetrate it, it would teach players to aim at weakspots, which in the case of the T-60 are very large and obvious. T-60 can be a more armored but more slugish M2A2, with a faster firerate but lower downtime between burts.
- First solution (faster reload)
- Second solution (better belts)
- Third option (faster reload and belts)
- T-60 doesn’t need a buff (I don’t want to scare new players away)
- I don’t care about reserve tbh