Merkava mk.2d reload

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
1

not sure if this has been brought up before, but I’ve been playing the Merkava Mk.2D quite a bit recently and noticed something that feels a bit off compared to other tanks. right now it sits at 6.7s reload (aced) with the 105mm. On its own that’s fine, but when you start comparing it to other vehicles, it looks a bit inconsistent

for example:

Merkava Mk.3D gets 6.0s
early Abrams sits around 5.0s

I get that Mk.3D is a later vehicle and has improvements, but layout-wise the Mk.2 still seems fairly loader-friendly. in X-ray, the ammo placement doesn’t look particularly worse than what you see on some NATO tanks with better reloads

at the same time, it doesn’t really have any obvious advantage to compensate for the slower reload either, especially when facing vehicles with ~6.5s autoloaders

so I’m mostly wondering how this value was decided:

is it based on some specific data for the Mk.2?
or is it more of a general balancing choice for its BR?

not saying it should be drastically faster, but something closer to 6.0s wouldn’t look out of place compared to similar vehicles

curious what others think, especially if someone has sources or more detailed info on Merkava reload rates

2

Give it 5s reload and then put it to 10.7 then to be on same level as Abrams with 105. Besides the Merkava is better than the Abrams with much more armor and survivalability aswell as better shell.

3

Reload times are up to the developers and are one of the ways the use to balance tanks without needing to change their BR.

4

The 2D is in a very weird spot. Its reload is longer than the competition, its armor is worse than the competition but it gets a decent dart for the BR

It really could benefit from a small reload buff but it isn’t necessary (tho I’d rather it got M428 SWORD and the LAHAT ATGM instead so it’s more unique)

5

I just don’t really understand why the Mk.2D has a 6.7s reload for its first-stage ammo in the first place (and this also applies to the mk.1d the layout is the same), when to me it seems like it should be closer to 6.0s, similar to the Mk.3D

but if this is purely a balancing decision, that’s completely fine — I’d just like to understand why it is set this way

6

they could give it a 5.3 second reload make life alot easier