I’ve never tanked more than 2 spikes. I either die to the first spike, or the 2nd spike, because they sure love to hit areas that don’t have ERA.
To me, they seem utterly broken.
So why are people still complaining about spikes?
to some extent negativity bias
but also they kinda do suck and we have no control over their suckiness
but also also
most vehicles that have spikes only get 4 spikes and then after they only have a bushmaster so being able to kill two tanks and then having your 10.7-11.3 vehicle turned into a 9.0-9.7 vehicle is very sad
especially considering under fire demonstrations (which are under basically optimal conditions sure) they make tank go big explosion
Because they are heavy RNG weapons, meaning that when you need them you have no guarantee that they’ll actually kill someone you need to kill. In fact they are best used against squishy targets that you’d be better off treating with your canon.
This is compounding with the frustration that they are most often paired with a Bushmaster 30 that while a decent autocanon, is really limited at the BR carrying F&F ATGMs propels you.
Also since you get a very limited number aside from the Freccia, you really notice whenever they do nothing.
There’s also a population of player that willingly refuse to understand why a weapon that has no feedback, virtually no range limit, and that can be used from behind cover shouldn’t be a guaranteed OHK.
Also you won’t really notice the F&F that outright miss you, or just clip your commander optics…
Because most of the tines they do not work on medium/heavy armored vehicles, either miss or do almost nothing. If I want to kill lights I have a 30mm bushmaster for that.
Spoiler
[quote=“gfdsa_killer, post:2470, topic:314801”]
First match: 3 spikes launched at players; 2 non lethal, 1 kill
Second match: 8 spikes launched at players; 1 non lethal, 1 crit (engine), 1 crit (commander and breech), 1 crit (breech only), 4 kills (2 light armored vehicles)
Third match: 5 spikes launched at players; 4 non lethal shots (one of them hit the cannon without doing any dmg), 1 kill (2s38)
Observations: Spikes do work well against light armored vehicles (such as the 2s38, 2s6 and btr82at), but not perfect because one of the spikes just hit the SPIKE launcher of an enemy PUMA without doing any significant damage. In case of MBTs its just a gambling, spikes sometimes goes to the UFP where the stronger armor and ERA is, and other times hits the turret. Also spikes launched at BMPTs are wasted shots, but what can you do when you spike carrier its at the same br?
Conclusions: Spikes do work well against light armored, but also does the 30mm bushmaster, the whole point of having an ATGM in an IFV its to defeat more armored targets that your autocannon can not pennetrate frontally, which the 11 total spikes launched at MBTs/BMPT, just 3 made kills, and 4 crit damage, the rest non lethal hits. So considering the BR the Namer and other spike slingers are, they do lack power at dealing with armored targets, which an mbt would take 2 spikes average to kill it, not ideal when you only have 4 spikes available.
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People complain about the system because of the HEAT performance. Even though Spike-LR, Spike-ER and PARS 3 LR do have Tandem charge this doesn’t indicate good post-pen damage. These missiles will behave like any other HEAT-shaped round: equivalent of the warhead explosive in TNT, conic damage and inability to cause overpressure most of the time—this is where the problems lives on: in-game the copper jet doesn’t behave like it should, it only goes forward, it doesn’t cause local damage where the liquid hit, and given that in chemical-warhead ammunition (HE, SAPHE and HEAT) the caliber dictate how good is, is no surprise that AGM-179 JAGM-MR and Izdeliye 305 will perform better (respectively HEAT warhead at 178 mm-caliber platform and HE warhead at 200 mm-caliber platform, if I’m not wrong).