Let’s not even have WW2 vehicles play against each other then.
Tanks developed so rapidly in those short 6 years that they are even less comparable than KT is to M48 🤦♂️
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Yes, that’s exactly why we don’t have M4A1s and T-34/76s fighting Tiger IIs and IS-3s, pr Panzer 38ts fighting KV-1/2s.
Do you see it now?
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Let’s assume you’re correct and that the overall combat effectiveness of tanks with respect to time can be modelled by this relationship
I would agree with you, for the most part, that tanks, as they get more modern, improve in overall combat effectiveness, and I would also agree with you that there were some timeframes where there were serious innovations in tank technology (where you’d expect the steepest gradients on this graph).
However, this model does not take into account the different roles tanks may have, which can drastically affect how useful they are in certain situations.
The overall combat effectiveness of tanks in one era would be the average, so there can be instances where tanks in the 1950s can perform (overall) worse than tanks in the 1940s.
In addition to this, War Thunder does not take into account the vast improvements in fire-control systems when modelling their vehicles (other than rangefinders and laser rangefinders and maybe some others). Scope quality (other than FOV, Thermals / NVD, and Zoom) is also not taken into account.
This is the reason why the Pbv 301 (a vehicle in service from 1961 to 1971) is at 2.3, despite its relative modernity. Its relative performance in War Thunder is what is being measured and results in each vehicle’s BR, not how modern they are.
You would be able to see a clear relationship of BR against time, but there will always be outliers that break this trend, and this is why you will be able to face ‘modern’ vehicles in your WW2 tanks.
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And it’s also why we don’t have Panthers fighting M48s.
Whoop de doo, the BR system has been discovered.
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I presume this all comes from the confusion between penetration and damage?
Who cares if you get penned if there is little damage? Chemical rounds have massive tradeoffs.
Oddly no one stands up for the heavies with solid shot, but the ones with APHE cannon that still hold their own in an uptier somehow suffer.
I guess most complaints come from one nation? Poor use should not mean nerf other vehicles.
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This is precisely the issue.
In War Thunder, mid-late WW2 “Heavy” tanks are often forced to play as slower Light/Medium tanks because their armor is outclassed by the shells of faster and lighter tanks because they come from the future.
Normally, you would expect:
Heavy Tank: sacrifices mobility for protection.
Medium Tank: middle ground.
Light Tank: sacrifices protection for mobility.
Normally, you would expect Heavy Tanks to be able to enjoy their protection advantages, while Light Tanks would be needing to use mobility to their advantage in order to outflank and hit Heavy Tanks on their weakspots.
Instead, as of now, we got Light Tanks zooming around blowing up Heavy Tanks frontally because apparently balance is only when everyone can lolpen everyone frontally with the same ease, throwing away roles and armor/mobility/firepower trade-off relationship between classes.
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The thing is, almost all heavy tanks at 6.3 / 6.7 / 7.0 have very powerful guns (that almost always 1-shot but have relatively low penetration compared to the Leopard I).
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Yet they are extremely slow and often have slow reloads too.
Why sacrifice your mobility in a Tiger II, expecting to at least have above average survivability… only to come across an M48 Patton, which has not just the same or better armor than you, but also significantly better mobility and the ability to lolpen you? At that point, your armor is just dead weight and your tank class has been rendered obsolete.
Notice I am not even talking about Light Tanks at this point, this is a full compression issue.
That being said, it used to be MUCH worse; Tiger IIs used to face M60s and AMX-30s. At least there was a tiny bit of decompression there, but… we need more. (Specially since, as of now, if you use Tiger 105, you will still come across M60s and AMX-30s).
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I honestly just find it immersion breaking and unfun. I’m driving along in a Sherman and then the Ratel from the 1970s and the Fiat from the 1970s both show up… It’s a freaking joke. It really feels like the game became more and more like WoT over the years.
Aircraft and tanks are commonly used from the 1980s fighting vehicles from today. That’s a fact of poor nations using what they have. We still see WWII vehicles fighting for certain nations, so we CAN see them fighting more modern vehicles; however, we played this game to go back in time, not to create a science fiction universe were vehicles went back in time.
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USA 6.7 tank versus King Tiger:
I play heavies more because they’re cooler. I’ve been playing mostly T26E5 lately. A lot of my stats are mid anyway cuz I only recently started getting better at the game. But its just infuriating to take my 1940s heavies and just get one shot disabled by some italian car made in the 70’s
like T-80BVM and 2A7V versus M1A2s? yeah ik, but atleast they have similar capabilities.
MBT (APFSDS, composite armor, fast) vs newer MBT (APFSDS, composite armor, fast)
or
Heavy tank (APHE, Steel armor, slow) vs light tank (HEATFS, no armor, extremely fast)
You’ve just rediscovered BR compression, congratulations.
But people with HEATFS know that. They will target places where it will disable you. I was playing that little german SPz 12-3 and came up against a T32. Shot it in a position to get driver and gunner, then finished it off. Sure, I didn’y one shot it. But it couldn’t fight back after that first shot.
Okay, what about the Ikv 103, for example?
If we assume the Tiger II stays at 6.7, and top tier becomes 15-16.0 or something, does the Ikv 103 get moved to e.g. 8.0?
well judging by how absurdly low it is compared to others, possibly its a special case
Massive skill issue. Both M-51s have terrible mobility and only the premium one has okay-ish armour, while the tech tree one uses the terrible cast hull. You can lolpen is just as easily as it can lolpen you, with tanks as low at 3.3.
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an 88mm APCBC versus thin armor isn’t lolpen
Its the insane 400mm penning HEAT versus actual thick steel thats lolpen
By this same metric of “always doing the right thing” then the person in the non-HEAT-FS vehicle has already killed the HEAT-FS vehicle.
APHE, on the whole, just needs to get in. HEAT and ATGMs must have, within reason, a perfect shot. And on ATGMs they are not that easy to guide and hit the correct spots. 50 cal tanks can slap the ATGM and if you shift about (move back and forth/sideways) you become a lot harder to hit (focus on the sub-7.0 vehicles).
The high pen of some vehicles does NOT instantly make them too powerful for their BR. Heavies until maybe 7.7 are not exactly performing badly from what I had seen.
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If you can’t lolpen an M4A1 with even the short 8,8 cm then it’s just a massive skill issue on your part.