Shermans are easy meat to anything that can get a gun on it. And the 51, with HEAT (not FS), is not a stabbed vehicle.
Many Heavies can be “lolpenned” by vehicles lower without these chemical round vehicles, it was nothing new and so does come across as a weak argument.
Most low tier HEATFS vehicles dont have enough armor to fuse APHE actually
It isnt lolpen, its just penning. There is no lol here
It will fuze if you hit a module like transmission, turret ring, the gun beech or the engine, just aim and you will be fine. Btw you can also load he for those vehicles.
It’s an lolpen. There’s nothing broken or overpowered about the M-51s, the guns are the only good things about it.
Which should never be the case for a heavy tank type vehicle. That’s the problem. How easy it is to pen the M-51 (or similar) doesn’t actually matter in this discussion; it could be something as MG-able as the M56 Scorpion, still doesn’t matter.
The problem is heavy tanks being frontally penned by lighter/etc vehicles, full stop. That’s all that matters. Light vehicles should be using their mobility, arty, scouting, etc to counter heavies, not engaging them frontally.
It’s similar, in reverse, to SPAAs being generally at far too high BRs because they’re given AP rounds.
However heavies shouldn’t be invincible frontally because that doesn’t work with war thunders gameplay and maps.
Yeah HEAT-FS is annoying, but people need to realize the tanks with it have huge downsides and aren’t as good as people think.
Exactly.
HEAVY vehicles should benefit from HEAVY armor.
LIGHT vehicles should benefit from FAST speed.
Each class should have a set of strengths and weaknesses that people should exploit within their abilities to their advantage.
Yet, as of now, many “heavy” vehicles can’t benefit from their “heavy” armor because light vehicles can slice through them just as if they were light vehicles too, except 7 times slower. I am not talking about M-51 right now, since that one isn’t particularly fast, but this goes for many lighter and/or faster vehicles being able to lolpen Heavy Tanks.
The WHOLE point of a heavy tank weighting 60-80 tons is for its armor to actually protect it. What’s the point of being so slow because of the armor of it’s just going to be bypassed by lighter vehicles?
Light tanks and alikes should use their MOBILITY advantages to take on Heavy Tanks, in any case.
Light Tanks being able to lolpen Heavy Tanks is not balance. Everyone lolpenning everyone ignoring the numerous other strengths and weaknesses is NOT balance.
The thing is, they already do. There are very few tanks that have HEATFS/ATGMs that heavy tanks face often enough to be a major concern. And if you can’t adapt to facing them, you are not a good player.
Armour does work, just don’t treat it as the only thing you rely on, that will get you killed.
Because not everything is a light vehicle with high pen rounds.
With how War thunder is set up, heavy tanks can’t be immune frontally.
And that’s what other Heavy Tanks, Tank Destroyers and even Medium Tanks are for…
For example: Tiger I can be killed frontally, even fully angled by some of these, by Russian 85mm, 100mm and 122mm guns, American 76mm and 90mm guns, British 76mm and 77mm guns, French 75mm guns, etc. All tanks, guns and shells from its own era.
There is no need for it to be vulnerable frontally to Light Tanks TOO, because, then, what’s the armor good for? If Heavy Tanks can’t even withstand Light Tanks frontally because these come from an era where armor was rendered obsolete in the future… what’s really the point?
There is NO NEED for Tiger I to face ATGMs or HEATFS for it “not to be OP”; it has more than plenity of counterparts from its own era, there is no need to throw at it 1970s munitions and vehicles that are 7 times faster, smaller and more agile.
The situation is slowly improving, but even a single one of such vehicles is a concern already. These situations should never take place ingame.
In concept I agree that heavies shouldn’t be literally invulnerable frontally, but the tradeoffs the light/mobile/etc vehicles make is not appropriate. Tank Destroyers, for example, make appropriate trades to be allowed to have bigger guns (for their BR) that can pen more things and such. They generally trade mobility, often survivability, arty, scouting, and even a turret for this.
Light vehicles keep essentially everything except survivability. This issue is actually less to do with heavies specifically, and more to do with the devs’ insistence that all vehicle types should be able to have a frontal duel. Light vehicles should not be able to engage heavies frontally, as a general rule of thumb.
Light vehicles should be flanking, moving quickly, hiding, ambushing, using arty and scouting, etc… not engaging in duels at ten paces. Instead, they’re basically the best type in the game, usually trading only survivability to have everything else (including arty/scouting).
As said, this same line of thinking is why we have so many over-BRed SPAAs.
Their armour is good for facing stuff that doesn’t have super high penning guns. Their gun is also very useful at killing light tanks, which often have very little survivability.
The reason tanks with that type of ammunition are low, is because they would be terrible otherwise. The Tiger I can very easily kill all of the tanks that have them really easily.
I don’t understand what you want to be a literal god? light tanks almost always still need to aim for weak spots
all i can say is stop crutching on armor your number 1 goal should be to to not get hit in the first place which you can prevent
and the tiger 1 example is awful every gun you mentioned was specifically designed to kill German tanks except maybe the french 75 since ww2 was already over
In War thunder? Nice joke.
I’d be more fine with changes if the maps were actually good and allowed for different playstyles. So many maps force you into frontal combat even if you flank. All it takes is 1 heavy tank to flank and then a light tank would be screwed.
Arty is nearly useless to, infact it is only good against light tanks.
I disagree with all of that in premise, so we maybe have to simply agree to disagree here. :P
There is no need for it to be vulnerable frontally to Light Tanks TOO, because, then, what’s the armor good for?
That’s not what armour is for. It’s never meant to make you frontally invulnerable to everything you face and should never be the case. It’s there as a fallback for if you’re shot at and forces the other player to take their time in aiming at you while you can often times aim at them anywhere or at a significantly larger area in return. The only cases where it should be “invulnerable,” is if the main gun is absolutely crap in return; see the Churchill Mk. VII for an example. Otherwise, you’re just making an overpowered vehicle that will have the advantage in nearly every situation.
There is NO NEED for Tiger I to face ATGMs or HEATFS for it “not to be OP”; it has more than plenity of counterparts from its own era, there is no need to throw at it 1970s munitions and vehicles that are 7 times faster, smaller and more agile.
The only ATGMs that the Tiger I can face are crappy MCLOS ATGMs from bad platforms that are either exposed (Zachlam), have the mobility of a bus (Ratel 20), or the slowest ATGM in the game (Type 64 ATM). None of them are “7 times faster,” or even smaller. Both the Ratel 20 and Zachlam are tall. The Type 64 ATM is the only one that can somewhat hide behind a ridge, but you never see that in games because the ATGM is hard to target anything with.
That’s the point. At most BRs beyond 5.0, Heavy Tanks only come across tanks that, being Medium or Light, have guns and shells more than perfectly capable of punching through them. So I would think the least you could ask is for them to be able to withstand Light Tank fire reliabily… but, instead of allowing that to happen, they are paired up with tanks that come from an era where WW2 tanks were nothing but ancient museum relics.
Why use a 10 hp/t, 30 km/h average 60 ton tank… when it’s not going to be any harder to kill than the 13mm-armored Light Tank with twice as much top speed and hp/t?
To clarify, I am not suggesting Heavy Tanks should be invincible. I just think they are more than perfectly balanced against their natural, contemporary predators and they don’t need to be shoved even more and further capable predators from the future down their throats.
Their gun is also very useful at killing light tanks, which often have very little survivability.
Also my point. A tank with 13mm of armor killing a tank with 200mm of armor with the same ease the tank with 200mm of armor can kill the tank with 13mm of armor is not balance when you consider and remember that the tank with 13mm of armor is several orders of magnitude faster, more agile and a smaller target, while the tank with 200mm of armor takes seven business days to move or turn and is built like a three story building because, well, its 200mm of armor were suppossed to give some sort of protection advantage.
…or maybe not!
Take Ratel 20 as an example. The thing has MILAT ATGMs with 530mm of pen!
With 530mm pen ATGMs, I can assure you it would be as effective against T-54s as it is against Tiger Is. This vehicle entered service in the late 1970s, its MILAN ATGM is definitely not going to struggle against late 1940s/early 1950s vehicles. It does not need to face 1942 vehicles in order not to be terrible…
It does matter in this discussion. Vehicles don’t exist in a vacuum, the M-51 and similar tanks can’t just be bumped up to BRs they shouldn’t be at because the feelings of a heavy tank might get hurt. There’s very few of them that are actually overpowered and need to be bumped up, most of them have a reason for why they’re where they are.
The M-51 is still a good example of this, because you can’t name any bloody good thing about it except “HEAT.” It has terrible mobility, terrible armour for its BR, and has a longer reload than most contemporary tanks which will make it lose a duel if it screws up it’s first shot or is caught by a second tank while reloading. Yet people will unironically suggest that it’s moved up to 7.0 because they’re mad that they got killed by it one time.
I already made my position on heavy tank armour in my earlier reply to @SPANISH_AVENGER.
I like to bully heavies with Type 60 SPG using HEATFS. But due to them tunnel visioning a lot, none of them punished me with Mg fire as I am easily destroyed by that. Also, my Ho-Ri is well armored, but that M551 easily penned my armor like butter and took like 5 shots from him. All I did was outplay him by aiming elsewhere as if I stopped focusing on him, the moment he popped out, i quickly aimed at him and killed the light tank.
In general, I think 90% of the issue here is a compression issue.
Some vehicles are too powerful at certain BRs, while they would be useless at other BRs.
This applies to many Heavy Tanks, and also to such Light Tanks.
If the game was more decompressed, all vehicles would be able to be in a comfortable and balanced spot both for them and their opponents…
