Currently, the stock belt for the 25mm autocannon found on the VBCI, VBC (PT2), Dardo, and Freccia is extremely weak.
Despite these autocannons having a very high rate of fire, they start out with a stock belt with 1 APDS round and 2 HEI-T shells. This means 2/3rds of your round are complete toilet paper.
Now that may sound bad on its own, but also consider the fact that the APDS shell has a meager 80mm of penetration at maximum.
What is worse is the shell shattering effect. It makes it essentially impossible to kill even light tanks with the belt. Seriously, I’ve struggled to kill Bradleys by hitting them in the turret. Any kind of angle and your round ceases to exist.
Keep in mind that the VBCI and VBC (PT2) only have their autocannons and thus have no other way to fight an enemy. Because of this, you are basically forced to cap points until you get the full APDS belt and parts unlocked.
What I propose is simply removing this belt and replacing it with the full M791 APDS belt stock, and moving the PMB 090 APFSDS belt up to Tier III, at the very least for the VBCI and VBC (PT2).
Pretty sizable difference to have triple the time to kill of a non-stock vehicle.
Hell, at least with stock HEAT, you have some extra utility against lightly armored vehicles like IVFs/wheeled LTs. 25mm HE is a literal detriment in every situation unless you’re fighting a Chapparal.
The way I see it, is that with a 300 rpm (5 shots per second) it isn’t overly demanding to have 1/3rd APDS as the default belt. Many light tanks don’t even have any APDS in their default belt, just standard AP. Add on the fact that full APDS belt is either Tier I or Tier II modification, and you get the conclusion that there really is no big issue whatsoever.
The vehicles around Rank VI that use AP as their default belt also have ATGMs to compensate for the lack of firepower from the autocannon.
Furthermore, light tanks that use the 30mm Bushmaster, like the VCC 80/30, CV9030FIN or the ICV (P) get full APDS belts stock while being around the same BR and having a more powerful gun.
So I’d say it’s fair enough that those with ATGMs start off with only AP.
I would say it’s also fair enough that 30mm vehicles with 200 RPM get access to a full APDS belt due to how shit their DPS is already with the poor firerate.
If they had 1/3 APDS they would be almost impossible to spade effectively.
Their slightly larger caliber (hence slightly better penetration) doesn’t compensate for the much worse RPM of 200, at least for me and my experience fighting such vehicles.
The issue is that with only 1/3 rounds being APDS, your fire rate is in fact effectively lower with the 25mm than the 30mm.
The VBCI has a fire rate of 400 rds/min, but divided by three that’s 133 rds/min. Meaning your fire rate is something closer to the 2S38 or Begleitpanzer (120 rds/min) than the 30mm Bushmaster (200 rds/min) while still having a weaker round.
No wonder these 25mm nail gun vehicles are so good.
They’re shooting 9.3 25mm APFSDS rounds per second.
Meaning that 1/3 of a belt being APDS means 3.1 APDS rounds per second (187 RPM), which is just slightly worse than a full belt of APDS from a 30mm, which is 3.35 APDS rounds per second (201 RPM).
I think 2/3 may still be reasonable, but 1/3 isn’t nearly as bad as I intially thought, coming from your post.
Maybe 2/4 would make more sense.
My bad, I was just thinking of the vehicles with the Oerlikon KBA.
I can agree with the VBCI getting a 2/3 APDS belt, but I’d still stick to the 2/4 or 1/3 for the ones that get the Oerlikon KBA gun.
Ok, so on average the gun overheated after 64 rounds (34 rounds left out of 100 round clip)
On average, that took about 10 seconds.
64 rounds / 10 sec = 6.4 rounds per sec.
6.4x60 = ~384 rounds per minute, which makes the stat card correct.
If I had a larger sample size (maybe continuous 100 rounds instead of just 64), the percentage error from my reaction time would become insignificant - so the closer it would probably be to 400rpm.
Look at it this way, these vehicles are balanced at their BRs based on their spaded performance. No other vehicle has such a massive TTK gap between stock and spaded performance. Even the water pistol that is the 20mm RH202 has a 50/50 AP/HE at worst.
Keep in mind, a fast TTK is pretty much the singular advantage tanks like the VBCs and RCV have. They have no ATGMs to fall back on, and the penetration is so mid (especially on the APDS) that you need to be able to quickly take out tanks. Otherwise many of the tanks you can frontally penetate will spray you down with their autocannons first, and stuff you can only pen in the sides/rear will have the ability to angle against you.
Also, the full APDS belt is a tier 3 mod for the RCV. Cards on the table, this is the only stock grind I’ve done with this gun, so it’s coloured my opinions on it, but I don’t want anyone to have to go through anything like that again.
