Now T-34s, a tank with historically many flaws, is back to being as unrealistic strong as ever.
With most T-34s now having a spot on the front that will stop almost any WW2 gun from penetrating, from 75mm L/70, British 17pdr and even a long 88mm with a bit of angle applied.
Of course there are many other vehicles with stupidly strong armor parts, that should be the case, like Tiger 1 driver vision ports but this will bring nothing to the game except frustration.
Because even when you have a gun that is strong enough to penetrate a T-34s front armor, one of many strenghs of T-34s, there is now a chance that you’re round will simply do nothing and you get killed in return.
Of course the same is true for the Tiger 1. In both cases the protection provided from the driver viewport or hatch should be adjusted to match the protection of the front armor.
The driver viewport on the Tiger consist of a large cutout for the driver vision block, which reduces the armor protection around the cutout. The additional armor should just bring up the armor to the same protection level as the front plate.
On the T-34s the 75mm driver hatch should receive a modifier that reduces the efficency down to 45mm of armor like the rest of the front. Likewise on early T-34s the 45mm driver hatch would become a weakspot that offers significantly less protection than the rest of the front armor.
The hull MG port on the T-34 also reaches completely ridiculous levels of protection.
Which is funny, considering this would be a weakspot on most other tanks.
On the T-34s the 75mm driver hatch should receive a modifier that reduces the efficency down to 45mm of armor like the rest of the front. Likewise on early T-34s the 45mm driver hatch would become a weakspot that offers significantly less protection than the rest of the front armor.
Are you suggesting that it would have effective thickness capped to 45mm when angled or something else, because if it would be 45mm like rest of the armor it would just make it as strong as the hull around it.
Even in this case that it would act identical to rest of the hull it would be kind of a stronger place, because there is good chance that you hit sights that can block ammo or you hit both 45mm UFP+45mm Driver hatch meaning you are shooting 90mm sloped armor :/
Edit: Just when I send the message I remember that hatch is cast so it would be slight weakspot, but not really major.
I was thinking about an armor modifier, reducing the efficency.
The driver hatch was identified as a weakspot in the construction, hence it was increased from 45mm to 75mm in later models. Therefore it seems reasonable that the 75mm thick driver hatch would offer the same protection as the rest of the hull.
Therefore, when your gun can penetrate the front armor, it won’t magically get absorbed by the driver hatch without any harm done.
Okay make sense. I know Gaijin implemented change to T-34 hatch like few years back that was meant to fix it being able to bounce even Tiger II ammo, but I never felt that it worked. I was still able to bounce stupid stuff with my T-34 and kept bouncing from it even when using like Long US 90mm.
But im with that MG ports and driver hatches most notable T-34 shouldn’t be places that you don’t want to shoot. I’ve been playing PzIIIs with long 50mm and it is so annoying that you have to take out the gun with second shot because there is no way to kill T-34 crew from front using 50mm or M2 75mm.
45MM driver hatch was specifically improved to 75MM driver hatch to stop being weakspot, it being a weakspot applies only to earliest T-34, unless you consider driver’s optics which are weakspot even with 75.
Because they just reduced the maximum amount of armor protection the hatch provided.
Which of course didn’t make any sense, as it defies any logic. Since it meant a round could penetrate at impossible angles. APCR which otherwise suffered against sloped armor would simply penetrate based on the high 0° penetration stat.
Random ricochet chance also still works for the hatch and since it’s 75mm and overmatch rule doesn’t apply against it for shells below 120mm, most rounds could still randomly bounce.
I don’t get why this random chance to make a round bounce is even still in the game after all these years. It has been less of a problem but it never made sense to begin with.
That’s basically what I said. Not a weakspot however doesn’t mean that it would make the armor more effective than the rest of the hull.
A round bounces from the plate when it fails to deliver enough energy to breach the armor.
But that’s simly phisics. The problem is that neither Gaijin nor most players have any understanding of armor penetration mechanics.
A round could also deliver enough energy to breach the armor while getting deflected from the plate.
Resulting in a penetration of the armor but without the projectile ever makign into the tank.
That of course doesn’t happen in WT. A round either penetrates, gets absorbed by the armor or ricochets at random without causing any damage.
Instead of spalling we have like this random ±5% penetration modifier.
So a round with 100mm penetration only has a certain chance to penetrate a 100mm plate.
However it doesn’t make any sense for a round that could penetrate an armor plate, to simply fail to deal any sort of damage due to some arbitrary chance to ricochet.
It doesn’t even make any sense from a gameplay perspective. Why should shells bounce at random but APHE fuzes never fail? Same mechanic, both stupid for a game.
Seems to be modeled. Sometimes when APHE struggles and pen and barely has any pen left it can do just one shrapnel of damage. Which isnt round collapsing since if that happens and it pens it has more shrapnels.
APHE only fails when it doesn’t fuze on the armor. It will otherwise always explode, if the armor stops it before reaching its fuze delay range.
That’s why APHE will often explode inside a vehicle when it hits a cupola. If the round doesn’t have enough penetration to go through the back the cupola, it will explode inside the tank, once the round is stopped on the other side.
The T-34’s driver hatch was identified as a weak point and was reinforced to a thickness of 75mm.
Nevertheless, if it should provide the same protection as a 45mm thick hull or less, you can submit a bug report with a valid source to support your claim.
Or are you disappointed since you cannot one-shot point and click them anymore bro
The only hatch penetration mentioned in these reports is after several hits. Armour deformation as well as hatches going off isnt represented in the game. This also doesnt specify the version as with time the weakspot got bigger armour than the hull and was made more reliable to hits.
This probably applies to only earliest T-34.
You still can pen driver hatch even on older T-34 if you shoot driver optic.
The game treats every hole in armor as penetration.
If the hatch collapses onyo the driver’s face or breaks off due to hinges failing - that’s a penetration.
And remember, no other part of hull front was penetrated after several hits. So hatch was clearly a weakspot.
One is soaced armour which is prone to coming off even from simply moving.
Simply because structure is better?
Sure it was a weakspot on earlier T-34, yet in game something shattering isnt modeled.
Not modeled, like pretty much any other case of that happening on any other vehicle.
Or Tiger 2 straight up splitting their frontal plates from getting hit no matter of if it pens or not.
Or Panther turret being penetrated by two 76mm HE at same place or 3 75Mm HEs
Yeah the rounds won’t penetrate but they will knock off the hatch, thus destroying it.
If that isn’t modeled, the hatch should just be treated as inferior in armor protection.
Imagine driving around with a giant hole at the front of your tank.
It’s a clear design flaw of the T-34, hence almost no tank has a driver hatch at the front.
