From the German perspective the biggest issue is lack of competitive MBT, though Germany lags behind RED force in about everything except light vehicles.
As we can see form the stats 2A4 (M1 for reference) performs much worse than the T-90A. Reason for that is that the T-90A beats leopard in about every important parameter except reverse speed. Most notable is the armor protection, where the Leopards armor does not offer any against the 3BM60, while T-90A being the noticeably smaller target is well protected against DM23:
In terms of optics T-90A also come on top with Gen2 gunner TVD and better zoom.
Conclusion:
2A4 is not really fit to fight the T-90A. It is better for the German layer to field the TAM, which overs the same level of protection against 3BM60 (none) has far superior optics and similar firepower, however suffers to auto cannon vehicles (BMP2M, 2S38).
Since the Germany does not have any good CAS to offset inferior MBT, probably addition of the 2A4M would be the easiest solution.
And yes the all other BLUE force nation has the similar issue, maybe except Britain, but I choose the Germany because they tend to form bulk of the BLUE force and I have most experience with them.
I’m curious how the others see the MBT situation in 10_2 and how would the fix it.
Thx
The usual excuse is “bad mobility” because bad reverse gear. But a lot of Red force vehicles have very generous BRs and solid line ups.
While Blue force is suffering from often times fighting tanks who are better than them, they’re also facing tanks who have a complete and relatively good line up.
If you look at blue force nations, Germany since you used the 2A4. Their last decent line up is 10.3. And that one has NO MBT unless you uptier the Leo 2k. 10.7 only has some orphaned vehicles/event vehicles. 11.0 basically just the Spike PUMA. The last BR change even killed the 11.7 line up.
So many of these vehicles are forced to bring along tanks much lower than their BR, who will have similar or worse issues. Or are themselves being uptiered even further and struggling.
The 2A4 also has a quite a few goodies the T-90 doesn’t. Just for an example, the blowout rack, much shorter reload, and dual commander controls.
The 2A4 has a very large change to black hole shells, hitting no crew, while the compact size of the T-90 means a guaranteed destruction on penetration.
Not to mention the lack of a lineup the T-90 has to support it, pretty much making it an 11.3/11.7 tank.
The T-90 has a ton of goodies the 2A4 has, more than the other way around. Including a magic autoloader that eats spall and keeps ammo from exploding, much superior armor while it in turn can lol pen, and so on and on.
The rest is just, simply not true. If you hit the 2A4 and pen it’s usually done. And it too has no line up, absolutely none. There exists no line up for Germany between 10.3 and 12.7 since the most recent change. Which means you can either uptier it a lot, or uptier a 10.3 line up solely for this vehicle.
Germanys last line up sits at 10.3. And it has no MBT. After that since they tore apart the 11.7 there is no proper line up before 12.7. Virtually all the vehicles above 10.3 and below 12.7 now have a single other vehicle, or none at all to go with.
A (destroyable) autoloader, I’ve never had issues with taking out by ammo explosion, even with 105mm DM23.
This has a 7 second reload, all the time. The Leo 2A4 has 7.8 base reload, and a 6 with maxed out loader stat. The autoloader can be destroyed and is inoperable for 10-20 seconds, while taking out the loader doesn’t stop the 2A4 from firing, at the cost of a lower reload speed.
The ammo exploding on the T-90 is sudden death, the 2A4 at least gives you a second chance to, ideally at least, smoke and remove yourself from the situation, or retreat under the cover of team mates. (Stop smoking when you can’t move German mains, you got yourself and your team mates universally boned)
You can argue all you want about Shtora-1 being any use, but it’s just fact that it’s useless against a majority of missiles at this BR.
I play the Swedish 2A4 (Strv 121) and it has plenty of good vehicles surrounding the BR that hold their own. Looking at Germany it dos too, the RKW 90 is great, the TAM-2C has good mobility and stabilization, and the PUMA is the biggest black hole auto-cannon tank in the game that still hasn’t got fully modeled.