Ok, this should be obvious to anyone playing the game, but the T54 is in no way a 8.0 vehicle.
Slow. glacial turret rotation, mediocre gun, bad gun depression, and armor that isn’t effective against ANY tanks of its BR or a br under it. Its like trying to put the Panther D at 6.0.
Not only that, you have the chinese with a T54 clone with a stab at the same BR.
The one that lost the stab you mean.
You might want to look at the changelog once in a while. it lost THERMALS, not stab.
Both the type 59 and type 69 have stab.
That was the D1, the regular 59 lost the two plane stab and now have just vertical. Same for the ZTZ59A.
horizontal stab is nearly irrelevant. when people refer to having a stabalizer, they are always referring to vertical.
Yeah the T-54’s aren’t amazing.
The problem with the T-54 is that they should separate the Br by giving them different bullets, the T-54 1947 with the BR-412 in Br 7.3, the T-54 1949 with the BR-412D in Br 7.3 and the T-54 1951 with the 3BK-5 in Br 7.7.
Whether you like it or not, the T-54 is the rival of the M48, they have different features but each one has its advantage, the T-54 is a little faster, lower and more armored, and the M48 has ammunition with better ballistics, rangefinder and better tower rotation speed and depression. As I have said before, the first two T-54 would be the counterpart of the M46 and M47, and the last T-54 would be the counterpart of the M48. Apart from that I would add the T-54A having the best ammunition the 3BK-5, but unlike the other three T-54, this one would have a stabilizer, staying at Br 8.0
T54E1 is fiiiine.
T-54s are yet another victim of BR compression, they don’t really belong at 8.0 but they have to be there.
why? almost no 7.0s have difficulty with the armor. Even tiger 2s can just shoot a good portion of your turret face. LFP is small but an easy kill. I again reference the Panther D for a comparison to the T54s. The slow turret rotation really makes the tank struggle.
M48 is 7.7. 2 T54s are at 8.0. If you are trying to call them equal, then their BR should be equal.
As for adding more T54s thats probably another topic.
I’d take a T54 over an M48 any day of the week. Especially the two later ones with sabot and HEAT options.
The M48 has better gun depression, turret traverse and a rangefinder. However, the gun is much worse, it is far slower, the armor is much less reliable, and crucially the hull traverse is worse.
That may sound like an odd thing to point out, but the hull traverse helps counter several weaknesses the T-54s have. You can completely negate the turret speed advantage by using your hull to swing the turret around faster. You can make your armor more reliable against standard AP/APHE rounds (Still fairly common at ~7.7) by constantly changing the angle and throwing off your opponents shots. And you’re just overall a far better brawler than an M48 can be.
It’s also worth pointing out just how much better the gun is. Thanks to the somewhat recent RoF buff, they now reload at the same rate. And the T54 gets a much better APHE round, a better HEATFS round, and a sabot round that more or less equalizes the rangefinder advantage.
The one that’s closest is the 1947 with the weaker turret and no lolpen rounds. You’re trading the HEAT and the ability to engage at longer ranges with a much more potent APHE round that is very useable at 7.7, even in uptiers with careful aiming and/or good flanking. That’s at the same tier. I have no issues with that. It’s more vulnerable in uptiers, but it’s much better in downtiers. Seems balanced.
What you seem to want is more BR decompression to send the tanks at 8.3/8.7 that completely stomp it up, which is fair.
The M48 is also one of the weaker 7.7s, so comparing it to that is rather a poor comparison. The M48 could go to 7.3 and no one would care.
Or compare it to the centurion/caervaron. They trade round selection and bit of armor and speed for a stab and reload rate. In my opinion they are equivalent.
T54e2 and every french AMX50 chassis are better than the T54 and they sit at 7.7.
Speed and ammo selection are kind of a big deal. Speed one of the most valuable attributes a tank can have, it’s what allows you to get into positions to make the gun and/or armor work to their best. Lacking speed means you cannot really do that, you risk being outmanuevered or overwhelmed, and you cannot position aggressively to get a position where the gun is at it’s best.
As far as ammo goes, you have a worse AP round in place of APHE, a worse APDS round (in terms of angled pen and spalling), and no HEAT shell for overpressure. That’s a sizable tradeoff.
And they lose out on a lot of armor. The T-54 is only really weak to high penning AP/APHE in the area immediately around the gun. It’s an area with some volumetric protection, and weaker rounds (for the tier) like the long 88 or American long 90 need very precise shots. Add on to this aggressive hull waggling, and that shot becomes rather difficult, even with rounds that can punch through. The entire hull is resistant to all but the strongest of these rounds. Even the French 100mm can’t punch through if angled.
Meanwhile, the Cent (and Caern) have armor that won’t stop anything stronger than M82 out of the short 90. Even then, the cupola and bottom of the turret will let that in at close ranges. The hull can’t even stop the long 88 at 500m, and even if they are perfectly angled, the LFP is a giant weakspot that anything can get a round through, directly into the ammo rack.
Does the stabilizer and reload speed account for these differences? Hard to say. It’s an apples to oranges comparision, and it depends heavily on playstyle. I’d say not personally.
Haven’t played the T54E2, so someone who has can feel free to correct me, but based on the test drive, it’s slower, gun is similar (AP with slighly more pen versus APHE for much more consistent damage, better APDS, slightly worse HEAT) but with a much slower reload. Armor is so much worse (Vulnerable to M82 in several different spots, most being unhidable). I’d take the T-54 for the speed, armor and reload, better for aggressive play. Though the E2 looks to be better in an uptier
The French are a bizarre comparison, given their complete lack of any reliable armor, radically different gun situation (AP only, autoloader, no options for long range/high armor targets), and entirely different playstyle. Too far removed to be a decent yardstick to measure the T-54s against.
Sorry but T-54s have ~14HP/t and M48 have it at 18.0 HP/t, so if you aren’t holding W for minutes at a time, M48 will actually be more mobile overall.
This is fairly situational. On any inclination your turning will be affected and having no neutral steering means you’ll have to be careful when turning in tight areas.
There are very few vehicles at ~7.7 that won’t have APDS/HEAT.
Yes, careful aiming and moving your hull constantly to offset your godawful turret traverse goes hand in hand.
Indeed, yet another flaw of T-54s.
Stabilization is a huge deal for basically any playstyle, it allows you to have much better reaction times. He can just keep driving and get totally accurate shots on you, while on the other hand, you’ll have to fidget your hull and also fight the bouncy gun.
I personally had a very acceptable time spading the Type 59 and 69 at 8.0.
And that was a fairly long time ago, before many of the BR changes that were very positive for them as many vehicles in the 6.7-8.7 range went up while they stayed at 8.0. I think they’re even better now. Very solid vehicles.
You just need to get used to pre-aiming because of the slow traverse, otherwise they’re a perfect MBT with very decent mobility, armor and firepower.
Type 59 and 69 have stabs. T54s do not. This is the problem.
Gun depression>>>>>>> speed. Big reason why BMPs, PT76s, and other tanks on that chassis are mediocre despite speed and good weapons. Also, slow turret traverse+ speed means you are going to throw your aim off with any maneuvering, especially on any hill. French, T54E2, and M48s all have depression that the T54s lack.
Even the worst 7.7s don’t have issue with 200mm armor. Holding the T54s armor up as a benchmark is a bit odd. Even the IS4 at 7.7 isn’t difficult for most tanks to deal with. Without depression, you can’t hull down in 90% of situations and your turret is your weakest point so you can’t hide that. At 8.0 your average tank has 400 pen HEAT that make a mockery of anything on your tank.
If you are questioning if stabs are important, you really haven’t played this game enough. Especially when you are saying you want to be playing a mobile gameplay with the T54. That gun is going everywhere when you are mobile and hitting weak points with your 240 pen aphe on even remotely armored tanks at 8.0 is going to be hard.
The early post-war BR range is really odd.
You have M48 at 7.7 while M60, T-54 and Leopard 1 are 8.0.
There’s obviously something wrong going on.
It’s probably a combination of APHE being too effective and the advancements in technology being too rapid, since anything above 8.0 gets stabilizer and better ammo.
T-54s didn’t have APDS and HEAT-FS for quite some time but when they received them they were technologically outdated.
If you need HEAT-FS in a T-54 you might as well use a M-51.
At 6.7 there are tanks with HEAT, APDS, APCR or big AP rounds that can deal with T-54s with either mobility or armor/firepower.
It’s like:
6.7, 7.0 7.3 → 1945
7.7. - 8.0 → -> 1950
8.3 → +1960s
Yeah, they’re not great. Worse in many ways than the Centurions and equal to the M48. But with the compression at the BR they can’t just straight move down in BR.
It’s also strange that we have essentially a prototype (1947), pre-production (1949), and then the first production model (1951) but not the most common model (T-54A) or the later T-54B.
What I’d like to see is the 1949 lose the 1967 3BM-8 and move down to 7.7. Then, unfolder the 1951, and add the T-54A foldered under it also at 8.0. This would provide two T-54s each at 7.7 and 8.0, with the T-54A’s vertical stabilizer providing improved performance in an uptier, but without being too powerful in downtiers. The T-54A ought to be added anyways for historical reasons -it was the second most common T-54/55 variant (when including foreign copies).
The real problem is BR from 7.7-8.7 are very broken and need to be extended much more.
for the WW2 br from 3.7-6.7,leaves enough room for the difference of firepower,armor thickness,rangefinder,while in 7.7-8.7 is like the downtier hold DM23 with laser rangefinder shoot an uptiered is4 or T32E1 from 500m away,
IF 7.7-8.7 BR is extended like 3.7-6.7 did that would be much fun instead of broken as it is now