It would be up to each player what they deem most important - ability to split-second react to a sudden encounter or being able to see someone who has not yet seen you and load the appropriate shell for them to one-tap them no questions asked.
Depends on what potential changes come to the game at large and the ammo selection for the QF 75mm.
The British QF 75mm did use M61 APHE initially IRL, but due to bad metallurgy and faulty fuses not working right, they then took the extra effort to remove filler from rounds the received and fill the space with concrete. Therefore, the gun should get M61 APHE as a module.
Furthermore, I’d also give it T45 HVAP (same with the Cromwell V, its premium version, and the Excelsior).
Further still, I would remove the ability to damage barrels of tanks pointed in their direction completely.
Even further, I would globally rebuff all APCR postpen damage, and restoratively buff all APCR penetration values.
In its current state, the thing is maybe 4.0 material - the gun is that pathetic. With all the above changes, it would actually perform at 4.7 (APHE, optional 187mm pen HVAP that actually spalls well like AP, no barrel BS).
That “artificial survivability” is entirely due to overkill neutering of various munitions, usually to service the complaints of Russian tank mains in the same BR range. APCR, early APDS, HEAT, HEATFS, HESH, and big HE all have seen various overkill nerfs. Most of which have not been reverted despite the reason(s) for implementing said nerfs no longer being relevant.
For example, 17-pdr APDS currently pens historically correct levels, but the postpen is so godawful nobody in their right mind would use it. Even though that round can frontally pen an unangled Maus turret from considerable distance, and the side from much further. A similar story exists for even US 76mm M93 APCR, though at closer ranges. US 90mm APCR would do the job at much further ranges than 17-pdr sabot. Nevermind anything stronger than those three rounds…
I would undo the old boneheaded nerfs to those ammo types, thereby removing the “fake survivability” from many heavy tanks across the board, including but not limited to the Maus/E-100. Then they’d plummet in BR to levels where their armor actually matters, while the egregious postwar crap would soar upwards due to HEATFS actually spalling well (all the 90mm-106mm tin cans).
Depends on the heavy. If it is a slug that can barely move, that thing needs to be hard to frontally pen and disable, barrel included, or it is functionally irrelevant. If it is a machine which can move decently well (IS-3, T32s), then its BR should be slightly higher. But in all cases, if something can frontally pen them, they should die easily.
Armor would become more binary, either it works and blocks rounds or it doesn’t and you die. Sitting there with a broken barrel/breech repairing for 5min of misery would no longer be a thing.
In other words, hard to pen, but easy to kill if you have something that can frontally pen.
The Maus currently faces all the HEAT-slinging cars which can negate its armor at virtually any range. That makes the thing not great unless 1) you run into something without HEATFS 2) they don’t shoot your barrel tip 3) they don’t run circles around you at point-blank range and 4) your gun can actually pen the thing you run into.
Many of the machines which fall under point 4) also suffer from the over-proliferation of HEATFS (T32s, IS-3, IS-4M, IS-6, T-10A, etc). Sure some can be frontally killed by the 128, but it is anything but easy, and we all know how Magikbounce works…
No it has definitely not been. I’m talking the power it had right when the mechanic was introduced, when a 6" arty could aim in a machine’s general direction without needing to “hope to hit the roof and not get volumetric’d into nothingness” and delete something.
A nerf is a nerf, and it wasn’t welcome, nor needed.
CAS is badly misunderstood. Adding a separate mode lacking it is not the answer. And nerfing its weaponry to try and placate people whining about it definitely isn’t the answer.
They lost the right to “freedom of choice” when the weapon nerfs they asked for also proceeded to help slaughter all relevance those same attackers and bombers had in Air RB and Air Sim modes. The nerfs were blanket-applied to all game modes, and I blame the people whose whining brought them about for provoking the snail to do them in the first place. Always will.
Their whining took away my freedom of choice when I wasn’t even playing with player tanks at all. How is that fair?