Im tired of seeing the same flawed logic being used against this argument claiming the type 16 is fine as is. I am a japanese tech tree player and i use the type 16 variants.
the people against the type 16 clearly dont play the type 16 and probably dont understand the matchmaking enviornment it gets put into.
Thermals and Mobility
Yes, the type 16 has gen 3 thermals and is a fast tank except when you brake or turn at low speeds but fast none the less if you let it get up there. However, these 2 features shouldnt mean this 2016 PAPER tank gets stripped of its firepower.
Let me tell you why the german 1978 dm23 at 9.3 is a joke. You will constantly find these tanks in your matches where DM23 (~337mm max flat pen) completely shatters or bounces off their primary frontal armor surfaces:
-T-72 Series (Ural, A, M1): Immune upper front plates and turret cheeks.
-T-64A:Angled steel-glass textolite arrays reaching nearly 400mm effective thickness.
-T-62M:Thick “Brezhnev’s Eyebrows” BDD turret applique blocks.
-ZTZ96 and ZTZ88: Massive Chinese composite block matrices.
-Chieftain Mk 10: Frontal “Stillbrew” armor packages hitting 450mm+ protection.
Uptiers to 10.3 are even worse. You are forced to face T-80B and T-72AV (TURMS-T) hulls covered in Contact-1 ERA, making the DM23 feel like a literal spitball. Long-range sniping becomes a statistical nightmare because distance sheds kinetic velocity, forcing you to pixel-hunt for microscopic weak spots while the enemy enjoys a massive margin for error.
The Double Standard of Firepower
You will find tanks that have 425mm to 470mm of pen in the same BR, yet they have armor and a fair bit of tanks get thermals too.
- The T-72M1gets 125mm 3BM22 (~425mm pen).
- The ZTZ96 gets Type 83/88 darts (450mm+ pen).
- The airborne 2S25 Sprut-SD sits at the exact same 9.3 BR, has a light chassis, and gets 3BM42 “Mango” (~470mm pen) to lazily point-and-click through anything.
Why tax the type 16’s firepower when its made of paper. If you want to see the pinnacle of this double standard, look at Japan’s own 9.3 lineup. The Type 74 (G) gets full access to the devastating Type 93 APFSDS round (~405mm pen), which cleanly handles Soviet composite hulls. It also features Gen 2 thermals and actual sloped armor that doesn’t instantly die to heavy machine guns or autocannons. Why does a tracked, armored tank get a high-penetration 1990s dart, while a towering wheeled box with zero armor gets hard-capped at an underperforming 1970s german DM23 round at the exact same Battle Rating?
To make matters worse, it’s a pure ahistorical fabrication. The Type 16 MCV entered service in 2016 and has never fired German DM23 or DM33 rounds. It was explicitly designed by Japan Steel Works to fire the domestic Type 93 tungsten dart. Forcing a modern 21st-century combat vehicle to fire a weak 1978 export round just to satisfy an arbitrary spreadsheet metric completely ruins the vehicle.
The Truth About Thermals
Thermals are good for spotting and gen 3 just make the resolution better, it doesnt help you aim your gun, thats entirely on you as a player. i will say its just convenient to use gen 3, as with gen 2 you can spot the targets easily, but having to flip them on and off for each shot if you really cant see is a slight inconvenience at worst. At long range, a thermal signature is just a bright blob anyway. Thermals do not change your shell’s velocity, they do not account for travel time, and they do not magically change the physical drop of your ammunition. Actually hitting a target far out depends entirely on your own aim and your shell’s velocity. Having slightly crisper resolution on a Gen 3 screen doesn’t mean anything when the round you fire shatters harmlessly on impact.
Conclusion: Re-Introduce 105mm Type 93 at 9.3
Having zero protection is already the built-in tax on a wheeled glass cannon. The Type 16 is made of absolute paper—it can be entirely disabled, overpressured, or shredded through the front and sides by mid-tier AA autocannons and heavy machine guns. Double-taxing it by breaking its gun performance is terrible game balance. The vehicle needs a competitive, sharp punch to execute its role as a flanker.
Adding 105mm Type 93 (~405mm pen) to the Type 16 would not make it an overpowered monster. Precedent already exists: the German Leopard 1A5 sits comfortably at 9.3 BR with excellent optics and full access to DM33, while our own Type 74 gets the Type 93 round at this exact bracket. Re-introducing Type 93 simply restores a more fair meta, allowing a 2016-era platform to actually punch through 1980 Soviet armor blocks without breaking Rank VI balance. Stop balancing this game purely on automated spreadsheet data and look at the actual lopsided matchups happening on every single map. Give the 9.3 Type 16s Type 93
