Hesh has been modified so many times at this point its effectiveness is nearly unreconisable from its initial release. Its design philosophy was to be a successor to HE rounds and perform almost all tasks at a similar level to HE rounds while being effective vs armor. In game, its not effective vs anything.
At the moment you have a bunch of problem with HESH. One, is that there are designed counters in the game. standoff armor, overlapping plates, internal bulkheads, and frontal engines. But even outside those, on scenarios the shell was DESIGNED to be good against, it will constantly fail. Side shot xm803, no postpen 3x in a row. roof shot T55 AMD, no postpen. LFP T10M, one crew killed. Shot trap T72, no damage. And that was last game alone using the chieftan’s 120mm, the same round thats on 11.7 tanks. It doesn’t get better than that, and that is actively detrimental to successful gameplay.
Not only that, but its worse than HE. For some reason, HESH rounds can’t overpressure. They explode with similar HE weight and with similar HE effects, but will never trigger overpressure. Strictly a gameplay decision to nerf the round from its already pathetic state.
Not just that, we saw almost all brit tanks get moved up in the last rebalance. Even the BR ranges that average 45% or less WR. You would think that brits remaining in such a poor state for such a long time would warrant some type of helping hand, but apparently we have to keep digging their hole deeper. Combine that with rank 4 tanks being 7.7 and rank 6 tanks being 8.3 and you have a complete mess of a progression in the ONE battlerank range where brits weren’t being curb stomped.
I still take 1 or 2 hesh rounds in my Challenger, just in case I get that rare moment where all I can see is the top of a SPAA at long range and HESH round is better suited. but it usually just sits un-used. They are hilarious to use in the CVRE. but pointless most of the time vs any actual tanks.
Sure, but i would take a round with equal quantity of explosive mass in HE rather than HESH any day and thats rather the point. It would serve the same role but be significantly stronger on side hits and vs IFVs.
You really have to admit that HESH ammo is by far the most abused bullet in the game (even above APCR). I have the centurion avre and have had situations where the damage was ridiculous, and even shooting at vehicles with virtually no armor only broke a chain or some absurd module, or you hit a T-54 in the front and the damage only kills the driver or even the damage disappears as if by magic, if that is added to the extreme difficulty of aiming and the very long reload time makes these vehicles quite unpleasant to play. Generally all HESH projectiles act the same, causing minimal damage unless you hit a completely flat area and there are no obstacles such as fenders or boxes, that although it is correct that they stop the damage, if what is behind it is 10 or 20mm armor, it should not resist the explosion damage since a HESH is still an HE with the explosion directed mainly forwards.
Personally, I think that for the HESH to work properly, the Hull Brake should be re-implemented but adjusting it correctly so as not to kill anyone by hitting the wheels, since when impacting with a HESH, breaks in the armor are generated that make the vehicle receives the impaco inoperative with what would count as a destroyed vehicle.
By the way, even at the risk of correcting this bug, apparently if you shoot with the HESH of the centurion avre or fv4005 at the wheels of an enemy vehicle it is instakill, I even tried it with the maus, you shoot it with the avre at any wheel and the maus dies completely, hehe in the end I’m going to play again with the avre or the m728cev.
Yeah, I’ve gotten a “hit” before from a direct hit from a 165mm HESH round fired from a AVRE. They really really dont like the idea of HE being viable in any form, especially HESH. When I first saw the animation for “HESH” in game, I thought it would be really good/interesting to use, nope…
Well, I’m telling you, if you find an AVE or similar, show it the front of the tank, because if you’re on its side and it hits a wheel, it’s instakill.
I know it’s a huge ask of Gaijin to actually fix HESH, but I’m not sure if they’re even capable of actually doing it. I mean they’ve got HE rounds that can one shot tanks, but HESH (like the M-51 with 400mm of pen) is at times completely useless.
Maybe they’re just to busy working on the next big game mechanic like when they introduced the use of dozer blades.
The M51 should be at Br 7.3, the only problem is that in the game the damage of all HEAT and HEAT-FS projectiles (including missiles) have a random and absurd damage, you might as well pierce and kill a single crew member, or You kill everyone in a straight line, or absorb the damage in a single module, etc. You could say that there is no doubt that the tanks with HEAT-FS that are in Br somewhat low are there simply because of how poorly modeled the damage is. These types of projectiles, tanks like the ratel 90, tanks with the 106mm recoilless cannon, the M51, the M36 with HEAT-FS and etc., with correct damage from their HEAT-FS could these at least 1 BR above how they are Now, but gaijin wants to continue with this horrendous bullet damage model, and maintain this absurd imbalance.
The UK is the main user/nation dependant on APDS and HESH in the game. They happen to be two of the worst ammo types in the game.
Russia barely uses APDS, and never uses HESH.
I’m sure that’s all just a coincidence though.
It’s the exact same as how an S-25O rocket can overpressure anything in the same postcode, whereas approximately the same amount of TNT in a maverick gets entirely absorbed by the roof ERA and gun-breech of a T-90.
I absolutely despise S-25O rockets.
The OHK radius of those is ridiculous, it exceeds bombs with identical or larger HE filler.
If one of those land within 20-30m of your SPAA you die, and of course they have a targeting computer so it’s impossible not to.
Case in point this S-25O from an SU-25 that I had killed that overpressured my stormer from THIS FAR AWAY.
Very believable.
HESH needs to be streamlined, much in the way AP uses a formula now. There was a fantastic report on the old forum about how to improve HESH. Based on historical documents. Basically:
HESH should penetrate roughly 1.3 times weapon calibre, regardless of calibre. So a 76mm HESH shell should be able to penetrate around 98mm of armour, 105mm HESH around 136mm, 183mm HESH around 237mm, etc.
HESH should have better angled performance than regular AP and APDS.
HESH should be more damaging than regular AP and APDS.
Lastly HESH should still act like HE after all of this.
I think the main problem is that HESH doesn’t have the SH.
When you hit a tank it just seems to take the amour at the point you hit. The main example of this is hitting the cupola of a tank, rather than squashing over the roof it just takes out the optics
because Gaijin has troubles exchanging basic/foundational systems.
Like the traction model is the same, as it was when ground forces where introduced, and how HE/HESH work, and especially what effects they do.
The pressure wave for example isn’t modelled, but is the most important thing of HE and HESH, so the they tried to introduce stuff like overpressure, but failed, bc it is hard to make a komplex system, as pressure waves are, into a simple one. Similar with implementing the penetration values of APFSDS etc.
Those formulas are approximations, that simply fail, when you look at all the differences you have just within APFSDS-munitions. You would have to look at tests, and do accurate simulations, but this is hard to implement (and takes longer to calculate etc), so they switched the system from a table base to the inaccurate formulas.
I think the main issue, is that the main thing of HE (the pressure wave) doesn’t exist in this game and gets replaced by somthing that can only barely immitate how the pressure wave acts, which especially for HESH makes stuff way worse.
