It has armor and pen. Even if it was worse in every category, it is VERY close in performance to a m833 firing M1. M833 isnt even as good as 105mm DM33 (barely) which is found at 9.3 on pretty much most 105mm tanks.
Had same opinion till I played the 10.7 Abrams properly in the past two weeks. Abrams UFP offers much better hull protection than leo 2 hull bar those equipped with MEXAS + beak.
For turret, I havent noticed any practical difference in effectivness.
You just bounce darts into the turret neck.
Here is a practical example as to why the Leo2a4 has more armor than the M1 Abrams:
BMP-2M firing APFSDS
If they move the reload to 6 seconds and even then I could see it going up if it still does as well as it does currently.
Acceleration? M1 Abrams.
Top speed? M1 Abrams.
Neutral steering? M1 Abrams.
Pivot steering? M1 Abrams.
Reverse speed? M1 Abrams.
Upper hull armour? M1 Abrams.
Lower hull armour? M1 Abrams.
Mantlet armour (size)? M1 Abrams.
Turret cheek armour? Tied.
Reload rate? M1 Abrams.
Penetration? Leopard 2A4
Muzzle velocity? Leopard 2A4
Secondary armament? M1 Abrams.
Optics? Tied.
Turret traverse? Tied.
Gun depression? M1 Abrams.
Safety of ammo stowage? M1 Abrams.
Crew layout? M1 Abrams.
Even the most powerful APFSDS in the entire game at point blank range won’t reliably do that.
1 Like
Thats not always true, its RNG mechanic and as all RNG mechanics its unreliable.
Sure, Abrams turret ring is a know weakspot, that is a valid point - however it doesnt change the fact that abrams UFP is better than that of Leopard 2.
1 Like
They are very similar tanks. You are giving the abrams props for being 5% better in some categories while its armor is certainly not as strong. The turret neck makes it far more vulnerable to the very common autocannons you will see. In all reality the tanks are very close in performance in all ways except the abrams is using a dart from 9.3 to fight 11.7 tanks.
1 Like
An interesting conversation started, they’re coming back, OK, I agree with that, Abrams has better protection, I played Leopard and remembered what it’s like
The turret ring weakspot also happens to also be the location that darts will drop if you aim at the barrel and don’t adjust for drop.
I mean, so? I’d rather have vehicles be as accurate as possible and put into BR’s based around their performance.
Me too but soft balancing decisions are perfectly fine if they can make for better user experience.
They dont detract that much from vehicle being accurate and allow for more vehicles to be actually fun instead of mid - I mean sure, you could slap M900 at current 10.7 Abrams and…you would get IPM1.
If worse ammo or slower reload is neccesary for vehicle to be put at BR where its fun to play, im fine with it.
???
You do realize if you take more than 22 rounds with the Abrams, the rest gets stored in the right-hand side of the turret?
Those rounds can be detonated if the right turret cheek of the Abrams gets lol-penned, which goes for 3BM42 (the most common round for Russia at ~10.7), 3BM60, L26, L27A1, and of course 120mm DM33:
This can’t be ignored.
The Abrams getting 6 extra rounds for its left-cheek first-stage is nice, but 17 rounds of APFSDS (from my experience) is enough in most cases anyways.
If you were hull-down, you would be better off having that extra ammo in the hull too.
Even if you were to only take 3/4 rounds extra with the M1 Abrams, I’d argue it has the same effect as the 3/4 extra rounds you may take into the the 2A4 – the enemy would just be gambling to one-shot them or (if you already transfered those shells into the first stage) only take out their loader and engine (and maybe the turret basket if you are lucky). At least with the Abrams you would get their gunner and commander (and maybe their turret basket).
I’m surprised you don’t know this.
Spalling number of fragments, penetration, and damage for long-rod penetrators depend on residual penetration of the round.
A shell that has 400mm of RHAe penetration against a piece of armour worth around 400mm RHAe will penetrate but will effectively do no spalling (<50mm of residual penetration):
However, a shell that has 583mm of RHAe penetration against that same piece of armour (worth around 400mm RHAe) will do significantly more spalling (~183mm of residual penetration):
So, the spalling depends on the round’s penetration and the armour it has to go through (which makes sense).
It’s why it seems like APFSDS rounds spall much better with side-aspect and rear-aspect shots.
Lucky you I guess?
Now there will be even more with the introduction of the Terminators, 30mm Freccia, and Ajax.
Ah, so you weren’t talking about fuel tanks absorbing the APFSDS. You were talking about the extra armour behind said fuel tanks.
Incredible. The outer edges (to be fair both are roughly 30% of the LFP) of the giant LFP of the Abrams can stop the second weakest round at 10.7.
Good for it I guess?
Though I’ll give it credit that it does reduce the spall of 3BM42 to that of <50mm of residual penetration:
The 2A4s and Abrams have good gun depression (9 degrees and 10 degrees respectively). The LFP weakspot of the 2A4 is weaker than that of the Abrams’, but its LFP is less pronounced than the Abrams’, and the Abrams’ weakspot gets transferred up to the turret ring, which is much harder to hide than the LFP of the Leopard’s.
Its hull armour is definitely better than that of the 2A4 – I’m not denying that.
But why would you shoot the LFP when you almost always can go for the center mass of its massive, unvarying turret ring though? You quite literally don’t have to account for what angle you’re shooting the weakspot as the crew placement is fixed, and you’re most likely going to get the breech / turret ring / engine if it somehow doesn’t kill all the crew anyways.
Even with the second worst shell at 10.7 (120mm DM23), you can generate so much spall because the Abrams’ turret ring only has ~68mm of RHA:
Anything beyond 468mm of raw RHA penetration (such as 120mm DM33 / L26) can produce maximum spalling, which is when the residual penetration is at 400mm:
But as you can tell already, it’s already overkill.
Want to do the same against the 2A4?
1 Like
Let me fix this for you:
Acceleration? M1 Abrams.
Top speed? M1 Abrams.
Neutral steering? M1 Abrams.
Pivot steering? M1 Abrams.
Reverse speed? M1 Abrams.
Upper hull armour? M1 Abrams.
Lower hull armour? M1 Abrams.
Turret ring armour? Leopard 2A4.
Mantlet armour (size)? M1 Abrams.
Turret cheek armour? Tied.
Reload rate? M1 Abrams.
Penetration? Leopard 2A4.
Muzzle velocity? Leopard 2A4.
Secondary armament? M1 Abrams.
Optics? Tied.
Turret traverse? Tied.
Turret elevation? Leopard 2A4.
Nato Hump? M1 Abrams.
Gun Depression? M1 Abrams.
Smoke Pops? Leopard 2A4.
ESS? M1 Abrams.
IFV / Autocannon survivability? Leopard 2A4.
Hull-down survivability? Leopard 2A4.
Utility shells? M1 Abrams.
Safety of overall ammo stowage? Tied.
More safe first-stage ammo? M1 Abrams.
Crew layout? M1 Abrams.
The Abrams is using a ~9.0 / ~9.3 dart whereas the 2A4 is using a ~9.3 / ~9.7 dart.
The rest of the 10.7s are using adequate shells for their BR.
Don’t take more than 15 rounds in the Abrams unless you’re feeling cheeky sniping.
You can be one-shot from the top if they hit one of the rounds and you have any HE rounds.
hes yapping ignore him also m1 abrams needs m833
The 120mm Abrams kinda has that issue due to how its ammo rack is positioned (though it’s uncommon for people to aim for that, let alone manage to hit it consistently):
The 105mm Abrams doesn’t really have that issue:
Not in game right now so I cant check but that ammo rack is, to my knowledge, still ammo bunker with blowout panels.
From my experience, it isnt. Any even slightly longer game requires me to stop on cap to rearm.
no matter how you slice it, hull ammo rack will never beat one protected by blowout panels.
I dont want to be that guy but youre firing for 6 seconds at completly stationary target thats not defending nor smoking nor retreating. Chances are that in real battle, if tank is standing still for that long, its probably half dead anyway.
Yes the left and right hand side ammo racks in the turret are both “protected” blowout panels
The blowout panels don’t really do anything but yeah they are protected.
Surviving getting hit in the side and the main compartment not being penetrated and having your ammo cook but not explode is rare.
What do you mean by this?
That’s true. A longer game requires you to rearm in the 2A4, though I can’t say that the Abrams doesn’t need to, especially if you only take the first-stage of 23 rounds.
In general, I can understand how the extra hull ammo can be more of a problem than extra turret bustle ammo, but again, any more than 23 rounds can cause ammo rack detonation with practically any tank at 10.7+ other than the 2A4.
Well, I was using the BMD-4, which has an alright firerate of 330, but it was using a 4/5 APDS belt (effectively only 264 RPM APDS), which is significantly worse than something like the BMP-2M’s 550RPM of pure APFSDS.
Same with the 550 RPM 4/5 APDS of the Terminator, or the 560mm RPM APFSDS from the 25mm of the Freccia, or 2S38.
Keep in mind this is being shot at ~800m away, so this would be even more effective at close range, where the gun dispersion isn’t as much of a problem.
This is pretty devastating for an MBT in front-aspect:
Even if I don’t manage to kill it, the turret ring, the breech, the vertical drive, and some crew members are potentialy damaged or even destroyed / killed.
If it were a 2A4, it would maybe catch the turret ring, or the driver, but it may only damage external modules beyond that (for the most part).
Don’t get me wrong – I think the Abrams is (for the most part) better or, at least, on par with the 2A4, but the survivability is worse than the 2A4.
You can be killed by practically anything frontally pretty easily (you cannot rely on your armour other than if you so happen to face a 2A4 when completely hull-down), and you will receive maximum spalling when shot in the turret ring by an MBT APFSDS round (which isn’t the case for any part of the Leopard).
Even if it gets an armour buff for its turret ring to something around ~200mm, its convenience and potency for MBTs would still be amazing compared to any other weakspot for any other tank.