It can only shatter if it hits the target. The dispersion is so bad it feels like I’m using a 6pdr and the damage requires you to direct hit crewmembers. It’s not strong enough to lolpen either so it’s just an overall very unpleasant gun to use.
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If an ammunition type is neutered that badly in postpen, why even keep it in the game at that point?
I would hardly argue with the stabilized 20pdr quintet (Cent3, 5/1, 4202, Caern, Act X) going up in BR even more if their APDS round did the postpen damage it once did years ago.
Since you’re more of an expert on ballistics than I am by far, Kiwi, wouldn’t APDS deal similar postpen to solid AP from the same gun due to the hugely better shell velocity on impact?
Did you hit the ammo?
Assuming both are from the same gun, and both penetrate an equal thickness of armour at the same angle…
IMO they might be similar - APDS displaces less material from the armour when it penetrates, due smaller diameter - but might give that material a higher velocity inside the tank.
Similarly the AP is going to have larger remaining projectile (and possibly fragments of it) whereas you’d expect the remaining APDS projectile to have a higher velocity after penetration.
There’s a US document where they shot, I think, a M26 with 90mm AP and APCR and compared the damage.
AP wounded more crews while APCR caused more casualties.
At the end of a day, the result would be the same. A knocked out tank.
In WT crews are damaged from a 7.92mm bullet going through them but even when you get wounded from metal fragments, you are most likely in no condition to keep fighting.
Heck, in the cologne tank duel there’s a guy leaving a Sherman tank with one leg after being hit by a Panther 75mm.
Even when your gunner survives but has his face peppered by fragments, you probably want to get out of there and to get him some medical treatment.
I can only hope that after the APHE rework they start decreasing the time to kill vehicles since there’s just no reason whatsover that a TD with 75mm APHE can one shot every tank while a vehicle firing 90mm APCR often needs more than one shot.
When shooting from the front, near the gunner optic, the ammo generally gets damaged but doesn’t always blow up.
That’s kinda what I said somewhere above, I don’t think the issue is APHE damage but more how pretty much every other shell type just sucks in comparison. I don’t think we should neuter like 70% of the vehicles with this type of ammo just because all the others are way undertuned.
Plus, your anecdote about crew damage kinda makes APHE more realistic in a way… solid shot might pass through, but the APHE death ball will make it so what would IRL be an injury causing the crew to bail out, actually results in a kill in-game.
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Every round in the game should be useable to some point. As it sits right now, very few solid rounds have any use at all.
There are very few cases where APHE would make a difference.
It’s almost impossible to penetrate a vehicle and not cause a casualty or damage anything important, unless the round barely made it through the armor, in which case the HE would be in no condition to function.
Like even when you shoot a M18 that doesn’t even have enough armor to cause any real spalling or break a large AP round apart, the round is still going to hit ammo or one of the crews inside, regardless from which direction the round comes from.
There are also tons of things that aren’t modeled. Like driving controls or just MG ammo lying around.
If 50-100 rounds of .30cal ammo just burst into flame and fill the inside with smoke, the crew won’t stay inside investigating what just happened.
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Not to mention the cases where the APHE was found intact inside the tank not having exploded…
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да это все хорошо, только тут почти каждый 2 танк такой и попадает в бои на БР выше и что теперь всем Бр опускать?
Yes. Rather than nerf APHE they should buff everything else. I don’t really understand what benefits are brought by the former approach over the latter, but I’m open to changing my mind if I’ve overlooked any.
This is one of the few areas where realism and good gameplay go hand in hand - a penetration having lethal consequences.
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English please
This is the only correct opinion on this topic but people aren’t ready for that. They think a change would help AP but Gaijin will just nerf APHE and soon no ammo will do any damage.
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Ideally, Gaijin would nerf APHE, and buff AP. A nerf to APHE to take it from a death sphere to a death cone, and a buff to AP, APDS, HEAT, and HEAT-FS to make them much more consistent and better to use.
I really hope Gaijin does a test server and a poll, so people don’t blindly vote for a bad nerf.
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I doubt it. We had a vote on the internal modules and there was a super quick turnaround on the 2S38 showing those new internal models. I have a high opinion of Gaijin as a developer, but even that response time is a little too fast to be down to just competence - IMHO work on those extra internal modules had already started well before the vote ever took place. This is consistent with the fact that Gaijin often prepares things way in advance.
I don’t know what that means exactly for APHE, beyond the fact that probably Gaijin already has an idea of what they want to do with it.
I think it’d be ideal to leave APHE as it is, and bring other rounds closer to APHE in effect - still keeping some obvious tradeoff of more pen for less post pen or viceversa, which is pretty good game design. The ideal situation would be to present the player with different scenarios where different shells are the ideal solution ratherr than just bring APHE and HE.
The reason why I would leave APHE unchanged and buff the rest is that, even though the physics are incorrect, the actual effect of putting a tank out of action is what has a bigger impact imho. Even a very well armoured tank can be put out of action with a shot in the right spot.
Perhaps that’s too alpha strikey?
But then again if we just have to whittle each other down by a thousand cuts no matter the round used, it becomes more like an HP system, which honestly looks less appealing to me. From a player perspective I think it’s less frustrating to die in one hit than to have to sit there and wait for death.
The other bit that is rarely talked about is how BRs will change. They are a product of efficiency. Changes in one-hit-kill abilities will impact BRs. If APHE is nerfed, tanks that rely on it will go down after a few months. If other rounds are bufffed, tanks that rely on them will go up after a few months.
This is especially true for HEAT-FS at the mid tiers. Many mobile but lightly armoured vehicles are at their current BRs because HEAT-FS is unlikely to guarantee neutralisation of a threat in one hit, and they don’t have the armour to withstand prolonged engagements. If HEAT-FS was more lethal, that in combination with their mobility might shoot a lot of these vehicles up in BR.
I honestly don’t know which combinations of scenarios would be better or worse for the game. The number of variables in play is very large and the ramifications may be beyond the obvious. I’m surprised this doesn’t give more players pause. I support a non-APHE ammo buff but the thing I would like to understand, especially before voting on anything, is how different the game will look three months after any major change to ammo is implemented…
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sorry? OK yes, it’s all good, but here almost every 2 tanks is like this and gets into fights on the BR above and now what should everyone lower the BR?
Post pen damage is already unrealistic.
The option are to make all post-pen realistic and change the requirements to destroy vehicles to keep time to kill as low as possible or to buff every round to the extreme and go with the current way it is.
I think it’s completely silly that a 120mm AP needs to deal so much damage to knock out every single crew member inside a tank with 5-6 crews, just so it can compete with 85mm APHE that does the same from the side.
Appart from the fact that you have a giant hole in your armor and the protection of the armor is severly reduced around the impact hole, some people are bleeding or ripped to pieces and some of the tanks mechanics are most likely inopperatable.
Armor is supposed to protect the people operating the tank, as well as the controls allow the vehicle to move and fire.
If anything gets destroyed, there’s simply no reason for the tank not to be considered knocked out.
Going through the armor is the number one priority and no one in history of tanks was concerned with dealing enough “post-pen” damage.
Going through the armor is better then not and that alone is a huge emotional event.
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True. But to me gameplay > realism. If post pen was completely irrelevant, one ammo type would always be the meta choice. Just like the current preponderance of post pen over pen makes APHE the default at many tiers.
I prefer a situation where it makes sense to bring more ammo types because tradeoffs are more balanced. So it’s not the concept of the tradeoff I criticise, but the extent of its execution.
You can achieve better balance by nerfing APHE or buffing everything else. I favour the latter for the reasons you cited, among others.
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nah man, ive seen so many uptiers against 7.7 us tanks with my 6.7tigers and mostly cant pen them at all. its sickening
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Guess how 5.7 to 6.3 feels about Tiger 2s.