Greetings,
Following up with the promise on the Cavalier that I would be further browsing the veracity in vehicles that Wargaming has added in recent times I came up with a very old issue, Wargaming’s World of Tanks lifelong inability to develop smoothbore and recoilless rifled guns.
It got reminded about this subject that has been occasionally talked over the years and made its appearance in Q&As while taking a look at the LHMTV that was introduced in the summer of 2019.
The LHMTV was designed with a hydropneumatic suspension just like the S-Tank which is something that it doesn’t have in World of Tanks and its armour is way over buffed as you clearly can’t have 60mm armour on such a small vehicle that only weighs 4 tons.
But the biggest mishap in the LHMTV in WoT is actually its gun, this vehicle was designed to have equipped a 120mm recoilless BAT gun as its primary role is reconnaissance and totally not meant to be trading fire unless it had no other resort:
Instead of the recoil being absorbed by the breech and recuperators sending the gun backwards, the hot gas is ejected out the rear at the same velocity equalizing the recoil, Newtons 3rd law, simple science.
120mm recoilless BAT gun
Wargaming, for many years now, has refused to add recoilless and smoothbore guns.
The excuses/reasons given as far as back in 2013 in Q&As by Serb on Recoiless Rifles was due to their the penetration inflation;
Recoiless Rifles’s typically use HE, HESH, HEAT – these also have typically very high penetration offset by relatively low velocity.
A somewhat valid argument given that the guns were moderately more realistic with their historical penetration back in those days but the parameters and development standards have decreased as years drove by and at the present time, they frequently make up damage, aiming and penetration values, which makes the original point irrelevant.
On the Smoothbore guns, the argument that it “is too modern” has been given, an example:
The idea that smoothbore guns are too modern is also hogwash as many smoothbore guns were developed and used in WW2.
The 8cm PAW, as an example.
They were however somewhat inaccurate and also suffered from low velocity, but this is not an issue for shaped charge rounds which do not lose penetrating power over distance. As tanks and combat ranges progressed, most wanted long-range fire and accuracy and rifled guns of the period were better for this, with later computerized systems and ballistics, the smoothbore once again came into play, able to fire both HEAT more effectively (you can fire HEAT in a rifled gun, just not as reliably and later APFSDS which prefers smoothbores.
Perhaps their argument could have been made on the basis that shaped charge is “too modern” but shaped charges have been in World of Tanks since forever not to mention that WoT now goes up to the mid 70’s in terms of technological armoured development and reactive armour has been around since 1955, the point is once again irrelevant, null and void and in all honesty and respect, a load of bollocks.
To conclude, are they too lazy to develop something new and over their heads with a much -community- disagreed upcoming New Balance? Do they think, we, the community, are stupid enough to accept their unplausible arguments or they are actually being honest with us and simply do not understand how Recoiless Rifles and Smoothbores worked in practice throughout the history of their development? You decide.
The T-62A could have its 115mm gun if they dropped the rediculous “no smoothbores” rule, and could be a middle ground between the Obj 140 & Obj 430U. Instead, its so irrelevant WG are going to sideline it because right now its just a worse 140…
yeah….. except for the fact that the Obj.430 was a Heavy Tank with Heavy Tank levels of armor (at least for its time) but in WoT it is playing the role of a Medium Tank, that is why the Obj.430U is OP, so yeah, nothing can become the “middle ground” between 2 so vastly different concepts of vehicles
At this point you’re just better off playing war thunder.
actually it is just a matter of time until they move into the modern era in WoT, in fact we already have 2 concepts in SuperTest (Concept N.1B nd Char Futur 4) from the late 70’s and early 80’s
in War Thunder they realized
« if we move into the modern era and add a couple of new Ranks/Tiers, we can sell hgiher Tier premiuns»
50€ for a Rank 5 premium and 60€ for a Rank 6 is too expensive (cost of most AAA games), but I would not be surprised if in the future we would see a Tier 11 T-64 MBT for 60€ as well
i wonder wen the usual suspect wg employee will make it’s appearance here again alleging poor righting and bad research…
Also, the Chieftain/T95 Tier VIII British CW reward Premium tank has a smoothbore gun but with “(rifled)” placed at the back of its 90mm T208 gun.
Quite frankly, with WG being able to make up numbers for everything and forgoing all semblance of historical attributes that they once used as a starting point for balance i.e. armour thickness was based on real life stats, there is no excuse for adding more vehicles to the game.
The US should have a line of T95 mediums. The turret and hull are already in the game. Then even the M60A1, M60A2 and even the MBT-70 especially considering the latter do not use composite armour.
But in Minsk, only the Russian tree gets to have multiple medium and heavy lines.
you are forgetting the most basic point about the T95 “line”, the 90mm smoothbore is just a bad excuse because they studied 16 different configurations for the T95 chassis, some with the T95 turret, some with the T96 turret, some with the M48A2 turret and at least 1 with the T54E2 turret (actually built and tested), 15 of those 16 mounted cannons and only 3 or 4 were not “conventional” rifled cannons
options:
M103’s 120mm gun M58 (T123E1)
120mm T123E6
105mm T140E3 x 3 (1 x T96 turret, 1 x T95 turret, as T140E4, and 1 x T54E2 turret, same gun as T54E2)
Chieftains L11 120mm gun (T96 turret)
possible American conversion of the same L11 cannon (T95 turret)
RO QF L7 105mm x 2 (M48A2 and T95 turrets)
105mm M68 (T95 turret)
90mm M41 (M48A2 gun and turret)
some 120mm gun, probably T123E6, modified to fire ammo propelled by liquid rather than powder charge, still “conventional” enough
then we move to the unconventional
90mm T208 smoothbore
105mm T210 smoothbore
105mm T147 rocket boosted gun (instead of propellant charge we have a rocket that then detatches itself from the projectile when it burns all the fuel and achieves maximum speed)
of those we have the 90mm M41 (TL-1 LPC and T95E2) and 120mm T123E6 (T95E6) but there are still many historical options left
as for the M60A1, M60A2 and MBT-70
M60A1: ideal Tier 10 for the “mobile” medium line, after split of the current one (T42?? »» M46 »» M47M »» M60A1) (armored: T20 »» Pershing »» AGF medium tank or M48A2?? »» M48A5)
M60A2: ideal for DERP medium tank line, starting at Tier 7 with the M45 and then we have a bunch of tanks armed with the same 165mm demolition gun firing HESH, the T39 (M46), T39E2 (M47), T118 (T95) and T118E1 (M60A1) adding to them a bunch of test-beds on the T95 and M60 for the 152mm gun-launcher system, between those 8 or so I am sure the proper balance would be found for Tiers 8 and 9, Tier 10 is obviously M60A2
MBT-70: 3 points, mobility, spaced armor and high alpha gun, would have to be a Heavy Tank, the XM803 is its cheaper “cousin” but might be too much for Tier 9 heavy tank
A gun made to kill russian tanks, can’t be in WoT, that’s heresy!
if I remember correctly there was one project to mount the 8cm PAW on a Panzer 4 chassis, it would probably be an interesting Tier 5 premium/reward
They really need to ducking pull this plan of theirs for the simplification of the trees, it’s so garbage it’s worse than rubicon
Of course they won’t put these tanks and their guns in WoT. They would obliterate the Russian crap tanks that they were built to outperform in reality.
See, that’s the problem with western tanks, in the most cases they where much better and obviously outperformed the shit out what mother Russia was able to put on the field.
I think you are overreacting.
T-62 with smoothbore gun outperformed tanks with rifled guns, and got a gun stabilizer in a standard.
So distance between tier X and hypothetical tier XI with smoothbore guns and all advanced stuff either would be too big (think tier VIII vs X every time), or tier XI performance would be laughable and probably ahistorical even for WG standards.
Especially that it would be a Soviet tank.
I think the most interesting tank/ammo missing from the game is the Obus G from the AMX-30 which was a combo of rifled barrel with non-rotating inner round, with a 400mm(!) pen, which would obviously break the game, but one can dream 🙂 Wikipedia has more details about how it worked.
Gun stabilizing is already in work on every tank in the game, just look at how your gun follows the cursor with zero lag. Honestly things can be balanced out pretty easily in game, be it smooth-bore or not. From what it seems, should just be a really weird allergy on recoilless and smoothbores. Unless there’s something planned for them in the future. Who knows?
Zero Lag what? Have u played WoT recently? I can send u several clips with lag issues from different sources … omg
you should read and understand the comment before posting anything, he was not talking about INTERNET lag but gun stabilizer lag
I think what many players don’t realize if WoT was made more historically and accurately AS possible it would solve many of the problems in the game. It would also make the game far more interesting too. Just think if they made the LHMTV with the 120mm gun it would make it a far more interesting and dangerous tank then it currently is. Right now the tank is a mediocre tank at best, but with that 120mm gun it would be a real big threat. WoT could balance the tank with the gun having a short range or lowering the current HP of the tank. It’s really sad, but WoT had so much promise and as time goes on War Thunder looks far more appealing now.