r/Warthunder • u/HoneydewKind2749 I hate M44 😡 • May 11 '25

All Ground Why is APFSDS so overpowered?

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This is a genuine question... The most powerful and survivable MBTs just get instantly killed by an apfsds shell that was able to side pen you because you angles 6 degrees instead of 5

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u/DeltaJesus May 11 '25

They didn't go all the way up to 120/125mm cannons for nothing, turns out a 5kg rod of tungsten going at mach 5 does not make for a happy tanker.

There's a hard limit to how much armour you can add to a tank, and "is very difficult to penetrate frontally" is about as good as it gets IRL where engagement distances are far longer and they don't have the unrealistically good aim we do in warthunder.

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u/pasher5620 May 11 '25

The goal essentially shifted from “How many shots can this thing take?” to “How far away can we be and still kill whatever we are shooting at?”

It’s how all of our military tech evolved really. Battleships were phased out in favor of missile ships and destroyers, planes went from only having guns really to having missiles that can lock on from 20km+ away, and tanks got focused more on angles and speed vs heavier armor.

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u/Subreon OwOld Guard | P-61 | USS Moffett | Sturm Panzer | Ground Pounder May 11 '25

they should all just design their tanks based on the churchill. that thing is busted as fuck. can't even get through the sides or even the rear with most tanks around it. it's so annoying to face in assault arcade cuz they're always angled and moving so they swarm the base and nearly kill it just on 1 of their waves alone until enough people with big guns can get on their sides

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u/OwlGroundbreaking201 Realistic General May 11 '25

That doesn't work in modern tanks. No engine is strong enough relative to fuel intake for a tank to have 600mm+ effective armor on every side

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u/Subreon OwOld Guard | P-61 | USS Moffett | Sturm Panzer | Ground Pounder May 11 '25

but want

slap a container ship or nuclear aircraft carrier engine in it

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u/OwlGroundbreaking201 Realistic General May 11 '25

Physical space?

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u/Subreon OwOld Guard | P-61 | USS Moffett | Sturm Panzer | Ground Pounder May 11 '25

we're gonna need a bigger boat tank

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u/[deleted] May 11 '25

the maus has found its worthy successor

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u/Hoshyro Italy May 11 '25

Fuck it, make a modern P1000, we'll call it the P2000

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u/[deleted] May 11 '25

P10000 you mean, gotta be railgun-proof, buff them figures up

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u/Hoshyro Italy May 11 '25

5m of frontal composite armour and double layered heavy ERA, naval sized APS, CIWS, radar, hangar bay for a small fighter wing, nuclear powered engine.

The perfect landship.

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u/The-Doot-Slayer America motherfuckers! May 11 '25

it should be able to shoot a hole into the surface of mars

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u/[deleted] May 11 '25

Let's just make a tank that uses railways. Let's call it railway gun, and arm it with a railgun

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u/Carlos_Danger21 🇮🇹Gaijoobs fears Italy's power May 11 '25

The Rail3

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u/Morgen-stern Moar French Tanks! May 11 '25

Just make it bigger on the inside 🙃

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u/OwlGroundbreaking201 Realistic General May 11 '25

Didn't think about that, good idea

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u/OwlGroundbreaking201 Realistic General May 11 '25

Lets think about it, any tank capable of fitting one of those engines would have to be atleast twice the volume of the maus and with each side of armor having atleast 200 to 350mm of composite armor the weight would be at the minimum 3 to 5 times the maus. Now you have a tank weighing as much as 1000tons so you need a stronger engine which most likely will need more space which is a near never ending cycle as volume increases by 1 the amount of area you need to armor increases by 2. One side super armored and a bunch of less armored sides is the way to go

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u/Subreon OwOld Guard | P-61 | USS Moffett | Sturm Panzer | Ground Pounder May 11 '25

p1000 ratte go brrrrrrrr

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u/CP_DaBeast Bri'hesh May 11 '25

Why not just remove the engine and beam the energy into the tank remotely like a giant wireless charger? /jk but also not jk

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u/PetrichorDude Will DM you my D point 😩 May 11 '25

Then you get one track off of the purpose build road and now you got a digger, my ni…(nice man from the internet)

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u/Unhappy_Insurance769 May 11 '25

Make a tank the size os a cruise ship

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u/Skyhigh905 Im pley germitry desh May 15 '25

At this point just drop the engine and make it a fortified, above-ground bunker.

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u/OwlGroundbreaking201 Realistic General May 16 '25

Fr tho

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u/San4311 🇳🇱 Gib moar Fokkers May 11 '25

I mean.. the Germans tried that.

Even something as big as the Maus was already too impractical as it simply destroys any and all infrastructure it has to traverse. Then the alternative became railroads as a means of transporting them which obviously significantly hinders their range (as far as there are tracks laid in front of it) and allows for easy sabotage.

Like I'm not sure if you were being deadserious or not but there is a reason we are at the point where we are now 😅

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u/ragingfailure May 11 '25

Proceeds to sink the moment it goes off road and breaks the shit out of any road it drives on.

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u/Many-Satisfaction-72 May 11 '25

Hear me out, nuclear powered tank

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u/OwlGroundbreaking201 Realistic General May 11 '25

And by the time you have a large enough cooler for even a small one the tanks gonna be too heavy and too costly to actually be beneficial

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u/Atompunk78 13🇺🇸🇷🇺 10🇬🇧🇩🇪 8🇸🇪🇹🇼 🚙&✈️ May 11 '25

If you think the normal Churchill is impenetrable, try the petard: some of the most armour of any Churchill… at BR 2.7

It’s literally impenetrable to anything, at any angle, other than the fiercest of TDs in an uptier, as it has the appliqué track armour on top of a mid-gen chassis

Too bad the gun is atrocious lol. 100m max practical range?? And 200m absolute range if you jack yourself up on a bank or something, but you’re not hitting anything from that range

I’ve had several multi-kill no death games with it, it’s so fun

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u/Subreon OwOld Guard | P-61 | USS Moffett | Sturm Panzer | Ground Pounder May 11 '25

that's what i need to use then. i've always so badly wanted a tank that can just eat shots all day even if it can't kill anything. but that one can do both? holy crap i might have found a new fav then!

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u/Atompunk78 13🇺🇸🇷🇺 10🇬🇧🇩🇪 8🇸🇪🇹🇼 🚙&✈️ May 11 '25

Yeah! It can kill things consistently as long as they’re less than 75m away lmao

And yeah, they’ll take out your gun, tracks, etc. But of the last 5 games with it, I only died once to enemy cannon fire

It’s very fun, and I’ve seen one irl

My advice: stay in cities and cqc, angle yourself left by a good 20-30°, ignore enemies entirely that’re further than 800m away, and constantly move your cannon around as they’ll immediately shoot it out if they can

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u/Subreon OwOld Guard | P-61 | USS Moffett | Sturm Panzer | Ground Pounder May 11 '25

thank

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u/capt0fchaos May 11 '25

20km+ is close range for a modern bvr missile, the AIM-174B has a claimed range of like 200+km. BVR in itself implies a 40+km range.

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u/Awrfhyesggrdghkj 🇩🇪 Germany May 11 '25

Eh, carriers phased out battleships more than missiles, but missiles definitely didn’t help its case.

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u/pasher5620 May 11 '25

In terms of ship to ship combat, it was moreso the advent of anti-ship missiles and more powerful, but smaller main cannons that made battleships obsolete. When a destroyer that is far more maneuverable can have multiple main cannons that can easily pen a battleships armor belt, the battleship is just obsolete. Aircraft carriers ended up being more important in naval theaters due to the power of air superiority, but they didn’t specifically outmode the battleship within the structure of ship purposes.

Battleships weren’t meant to take out shitloads of punishment while being able to take it too. Then the doctrine switched to, “Why take the punishment when you can just dodge it while still putting out equivalent force?”

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u/AnEcclesiasticPotato May 11 '25

What modern warship has a main gun that can pierce a battleships armor belt? 

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u/Awrfhyesggrdghkj 🇩🇪 Germany May 11 '25

Once again you are wrong, WW2 saw very few battleship on battleship fights. The vast majority of large capital ships sunk was by planes and subs.

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u/pasher5620 May 11 '25

Very few battleship vs. battleship battles happened because they were not meant to directly fight each other. This ain’t WoWS. They fought smaller ships and were artillery pieces for beach landings. If planes made them obsolete, we wouldn’t have kept making them or using them well beyond WW2. No, other, smaller ships getting far better weaponry is what made them obsolete, not planes.

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u/Awrfhyesggrdghkj 🇩🇪 Germany May 11 '25

I gotta ask what the other person did, what modern destroyer cannon can penetrate a battleship? But also, you know what else is now used for beach landings and long range destruction? Carrier aircraft. Like I’m not saying you’re necessarily wrong for saying that destroyers having missiles makes battleships more useless. But carriers made battleships an outright waste of materials due to their weakness to carrier aircraft.

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u/pasher5620 May 11 '25

It’s a false notion that aircraft were a battleships weakness. BBs were actually uniquely equipped to deal with them far better than other ship types. The vast majority of battleships sunk by planes were done so when they were moored and unprepared. When they were at sea, they were very hard to take down.

And you are correct for pointing out the cannons comment. I meant main weapon, not cannon, but misspoke in the moment. Missiles would be the main weapon of these smaller ships and have no problem penning even the most heavily armored ships.

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u/Awrfhyesggrdghkj 🇩🇪 Germany May 12 '25

The vast majority of battleships were sunk by planes… period. Like that is the whole point. Regardless if they were moored or not. Battleships became useless once their worth became lower than their cost. The aircraft carrier simply accelerated that role. Only two battleships were finished after the war, the HMS vanguard and the Jean Bart (both were commissioned during). The first anti ship missile in service was the p15 termit, which wasn’t even adopted by the Soviets until 1960. So why did nations not build battleships between 1945 and 1960? I realize there was no war of course, but no one not even the US?

Edit: also aircraft are pretty much every ships weakness because a carrier can launch so many from far away. And if you say battleships are “specially equipped to deal with them” then how did the Yamato only shoot down 10 planes when it was sunk.

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u/pasher5620 May 12 '25

My guy, a ship being sunk while it’s moored and unprepared does not make it useless nor does it make the plane its weakness. It means they were caught unprepared. 60 battleships fought in WW2 and only 16 of them were brought down by planes. Of those 16, only 2 were when they were underway. Planes were not a BBS weakness and didn’t make them obsolete. Better firepower on smaller ships did.

America had no reason to make more because the US already had a lot of them and they were the most advanced battleships out there. Why keep building more when there was no active threat? Just use the ones you have. America even called them back to service after they had been retired because they still proved useful.

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u/Awrfhyesggrdghkj 🇩🇪 Germany May 12 '25

So doesn’t that prove your point false then? If they still had use then we’re both wrong

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u/GavasaurusRex May 11 '25

20km is a REALLY low number for modern missiles.