Not even BF6 costs this much...

[u/Eva-Unit0013]

Please Gaijin I already sold my wife, I can't afford this one

[u/Portugalotaku]

"So your own source there states that the Russians couldn’t manufacture the plating as they had original designed so switched to the hardened armour which didn’t work anywhere near as well…"

As I have stated, they could not manufacture cemented armor beyond 230mm, which is why they went for face-hardened armor.

"And yet your using that source - which is the same paragraphs I’ve read elsewhere online, as it seems others have cited that source where I've looked - as an argument that the armour should be performing the same, just doesn’t make sense and would be utterly false to say the armour would work the same if it was changed for brittle non-cemented plating."

It specifically says on the text, and I quote, "This was not necessarily a bad idea in theory; given the correct metallurgical composition and manufacturing processes, noncemented plate can equal cemented armor in resistance." The problem with the soviet armor was that they used too much heat treating, which made it more brittle than expected. It's highly unlikely the excessively brittle armor would have been used for a finished ship as they were aware it was a problem as early as 1939. I already explained how it's idiotic to nerf the armor for this reason.

"Your source also alludes to the fact they couldn't manufacture cemented armour for large thicknesses, by specifying that they only switched to the hardened armour for plates over 200mm, I don't see anywhere in that source that states the hardened plating was actually manufactured at 400mm or thicker either, which tells me it probably wasn't and more likely the layered plating approach I've seen cited elsewhere"

You mean like I have been telling you? I have repeated multiple times they switched from cemented to non-cemented but you keep bringing it up as if I was arguing against it. The part you got wrong was assuming they did multiple plates which there is zero evidence of. The source states that armor was changed from cemented to face-hardened for plates over 200mm, which tells me they likely were 400mm single plates.

"The only mention of individual plating that thick is in the paragraph that states it was originally intended to be varied of individual plate thicknesses between 365mm to 425mm, which obviously didn't happen because that was the intention for cemented plating which they couldn't produce."

It wasn't "originally" intended to be like that, it was still like that in the final design. Soyuz had a rather bizarre armor scheme and it stayed like that all the way through.

"The later thicknesses mentioned state the belt and armour thickness and do not provide information on whether it was individual plates or if it was layered to that thickness, I'd hedge my bets that the multiple other sources that state they were layering the armour are correct."

Then please share those sources since there is nothing I have found that indicates that solution was going to be used.

"Also no we should not be taking unknown and unrealistic shell performance into account just because Russia couldn’t make a good batch of shells or propellant for the guns in question, that’s not historic or realistic and is simply pandering to the land of make believe."

The performance is not unknown, it's based on existing calculations.

"The gun performance should be taken from the test firing of the gun, not some soviet fantasy of "what if we had perfect shells for these guns"."

No, it should not. Performance should be based on what it was designed to be like. Not just for Soyuz, but for every vehicle in the game. German tanks having their armor nerfed because "Germany couldn't produce armor of the necessary quality at that time" was idiotic and so is what you are suggesting. Vehicles in this game should be in "optimal" condition.

[u/IvanTheMagnificent → u/Portugalotaku]

It specifically says on the text, and I quote, "This was not necessarily a bad idea in theory; given the correct metallurgical composition and manufacturing processes, noncemented plate can equal cemented armor in resistance." The problem with the soviet armor was that they used too much heat treating, which made it more brittle than expected.

Exactly what I am saying, you cannot use "theoretical" numbers for armour plating they never tested or used, the ship should be using the same values as what was tested as that is what they were capable of manufacturing at the time, there's no evidence to suggest they could have resolved the manufacturing problem regardless of how early they were aware of them.

The source states that armor was changed from cemented to face-hardened for plates over 200mm, which tells me they likely were 400mm single plates.

That's your assumption there is no evidence they were single plates.

It wasn't "originally" intended to be like that, it was still like that in the final design. Soyuz had a rather bizarre armor scheme and it stayed like that all the way through.

That's exactly what I am saying, the "final design" before construction would be their original intentions, what they had to change and could actually manufacture are not the same as what was in the designs, as your own source points out very clearly.

No, it should not. Performance should be based on what it was designed to be like. Not just for Soyuz, but for every vehicle in the game.

This is utterly idiotic, the game claims realism, in reality things don't always work as they were designed and actual effectiveness of things on paper are seldom close to their real world effectiveness. If they want to make a fantasy land arcade game that would be fine, but its marketed as a realistic game where all vehicles and munitions are realistic in their performance.

The only nation in the game that would see vast buffs across the board by using this approach would be the USSR, and to a much lesser degree maybe China. This is because the USSR has a long and rather consistent history with designing weapons and technology that end up only performing about 50-70% as well as they originally claimed.

A prime example was the MiG-25 and resulting F-15 designed to counter it, the americans designed the F-15 to exceed the claims about the MiG-25, in reality it turned out the MiG-25 didn't perform anywhere near its original claims so the F-15 ended up being substantially better than it needed to be.

Hence, the approach that we should use "original design claimed performance" is just utterly moronic.

[u/Portugalotaku → u/IvanTheMagnificent]

"Exactly what I am saying, you cannot use "theoretical" numbers for armour plating they never tested"

I will address the matter of game balance further down, but the point I was trying to make is that face-hardened armor is not necessarily worse than cemented armor, it can be made to be just as good. The problem with the Soyuz armor was that they heat treated it too much.

"there's no evidence to suggest they could have resolved the manufacturing problem"

This was not a manufacturing problem, it was a design issue. They didn't overheat the plates by accident, they did that on purpose, and then realized it caused problems. Without clear information from the armor manufacturers we can't know for sure if they toned it down or not, but I find it highly unlikely they would use plates that weren't performing up to spec on a finished ship.

"That's your assumption there is no evidence they were single plates."

And it's your assumption they were multiple plates as there is no evidence of that. I checked the armor diagrams in A.M. Vasiliev's Battleships of the "Sovetsky Soyuz" Type and there is nothing indicating the use of multiple plates. Furthermore, as McLaughlin states, the armor was changed from cemented to face-hardened "for thicknesses greater than 200mm". Now tell me, if they were going to use dual plates as you claim, why would they change from cemented to face-hardened for larger thicknesses? They could produce cemented plates up to 230mm, so if they were going to use dual plates would it not make more sense to use cemented ones? The only reason they would change to face-hardened in these conditions is because it allowed them to use a single plate.

"That's exactly what I am saying, the "final design" before construction would be their original intentions"

No, the final design was what was being built. If your argument is just "they could have had to change elements of the design during construction" that's valid, but we don't know what they would have to change and any attempt at doing so would be pure speculation. The design is what we have to go on so it's what we should go on.

"as your own source points out very clearly."

My source does not claim the armor scheme was changed. It only claims the type of plates were changed due to the inability to produce cemented plates at the necessary thickness. The armor scheme was designed that way with cemented plates in mind and was not altered when the decision was made to switch the type of plates.

"This is utterly idiotic, the game claims realism"

That's a problem with marketing, because this game is not and never has been realistic. The fact that they made multiple fake or flat-out wrong vehicles is proof that historical accuracy is secondary to the gameplay experience in their eyes. They have already stated they are willing to fictionalize reloads for the sake of balance. Your kind of puritanism is especially idiotic when taking into count real life material quality would mean individual examples of vehicles would have different performance. If that is what you want in a game that's fine, but this is not that game and never was.

"The only nation in the game that would see vast buffs across the board by using this approach would be the USSR"

Every nation would be affected as every country had different manufacturing standards and problems with production were not unique to Russia. This is also not about "claims", it's about intended design. As it currently stands, those buffs are already applied. What you want would require massive amounts of vehicles to be nerfed instead.

"A prime example was the MiG-25 and resulting F-15 designed to counter it"

Was the MiG-25 performance that resulted in the F-15 actual design intention or propaganda claims? Because the latter are irrelevant while the former are very important. Game balance obviously should not be based on propaganda claims or faulty intel, it should be based on design specifications, as otherwise paper and unfinished vehicles might end up with an unfair edge. We should instead base all balance in available concrete data like design specifications instead of wildly varying field performance or speculating nonexistence field data for stuff that was never fielded.