Why is APCR rounds so bad?

[Kinakin]

Are apcr rounds supposed to be so bad?
They just dont feel worth using like 90% of the time.

[OneEye]

I never understood why it’s either modeled bad or actually really performed bad. I mean historically even APHE rounds didn’t work like they do in game. In game you always get a nice reliable detonation as long as you own enough armor. When IRL APHE was very sporadic in its effectiveness. Even APDS works so much better than APCR, I get its based on a higher velocity to overcome the armor and APCR is relying on sheer hardness of the projectile. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t used very long, that and the material cost to make an APCR round compared to an APDS round is what drove them out of service.

[✡︎☭ Farmuhan ☭✡]

because it is. It's only purpose to penetrate the armor not 1 hit 1 kill

[Kinakin]

I get that APCR should not have alot of 1 shot killing power, but it bounces like crazy. The times you can pen with APCR you usally can pen with regular ammo aiming at a weak spot.

So it feels almost completely useless.

[Mac]

In the past I did use it sometimes but these days I have removed it from pretty much all my tanks.

Unless you are hitting a perfectly flat surface, the chance of APCR bouncing off is rather high. I prefer to take my chances hitting cannon barrels or extremely tiny weakspots over betting on the RNG behind APCR to not bounce off.

You very rarely get to hit a flat surface in this game because even if you are aiming for a flat armour plate then all it takes is for your enemy is to wiggle around a little or stand at an angle from your perspective and the flat armour plate is not so flat anymore in practice.

Also as you mentioned if you do penetrate it is by no means guaranteed to deal enough post penetration damage to be worth it. I have had experiences where a penetration shot with APCR only turned a gunner red instead of taking him out...

Maybe in the future they will change it again and I might use APCR from time to time but at the moment I am not using it at all pretty much.

[TacoDolphin]

skill issue

[halolo39]

APCR doesnt perform historically because of nerfs forced on it over the years

[Wolwaryn]

Welcome to garbage thunder :D

[Chaoslink]

It has a high chance to bounce on angles and doesn't have good post-penetration damage. Its meant for brute force punching your way through the thick armor of your enemy at a perpendicular angle of attack. It won't kill them immediately, but it will shred whatever is on the immediate other side of the armor. Its only really good when you're shooting at a target your other ammo types won't penetrate and you can't get a flank shot instead. The Jumbo 75mm Sherman can make good use of the shell since its gun is very weak compared to the things it fights. It often needs that punch to get through the enemy to deal any damage at all.

Most tanks, its just not useful.

[Qu Rahn]

Originally posted by OneEye:

I never understood why it’s either modeled bad or actually really performed bad. I mean historically even APHE rounds didn’t work like they do in game. In game you always get a nice reliable detonation as long as you own enough armor. When IRL APHE was very sporadic in its effectiveness. Even APDS works so much better than APCR, I get its based on a higher velocity to overcome the armor and APCR is relying on sheer hardness of the projectile. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t used very long, that and the material cost to make an APCR round compared to an APDS round is what drove them out of service.

Bad modelling. Historically, many APCR shells performed way better than their APHE peers (6.x USA comes to mind). APHE in-game acts as a mini-nuke, whereas IRL it was basically the same as common AP/APBC. APHE only really acted as intended in naval guns, where you can pack a massive amount of explosives in an already massive shell, for tanks, 20-100g of explosive filler made basically zero difference (we have threads on their effectiveness in the official forums).
It's part of why we didn't pursue advances in APHE shells that much: no difference to solid AP shots, while HEATFS offered all the explosive effects we wanted, with the pen we needed.
As for the game, who knows why it's badly modelled? To differentiate shells at the cost of irreality? To make players spend GE? They never cared about correcting the behavior because - because it's ancient code; because they don't want to have further questions in balance? I can only wonder.