VFW - why was this added to the game?

[Rejak]

This is a cheat vehicle, used by system exploiters. Whoever decided it belonged in War Thunder should be fired. FIX THE GAME. FIRST STEP IN FIXING THE GAME IS TO STOP BREAKING IT MORE! Also, fire the people who ruined it!

[Ouroboros]

Originally posted by kamikazi21358:

The Su-100P is a way better tank.

Alright, let's go through this. Statistics are SU-100P/VFW

BR = 6.7/5.7.
Turret Rotation Speed = 4.2/5.9
Vertical Guidance: -4 and 37/-3 and 90
Reload Rate: 9.8/5.2
Hull Armour: 25, 15 and 8/20, 14 and 4
Turret Armour: 20, 15 and 0/15, 0 and 0 (although both this and the hull armour is inconsequential, it's both nothing)
Penetration with best APHE shell: 239/230, VFW gets APCR (272mm) whereas the SU-100P does not.
Crew: 5/6
Engine Power: 354 bhp at 1800 rpm/318 bhp at 3600 rpm
Max Speed: 40/37

So let's break this down. The VFW has better gun elevation, the best reload time by far, slightly worse penetration but with APCR, one extra crew member, 3mph slower, no hullbreak and yet a whole 1.0 BR lower than the SU-100P despite being, if this stat card is anything to go by, relatively equal in performance or even slightly better. So to say it's 'way better' is downright wrong. No, I'm not asking for the VFW to go to 6.7 as well (though it might be worth it for the wehrb salt), but it's obviously not too much to ask for the thing to get hullbreak when something that's equal if not better and 1 BR higher gets it and the VFW for some reason does not. Must be that Russian bias amirite

[Lunae Tempestas]

As a person who has the VFW amd fought it aswell i believe it should get Hullbreak since most of its armor is less than 25mm. As to why they didnt give it hullbreak i dont know. It really shouldn't survive against a 152mm he (roughly 64mm pen) round hitting the gun shield or a bomb or rocket exploding next to it. When i have used it i have done pretty well, and you can survive quite a bit of hits when you play it well. You can play aggressively in it. I have had times were i have been hit by ap and was still able to pull punches with the fast reload speed. Also READ THE GOD DARN PATCH NOTES, it is as if you people ignore them. One of the things they changed was how j'ing works.

https://wiki.warthunder.com/Update_1.89_%22Imperial_Navy%22#Smaller_updates_that_came_afterwards

And look heres more stuff they fixed or changed after the 1.89 update.

[Cartoon_JR.]

Originally posted by Illusionyary:

Worth pointing out the VFW has been in the game for months now. I guess OP is salty because one killed him.

this is off subject but I have been wondering what OP means in this syntax

[RetroRun]

Originally posted by Cartoon_JR.:

Originally posted by Illusionyary:

Worth pointing out the VFW has been in the game for months now. I guess OP is salty because one killed him.

this is off subject but I have been wondering what OP means in this syntax

All people who whine about the VFW

[Dakota]

Originally posted by kamikazi21358:

Originally posted by Dakota:

The waffentrager ends up with less protection than the VFW when it comes to how durable one or the other is,

The Waffletraktor has more resistance to machinegun fire, and is protected at more angles. The area without roof armour is smaller, making it more likely to be hurt by planes, while the VFW is weak at all sides from machine guns.

Originally posted by Dakota:

the M10 and M36 both have far more effective frontal armor than the VFW,

Exactly, it has 1.5mm more frontal armour. The M10 and M36 don’t have hullbreak...

Originally posted by Dakota:

Waffentrager gets a lower profile, VFW gets less than half the reload time, far more survivability and much higher speed, beats out the VFW in the 3 main facets of tank rating.

It only has more survivability because nobody seems to know how to bloody kill the VFW. It’s like people don’t understand “hey, over half the crew are lined up on the left side, like an American tank, not the right!” People don’t seem to learn that. If you can’t kill a VFW in two shots max
> 1 completely disables the entire tank
• and no, 3km/h reverse speed, it isn’t escaping
> 2nd kills the tank
> or the ammo rack obliterates the tank alternatively
you need to re-evaluate ether how to kill it, or how to improve your aiming skills. My favourite nation in the game is Russia, and even someone who is spoiled on APHE ammo, even I learned how to kill it easily!

It doesn’t take a PhD to learn how to kill it!

Originally posted by Dakota:

Shooting the left side's not going to kill it,

Every player who played Britain ever:
aww, that’s too bad
*world’s tiniest violen starts playing*

Originally posted by Dakota:

its a twoshot at best but it leaves the driver alive so he can just go and pull away into safety, shooting the ammo rack from the front is actually impossible if you don't have AP loaded since the APHE detonates in the driver cap (which also means if you shoot left with APHE you're just going to die because his gunner is still alive but he has no driver and machine gunner at least), with AP you'll have to be able to get through the transmission case and the front and back cab armor to get to the ammo. Machine gunning it also doesn't work for a kill due to the cab armor and also doesn't work at all if you aren't a nation that gets a complimentary HMG with every tank. So yes, its definitely that hard to kill.

It is two shot maximum, not minimum,

which unlike the Abrams which I see you mention later in the post, 3km/h top speed. That isn’t even Panther level. That isn’t even Sherman level. That is Cromwell and Churchill level. The crew could literally get their legs shot off, and crawl to safety before their tank makes it in reverse. It doesn’t matter if the driver is alive or not, you would have to be using the FV 4005 to not get a 2nd shot into it, and if you were, I seriously question why you didn’t kill it with 183mm HESH.

1-2 shot kill, guaranteed if you know where to aim. Frankly, I am not convinced otherwise, I played probably more Britain in this range than Germany since it was added, and although it can be frustrated sometimes to be killed by a VFW (because 8.8cm), at the end of the day I quickly learned how to kill it easily, and realized it’s just a ZiS-30 or whatever of 5.7 — you aim wrong, of course it’ll survive, but it’s easy af to kill otherwise.

Originally posted by Dakota:

I'd put the Abrams before the powercreep below the VFW in its BR to be honest.

VFWs vs M4A3E8s is a whole lot more balanced than M1s vs T-55s. A M4A3 can kill a VFW in two shots, while a T-55 — do you know how many Abrams have been killed by T-55s, T-62s, and T-72s? Here is a hint: there is a reason for that.

Originally posted by Dakota:

Abrams was no where near as durable, still gets frontalled by the autocannons at that BR, and the gun wasn't nearly on par with its contenders unless at some point having 100mm lower pen than your comparable enemy vehicles is "not bad". Leo 2A4 also had a ~1500 hp engine, same with type 90, france with 1300 while being around 10 tons lighter, italy didn't exist.

The 2A4 and Type 90 came later, after the Abrams was moved to 10.0. Which I don’t think anyone was denying that the Type 90 was better than the M1A0, which was not long replaced by the M1IP, which is accurate to the name.

Originally posted by Dakota:

Only the russians and brits were shafted when it came to speed, and they were both only 9.7s at the time and russia at least had armor that'd ping off anything an Abrams shot at it that wasn't launched into the driver's port or lower plate.

There is shafted with speed to be fair, and there is “having less than half the engine power” as the Abrams had a 1500 HP engine compared to a 690 HP Diesel engine. While Britain had a 1,200 HP Diesel engine with over 60 tonnes. The T-64B is not a bad tank at all, but it is rightfully lower than the M1, as the M1 could literally make it to the far side Russian-side capture point before they get there themselves. They could not only do that, but they could do that and, in this case, actually guaranteed to survive 2 shots with first order ammo rack (which seems to be more resilient than it is now, I think it was nerfed) and 4 crew, and high mobility, and what was at the time good armour. I was talking about when the M1 was 9.7.

Originally posted by Dakota:

So the Abrams had bad gun

*average gun, the Russians were the only one with a 125mm

Originally posted by Dakota:

slightly above average mobility, and slightly below average armor, and honestly the survivability wasn't any higher than any of the other NATO MBTs.

it wasn’t slightly above average, it’s engine when it was added wasn’t state of the arc, it was the arc. 1,500 gas turbine engine was only rivaled by the German Leopard 2K, which had the same engine and was even faster (but had none of the armour). Saying it was slightly above average is like saying the M18 is slightly above average. Remove the slightly, it introduced tank drifting.

No other tank had first order ammo rack. Seeing it survive ammo rack explosions on the dev server was impressive, no vehicle did this in War Thunder. It is like adding a plane that puts out fuel fires instantly or something, the Abrams was the most durable tank in the game, with the first depleted uranium round in the entire game, and it with the 2K were the first with gas turbine engines in the game.

Originally posted by un.Casual:

It's a panzer 4 chassis giving it hull break would be like giving M4 Shermans hull break (also anyone who finds it op should learn what a mg is)

Gib M36A1 hullbreak

Originally posted by Edmund Ironside:

Also keep in mind the SU-100P is pretty much the Russian equivalent of the VFW and yet that's a whole BR higher, but of course the VFW is German so it's completely balanced. Oh, and the SU-100P gets hullbreak, too.

The Su-100P is a way better tank.

Waffle has more resistance to MG fire as long as the VFW is running armor down for the reload rate boost, though if for some reason someone actually is so afraid of some LMG fire in the VFW they can just put the armor on the sides up and still be reloading much faster than the waffle while having equal or better protection.

I have no idea where you're coming from with thsi "it only has 1.5 more frontal armor" nonsense. The VFW has 20mm of frontal armor, 22mm effective. The M10/M36 chassis has nearly 3x the effective armor and nearly 2x the raw armor. A wonder I'm not amazed that something that has 3x the armor doesn't have hullbreak. Though that said, we could just laugh at how the Bradley has 50-60mm frontal hull armor and hullbreaks, or how various modern IFVs with their layouts setup to be as survivable as possible die in a hit due to hullbreak while the VFW just shrugs off rounds. I mean look at the Type 16, that thing has up to 130mm armor vs KE, even more vs HEAT, gets hullbroken. Do you honestly believe that the VFW should not be given hullbreak while there are vehicles with over 6 times the armor protection that do have hullbreak?

I'm still saying its generally going to be 2 shots minimum to kill a VFW unless you're lucky enough to light off the ammo from a shot through the transmission, which some tanks can't even do. Another thing some tanks can't even do is have their APHE even go through the VFW's left side cab to kill the gunner, I guess huge russian APHE shells manage to get through without too much issue, but sure lets say you've shot the guy in the left side, it pens, it goes through, and it does kill the left side, the guy's still alive, you got about 10 seconds of reloading to do, he doesn't have to just 3mph(not kph, note the Sherman's is 3.1mph, amazing 0.1 higher speed) reverse out of there, the whole point of having some huge gun like this in a super rapid fire platform is that you'd use it in positions anyway. So lets say that if you're smart enough to go and destroy this thing in 2 hits, this guy's smart enough to not let you do that so easily, he can be sitting behind cover with the huge gun sticking out the top, he can be far away like someone sane where MG fire can't hurt him, and he, at most in this situation, only needs to reverse about his own tank's length to be out of your line of sight again, easily doable with even that low of a reverse speed, a reverse speed rather standard at that BR.

The thing's got the ability to oneshot just about anything it sees and do so at extreme range, and do it every 4 seconds, and absorbs rounds better than the heavy tanks it consistently oneshots, yes I'm going to consider it a bit odd that it takes a process, some luck, favorable conditions, great aim, him being out of position, and a powerful enough AP shell (as APHE shot going for the ammo will detonate in the transmission) to oneshot it while it just clicks on everything it sees center of mass for that easy kill. The whole point of the vehicle is it has super great firepower, average speed, and supposedly bad durability/protection, but it ends up having super great firepower, average speed, and great durability. It seems like an error.

Coming from the side of actually playing this thing and learning how to use it, I assure you its not so easy to kill if its driver isn't afk. First off you gotta be more worried about it than it does about you, that long 88's going to rip a hole through just about any vehicle you have out in its BR range and blow it to pieces, if it messes up a shot you don't have much time to react before another one is coming, meanwhile it can make great use of that structural steel in the turret to stop shots, it eats up APHE rounds for breakfast, keeping the side with all the crew relatively safe from danger and keeping that gunner ready to fire again if you fail your shot. It can very quickly turn into a rather small area that can be hit to actually kill the gunner that is being presented when angled properly, and this is assuming the VFW is right there in open ground, something no sniping tank destroyer should be doing in the first place.

VFW can punch through the Jumbo all over, the Jumbo's APHE is weak enough to occasionally fail to pen through the cab's rear wall, unless you're talking the 76 jumbo but then what's the point of this comparison of the VFW vs a tank higher BR than it vs the Abrams against tanks lower than it?

Either way I assumed we were talking Abrams at the time in which there was actually 10.0 tanks, not the exact moment it was added in as the first, thus my comparison to other actual 10.0s, but that said the T-55 can't currently see an Abrams at all, and if it does it can shoot through the turret ring, a similar shot to the Abrams firing at the driver port of tanks 0.3 under it to pen. the 9.0 T-62M-1 punches through the Abrams hull rather easily killing the driver and gunner with a shot near center of mass, turret ring also pennable, turret face also penned at closer ranges, T-72 does the same and its turret cannot be penetrated by the Abrams but its hull can be.

The M1IP gains less than 10mm additional armor against APFSDS with good slope modifiers, 20mm vs ones with bad modifiers, not really amazing benefits there. Abrams of course, compared to other 10.0s when 10.0s came to be, had the worst gun of top tier by a significant margin, stuck with only 105s while everyone else had 120s and 125s and far less pen on them too. Ammo racks by the time of 10.0s weren't so great as before, a shot to the front of the turret that pens through the ammo rack was going to kill the tank, a shot to the side of the turret left it without any ammo to continue to fight, and besides first order ammo was standard in everything but the russian and british tanks that just followed different design doctrines entirely it seemed. First DU round in the game is entirely meaningless as they aren't modeled with seemingly any difference to the tungsten rounds when it comes to post pen or anything else for that matter, infact the russians had notably the best post pen due to their short rod modifiers up to around the time of the penetration calculation changes where I lost track of what had what.

Maybe we'll agree on more things in regards to the abrams now that you know I'm talking about the long running segment of time where there were 10.0s of all the countries fighting eachother aside from the british and french who had 9.7s only, no italians yet, T-80 had just come out, etc rather than some tests on the dev servers and the usual messy implementation of a new tier of vehicles.

[jaxjace]

Because germany dosnt get m18 hellcats thats why.