It has been long enough that the Soviet Body armour ruins the balance of the game. Body armour (and for that 1 Japan squad too) should have its damage reduction taken away. You should not be able to gain an advantage from a cosmetic (helmets are fine though, since their impact is so negligible). My proposal is this
- Remove the damage reduction from body armour
- Additionally, refund all tickets spent on them. If a person has paid for 25 body armour vests, put 25x6 (or whatever the cost is) tickets into their inventory.
Below are some examples of how toxic body armour is, and how it messes with weapon balance at different tiers.
As you can see, the PPS-43 is actually not that powerful of a weapon against vitality. Obviously, against non-vitality, its pretty powerful (with a time to kill of 0.097, which is similar to the Owen Mk 1 - obviously it doesnt work against vitality because of its lower 6.7 damage and not 6.8)
As well as that, you can observe the difference that is made to the Axis weapons here, almost doubling their time to kill. Its criminal that the only faction having to face body armour loses to it here. The MP40 and Beretta are not even “bad” weapons when there is no body armour to account for.
Same story in BR3. Body armour makes Soviet weapons seem overpowered.
BR4 - The Kiraly does not care for body armour, since it has 7.9 damage. For reference, you need 7.5 damage to beat body armour in 2 hits (at 10m damage drop off). It is unreasonable to buff all Axis smgs (with 9mm) to be doing nearly the same damage as .45 ACP from Thompsons etc.
BR1 Advantage - lol
The only “reasonable” advantage that soviet body armour gives, is an increase in survival based on ranged damage at BR5. The Select Fire Rifles dealing 15.3 damage (FG-42, T20, AVT-40) will only 1 hit kill body armour up to 21m approx. The AVS-36 with its higher damage of 15.8 will kill up to 40m. This scenario doesnt really happen outside of custom games, but gives soviet body armour a slight niche in BR5 allowing Soviets to out-range the FG-42 (after its buffs which it rightfully deserved). I still dont think this would be that important in the grand scheme of things
All of these calculations are for 10m damage range and bullet velocity.
I included Japan weapons incase of Soviet V Japan in the future, and included USA for reference (its funny because USA weapons rarely care about body armour)
I will not include the Type Hei Automatic for Japan. Its 13.9 damage obviously loses to body armour, but the lack of recoil and incredibly fast rate of fire mean it really doesnt care too much about the armour.
Other weapons outside of the SMG class that lose to body armour and give Soviets an advantage
Axis: Gewehr 41, Scotti Mod X, Beretta M31, Gerat 03, Krieghoff FG, Kbsp wz 1938M, Walther A115
Japan: Type Hei, Type Otsu, Type 4 Rifle
Other: SVT-38, M1E5 Garand, Meunier A6, Pedersen Rifle, Gorov LMG
Not: M1 Carbine
