They have quite bad penetration so at least make them good at disabling tanks. It’s absurd that I need 3-4 shots to destroy a track/wheel.
Edit
I think 2-3 shots (depending on range) to destroy tracks would be good enough buff.
12 Likes
Also some firerate buffs to guns like ptrd and pzb would be appreciated
10 Likes
I guess the damage drop needed a improvement.
I’d love a separate animation when the gun is mounted - soldier doesn’t close the ammo box so you save 1-2s on each bullet.
Imo it would be cool but I guess it’s not enough run and gun, explosions and lasers for anyone to be interested.
AT rifles are designed to destroy vehicles below BR II. Most factions will get bazookas or other AT explosives when they reach BR II. These weapons are more powerful.
They cant even do that. Most br 1 tanks have good enough armour to survive at rifles from front. Also they barely deal any post pen damage meaning that you will have to shoot at the ammo rack multiple times which is ineffective. Their main point is to be able to disable enemy tanks from long distances. It defeats their whole purpose when it takes 5 shots to take down one track
7 Likes
I agree.
The Japanese AT rifle is excellent, no complaints with it.
However the Boys rifle SUCKS. It straight up doesnt work.
As far as I can gather that’s what it was like irl, only thing it was good for was dislocating some poor soldier’s shoulder.
The German one isnt very good either.
Havent used the Soviet one so wont comment on it.
But yeah Id happily support an increase in damage. IIRC most guns in game dont have their ‘historically accurate’ stats anyway.
Id much rather buffed AT rifles than more nonsense high rank Star Trek tanks!
2 Likes
Not to play the devil advocate but maybe we are supposed to pick off the crews from the side and engine/track from behind?
1 Like
Killing crew is a somewhat good tactic but very slow and can be hard as the penetration is very bad, especially vs sloped armour.
And destroying any component is just pure pain as you need about 3-4 rounds to do anything (also ammo explosion is very unlikely).
Tldr; poor penetration + poor damage = poor gun
2 Likes
If there was a ranking of AT rifles, it would probably look like*:
- Type 97, absolute meme cannon, and with how bad other Japanese ballistic AT weapons are, you can probably carry it for a long time and just troll with it.
- PTRS, semi-auto, works quite well, for some reason BR II, when the Type 97 exists.
- PTRD, single shot, but still effective.
- Boys’ awful, but because everything they face is paper thick, you can actually use it, somewhat.
- PzB, both of them, literal starter tanks can tank them, and they’re single shot.
For both Axis and the Allies, you’re better off getting StP/Bazooka instead, their ATR’s are that dreadful.
*This list is a subjective ranking.
2 Likes
PTRD-41 (ProtivoTankovoye Ruzhyo Degtyaryova 1941): A single-shot, bolt-action rifle. After each shot, the user had to manually open the bolt, eject the spent casing, and load a new round. This made its fire rate slow, roughly 8-10 rounds per minute with a well-trained operator.
PTRS-41 (ProtivoTankovoye Ruzhyo Simonova 1941): A semi-automatic rifle that used a 5-round magazine. It automatically cycled the next round, giving it a faster fire rate—about 15 rounds per minute in good conditions.
Effectiveness Against Tanks
Both rifles fired the 14.5×114mm armor-piercing round, which had high velocity and could penetrate 20-40mm of armor at 100 meters. Early in the war, this was enough to damage or disable light tanks, armored cars, and weak spots on medium tanks (like the engine compartment, vision slits, or side/rear armor). However, as German tanks got heavier (e.g., Panther, Tiger), these rifles became nearly useless against front armor.
Fire Rate in Practical Use
PTRD-41: Too slow to suppress a tank effectively, but useful for quick ambush shots before relocating.
PTRS-41: The semi-auto action made it better for disabling exposed components like tracks, periscopes, and engines with multiple shots in quick succession.
Overall, the PTRS-41 had a much better fire rate, making it the superior choice for engaging tanks before they became too heavily armored for anti-tank rifles to be effective.
I vaguely remember only ever needing 2 shots to de-track a tank by shooting at its treads with an AT rifle.
Outside of that, I genuinely don’t expect anything out of using an AT rifle instead of a handheld HEAT launcher, other than something to give your AT gunners for BR 1.
The niche that ATRs have in WW2 that allowed them to easily smash vehicle optics and disable tank components isn’t well-represented in-game because tank optics aren’t modules you can damage, nor can the game replicate scenarios such as jamming a turret by getting an ATR round stuck in the turret ring.
There’s also the simple fact that using an HMG for light anti-tank duty is far more reliable, but situational.
Instead of the damage being buffed (and especially given that people are giving too much weight to what a single shot or a magazine’s worth can do), I think it would be better for ATRs to be far less unwieldy so that they aren’t so miserable to use.
Apart from shooting at treads, the only niche they have is for instantly destroying engineer emplacements and oneshotting the occasional low-flying plane.
1 Like
I’m confused.
First you lecture about how AT rifles were used irl (that supports my point if anything) and then you propose even less realistic solution that doesn’t even address the issue.
I don’t get it.
Increasing the damage dealt may have additional unintended consequences given that vehicles and infantry work with different damage thresholds. ATRs already deal up to roughly 10 times as much damage as vehicle weapons of the same caliber, giving them the aforementioned niche of instantly destroying engineer structures and any plane the user can land a hit on.
Making ATRs less cumbersome would incentivize players to focus on positional usage and allow the user to more easily relocate in the event something goes wrong.
The way I see ATRs used, if it’s a semi-auto ATR, users will magdump the 1st light vehicle they see without really aiming at weakpoints. If it isn’t a semi-auto ATR, there’s a massive gap in the rate shots are fired at a tank and the time a tank has to react to someone attempting to plink them.
If the user screws up, they will be unlikely to deal with an angry tank in time.
If it already OHKs planes, soldiers and emplacements, adding more damage won’t hurt.
And their poor damage combined with poor penetration makes them bad at fighting tanks.
Imo they are already easy to use. Making it any easier would basically make them equal to normal infantry rifles.
Only their rof is really an issue but not much can be done about that if we want to remain at least somewhat close to realism.
If they don’t aim at weakspots, they won’t penetrate = no damage. So I’m not sure what is your point.
We can increase damage. You don’t need faster rof if the 1st bullet did the job (assuming you hit the weakspot and pened).
To be clear, I have experience mostly with German AT rifles that are one of the worst. So maybe there are some things I don’t know that would change how I see this whole thing.
I have no clue what’s absurd about it.
I don’t see how it’s not absurd.
AT rifles are generally quite bad at destroying tanks. That’s understandable as they are mostly BR1 weapons.
So they need to deal with tanks in other ways, like disabling them so they are easier to kill in other ways. Problem is, I need to take 3-4 shots to destroy any component, each shot takes about ~2s and after the first one the tank is actively looking for me.
So not only are BR1 anti-tank rifles bad at destroying tanks but also at disabling them. So they are bad at their main role as anti tank weapons (that is absurd) and thus need a buff.
That’s why AT rifles were pure trash concept irl, already outdated at the start of the WW2.
I really don’t see why trolls should get another means of screwing with tanks. A super accurate weapon with very good velocity that will immobilize you and force you out of the tank in one shot.
Yes, that’s sound definitely like something that newcomers who want to start playing tanks will appreciate.
If anything, destroying tank tracks in one hit with AT rifle is a completely absurd idea.
Since when do Devs or even you care about that?
Also AT rifles were used by Russians for a long time to disable tanks (optics, tracks, turret rings etc). So I’d say my suggestion is quite in line with history.
Destroying tracks in one shot would be too much. I’d say 2 shots is good enough.
But stuff like internal modules should be ohk imo because of poor pen and often poor rof.
All other BRs have AT launchers that can destroy tanks in one hit. I don’t see why BR1 AT shouldn’t even be able to reliably damage tanks.
Alternative is to make AT rifles also ohk if they pen (from my experience they can’t even explode ammo most of the time). Would be interesting.
3 Likes
Sounds reasonable.
3 Likes