Currently when an HE round is fired close by or High Explosive goes off it’s just very lack luster. I would like to see more blast effects. Smoke, fire debri and the like thrown into the air. Large bombs or arty shells should deform terrain and create shell holes …
While I like the shell hole idea, because who doesn’t want malleable terrain, (Yeah I know you don’t because game balance but let me dream) I’m not sure about bigger explosions with all these effects. The explosions are pretty realistic actually. Real explosives don’t actually create a lot of fire and unless they’re underground they don’t throw debris because of how the gas expansion works. So I think they’re fine as are.
Realistic? What? ^^
The HE tank shells are fairly accurate to how they function in real life. They might be underwhelming as for shrapnel ricochet on interiors but the explosion size and behaviour is realistic for the most part.
Smoke/fire are basically just a movie trope unless someone specifically designs a shell to do those things.
IRL as a tanker you would want as much shrapnel as possible which obscuring tour own limited vision, and vision of your allies, as possible.
In rare instances shells would be designed for a more fantasy purpose like fire/smoke but this was mainly used to draw fire while obscuring vision. Basically like throwing a smoke grenade in someone face while a loud less lethal explosion occured.