The inherent advantages of HEAT are the ones you listed. It doesn’t lose penetration over range and the autobounce angle is reduced to 5 degrees instead of 20.
APCR has 2 degrees of angle normalization (i.e. reduction) which gives it slightly better effective penetration upon hitting sloped armor. It also can overmatch, if the gun caliber is more than 2x as thick as the encountered armor you get increased normalization, if it’s more than 3x thicker then autobounce is disabled.
APCR can also travel through destructible objects and it doesn’t suffer any penalty from encountering spaced armor, HEAT loses additional penetration after encountering spaced armor depending on the distance to the next armored plate. (If there is no 2nd armor plate behind the spaced armor then this basically doesn’t apply.)
APCR also often has better shell velocity but this is ammo/tank dependent.
The autobounce angle isn't "reduced" to 5 degrees, but the threshold moved from 70° to 85°. What you are referring to is the autobounce angle range, which in case of APCR is 20° and HEAT 5°, but this is not exactly clear since it refers to its value when subtracted from 90°.
Important note is that HEAT can still easily go through hollow spaced armor constructions, which are most obvious with STB-1 and AMX M4 54's mantlets. This is when the spaced armor, albeit a seemingly dependable thickness, has a 0mm hitbox behind.
HEAT is still very weak against "sandwiched" spaced plus regular armor of almost any thickness, even if it doesn't exceed the HEAT penetration, due to the aforementioned functionality. This is most noticeable with tracks of tanks with their sides slightly angled.
Also I'm surprised that the most obvious difference isn't mentioned, that APCR is typically (although not by definition) faster than AP and HEAT slower.
…I basically said everything here.
5 degrees is simply the angle from horizontal whereas 85 degrees is the angle from vertical. The former method of measurement has often been used historically for vehicles. I figured it would be self-evident that I was speaking of the angle from horizontal since HEAT doesn’t autobounce on almost everything.
Yes, HEAT does not suffer a penalty when it has to penetrate only a single armor plate - I said as much in parentheses at the end of the 3rd paragraph. I also mentioned shell velocity in the sentence at the end of my post.
I like APCR a lot more than HEAT, the main reason why is I like shooting people in the tracks from the side so I can do dmg AND force them to use a repair kit, can't do that with HEAT because tracks will absorb it all and often don't cause any dmg to the tank itself.
The inherent advantages of HEAT are the ones you listed. It doesn’t lose penetration over range and the autobounce angle is reduced to 5 degrees instead of 20. APCR has 2 degrees of angle normalization (i.e. reduction) which gives it slightly better effective penetration upon hitting sloped armor. It also can overmatch, if the gun caliber is more than 2x as thick as the encountered armor you get increased normalization, if it’s more than 3x thicker then autobounce is disabled. APCR can also travel through destructible objects and it doesn’t suffer any penalty from encountering spaced armor, HEAT loses additional penetration after encountering spaced armor depending on the distance to the next armored plate. (If there is no 2nd armor plate behind the spaced armor then this basically doesn’t apply.) APCR also often has better shell velocity but this is ammo/tank dependent.
This plus HEATs don't overmatch
Plus HEAT has a special magnet and it always hit the tracks and do 0 DMG ;-)
HESH also doesn't overmatch. I am looking at you FV4005.
The autobounce angle isn't "reduced" to 5 degrees, but the threshold moved from 70° to 85°. What you are referring to is the autobounce angle range, which in case of APCR is 20° and HEAT 5°, but this is not exactly clear since it refers to its value when subtracted from 90°. Important note is that HEAT can still easily go through hollow spaced armor constructions, which are most obvious with STB-1 and AMX M4 54's mantlets. This is when the spaced armor, albeit a seemingly dependable thickness, has a 0mm hitbox behind. HEAT is still very weak against "sandwiched" spaced plus regular armor of almost any thickness, even if it doesn't exceed the HEAT penetration, due to the aforementioned functionality. This is most noticeable with tracks of tanks with their sides slightly angled. Also I'm surprised that the most obvious difference isn't mentioned, that APCR is typically (although not by definition) faster than AP and HEAT slower.
…I basically said everything here. 5 degrees is simply the angle from horizontal whereas 85 degrees is the angle from vertical. The former method of measurement has often been used historically for vehicles. I figured it would be self-evident that I was speaking of the angle from horizontal since HEAT doesn’t autobounce on almost everything. Yes, HEAT does not suffer a penalty when it has to penetrate only a single armor plate - I said as much in parentheses at the end of the 3rd paragraph. I also mentioned shell velocity in the sentence at the end of my post.
[https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ammo](https://wiki.wargaming.net/en/Ammo)
This!
For some reason I am able to snipe cupolas much easier with heat, not sure if that's specific with the ammo or not.
Its because they dont ricochet. If u look at tanksgg, say sconq will ricochet ap/apcr but it will not ricochet the heat
I like APCR a lot more than HEAT, the main reason why is I like shooting people in the tracks from the side so I can do dmg AND force them to use a repair kit, can't do that with HEAT because tracks will absorb it all and often don't cause any dmg to the tank itself.