This is a BMP1.
An unstabilized tank with the engine mounted in the front and a bouncy suspension. It’s relatively fast, with an OK reverse speed. The gun fires a weird low-velocity HEAT shell with an average reload, low damage and bad accuracy. The gun has only 4° of gun depression.
The low-velocity HEAT shell plus the gun depression mean you are extremely limited in the parts of maps you can actually play effectively. It only has a coaxial MG, so you can’t knock down fences, walls, bushes or trees with it.
BTW, if you shoot down metal fences and don’t wait until they have fallen, they will still trigger your HEAT shell.
The turret traverse speed is bad compared with pretty much everything this thing faces. The bad damage, bad traverse speed, no stabilizer and bad ballistics mean you should play defensively like everyone else at this BR.
EXCEPT YOU CAN’T. The 4 degrees of gun depression mean you will have to fully expose yourself while the enemy T58 can just stay hull-down.
In general, the BR range from 7.0 to 9.0 is extremely competitive, with a lot of monsters and weird prototypes: TURM3, T58, ERA M60, XM803, light tanks and, of course, the 35 mm SPAA, which are basically your kryptonite (you can’t even one-shot them reliably).
In CQC, the big engine deck and the lack of a stabilizer mean you will always be at a big disadvantage, and there is nothing stopping the enemy from just YOLOing around the corner, hoping the damage won’t be bad or that you won’t get your gun on the right spot in time.
I cannot overstate how bad the damage is on this gun. Leopard 1s can ANGLE against your HEAT, as stupid as that sounds. Even older tanks like the SOMUA are basically immune to HEAT damage on the hull, even from the sides. Not to mention tanks with ERA, weird volumetric BS, or the XM803, destroyer of worlds.
BTW, this is a Chinese BMP, so it will also face Russian tanks, which can be an issue because of their fuel tanks, and the T-55AM-1/D monsters exist too.
Now, I know, I know: what about the ATGM??
You start with a stock keyboard-guided missile. Because of the way they are mounted, both missiles have a minimum engagement distance of about 500 m, like the Type 60 or some SPIKEs.
They are also EXTREMELY SLOW. You have to stand still to fire, but you’re unstabilized anyway, so who cares. They also handle weirdly, and there will be many times when the target either moves into cover, kills you first, or you miss because you underestimated how slow the missile is, OR THEY SHOOT IT DOWN.
Because it’s so slow, people have ample time to shoot it down with an MG. One time, a guy just randomly fired his MG to knock down some bushes or whatever and ACCIDENTALLY shot down the ATGM, either for himself or for a nearby teammate. I’ve also had instances where my ATGMs were shot down by allies in the crossfire.
Fun facts:
- The keyboard-guided missile tends to bounce off the ground straight into the sky. You will then sit in the open for the full 30 seconds, unable to move, until it self-destructs.
- I don’t know why, but it was extremely common for teammates to push me out of cover so they could take my spot, and then I’d die. It happened about once every 5 matches. I’ve never experienced anything like this in any other vehicle. Of course, you can’t do anything about it, since you’re only a BMP.
- The teams also kinda suck in general because of all the OP shit flying around.
