Original title: “Tank Gun Depression," 12.03.2013
Author: Legion
Note: This is based on ingame tests.
Special thanks to hunturk, who helped me with the comparison and made the screenshots and to KamGodzy, who created the video at the end of the post.
Gun depression is how much an AFV can lower his gun. This is important for hiding the hull behind objects and terrain features(hull down). It is also important for fighting enemies, on lower terrain than you.
Now straight to the values. The negative number is the maximum gun depression, while the positive number is maximum gun elevation.
Note: These values are taken from the front.
T90 -8 to +20 degrees
2S25 Sprut SD -8 to +20 degrees
Stryker MGS -8 to +20 degrees
M1 Abrams -12 to +20 degrees
The M1 can depress the gun slightly(~3°) more if you aim to your side and ~12° less if you aim over your rear.
The others also have slightly less less depression when aiming over the rear. This is 4° less for the Stryker and the T90 and 6° less for the Sprut-SD
Now, the reason I did this was because I had problems with hull down positions with the Stryker, compared to the Sprut-SD.
The answer is simple and most probably guessed it. The Stryker is much larger and the turret is pretty high compared to the other tanks.
This is a disadvantage against enemies close to the tank, as there is a rather large blind spot.
This also means that it has a “higher” elevation, so there is more room to shoot aircraft.
Now, for comparison.
