VDD desantniki battle it out against German elite! | Steel Division 2 10v10 Gameplay 1440p 

Regarding T34/76 armour quality: IRL To increase the number of produced tanks factories used any available equipment. Including equipment for metal casting. Casting gives lower armour quality than rolling, so the thickness was proportionally increased to 53mm. That's the "1942 variant". The "1943 variant" had the turret made by stamping 45mm rolled plates. All variants of T34/76 and T34/85 share the same hull with 45mm plate angled by 60 degrees gives 90mm effective thickness. There were indeed issues with armour quality due to high sulfur quantity and rushed assembly but they were much more prevalent in 1942 when evacuated factories barely set up the production and were more concerned about producing anything at all. These issues were resolved in 1943 (don't remember the exact date, so maybe late 1943). In game all armour values are subject to Eugen's balancing and there don't seem to be any consistent rules. Even the effective armour thickness gets picked and choosed and tweaked a lot. For example, to up-armour Tiger from 100 to 125 they probably "included into calculations" almost horizontal piece above the transmission. And the armour quality doesn't matter at all, otherwise half of Panthers should be torn apart by a rock thrown in their general direction.

I recommended bringing in more 120 mm mortar. A,B,C phase. The gimmick for this division is to smoke the open ground for the desantniki to rush. Bring in supply in A,B,C phase for unlimited smoke I recomend everyone to watch vulcanhd video titled "lung damage not service related sd2 gameplay" where the allies ALL play 3 VDD in 10 V 10. It will enlighten everyone on how to play this div. Either then that nice game

Armor value going "down" might be due to the fact that 1943 models of T34/76 had larger turrets, with less sloping (T34s up until that time had rather cramped small turrets that hampered crew operations). The same steel thickness in a more vertical plate makes for less effective armor overall. And like whyme943 said, the soviets experienced repeated problems with providing good quality armor steel to tank factories, theres even reports of widely varying effectiveness in the same single plate on a tank.

The -43 had worse armour than the -42 because of issues with steel quality in that year. Don’t know much more than that unfortunately.