I got the Type 89 the other day, and my thoughts on it in the stock configuration so far are as follows:
- The missiles are powerful with high damage and penetration, but don't have a tandem warhead and need to be aimed carefully
- 9k DPM on an autocannon with 200mm of penetration is respectable, if a bit lackluster compared to the 9k DPM with 320mm pen on the BWP-2000 or the >11K DPM with 185mm of penetration of the BMD-2M and BMP-3M
- Gun handling on the autocannon is excellent, and the missiles are very responsive
- Mobility is adequate, but a bit on the low side
- It is looks like it might be surprisingly well-protected against autocannons, but I have not been shot at enough to test this properly
- View range is above average (but not by that much)
- Camo when stationary or moving slowly is slightly above average, but suffers when you move quickly and especially when you fire the autocannon in long bursts (I can get it to drop from 45% camo to ~16% when stationary using Lt.Col Rashid)
- Lack of APS or ERA makes it venerable to ATGMs
Overall it's not a terrible vehicle, but it's not particularly good without any upgrades. It definitely has the potential to be very good, but requires some amount of skill and game knowledge to use effectively when stock. Looking at the upgrades it has access to, I'd probably only make a few minor changes:
- Increase the damage per shot of the autocannon from 45 to 50
- Add an option for a continuous-fire autocannon that can be swaped out with the magazine-fed one (~200 rounds/min should give comparable DPM when using the same ammo)
- Add an option to either take the ATGM control unit OR a flash suppressor (reduces the camo penalty for firing by some amount) that unlocks at the same time as the control unit