World of Tanks

[xthetenth]

Ok, to expand on the above... When you first start with the T-32 right off the bat you can upgrade to your highest level engine (it's the same engine upgrades from the T-29 American heavy), which makes going in a straight line easier, but till you upgrade the tracks your turn rate is a lot like the base T-29, which is to say pregnant whales can out manuever you. The base turret will accept the 105mm gun from the T-29, but you need the track upgrade in order to support the weight (same goes for the gun rammer add-on), so first thing you do is spend your XPs on those friggin' tracks. The down side is the base turret has horrible armor (like less than 150 if I'm remembering right), but the upgrade turret makes up for this bay having enough armor that you can bounce Mous shell half the time. Another down side is that the smaller turrets of the T-32 mean less ammo load out, but that's no biggie.

Also, you can't go hull down in a lot of the same places a T-29 can. This tank is short, like maybe half a meter taller than a T-54.

Great tank once fully upgraded, and you're gonna need a gun ram and vert stabilizer on it.

It's 114 on the front turret, but I'm not sure which part it's calculating. I seem to recall hearing that the upgrade was counting the glacis and the first was counting the rest of the hull or some other vodka sodden coding sorcery. There is a lot more detail in the armor models than they put in the ingame stats. Beautiful tank though just about got it to the second turret.

[Norade]

I managed a fuck me moment just a few minutes ago, I accidentally sold my M6 without having researched the T-29 yet and put myself in the hole so much I had to run a match before I could upgrade the gun and radio on the damned thing. Thankfully my Easy-8 works like a charm as a money earner.

[PeZook]

Last night was a rather frustrating experience for me: I was rather happy with my new snazzy 100mm gun for the T-34-85, and even had one match where it was mostly medium tanks, so I could actually fight and kill stuff.

Then, the rest of the night, I was once more relegated to desperate survival: the 100mm can penetrate pretty much everything, even from the front, but it can't actually put much hurt on the high tier heavies I keep getting.

I wonder if I am doing something wrong: one match on Campinovka, an IS-4 just plain tanked (hah! pun! ) four of my rounds, drove up right next to my hull-down position and wasted me at point-blank before I could run away (it stuck the gun through a solid wall, actually...)

In other matches, I also noticed heavies can lurk in trees quite effectively: I ran into four once who of course turned me into swiss cheese. Are there any effective ways to defeat camouflage at all?

The T-34-85 also has an annoying tendency to get ammoracked. It can kill KVs with impunity, though, which I suppose is an upgrade

----------------

The other thing I did yesterday was to sell mu Su-76 and Su-85B in favor of the fully enclosed Su-85 tank destroyer which I finally researched. Well, that didn't go so well: upgrading one tier means I now get to contend with the well known swarms of heavies. The first upgraded gun, an 85mm, is really rather anemic, and the vehicle itself gets gored by anything bigger than a KV the moment I fire. Since everyone is datalinked, that means a Tiger II lurking waaaaaaaay back can easily plink me with a round while I try to engage.

--------------------

Overall my experience so far has been positive, with the biggest gripe still being the matchmaking. Fortunately, the matches are really fast so I can keep trying until I get a somewhat balanced match.

[HMS Sophia]

Grrrr
Teching up on russian SPG's (lulz snipertillery), and I keep forgetting to watch for enemies flanking my position.
That last game went well though. No kills, but lots of assists, from my tiny tier 2 SPG

[Norade]

More experience with the T29 and I must say, if you know how to use the thing it can be great even against T10's. I just move from hull down to hull down and aim for tracks on the big stuff and hull on the smaller stuff. Toss in the occasional HE round at the turret to mess things up there and you're set. So far the lack of speed hasn't hurt too badly, but the tracks are a needed upgrade. I can't wait to upgrade from my 90mm to the 105mm, but at least one engine upgrade is coming first.

Also, I guess this means I'm tough enough for the big boy SDN units now. So if you need another heavy who isn't afraid to occasionally eat some rounds and will actually move up and help pick stuff apart let me know.

[HMS Sophia]

Are there any low tier platoons/teams running around?
I'm still quite low but I would rather run with people who are likely to work together.

[Highlord Laan]

Got a T20 yesterday, and had enough xp to snag the tracks, M1A2 cannon was already researched, so I dropped that in too.

Immediately ran into hordes of IS7's and GW Tigers. Lot's of T54's, too. I assume this is the point where the game turns to total shit. Seven games, and I was barely able to hurt anything in any of them, and I ended up getting oneshot by the dev's favorite superheavy in all of them.

[PeZook]

It's funny because SOMEONE drives those tanks in the top parts of the matchup table. It's just that I never get to be the one massacring everything below

[Mr Bean]

Yes there are four types of matchups I've seen

1. Tier 2-4 matchups, sometimes Tier 4 tanks are not available so it becomes a Tier 1-3 matchup which is a nice fair matchup for all involved. The Loltractors and MS-1's can't stand up to fire but working together they can defeat any Tier 3 tank out there.

3. Tier 2-5 Godillza matchups, might not be a type but I often see these where there is only 1 Tier 5 (Normally a T1 Heavy or a KV, sometimes a Su-85) vs a whole host of tier 2 and tier 3 tanks. The only reason the T1/KV does not get 14 kills is due to being kinda slow and everyone dieing before they can get there/competent arty targeting the single Tier 5 tank first.

4. Tier 4-10 The matchs your most in, because when there's 8 IS-3's and a Maus on the field, your T1 Heavy? Oh yeah, you really can compete with those big dogs. But hey sometimes your the IS-152 facing off against Shermans. The high end of the game is luck of the drawn shit because the tanks don't seemed to be weighed by type. An ultra heavy team of IS 1's, 3's and German Kingtigers can face off against a tank destroyer team of Su-152's and IS-152 with the odd Jagpanther and it's going to be horrible one sided because while the TD have the guns to hurt the IS-3's and KT's, they don't have the standup power because TD are over-valued at this point

Take this matchup

IS-1 vs Su-152
IS-1 has more armor, more hitpoints, better turning rates better most everything and can get the best mid-range gun (The 100)
The Su-152 has better top speed

The TD loses to the IS because it's on equal footing. Yes the dev's have given the Su-152 the ability to mount the same 122 the IS has but it fires slightly faster (as in in sixty seconds you will be able to fire one extra shell) but since your much weaker armor you shooting him might knock off 25% of his heath, him shooting you will knock off 60% of your heath. Or worse de-track (Read your going to die) you in his first shot.

If TD were moved back 1 tier in mass I suspect they would all be much more deadly. If the Su-85 was a Tier 4 and so on the matchups would be better for all involved as the weakeness of no turret and very weak side/rear armor would be balanced by strong front armor and an outstanding gun instead of a gun "just a tiny bit better than what the mediums and heavys are running around with.

[Zinegata]

Yeah, I kinda feel pity for the TDs when I'm playing in my IS-3. They seem to be horribly outmatched most of the time.

Anyway, I have an IS-3, about 50K free XP, and 2.2 million credits.

My Russian line is pure heavy tanks up to the IS-3.

I've done the German TD tree up to the Marder, the medium tank tree to the Mk IV, and the arty tree to the Hummel.

US tanks I've gotten the Easy 8, going through the lights.

Which one should I go for next? I'm almost tempted for a Jpgpz IV but TD issues are deterring me. I feel like getting a GW Panther, but if I do Laan will start making fun of me again

(I don't necessarily feel like grinding up also. So if you guys know any fun low tier tanks I may go for that).

[Rightous Fist Of Heaven]

Decided to take the last advantages of the 5x exp and credits yesterday and went for the Maus. Seeing as to how I already had the VK4502 fully upgraded and grinding exp and cash was very quick since every round got me at least some 200k cash and 2000exp. So I went for it and bought the Enhanced Gun-laying Drive, Gun Rammer and Ventilation kits while getting the crew up to 100%. With the three kits added and crew fully trained, the Maus is devastating. Sure, its pretty slow but to compensate it is virtually impregnable from the front against pretty much anything short of the heaviest Russian TD guns and artillery. I actually got into a slugging match with another Maus and we both kept pounding each other at the front to no avail. I bounced 5 times off him while he bounced 4 shots off my front.

The Maus can very confidently go against anything on the map and expect to walk out as the winner. IS-4's and IS-7's can both be penetrated frontally with its 12.8cm even without using premium ammunition. This applies to the T30, T34 and T32 as well. In one match I ended up trashing an IS-7, T30 and an IS-4 with 55% damage incurred. Most of their fire simply bounced off whatever part of my front they could get a shot at.

Though I suspect now that the 5x exp and credits is over, I cant play as much with it since its damn difficult to make money with any T10.

[Exonerate]

PeZook: That sounds about the same as my experience in the T-34-85. The IS-4 is beastly enough that you'll pretty much need another Superheavy to reliably damage it from the front. The triangle on the front hull is actually a weak point that is shared with the IS-7 as well, but after the (incredibly unnecessary) armor buff it got, even 175mm penetration won't do much at all. There's pretty much nothing that beats hidden tanks, the only think you can do is stay in a large group and hope your team's artillery will help out. And if you think the 34-85 ammo rack is bad, wait until you play the T-44. I've literally had streaks of games where the first shot that hit me detonated the ammo rack.

Soviet TD line gets a lot better when you hit the SU-85, which has the 107mm - hands down the best gun of its tier. You lack the frontal armor to do bounce shots reliably, so your role is pretty much limited to taking potshots from outside view range.

[Mr. Coffee]

There was a good reason for the majority of matches last night involving a lot of Tier 9-10 tanks. It was the last night of the 5X XP/Credits promotion and people were hell bent on extracting every last bit of XPs and creds they could get.

[D.Turtle]

snip matchmaking stuff

Well, in this post they explain how the matchmaking works.

How this works:

Match-making system defines type and tier of every single vehicle. E.g. T-29 - tier 7 heavy tank.

See 7-heavy line and find out which battle tier spread it has. In our example, from 6 to 10.

The exact battle tier is chosen on a random basis. E.g. 7.

Then match-making system begins processing the waiting queue, and chooses the tanks that can participate in tier 7 battles (7th column) and makes up 2 teams from them.

The problem is that when there are 5 times as many people playing high tier heavies in comparison to high tear mediums, then you will necessarily have a lot of matches with many high tier heavies and few high tier mediums. They could of course implement some sort of limit, as to how many heavies are allowed in a match, but then the wait times for heavies would be atrocious.

As for the heavy vs TD thing: generally, TD have guns one tier higher than the same tier heavy, while mediums have a gun one tier lower than the same tier heavies (so two lower than same tier TD). So TDs should already be quite strong in comparison to same tier heavies (and massacre same tier mediums unless outmaneuvered).

[Mr Bean]

As for the heavy vs TD thing: generally, TD have guns one tier higher than the same tier heavy, while mediums have a gun one tier lower than the same tier heavies (so two lower than same tier TD). So TDs should already be quite strong in comparison to same tier heavies (and massacre same tier mediums unless outmaneuvered).

This is simply not true

Lets look at some examples
Tier 5
KV best gun
107mm Zis-6, ROF 7.06 r/min 167mm average penetration 300 damage accuracy .39, aiming time 3

Su-85
107mm Zis-6S, rof ROF 7.79 r/min 167mm average penetration 300 damage accuracy .37, aiming time 2.3

Panzer IV
75mm L/70 15.38 r/min 138mm average penetration, 135 damage, .31 accuracy, 2 aiming time

Stug 3G
75mm L/70 15.38 r/min 138mm average penetration, 135 damage, .3 accuracy, 1.5 aiming time

See the issue?

IS-1 VS Su-152
Both have the
122mm D-25 but the Su-152 gets the mod 1944 version that fires at 9.23 rpm VS 5.56 and again has .36 acc vs .4 and 2.3 aim time vs 3.

There are a few tank destroyers that get better guns then their equal level counter-parts. But only at the low end (AT-1 6pdr vs 37mm's) or the high end (Ferd gets Pak 12.8 vs 88 longs and 105mms) does that happen. For Tier 3 to Tier 9 every other TD comes equipped with identical guns to the heavy or medium tank counter-parts.

And that's why playing a TD sucks balls on top of everything else, your only advantage is in being hard to see, beyond that your lacking.

[Zinegata]

So no next tank advice? *cries*

[wautd]

Is there any SDN unit one can join? Also, I am gravely dissappointed by the lack of German audio in the "German" version of the game. And finally, Russian version players got an M3 Stuart for New Year! Heheh. It's so fast, but so ... crap.

SDN unit is sdn in the search field
.

doesn't seem to work since server split. I suppose everyone is on the US server?

[Vanas]

Looks like it. I'm over on the EU side myself. Can always make an SDN EU channel, I suppose.

[PeZook]

Yeah, most of SDN unsurprisingly ended up in the US cluster

Next time I'm on, I'll take the liberty to open an EuroSDN channel

[HMS Sophia]

Joined EuroSDN pezook
Looking forward to seeing you guys on there.

[Highlord Laan]

Got the 90mm and a vert stab on my T20. I am now rampaging high-speed death for Tigers and KV's of every stripe. Only IS4's and 7's can fend off my wrath, and not even the Maus is safe.

The only tanks I now fear are T54's and Pershings.

[Thunderfire]

How common is a tier 4 tank in a tier7/8 match? My poor T-28 has to fight tiger/panther/IS tanks sometimes.

[PeZook]

I saw a T1 Cunningham in a Tier VIII match once. It was driven by a guy called "LuckyHead".

[Vanas]

I'd like to re-iterate my love for the humble Churchill. For some reason, that quirky bullet-magnet of a war bastard has very slowly trundled it's way into my heart and gone all hull down. Whether it's chasing a Sherman across the map, frontally penetrating it 5 times in a row before it's gotten 3 shots off, driving with another Churchill straight into the enemy lines and drawing more firepower than an entire squadron of Maeuser (I hope that's the plural, german's not my strongpoint.) or just randomly plinking shells off of a passing Tiger, there's something about it that just works.

Unlike my Tiger. Designed by Porche. Crewed by the finest tank crews. Built by the Three Stooges. I fear that the sides of it are likely to fall off at any moment, while the commander has the mercifully unique innovation of the involuntary ejector seat carefully calibrated propelling him clear of the tank and presumably into a giant pie the moment a shell flies even near the tank.

It's doing it's job bearably when it's not exploding, especially holding off the tanks it was actually designed to unlike the far future IS4s and the totally imaginary T29s.

[Thanas]

Whether it's chasing a Sherman across the map, frontally penetrating it 5 times in a row before it's gotten 3 shots off, driving with another Churchill straight into the enemy lines and drawing more firepower than an entire squadron of Maeuser (I hope that's the plural, german's not my strongpoint.) or just randomly plinking shells off of a passing Tiger, there's something about it that just works.

The plural of Maus is Mäuse.