xthetenth wrote:On the subject of artillery, I've really pretty much forgotten that artillery is a major thing, because between positioning and movement habits I very rarely get hit with much more than a splash or two with any frequency. Just thinking about where arty is and moving when they might be able to see you to make you an unappealing target helps a ton, arty doesn't aim for splashes so if they don't think they'll be able to do more they won't try.
That's certainly true for higher-tier artillery. When I play my SU-14, I tend to ignore enemy units that move around a lot, because I don't want to waste a shot. I can only uncork so many shots per game, so I tend to go for the bigger tanks that feel invincible and expose themselves for extended periods of time. My favourite target is the Lowe: in my experience, Lowe drivers are most likely to think they're invincible. I've even seen Lowe drivers take a direct hit and
not move even though they weren't tracked, thus allowing me to nail them again despite the slow reload time on my gun. I don't know why Lowe drivers seem to be so unusually dumb about avoiding artillery, but there you go.
Mind you, when I play my SU-26, I'll often fire at moving targets just because the thing shoots and reloads so quickly that I can do this and be effective.
I would love to see historical battles, although the sort where you get randomly allocated a tank might be a bit tricky to make work considering they had to pull a game mode and some of the new game mode maps because while the supertesters had been able to figure them out easily and play good games the general player base couldn't.
If they were to do the historical battles with randomly assigned tanks, they would have to make it a user-selectable game mode instead of just randomly dealing it out to people when they click on "Battle".
On the german players... I really dislike the vocal sort who tend inevitably to downplay all their strengths and play up the other nations' strengths. I actually had to argue that the E-50 is a better sniper than a T-54 because the useless hull armor, worse accuracy, very slow aim time, low damage per shell and bad layout for peeking aren't serious problems. I would like the pen on the short 88 increased, because playing a 130 pen gun going for a 200 pen gun is painful and could seriously use some middle ground. Hopefully they really do tighten the tiers because that'll help a lot.
I get the feeling that they've either never tried playing other nations' tanks or they're just lying when they say US and USSR tanks are so much easier to play. I enjoy playing my Panther tank at least as much as my T20 or my T-43 which are both at the same tier. The 198mm penetration and fast firing rate easily make its gun the best of the lot, and while the other two are obviously more maneuverable, I can't see any reason to feel jealous of other tier-7 medium tanks when I'm in my Panther.
Similarly, while the Tiger tank is not as invincible as its legions of fans would like it to be, it still has a gun which is superior to its same-tier competition. Yes, the Soviet 122mm guns have more alpha damage, but so what? Alpha damage is academic if you miss or bounce, both of which are more likely with the 122mm gun which has less accuracy and penetration. Its low-tech shells are also outrageously expensive.
