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agentfisherSDnet: You're as brilliant as you are beautiful.
Librium Arcana, Where Gamers Play!
"We're cooler than an iced frappicino -- On the Planet Hoth!"

...I was kind of wondering when someone would do something there.

Anyway, question. Right now I'm playing the T-34-85 as if it were an American medium or something- lots of 'keep the enemy at bay and pound them from a distance' when I can. I'm pretty sure there's more complexity to handling the higher tier Russian mediums. Anyone have any advice?

What kind of American medium? The toothpick play of the Easy 8 and the T20 is quite a bit different from the higher tier ones.

I just don't get my IS-3, sometimes I play a game and manage to trudge on through it with 5 kills and maybe 50% damage at most after deflecting like 100 hits and sometimes I die in one hit to the front.

You're probably getting inspectionhatched in the latter case. I do it to IS-3s a lot, but none of my tanks have a gun big enough to actually kill one in a single shot. I did troll and annoy more than a few with the Easy 8 though.

The T-34-85, with it's new engine upgrade and the removal of the 100mm IDIOT cannon has become a sort of 'Heavy Easy 8'. You get lucky bounces unlike the E8 from enemy medium shots sometimes, but you mostly still need to flank and hit enemy heavies from the sides, and run the hell away if ANYONE points a gun barrel in your direction.

So that's not really an American medium style, that's just mediums. To be honest, I think the soviet medium style only appears at the T-44, when you have a combination of high frontal armor, topspeed, and gun to overcome your many soft stat weaknesses.

The new TDs have made this patch very different.

Previously, you just went 'la la la, oh what, that enemy TD/Heavy hit me for 600 damage! Unfair!'

Now you go

'Oh thank science, I ONLY got hit for 800 from that enemy TD instead of 1300!'

I have a KV-13, and not the faintest idea how to use it effectively, a good match is when I manage to hit something before I die. It feels undergunned for a tier 7, but that's probably from playing mostly heavies and arty.

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A fuse is a physical embodyment of zen, in order for it to succeed, it must fail.

Power to the Peaceful

If you have friends like mine, raise your glasses. If you don't, raise your standards.

I still haven't gotten past the T-28/A-20 so I wouldn't be any help there.

That being said...I'm finding the 3601 to be an odd machine. It is a medium, but plays much more like a heavy. It isn't fast enough (at least with the base engine) to flank attack, and its turn rate is horrid. That being said, its armor is surprisingly bouncy, so I've been playing it like a sniper heavy, not a medium. And oh boy...with that L-70 its quite the sniper.

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SDNW5: Republic of Arcadia...Sweden in SPAAACE

I never see KV-13's when I play my T34 so I can't even say what they're like to play against. My guess is that it's just 'one of those' tanks and that it's something to push through.

Ran into a couple KV-13's during that special over the weekend. From what I could tell they were just bigger and slightly slower KV-1S's. That being said, the gun was able to get through my 3601, so it isn't THAT bad.

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SDNW5: Republic of Arcadia...Sweden in SPAAACE

Which probably explains my bad Pershing-fu...

I mean that I try to stay hull down and snipe, occasionally dash to what looks like a good flanking firing position, and N% of the time I stupidly get sucked into a brawl and die in a fire because that's what I always do.

Sounds like how I play my 3601, though with less 'dashing from position to position' since the thing is surprisingly slow. Speaking of which...am I playing that tank right? I'm using it like a slightly lighter/faster sniper heavy, since it isn't playing like a medium.

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SDNW5: Republic of Arcadia...Sweden in SPAAACE

Its the other way around, the KV-1S is the bigger and slower vehicle, I know, I have both of them. The '13 has an 85mm as its top gun, is armored almost exactly like an IS, and will do 60kph, but I just can't seem to make it work for me. Its fast enough that I can get into trouble, but not well enough armed that I can fight my way back out. So it's mostly a hangar queen, just filling out my KV garage.

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A fuse is a physical embodyment of zen, in order for it to succeed, it must fail.

Power to the Peaceful

If you have friends like mine, raise your glasses. If you don't, raise your standards.

Eh, I just saw how people played them, and didn't really get a good look before it blew my 3601 sky-high. So I'll gladly admit to being wrong there.

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SDNW5: Republic of Arcadia...Sweden in SPAAACE

The 3601 is my best tank when I used it, and that was when I was still more noobish, it really is an awesome tank - it has the same frontal armor and firepower as a stock Tiger, which really helps it withstand so much punishment at its tier.

I'm now replaying it to train up the crew I kept for it so that I can move them into my empty Tiger when they upgrade the 3601 to a heavy in 8.0. My tiger's crew has went on to crew my Tiger II. Mothballed the Tiger to avoid spoiling its 56% winrate with careless play. But I still <3 the ingame maxed out Tiger. Cute and stumpy and surprisingly agile.

For all the whining about "russian bias", my PzIII, 3601 and Tiger have healthy stats, and a lot of it from farming of assorted KVs. Though admittedly my panther stats suck and the M26 is my best tank now - but then again by the time I got the M26 I'm considerably less noobish then when I had the PzIII and 3601

Also yeah, I tried the VK3002 with the short 88 and the L70 and decided that it really does work better with the L70 for some reason (appearently the extra 8mm pen really makes a difference?). It's a fun tank, except for the horrible gun depression.

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I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character

So that's why it was so bouncy

And I can see them upping the 3601 to heavy status. It does play like a 'mini-Tiger' so it makes sense. And yeah, its my best/favorite tank, with my III/IV in close second. I love that L-70 coupled with the insane (for a Tier 6 medium) armor. So much fun.

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SDNW5: Republic of Arcadia...Sweden in SPAAACE

Situational awareness is key for the US Mediums and the Fatton (M103). Too many times people get too engrossed with trying to kill their target and forget that there are 14 other tanks in the field.

You just have to keep moving based on where the enemy team is, and recognize that your armor is just an insurance policy rather than a license to actively court taking hits from enemy tanks. A tank like the T29 or T32 can actually consistently court taking hits. A US Medium can't.

I think the KV-1S is simply the superior vehicle. The KV-13 feels like a speedy premium (good armor and crappy gun), but the KV-1S is basically a miniature IS-2. It will teach you good habits for when you eventually upgrade to a true IS. Heck, I call it the KV->IS rather than the KV-1S.

There's a lot of tanks in the game, I think, that have side armor right around the 80-100mm LOS thickness where that little extra oomph matters. Especially when you factor in hit angle- it's way easier for a medium to fight effectively if it can reliably penetrate enemy tanks' side armor at a thirty degree angle from 200-300 meters, instead of bouncing 20-30% of the time.

Also, I suspect the quicker rate of fire has some major advantages- for one, it means that you're going to have a better chance of doing 'hidden' critical hits that impair your enemy's ability to fight back, like gun or engine damage. As long as all the shots penetrate, there's a lot to be said for low alpha high DPS for a sniping tank.

Hilarious thing just happened...I was playing with my ELC and made it to the enemy flag. Once there, I rammed their arty and fired point-blank taking him down to very low health.

What's funny is that I had a T-50 chasing me from earlier, and I moved slightly to the side, and he overshot me, ramming the arty and killing it.

One of the funnier moments I've had in this game.

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SDNW5: Republic of Arcadia...Sweden in SPAAACE

You have a point there - also I tend to forget the usual value I look at in the direct gun comparision module menu see is the average, not the +/- 25% variance , which also explains why you'd hardly ever fail to pen with the Panther's superb 75/L100.

I'm still not entirely convinced the short 88 should have such relatively poor pen in game, but such is how it is. @Zinegata: what's your take on the 88's actual performance?

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I do know how to spell
AniThyng is merely the name I gave to what became my favourite Baldur's Gate II mage character

Mainly because as a large-caliber antitank gun it was designed in the 1930s and didn't have great penetration characteristics. Breaking four inches of armor was gross overpenetration against pretty much any tank that existed when the gun was introduced, and it was designed to have full ammunition compatibility with an AA gun of the same caliber.

It performs better with APCR ammo, but that's gold rounds in the game, more or less.

So the Germans really had no logical reason to introduce the 88 L71 until someone started worrying about the next generation of Soviet heavy tanks, the ones that might have MORE than 4-5 inches of armor from many angles.

Simon already covers it pretty well from the technical aspect, but I'd also add that the 88's actually fought mainly against Allied M4 and T-34 mediums; or Tier 5s in WoT parlance. The 88s had more than enough penetration against these tanks, which in any case often survived a hit or two from 88s anyway.

Frankly, IRL any German gun above the 75mm L48 was overkill against the Allied mediums and even the few heavies (mainly the IS-2s).

The "problem" in WoT is that Tigers with the short 88 aren't fighting mainly Tier 5s. They're fighting Tier 7s - which includes tanks like the IS-2 and T29. The former has better firepower, while the latter has a superior armor layout and firepower. Both really benefit from being designed by actual engineers instead of bootlickers trying to impress Hitler.

Contrast it to the 3601H, which I'd generally drive over the Tiger any day. It faces Tier 5s more due to its rank, but it's still mobile enough to face Tier 7s or better.

There's also a minor issue that I found with the ingame 88s: There seems to be half a second delay between pressing the "fire" button and the shell actually leaving the barrel. While I've generally been able to compensate for it, I think this is one of the more unfair "soft stat" disadvantages of the Tiger / other German tanks which needs addressing. Only derp guns should have this disadvantage, not the high-velocity ATGs.

It looks like with the L/70 going bye bye on the Pz IV next patch its pen is going to get buffed to 150mm pen which should help that tier bracket out for Germany a good bit.

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Of course, that comes from what I remember on the Nuclear Weapons FAQ, so that may be assuming you have a small nuke go off in your ass rather than a red hot poker. - Connor MacLeod