StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Thanks, that's of course true. Any issues I have with the 88's pen are against equal or higher tier, I don't recall any real problems with lower tier opponents. At least I don't recall going "Oh no, it's a T-34, run!".

On a tangent, it looks like with the upgraded turret, the driver and radioman of a 3601 can only use the hatches if the turret is rotated to face the rear...? Is sort of thing something that really does happen for tanks of the era or is it an art oversight? Is that why they have that rear facing MG port?

Personally I'd have liked it if the PzIV was modeled as the late war one with those side skirts. It just "looks" right to me.

There's always the piss hatch at the bottom if the 3601H has it...

xthetenth wrote: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.

Why would they do that?

AniThyng wrote: On a tangent, it looks like with the upgraded turret, the driver and radioman of a 3601 can only use the hatches if the turret is rotated to face the rear...? Is sort of thing something that really does happen for tanks of the era or is it an art oversight? Is that why they have that rear facing MG port?

Similar issues existed with some operational tanks of the era, and were outright common with prototypes and one-off technology demonstrators. Since the 3601 was a development prototype IRL, it's not unlikely the proposed turret would have been awkward like that before engineers corrected the problems for a hypothetical production vehicle.

Simon_Jester wrote:and it was designed to have full ammunition compatibility with an AA gun of the same caliber.

This is incorrect. The ammunition had different primers. The Tiger's 88 was electrically fired while the Flak 88 was percussion.

As for AniThyng's turret question, several tanks had issues where having the turret in a particular position would block a hull hatch and trap that crewmember inside. I am not aware of anything as bad as the 3601 fathead turret, but then WoT does not have to worry about such things. I believe many pages earlier in this thread someone said that Panzer IV drivers were known to remove the nuts from their hatch hinges and carry a hammer so they could pop the pins and throw the whole thing clear if the barrel was left in an inconvenient position.

Simon_Jester wrote:

xthetenth wrote: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.

Why would they do that?

Mainly because they're removing the Vaderturm from the PzIV. It's getting replaced with a less stupid turret, which will also have spaced armor. They're going to be buffing the L/48 to compensate.

AniThyng wrote:On a tangent, it looks like with the upgraded turret, the driver and radioman of a 3601 can only use the hatches if the turret is rotated to face the rear...? Is sort of thing something that really does happen for tanks of the era or is it an art oversight? Is that why they have that rear facing MG port?

I had the privelege to talk to a Panzer IV driver who had been through the whole war in his tank (Panzergruppe 2 - Joined Spring 1941 and was active until the surrender in 45). He told me that tank drivers would remove the nuts from the bolts holding the drivers hatch down and would have a hammer on them because of this problem. When the tank got hit, they'd get the bolts out and lift the hatch cover as whole. His tank got knocked out 4 times, he always got out unharmed because of this trick.

Also, a funny anecdote that tank crews used to sleep in 3ft deep ditches they dug, and then parked the tank over it during the later parts of the war. On asking why, he retorted that a bomb hit on the tank would usually not go through the bottom, but they usually missed the tank, and the shrapnel was the real danger. This method was proven to be most effective to survive the night...

I met a black veteran one day when I was in college who'd started his Army career in tank destroyers in World War Two in France. He fought in Korea; after a tour in Vietnam he finally concluded the Army was actively trying to kill him and got out.

I've named the commander of my American medium after him.

So...I got bored of the T8 grind and decided I want a Stug in my garage. I'm at the marder ii stage now. Is it worth spending free xp to skip the hetzer? I only really want to play a stug for the sake of playing a stug...

The Hetzer is a pretty popular TD, from what I've heard. It's low-slung, sneaky, and can be extremely well armed with the upgraded 75mm gun or the 105mm miniderp (think of the weapon that goes on the Sherman 105).

Not a perfect tank, but certainly not feeble or useless.

EDIT: My personal impression of the Hetzer and other German TDs comes from fighting them, but I get the sense that the Hetzer is similar to the later ones in that it has good frontal armor (praise be to slope), but weak flanks. Since that's true throughout the German TD tree until you get to the massive mobile pillboxes that are the Ferdinand and Jagdtiger, it might be good practice.

The Hetzer's darned good and has been for a long while. It starts off a bit slow but it's well armored and camos great.

Also, the Ferdi and JT still have weak flanks. Even the JPE has weak flanks for its tier because of that casemate.

Simon_Jester wrote:I've named the commander of my American medium after him.

How do you rename a crew member to whatever name you like? I thought you had to use one of the names already in the scrollbox. I would love to name the commander of my T-18 "Chuck Norris", but the closest is "Curt Norris", and it won't do.

It so happens that both his first and last name are common. That said, I'd like to be able to do true custom names too. I heard of someone editing a file on their own computer to do it...

I'm really liking that X5 XP thing they've got going on right now. Makes things so much easier...got me my KV-1's 85, and that is so nice. That tank is a monster with that gun at top-tier...I like it.

The KV-1 is a very good tank now that it's got that 85mm. It's nicely placed between the T1 and BDR, with a solid gun and real armor all around. I must confess the 57mm keeps singing a siren song to me though, promising it'll make the KV-1 play like the Churchill. I know it doesn't have the moving dispersion to make it work well though. I just haven't been playing much at all. I hop on for CW and that's about it most days.

Just started playing this last week. Name in the game is Lodgik.

Dear god I'm loving the Luchs. Just got my first top gun in it.

Victory!
Battle: Himmelsdorf September-01-12 11:24:25 PM
Vehicle: PzKpfw II Luchs
Experience received: 852
Credits received: 11,428
Battle Achievements: Top Gun, Leclerc's Medal III Class, Mastery Badge: "Ace Tanker"

That tank is just a beast in same tier matches. Stock, it's nearly useless. You're undergunned and really underpowered. But upgraded fully, that thing just owns.

Hoory for 5x XP. But it's not helping in the slightest because of FUCKING USELESS FUCKING TEAMS.

I literally have not won a match in the last two days. And again, it's not 'slightly' losing. It's losing because the entire fucking useless bunch of gibbering fuckwits have decided to line up one by one and very slowly drive into the entire enemy team rear armour first while belching La Marseillaise.

Yeah, I think I'm going to be taking another break from this game just for the sake of my blood pressure.

It's interesting playing turretless tds. I'd done my time in the m3 like any other Sherman driver but this is different. Now bushes really mean hiding, and if I get a good sniping position I can shoot and shoot and nothing returns fire. I can't brawl at all, I sometimes forget I have no turret, and death follows swiftly if anything shoots my sides.

AniThyng wrote:It's interesting playing turretless tds. I'd done my time in the m3 like any other Sherman driver but this is different. Now bushes really mean hiding, and if I get a good sniping position I can shoot and shoot and nothing returns fire. I can't brawl at all, I sometimes forget I have no turret, and death follows swiftly if anything shoots my sides.

Work your way towards the SU-152. Armor is lacking, but it's fast as hell and the top 122mm has completely absurd DPM, around 3500 or so with a rammer and 100% loaders. For a Soviet gun, the accuracy is pretty good too. It was one of the most pleasant grinds I've ever had.

One thing I have a perception of is that my (kills+survivals)/matches score is improving lately. It may just be me, but I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of some things. That, or it's a string of luck. Hard to say, and I'm not obsessive enough to look over my scores that carefully.

Currently my theory is that you're doing "average or better" if your (kills+survivals)/matches score is greater than one. Statistically speaking, that means you kill enemies more often than you are killed. Obviously not the only measure of performance, and for arty players (who are way more likely than normal to survive a winning match) it's probably distorted, but I think it works.

Simon_Jester wrote:One thing I have a perception of is that my (kills+survivals)/matches score is improving lately. It may just be me, but I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of some things. That, or it's a string of luck. Hard to say, and I'm not obsessive enough to look over my scores that carefully.

Currently my theory is that you're doing "average or better" if your (kills+survivals)/matches score is greater than one. Statistically speaking, that means you kill enemies more often than you are killed. Obviously not the only measure of performance, and for arty players (who are way more likely than normal to survive a winning match) it's probably distorted, but I think it works.

Kills aren't a great metric, since that also includes finishing off tanks that other players did most of the work on. I'd say the best metric of skill is either xp/match or damage/match.

Vortex, I don't disagree with the point, but I think it averages out. Everyone gets some portion of their kills by finishing off a damaged vehicle, including the people who kill me.

Over the course of a hundred matches or so in (for example) my Matilda, sometimes I kill several enemy tanks. Sometimes I kill none. "Typically" I kill an average of about 0.9 tanks per match: sometimes I pump 300 points of damage into something only to see someone else finish it off, sometimes it's the other way around.

The only way for your kill statistics to be grossly out of proportion to the amount of damage you're dealing per match

Also, I feel that damage/match disproportionately benefits certain kinds of tanks with heavy guns- TDs and SPGs. And it does so at the expense of tanks whose role is (partly) to use their heavy armor to draw fire that would otherwise land on scrawnier allies. Since some of those tanks are ones I like to play (Matilda, Super Pershing, T29), I don't feel that damage/match really captures everything.

XP/match would be a better measure if it adjusted for premium usage and tank tier, which as far as I can tell it does not.

On the other hand, (kills+survivals)/match disproportionately benefits SPGs a bit, leaves heavies, mediums and TDs more or less alone. It penalizes light tanks, since they usually die fairly early and most of their benefit to the team comes from spotting which doesn't get them kills. But then again, I don't play light tanks much, so I feel like it's not a bad measure of how I am doing.

I don't think you can come up with a mathematical "I am doing well" algorithm that works across all vehicles.

I mean I reckon I'm doing well in a loltraktor because I can break 1000xp in it without bonuses, but that doesn't translate to good overall performance, just that I have one set of encounters figured out.

The Infidel wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:I've named the commander of my American medium after him.

How do you rename a crew member to whatever name you like? I thought you had to use one of the names already in the scrollbox. I would love to name the commander of my T-18 "Chuck Norris", but the closest is "Curt Norris", and it won't do.

Surely you could call him Charles...?

Anyway, as per Vortex's praise of the ISU, I am toying with the idea of opening a russian TD line, since I already run US meds, German Meds/Heavies and am on my way to a StuG. That way I can experience the so called russian bias for myself!

That being said, what are the major differences in the way Russian TD's play compared to German?

Vendetta wrote:I don't think you can come up with a mathematical "I am doing well" algorithm that works across all vehicles.

Clearly yes- but there are indicators.

If you're winning 40% of your matches over a thousand-match period, you're doing something wrong. It's really, blindingly obvious. To achieve that you'd basically have to go randomly shooting your teammates in the back or something. Likewise, if you're winning 60% of your matches you're doing something right.

My own personal metric of my own performance, one I create to check to myself "how am I doing?" is "do I blow up enemy tanks roughly as often as I myself am blown up?" For the kind of tanks I drive, this seems like a pretty fair way to judge.