World of Tanks

[PeZook]

I have performed some SCIENCE! on this method today, and here are some preliminary conclusions:

1. Doesn't work on Tigers. VERY MUCH doesn't work on Tigers.

2. Stugs and Hetzers are very vulnerable to it.

3. KVs, KV-3 seem most affected, but instakills are rare. Possibly I don't shoot straight enough. Must investigate further.

4. Using it means you have to point straight at an enemy tank. This might be dangerous. Possibly.

[Simon_Jester]

Oooh! Ooh! Try it on Type 59s and ISes...

[Vanas]

It should be nasty on IS and Type 59s as the ammo should be on/close to the bottom of the tank.

And congratulations! You've found the one thing that *doesn't* ammo-rack a Tiger.

[Agent Sorchus]

Yes this is good, but with the 105's you have to note the height of the enemies underside from the ground. See the blast radius of the 105 is smaller, and the ability to pen and deal damage follows some variant of the inverse square law. A Tiger has decent height and so the blast has lost a lot of strength where it impacts.

[PeZook]

Yes this is good, but with the 105's you have to note the height of the enemies underside from the ground. See the blast radius of the 105 is smaller, and the ability to pen and deal damage follows some variant of the inverse square law. A Tiger has decent height and so the blast has lost a lot of strength where it impacts.

Actually I think it's the redneck grille on the glacis, it tends to catch the rounds and make them go boom against the frontal armor (since the 105 fires at a pretty curved angle).

I shall try to blow up T-59s and the IS series later today. I'm sure it will be hilarious whether or not it works

[Agent Sorchus]

I got a AMX12t last night. I find it is... different to play. So far the best I have been able to do is dash in to support an IS against Tiger T29 and a PZ4, and I didn't even do my weight in damage. ('Cause I targeted the Tiger first and bounced twice before targetting the pz4 like I should have at first. Still we all died cause there was absolutely no support, the entire team was camping in a worthless spot or afk at base and not using their strengths well. (Stupid KV-13, you are fast enough to flank the heavies rather than get in a straight head on fight which you don't have the gun to actually win.)

[Nephtys]

I'm about to get out of the AMX-12t. A few observations for you.

It really is very different. You are not a traditional light or medium in any sense. You're more like some sort of bastardized, high-speed ambush TD. Your gun takes far too long and is too inaccurate to snipe, so you need to whack enemies at point blank.

Unlike my usual practice of lights and mediums hitting clear terrain for maintaining maneuverability, the french lights seem to reward hitting dense urban terrain so you can make the best of your burst firepower and bad accuracy. This is ESPECIALLY true for the 12t and it's legendary terrible gun depression/elevation. I seriously think it's like -2/+4 degrees or something insane like that.

But if you wait in an urban area, you can eventually zoom around and flank people. KVs are a favorite target of mine, though you can do incidental damage to American heavies at least.

[Agent Sorchus]

I really actually like rolling terrain in this, you can pop over a rise and start stabbing people in the back and have enough room to turn around to flee behind the rise. Just did this to a Type and a T34 on the Arctic level, dashed in while they killed my teammates and emptied on them and then dashed away on the straitaway into rougher terrain to live and harass a T32. The T34 did have revenge later, but he prioritized trying to kill me over fighting on the hill(where his tank is better than what we had) to keep the team out of his base.

[xthetenth]

Well, I'm retiring my VK 4502 P Ausf B after a great run of 84 battles (read I used fat stacks of free xp). I only pubbed in it and I had a win rate of 74% and 160 kills. That tank just won battles. Here's hoping the shiny Maus I have parked in my garage can do the same.

[PhilosopherOfSorts]

I'm about to get out of the AMX-12t. A few observations for you.

It really is very different. You are not a traditional light or medium in any sense. You're more like some sort of bastardized, high-speed ambush TD. Your gun takes far too long and is too inaccurate to snipe, so you need to whack enemies at point blank.

Unlike my usual practice of lights and mediums hitting clear terrain for maintaining maneuverability, the french lights seem to reward hitting dense urban terrain so you can make the best of your burst firepower and bad accuracy. This is ESPECIALLY true for the 12t and it's legendary terrible gun depression/elevation. I seriously think it's like -2/+4 degrees or something insane like that.

But if you wait in an urban area, you can eventually zoom around and flank people. KVs are a favorite target of mine, though you can do incidental damage to American heavies at least.

You can do more than incidental damage to American heavies, I completely destroyed a T32 last night. Came from behind cover, blitzed around him faster than he could follow, and put five shots into his engine, setting him on fire, twice. I got picked off by a 13 75 right after that, though.

[Broken]

Here is an interesting website I saw on another forum for WoT players, http://www.planetwot.com/. It is another statistics tracker, which I decided to check my stats on:
Name Value Change to day before
Victory Ratio: 52.06% +52.06%
Battles: 3511 +3511
Average Experience: 631.11 +631.11
Experience: 2215832 +2215832

Damage per battle: 1049.36 +1049.36
Kills per battle: 1.13 +1.13
Capture per battle: 2.5 +2.5
Defense per battle: 1.14 +1.14

Based on defense/capture ratio BrokenThoughts is a highly offensive player.


It also breaks down time spent in various tanks (I'm 47% medium; 45% heavy; TD 4%; arty 3%; light 2%), how much time you drive each tier and the fact I drive German tanks 54% of the time. Too bad it doesn't include beta stats as I ground up to a Ferdie in beta and played a lot more arty.

Overall, interesting little site for breaking down your WoT stats a bit.

[Simon_Jester]

By that site's standards, I think almost all players are "highly offensive-" in a typical game, the number of cap points that gets accumulated is much higher than the number of defensive points.

You pretty much have to camp on the back side of your own base and wait for someone to cap if you want to pick up a lot of defensive points regularly; the only other way to get them is to be the one who goes 'oh shit' and hurries back to base to save the day, and opportunities to do that only arise every few dozen games at best.

Since their "defensive play" doesn't include tanks that park on the approaches to the base and delay or turn back the enemy, it misses the main form of "defensive" activity in the game.

[Agent Sorchus]

Okay so WoT is having a tournament. http://worldoftanks.com/uc/tournaments/ ... Challenge/

It's a maximum of T8 (except T7 light and T6 arty), however the points limit is going to limit teams to a couple of T8's and a fair number of lower Tier tanks. Max of 8 players with a team point limit of 35. Minimum of 5 players. A team of 5 Tier 7's would be good, but really if you are interested I would like to see an SDN team in the tournament.

ed: we will probably see a number of teams with 2 either Tiger 2's or IS3s, 2 arty and 1 AMX1390

[Hawkwings]

Well, the only tank I would conceivably play with would be my M7 Priest, T4 artillery. I'm pretty damn good in the thing, but the gun is a bit piddly. Sand River is a good map for artillery though. Good for American heavies as well, with all the rolling terrain. Although apparently IS3s are autowin so eh...

[The Vortex Empire]

If we're doing an SDN team I'm in, I'll bring either a Tiger, VK 3601, or KV depending on where we are in the tier limit.

[xthetenth]

Go tier 8 or go home. It's a huge leap in capability.

[Zinegata]

Go tier 8 or go home. It's a huge leap in capability.

Indeed.

[Scottish Ninja]

I'm in, though right now the most I can offer is T7 (maxed out T20, not yet maxed T29 though I can push for the 105 and engines. Maybe through super grinding I can get the T32.) or my Type 59.

[Broken]

By that site's standards, I think almost all players are "highly offensive-" in a typical game, the number of cap points that gets accumulated is much higher than the number of defensive points.

It is certainly a very imprecise measure, but then again I have seen players whose first action every game is find a corner with trees/bushes and hide in it, maybe taking one or two shots if anything wanders by . But even then, as my medium playtime makes clear, I do tend to be an offensive player. Especially in German mediums, I'll move forward to a defensible location where I can defend or help offense while using the (usually) accurate German guns to take chucks out of targets. Unfortunately, that also means I can end up too far forward with too little support when the enemy mediums arrive.

On another note, how are is the French tank line? I've barely touched the game in a while, but do tool around for a few matches every now and again. Credit making without premium is such a grind that I doubt I'll do anything resembling the playtime I did before.

[Agent Sorchus]

X did you actually consider that the way the teams are formed T8's are a little bit of a liability? That isn't to say that they aren't awesome, but that to get the required number of players (5) you can at most have 4 T8's and one T3? The math for HP, which is one of the biggest things behind Clan Wars teams, says that a group of 5 T7's will have more aggregate HP and survive longer. (especially if the T7's are Tiger P's, 1450hp vs IS3's 1500.)

And at the T limit for arty Tier 8's are just as one shot able as T7's. 203mm shells are just plain nuts. Though so is the BL-10 armed ISU's that I expect to see one or two of.

OF what people have come forward with I'd take the Tiger, the T-29 or T-20 since this is a large hilly map, and either my Tiger P IS-3 or if I can grind the silver maybe an S-51. The Priest is just a little small in the gun department, but could still harass opposing arty or TD's. Still need one more.

AS for french tanks: the lower tier stuff is just painfully slow. When you hit BDR you will start pulling your hair out since it gets the same MM as a the KV and has no good guns like the KV. The AMX12t is fun though, and it's soft stats are really different from other tanks so people have a fair amount of problems with it. The light-medium line above that is great, and the DEVs consider it OP and are going to hit them with the nerf bat. The heavy line is only so so till AMX50-100, and while that tanks rocks it still doesn't have the global win rate the lights have.

[Hawkwings]

I'm working on the ARL44 right now, after painfully grinding my way through the BDR. The reward at the end of the ARL44 tech tree is a tier 8 gun with 212mm of penetration.

[Simon_Jester]

What do you mean by "soft stats," Sorchus?

[xthetenth]

X did you actually consider that the way the teams are formed T8's are a little bit of a liability? That isn't to say that they aren't awesome, but that to get the required number of players (5) you can at most have 4 T8's and one T3? The math for HP, which is one of the biggest things behind Clan Wars teams, says that a group of 5 T7's will have more aggregate HP and survive longer. (especially if the T7's are Tiger P's, 1450hp vs IS3's 1500.)

The HP isn't a huge increase. However, the increase in other capabilities is huge. I'll compare each tier 8 heavy to its tier 7 counterpart.

The T32 can withstand tier 8 mediums to the hull with good driving, the T29 can't. It also drives a bit better and has a lower silhouette, much stronger cupolas and better rate of fire.

The IS-3 has actual recognizable armor, the IS doesn't. It also has a whopping 50 penetration more, drives just as well if not better and barely loses any dpm if at all.

The Tiger II has significantly better front armor than the Tiger (P) (the tech tree is misleading here), can reach a higher speed consistently, turns better, has more alpha, and more pen. It can also be nearly impenetrable from the front when angled correctly against nearly all threats.

The 4502 A has more alpha than the tiger, can accelerate better, turn far faster, is nearly proof against tier 8 mediums from the front, has a faster aiming time on its gun, and can do around 10 kph more and uses that speed well.

The AMX 50 100. Autoloader. 48 kph cruising speed. Autoloader. More agile. Autoloader. 400 damage shells instead of 300. Did I say autoloader?

That's what I mean by huge leap in capabilities.

For optimal setups I'd think

3 tier 8 heavies, 1 tier 6 artillery, 1 tier 5 light

or

2 tier 8 heavies, 2 tier 7 heavies, 1 tier 5 light

Unless that arty gets in a game changing shot, I think with this few tanks its' excessively vulnerable and having pairs of tier 7 and tier 8 heavies on each main flank would be well worth it. Feel free to sub in tank destroyers or mediums to suit taste and the map, I'm used to CW's heavy sausagefest, but getting two tanks together would be huge and two tier 7s is more balanced and more capable than going down to tier 6 on one side. The scout is non-negotiable.

What do you mean by "soft stats," Sorchus?

In the case of the 12t, gun depression and elevation. Turn speed and aiming time are also problems with that tank.

[Nephtys]

Hard Stats are attributes like armor thickness, gun power, max speed.

Soft Stats are things that aren't as easily valued, but potentially as valuable. Such as gun depression, ease of driving, shape and difficulty to hit, comfortable leather seats, etc.

Edit:
I'd argue that some T7s can compare very well to T8s. A T20 is worse than a Pershing, but when played like a fast TD, it can do very similarly. Likewise, a T29 that's hull down is pretty much exactly as capable as a hull down T32. The Russians gain huge capabilities per level though.

[xthetenth]

I'd argue that some T7s can compare very well to T8s. A T20 is worse than a Pershing, but when played like a fast TD, it can do very similarly. Likewise, a T29 that's hull down is pretty much exactly as capable as a hull down T32. The Russians gain huge capabilities per level though.

If I were choosing, the T29 would be the preferred tier 7 for this very reason. The Pershing upgraded can actually hull down as well as anything, that 150mm mantlet is freaking hax. The T20 has to make do with flank attacks, and speed, and on hilly maps, where the Pershing can make the most of its pivot turn on backslopes and its better mantlet and better pen it's hard pressed to compete. The tier 7 tanks I'd consider the best for this are the T25 AT and T29, with the T20 lagging a bit behind. The Tiger P could be viable as well. The Russian tier 7 kit is just too vulnerable where the expectation is tier 8, and the German stuff lacks alpha and except for the Tiger P staying power. The Tiger P more than makes up for its advantage in armor with its horrible speed.