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During one of our campaign matches we took five FV304s into Province and wrecked the enemy's main push with them. This was in a tier 8 game.

The Vortex Empire wrote:The 304 is one of the most annoying tanks in the game. Even in higher tier tanks, half the time I see one it singles me out and keeps chipping away at my health every few seconds for the whole match.

I still wish there was an arty opt out, but I'm just glad the the bad old days are long gone. I still have flashbacks to the days when 10 T92s and 261s per team with godly aimtime compared to their current form was a common sight.

And as far as low tiers go, I'm still at a loss as to how the T18 has remained the massively overpowered, blazing fast, bouncy, oneshot nearly everything it sees monstrosity that it's always been. But then, balance is pretty much nonexistent in the low tiers anyway.

Honestly I haven't gotten oneshot as much as in the past few days ever. Stuff that would be fine artillery cover in higher tiers just doesn't work, I can't keep moving and keep getting shots off and there just isn't any response to every single artillerist who sees me focusing me immediately with their goddamned treaded garbad apologia. I'm getting oneshot at full speed as I turn for crying out loud.

The Vortex Empire wrote:The 304 is one of the most annoying tanks in the game. Even in higher tier tanks, half the time I see one it singles me out and keeps chipping away at my health every few seconds for the whole match.

Whenever I get into the sights of a 304, I get the urge to just go back to the garage right there. It's an arty that can keep you perma-tracked behind cover, by itself. Leaving you to just rot away under its fire, or worse, be stuck there the entire game until one of the teams is dead.

There are two things that artillery just shouldn't be able to do:

-Permatrack you.
-Oneshot you.

Driving tier five mediums, the 304 can do both of these. Words fail me.

I dunno, I've gotten plenty of one-shot kills with the 152mm on my SU-5. On Matildas even.

xthetenth wrote: Driving tier five mediums, the 304 can do both of these. Words fail me.

It is possible to penetrate a T5 medium with a large HE shell. Howitzers are common low tier weapons and the british 3.7 inch gun is able to one shot a T5 medium with a good damage roll. The 304 is T6 SPG. It should be able to one shoot a T5.

Just because mechanically it can doesn't mean that it should be able to. It actually routinely penetrates a T5 medium because its arc is so high it usually hits the top. A lot of artillery can penetrate and oneshot tanks.

Oneshotting enemies on penetrating hits is one of the biggest problems of artillery and indeed with the entire game. To bring their averages down, the accuracy sucks and the aim time is eternal. This just means that playing artillery is a matter of increasing infuriation with your gun and even the eventual payoff isn't worth it. This also brings the skill involved down in a huge way since as long as you can get a reticule the size of a football field on the target you have a chance to hit. Lower accuracy makes it easier for really bad players to hit and harder for good players to hit. So by having penetrating artillery hits and balancing around that, the game is much more infuriating for every player and the role of skill is reduced. This is the direct opposite of the effects of any good game design.

Even then the 304 is an outlier because it isn't notionally that damaging, so it gets the benefits of being a low damage piece, which include fast rate of fire taken to a ludicrous extent that's gamebreaking in another way since it can permatrack tanks and high accuracy and fast aim time, which makes it pretty trivial to oneshot a medium that has the unbridled gall to dare to attempt to be effective in combat by stopping to shooting.

This in general is why I hated low tiers for their artillery. They were faster aiming, faster firing and since the tanks in those tiers have to sit still to fire effectively, were basically custom tailored to defeat good players.

I haven't played in some time, so I haven't seen the 304 go around beating my KV-1 over the head. Should I be worried if I jump back in about getting permatracked? (especially in a tank that is already slow at the best of times)

With any halfway decent 304 player, yes.

Skywalker_T-65 wrote:I haven't played in some time, so I haven't seen the 304 go around beating my KV-1 over the head. Should I be worried if I jump back in about getting permatracked? (especially in a tank that is already slow at the best of times)

A ROF optimized FV304 is able to shoot you 7 times in 60 seconds. A KV-1 has good enough top armor unlike other heavies out there AFAIK. A FV 304 is able to kill am IS-3 with 3 above average damage dealing shots. Churchills and Tigers have thin top armor too AFAIK.

Last game in Ke-Ho before buying the next one in Japanese tech tree ...

Victory!
Map: Ruinberg
Date: 12.01.2014 14:22:22
Vehicle: Type 5 Ke-Ho
Exp: 1 200 Credits: 26 116
Achievements: : Defender, Top Gun, Master Gunner, Sharpshooter, Mastery Badge: "Ace Tanker"

Yeah, I totally carried at the end.

You can get a long way with only 82hp...

A friend had this quite awesome fight with his Type59 and did 8 kills.
Sure, some of his victims were almost dead, but so was he.

http://wotreplays.com

Just got the Chi-To (from now on called the "Cheeto") fully upgraded. I'll admit it's not an outstanding tank, but it's not an abysmal one, either. It's armor is ok, it's speed and mobility a bit on the sluggish side -I blame the absurdly gigormous 560kg radio- but it's gun is great and it's gun handling is equal to it. The second turret has amazing depression and lets me to fire accurately from pretty much whereever I dammed well please.

It's not a keeper, but it's not a pile of shitty, death-grinding hell. A solid workhorse tank.

I am so goddamned tired of Wargaming's completely bullshit, pants-on-head-retarded, unjustifiable, asinine, stupid camo/sight system. Whichever idiot thought it up, and every fucking moron saying it's working correctly is an insult to the entire gaming industry. EA could have made a better system.

Highlord Laan wrote:I am so goddamned tired of Wargaming's completely bullshit, pants-on-head-retarded, unjustifiable, asinine, stupid camo/sight system. Whichever idiot thought it up, and every fucking moron saying it's working correctly is an insult to the entire gaming industry. EA could have made a better system.

What I've developed a special hate for is that for some reason, an enemy can be detected on the other side of the map, everyone near me (with similar view ranges) can see the vehicle and shoot at it, and I, with maximum render distance, cannot, ever, see them.

I also hate the delay between being spotted and sixth sense activating. It's a good half-second or so usually, which is a lot of time when it comes to risky situations.

Though I would be interested in finding out what, exactly, you dislike about the spotting system. Frankly I am too busy raging about arty to notice most of time.

Imperial528 wrote:

Highlord Laan wrote:I am so goddamned tired of Wargaming's completely bullshit, pants-on-head-retarded, unjustifiable, asinine, stupid camo/sight system. Whichever idiot thought it up, and every fucking moron saying it's working correctly is an insult to the entire gaming industry. EA could have made a better system.

What I've developed a special hate for is that for some reason, an enemy can be detected on the other side of the map, everyone near me (with similar view ranges) can see the vehicle and shoot at it, and I, with maximum render distance, cannot, ever, see them.

I also hate the delay between being spotted and sixth sense activating. It's a good half-second or so usually, which is a lot of time when it comes to risky situations.

Though I would be interested in finding out what, exactly, you dislike about the spotting system. Frankly I am too busy raging about arty to notice most of time.

I know the feeling, especially after seeing War Thunder's CBT ground forces spotting mechanics WoTs spotting mechanics is just plain inexcusable.

Imperial528 wrote:

Highlord Laan wrote:I am so goddamned tired of Wargaming's completely bullshit, pants-on-head-retarded, unjustifiable, asinine, stupid camo/sight system. Whichever idiot thought it up, and every fucking moron saying it's working correctly is an insult to the entire gaming industry. EA could have made a better system.

What I've developed a special hate for is that for some reason, an enemy can be detected on the other side of the map, everyone near me (with similar view ranges) can see the vehicle and shoot at it, and I, with maximum render distance, cannot, ever, see them.

I also hate the delay between being spotted and sixth sense activating. It's a good half-second or so usually, which is a lot of time when it comes to risky situations.

Though I would be interested in finding out what, exactly, you dislike about the spotting system. Frankly I am too busy raging about arty to notice most of time.

A 50+ ton war machine the size of a small house with a giant stick going out the front of it somehow being invisible despite being under 70 meters away and sitting in the middle of an open parking lot. Bring it up in chat and all you get is "lul they camod."

Imperial528 wrote: What I've developed a special hate for is that for some reason, an enemy can be detected on the other side of the map, everyone near me (with similar view ranges) can see the vehicle and shoot at it, and I, with maximum render distance, cannot, ever, see them.

The only reason this would happen is that you are not in radio contact with the tank which is actually spotting the target, or the target is out of the render square. View range selected in options makes no difference to the range at which an enemy tank is rendered, it only affects terrain.

I reccommend installing a map with the render square drawn on it though, so you'll know where tanks will and won't draw in and can position appropriately.

Imperial528 wrote:I also hate the delay between being spotted and sixth sense activating. It's a good half-second or so usually, which is a lot of time when it comes to risky situations.

The delay on Sixth Sense is three seconds. That's in the skill description. If sixth sense goes off you were spotted three seconds ago.

Highlord Laan wrote:A 50+ ton war machine the size of a small house with a giant stick going out the front of it somehow being invisible despite being under 70 meters away and sitting in the middle of an open parking lot. Bring it up in chat and all you get is "lul they camod."

The only time that will happen is if all the vision checkpoints on the tank are covered. It's very rare, I've seen video of tanks vanishing because their vision checkpoints were covered by the highway supports on Port, despite the fact that the rest of the tank was visible between the supports. I can't think of any other map this could happen on though and Port is dead now. The vision checkpoints on a tank are the centre of all four sides of the hull, the centre of all four sides of the turret, and the end of the gun barrel, if at least one of those is visible to you you can spot that tank. Working out vision is the single biggest load on the servers, by the way.


A lot of this sounds like Dunning Krugering, the problem is that you don't understand the vision system. Make an effort to know why other people can see something you can't, read the skill descriptions so you know what they do, and know what it actually means for a tank to be spotted or not spotted.

It's also worth noting that if it helps you rationalize it, it's not just that there's a tank in the open you missed, it's the fact that you are trying to look for it through tiny viewslits in an equally noisy tank...(and come on, people miss entire blips on the minimap just because they are distracted/inattentive...)

Vendetta wrote:The vision checkpoints on a tank are the centre of all four sides of the hull, the centre of all four sides of the turret, and the end of the gun barrel, if at least one of those is visible to you you can spot that tank.

Did they change this? According to the wiki, the gun checkpoint is at the base and there is not one on the rear of the turret.

Pew Pew Pew!

montypython wrote: I know the feeling, especially after seeing War Thunder's CBT ground forces spotting mechanics WoTs spotting mechanics is just plain inexcusable.

Unless for some bizarre reason you're looking for a means of having tank fights not resolve into a hybrid vision test/boredom simulator. In war, campers win the vast majority of their engagements. There are definitely problems with the system implemented, however there are problems that can be just as large if not more so with basically any other possible implementation of a spotting mechanic.

War Thunder's system is to render everything all the time whether it's spotted or not, isn't it, and only put names on things that are spotted and outlines on things you spot personally.

Couldn't do rendering all the time on WoT anyway with the way arty works, and any of the others would just be used to create cheat mods in seconds flat.

I have a feeling that's going to shift the game in favor of the stationary guy in camo and/or the guy whose trees and bushes are unaccountably semi-transparent and tanks are workplace safety shades of fluorescent.

Yes; the fact that the appearances of objects are stored on your computer and are routinely edited from there... probably wouldn't help if you had realistic rendering rules in World of Tanks.

Didn't you tell stories about how artillery shell tracks had to be deleted from the game when some joker figured out how to edit them to stay hanging in the air like rainbows so that counterbattery could crush them?