Re: World of Tanks: An Oh God What Is This Story

#16
I've actually seen it happen about the same frequency as it doesn't, or did. It seems to have died off a lot with the shift to a T20 or a Panzer IV; people get it into their heads you can take care of yourself, just because you get penetrating hits on these things. When you're hitting for ten percent or less...

You get the same thing with the derpgun. Yes, you can theoritically oneshot most Tier 5s, so people think you're good to go without support. The truth is a lot of the time they hang on with 15% or less remaining, and you need somebody to finish them off since it takes you 27 seconds to load another round.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS

Re: World of Tanks: The Dark Side

#18
So I decided to turn to the Dark Side and get a Wespe. I now understand arty much better. Angles are surprisingly restricted on most maps, and no, you're not allowed to crank the gun up higher and use a reduced powder charge like reality. A lot of the time I don't have much choice of which targets to engage, though I suspect I'm a lot more responsive then most arty when it comes to offering supporting fire.

Also, the tears of people I kill are delicious. I actually rather enjoy SPGs, and that is a reason, but not the main one. I've always preferred the effective employment of artillery over the use of a tank rush in strategy games.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS

Re: World of Tanks: An Oh God What Is This Story

#23
T18: Based on the Stuart hull, it's essentially one step up from a German Marder or Panzerjager I with a fully enclosed casemated hull, and one step down from any sane tank destroyer with its huge high-up gun casemate. The inset and curved mantlet appearing to be one giant shot trap deflecting rounds into the more vulnerable parts of your tank is, in fact, just a regular trap; Tier 2 and Tier 3 guns can't pierce it or the areas it deflects into. Score one for US engineering.

Gun options come in a long-barreled 37mm (basic), 75mm howitzer (derpgun), and the British 40mm OQF (that's Ordnance Quick-Firing for the curious) 2pdr AT Gun Mk. X (spamgun, better than 30 rounds a minute). No turret, as some later US TDs have, so it plays normally. A distance killer, you stand off and blow those fools with turrets apart.

37mm: As a Tier 2 TD gun, it rarely encounters anything it can't handle, save for the gun mantlet of another T18 or the occasional tier 4's frontal armor.

75mm howitzer: Tier 4 derpgun on a Tier 2 tank. Hilarity ensues. Load only HE and watch the murder. The game has unwritten rule; any time an HE round successfully penetrates the tank's armor and explodes inside, that tank is dead. The 75mm can penetrate nearly any Tier 3 and all Tier 2s and blow them apart.

OQF 2pdr Mark X: Rapid fire, as advertized. Also very good penetration, punch through the front of another T18. Not so great at actual damage, but that's not a huge concern at that Tier, where HP is generally low.

T82 to follow during lunch.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS

Re: World of Tanks: An Oh God What Is This Story

#24
The T82.

Yet another conversion of the M3 Stuart's hull, this one lack the casemate; instead the fighting compartment is open, but at least unlike the similar-tier SU-76 or Marder II it is only open-topped, not open to the back or sides. Once again, the gun is in a forward mount, cut out through a slot in the front hull. No large mantlet and no serious traverse here, and a serious step down in armor; 13mm front, which isn't going to stop anything.

You begin with that 75mm howitzer I mentioned last time. Derpgun indeed, however; other options include a 105mm howitzer normally seen two Tiers later. There is also the 57mm Gun M1 L/50, which is otherwise known as the OQF 6 pdr MkIII, a thirty-rounds-per-minute murder machine I'm quite familiar with from my Ram-II.

The 75mm does everything stated on the T18, but there's a chance of meeting Tier 5 and Tier 4 tanks which don't mind it very much now.

The 105mm giggles at pretty much everything it faces, and well-aimed murders even Tier 5s, but remains a derpgun: slow load, difficult to aim.

The 6lbr, as on the Ram, blazes out shots fast and with good penetration for relatively little damage. The difference is that at this Tier, that relatively little damage is actually a whole damn lot of damage to such light vehicles, enabling you to engage and destroy multiple opposing vehicles before they can return fire.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS

Re: World of Tanks: An Oh God What Is This Story

#25
The T40!

An M3 Lee conversion, like the others it rips out the turret and goes open-topped. While it has the same 51mm of armor frontal that that the T18 does, the T40's is mostly sloped, granting it somewhat superior shot deflection. It's also a lot quicker. It has superior traverse over the last model, with a gun shield and traverse mechanism rather than a small slot in the front hull.

Gun options include our old friends the 75mm howitzer, 6lbr, 105mm howitzer, and our new friends the 76mm AT Gun M1918 and the 76mm Gun M1A1. The former is the standard 76mm from which most US designs in that caliber were derived; the later is most famous for being used on many makes and models of the M4 Sherman.

Battle report to follow when I get home.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS

Re: World of Tanks: An Oh God What Is This Story

#26
Okay so I'm an awful person but I suddenly felt compelled to explore the nature of the Ram-II for awhile, and have come to the conclusion that it will either loldie first, or be an unstoppable murder machine. There is no middle ground.

76mm M1A1 is, at Tier 4, a surprisingly nasty critter. This is offset by the fact you get dumped in at the low end of the match pool a whole lot because of it. Still, a tier 4 vehicle engaging and hurting tier 6s is doing something right.

So we load up Clubbed to Death on the playlist and roll out on Erlenburg, across the bridge, find bush to hide in...and then instantly get in a gun duel with a T20, which is the Tier 7 US medium. He, not surprisingly, murders the f### out of the T40, but takes nearly 50% damage in return. Impressive work for a Tier 4 in that match. Team capitalizes as a Jagdpanzer IV drives up and kills him with a round from the short 88, then proceeds to murder his buddy in an M4A3E8 for good measure. Momentum established, a good kill ratio set, the rest of the match goes well.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS

The M10 Wolverine, or how I learned to fight Hull-Down

#27
The M10 is sort of like US heavies supposedly are: it has very little hull armor, certainly not enough to protect it even at Tier 5; about 13mm. It also has very little turret armor, 50mm frontally, or so the stats claim.

This is a lie.

The Wolverine has a 120mm thick gun mantlet with a very high slope that covers essentially the whole front of the turret. As such, a hit to the front of the turret from any non-HE, non-premium shell in the game will bounce. In one match I bounced 15 shots, ranging in size from 122mm to 50mm, off the gun mantlet on my Wolverine.

The downside is of course that everyone and their dog knows your weakness and will try hard not to fight you when you're hull-down, and you're actually not as maneuverable or quick as a Sherman.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS

Tiger Platoon Adventures!

#30
So yesterday my clan, in a fit of madness, had a "matched platoon day" and everyone got into platoons based on type.

I find myself in a platoon of three Tigers. Fortunately we are all utterly ahistorical and have the 88mm L/71 gun that wouldn't actually fit in the Tiger I turret due to industrial sabotage by Krupp. (Which is an amusing story in itself.) I quickly deduce, however, that my platoonmates have the top engine as well because they accelerate faster than I. Still, we all have the same top end and the difference isn't huge.

We begin on Reddale, a map split by cliffs down the middle for the most part. As heavy tanks, we are on the upper half to start. It is immediately obvious we are actually facing a platoon from our own clan, too, as friendly waving across the field ensues.

It looks a bad matchup. Though our platoon of Tigers represent the highest-tier vehicles on our side, which is always reassuring, the platoon we face is composed of IS. If they are properly upgraded, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, their 122mm guns will be much more effective than our long 88s. (Which is sharply ahistorical in itself.) There is minor cause for hope, as their is a single other Tier 7 vehicle on each side. Ours is a Jagdpanther, the fast and dependable ruiner of days. Theirs is a T20 medium, which from my own time in the type I know isn't a match for any of the heavies or the JP. (Their team is also weighted down with a number of M3 Lees.) There is also cause to curse our teammates, as someone platooned with an M2 Light Tank and Panzerjager I and dragged them into a battle where they have no hope of having an effect.

We roll forward into town, engaging and destroying a lone Lee (god knows what he was doing there), but finding none of our opposite numbers, who took the far path in the hills. Fortunately our Jadgpanther holds them there with quick and accurate fire, driving them into cover. (And killing a couple of Lees.) Two of our Tigers move to join him in case they rush, while I attempt to flank over the hill.

It doesn't work out. There's a M36 somewhere that I can't spot shooting at me, and I do make it over the hill only to be confronted with the T20 and one IS who was paying attention to his minimap. I get off a shot or two at the ones which aren't engaged (I want their attention, not to survive) and manage to lolammorackhit one with one shot, killing it. Shortly after that, I die.

Then the JP and the other two Tigers come over the hill and finish up, but we lose the JP and the Tigers take heavy damage .The JPz I takes the lead (wat) and for some reason I still fail to grasp, most of the enemy fire. And for reasons I am failing even more to grasp, despite an M36 and at least three artillery pieces, it survives all the way across the rest of the plateau, down the cliff road and into the enemy deployment zone, dying only when a second M36 reveals itself in the woods on the opposite slope. The M36 also kills one of the Tigers of my platoon before it succumbs to the 88 of the second Tiger.

Meanwhile, the low-side forces, our medium and light tanks, have completely failed. The wasted space from the M2 Light and a particularly skillful enemy Pz IV have combined to get them wiped out for only a single kill in return. Our Hummel SPG makes more of a fight of it then our tanks did, killing the T20 with direct fire and badly damaging an M4A3E8 with one round and a ramming attempt. The M4A3E8 runs all the way back across the map to attack our lone, badly damaged Tiger. He could have killed it, too, but he missed his first shot. The Tiger didn't.

We scream at the Grille, our other SPG, to get his ass in gear and just hit the Panzer IV, just once, even with splash damage. Just knocking off the cap he's built up will be enough to win the game. The Grille, however, has other ideas; his first round kills the Panzer IV for an all-enemies-destroyed win.

None of the other games were quite so interesting, largely because we were not near the top of the tier rankings and had little control of our own fate. I did manage to successfully complete an over-the-hill flanking maneuver on Desert River in support of a friendly IS-7 and live to tell in one case, while in another a pair of our Tigers managed to complete a flanking maneuver and win the match by being heavies out of place (and out in the open amid a veritable rain of artillery shells) on Erlenburg.
IAR
A Numbered Existence
In The Service
Monsters
SAMAS
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