World of Tanks

[Agent Sorchus]

That is why I think they gave a shorter announcement than the Lowe price hike. Less chance for people to rush to buy it.

[xthetenth]

There's already a spike because of people trying to grind their French tanks up quickly, but at least now the population won't be increasing as rapidly.

[Zinegata]

I already have a Type 59.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Why is the AMX 40's speed limit given as 50kph? I put the best engine and tracks on it first thing and on level ground I can't get above 20.

[Nephtys]

I've hit 55 kph when going downhill on El Halluf.

Everywhere else, I get lapped by KVs.

[Simon_Jester]

The AMX-40 reminds me of my old station wagon. The speedometer went up to 100 miles an hour. But the only way to actually make the car go 100 miles an hour would be to drop it off a cliff.

[xthetenth]

The AMX 40 more than makes up for it with its armor though. It's the lowest tier tank I have a steel wall in and I have three.

Enjoy it, the 12t is terrible. If it were to be a good light it'd need real maneuverability and speed, while if it were a combat tank it'd need a gun aiming time not measured with a calendar or some armor.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not actually sure I'm going to play the 12t any time soon. I'm trying to get the low tier French tanks done with so I'm positioned when they finish the tree, and I don't feel like going through the effort of grinding through a Tier 5 or above tank for what I see the French having right now.

[Zinegata]

The AMX 40 more than makes up for it with its armor though. It's the lowest tier tank I have a steel wall in and I have three.

Enjoy it, the 12t is terrible. If it were to be a good light it'd need real maneuverability and speed, while if it were a combat tank it'd need a gun aiming time not measured with a calendar or some armor.

The AMX-40 is funny because it has the lines of a Speed Racer-style sports car but moves like a turtle.

Also, some of the saddest/funniest matches I've seen were between me and several enemy AMX-40s. We couldn't hurt each other until I realized the only way we could penetrate each other's armor was through the rear plate.

So... I backed my tank's ass up against a wall, let them flail around me helplessly, and shot them in the rear after they got bored and tried to drive away

[xthetenth]

Oh. I just go face to face with them and plow three rounds through that v shaped driver's slit plate.

I am the true duck. QUACK QUACK BITCHES.

Other than that, I think the cylindrical bit the second turret sits on on the upgrade turret is weak too.

[Agent Sorchus]

I think the gap on the first turret is also weak on the AMX 40, though I can't hit it.

[Hawkwings]

The trick with killing B1s and AMX40s is to get right up in their face and punch their weak spots. In my B1, I would always try to ram enemy B1s, then shoot the observation dome on top of the turret.

In other news, I'm going back to the M4 Sherman to try to get a Jumbo and hop over to the heavy tree. Any tips for playing the E2?

[xthetenth]

No idea, that's one of the six tanks on the US tree I haven't driven. Your armor can bounce some serious stuff especially if you angle it though.

The low tier French stuff is all about the weak spots, the regular armor is beastly.

[Agent Sorchus]

The E2 has some armor, but unlike many others I think the M1A2 gun is better than the 105 on the E2. It makes a good sniping tank, especially on hills. Otherwise it can brawl if you do some angling, though there are plenty of weak points. And it is more maneuverable than most heavies so you can get into locations you wouldn't in a heavy.

[Nephtys]

As far as I'm concerned, 105 is dead after the HE nerf. It got hit the hardest, and really is just terrible.

I NEVER fire HE nowadays. Even against superior armor, better look for a chance to penetrate a weakspot or get some weird ricochet instead of guarenteed zero damage from HE.

[Simon_Jester]

Do you think they'll change it again, to at least partly de-nerf it? It's such a big chunk of the game mechanic to at least be able to fire HE and damage other tanks more than one time in four if they're bigger and tougher than you.

[Zinegata]

I still find the 105mm HE useful as long as you're not taking ill-advised head-on shots.

It sucks for arty though, as sometimes they don't have a choice but to hit something head on.

[Simon_Jester]

Again, half the point of HE is to let tanks with small caliber guns actually do some damage to heavy opponents. As it is, I can pump ten or twenty HE rounds and chip off no more than a small fraction of the HP of something that isn't that much better protected than my gun's penetration would let me crack with AP.

Having this come along with the French tanks (which, at low tiers, have low-penetration guns and so fire more HE than normal) is a real kick in the head, and probably contributes to the frustration people have driving the French tanks.

I get that their fix avoided an unrealistic effect (the blast wrapping around a corner of the tank and hitting top armor), but they really need to increase the effect of HE against moderate thicknesses of armor if it's going to work in the long run.

[S.L.Acker]

They've broken HE anyway because they've ignored the fact that even a fairly light HE round will potentially cause spalling and thus critical hits. It wouldn't be so bad to do no damage if you knew the guy was blinded from a single well placed HE round. Heck, even having a buttoned and unbuttoned state for tanks would be massive instead of the game assuming that all tanks fight with all hatches closed.

[Alkaloid]

Aye, the most srustrating thing is hitting a tank, causing no HP drop and hearing 'çritical hit' but seeing no difference in the way the tank handles. Even if they just listed it next to the damaged or destroyed vehicles in the match summary so you would at least know what you did.

[Simon_Jester]

They've broken HE anyway because they've ignored the fact that even a fairly light HE round will potentially cause spalling and thus critical hits. It wouldn't be so bad to do no damage if you knew the guy was blinded from a single well placed HE round. Heck, even having a buttoned and unbuttoned state for tanks would be massive instead of the game assuming that all tanks fight with all hatches closed.

An unbuttoned state would be an invitation to disaster with so much crap getting thrown around- I would think most tankers would fight buttoned up if they knew they were going into something as generally hellacious and brutal as a World of Tanks fight. A typical battle will see about twenty to thirty tanks blown up in under ten minutes- for intensity, they're comparable to the great tank battles of WWII.

HE's potential to do critical damage would be more helpful if the player had some idea what critical damage had been done- or even if critical hits were reported reliably. Say, if "tracked them!" was one battlecry and "critical hit!" was the other generic one, and neither was reported at all unless considerable damage had been done to the vehicle's tracks or other systems, respectively.

As it is, when I hose a target down with half a dozen HE shells from my Matilda, I can be fairly sure I've done some critical hits, and some bounces, but I don't know which ones or how many. Which reduces the sense of achievement.a

[S.L.Acker]

An unbuttoned state would be an invitation to disaster with so much crap getting thrown around- I would think most tankers would fight buttoned up if they knew they were going into something as generally hellacious and brutal as a World of Tanks fight. A typical battle will see about twenty to thirty tanks blown up in under ten minutes- for intensity, they're comparable to the great tank battles of WWII.

That's very true.

HE's potential to do critical damage would be more helpful if the player had some idea what critical damage had been done- or even if critical hits were reported reliably. Say, if "tracked them!" was one battlecry and "critical hit!" was the other generic one, and neither was reported at all unless considerable damage had been done to the vehicle's tracks or other systems, respectively.

As it is, when I hose a target down with half a dozen HE shells from my Matilda, I can be fairly sure I've done some critical hits, and some bounces, but I don't know which ones or how many. Which reduces the sense of achievement.a

That's also a downside. Also, and I understand why it was done, but logically, shouldn't a hit to the middle of the tracks still track a tank? There are also sorts of suspension bits and track return rollers in there after all.

[Simon_Jester]

I think that's a case of dropping realism for fun's sake. Among other things, if they did it that way it would be very very easy to "perma-track" a tank from the side, leaving it permanently immobile and exposing the hull armor on the side. For TDs this would be a really crippling problem. It would also mean that even near misses from artillery would be almost guaranteed to track or partly track the tank- I think there were complaints about this in the earlier days, before artillery blast radius was toned down.

[S.L.Acker]

I think that's a case of dropping realism for fun's sake. Among other things, if they did it that way it would be very very easy to "perma-track" a tank from the side, leaving it permanently immobile and exposing the hull armor on the side. For TDs this would be a really crippling problem. It would also mean that even near misses from artillery would be almost guaranteed to track or partly track the tank- I think there were complaints about this in the earlier days, before artillery blast radius was toned down.

I know, but it's something that well placed HE should be able to do. It's also the case that real life artillery is more than capable of soft killing a tank even on a fairly wide miss. Of course arty as displayed in this game has unrealistic information to target with, and too few guns to bracket fire on a target or spend shells on ranging shots... I bet a lot of the issues with arty could be solved by displaying tanks on their map as fuzzy circles so you're never really sure where the tank is. An information delay on them moving or not would also be great.

[S.L.Acker]

An article on artillery versus tanks.