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PhilosopherOfSorts wrote:Raving insanity. I just got a Steel Wall in my KV. I took a total of one hundred and thirteen hits, from several autocannon equiped lights, as I sat there tracked. It was like being in a hailstorm.

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No. 864 KV counted 135 non-penetrative hits after that action

I think my hit record is mid-fourties on the Valentine. It is the KV of light tanks. If the enemy lacks TDs and Lees, it takes a ton of pounding to take me down. I believe I have more Steel Walls in that than my Ferdinand.

Rekkon wrote:I think my hit record is mid-fourties on the Valentine. It is the KV of light tanks. If the enemy lacks TDs and Lees, it takes a ton of pounding to take me down. I believe I have more Steel Walls in that than my Ferdinand.

I have a Val, its a slow, little, murder machine, reminds me of a miniture KV-3.

I missed six derp shots while those lights were sandblasting me, that was kind of frustrating, but it worked out, they were so intent on killing me that they didn't notice the rest of my team sweep in and roll them up.

I just got an M-7, I think it can be effective in its tier, once I upgrade it a little.

I've got I believe 2 steel walls on my T-127. Unless the enemy team has lees, hetzers, or something else with big guns, the front armor is nearly impenetrable to most of the lights it'll face.

The (few) times I've used my T127, it's been effortlessly shredded frontally by the enemy, even T3s with autocannons. I'm not entirely sure whether my one actually has armour or is, infact, a wooden mockup of a tank.

Currently, the tank of mine with the most Steel Walls is the Churchill, though the Loewe and the Panther are only one behind it. I can understand the Churchill and Loewe; they're either well-armoured or somewhat bouncy... but the Panther? While I'm loving the Panther series (save the GW) I'm not entirely sure how that's happened.

My first try with the T-127, I sat on a hill, and absorbed fire from a BT-2, an M2 and T2, and a Loltraktor for like, 200 rounds. While my crappy 50 percent crew was trying to line up shots and failing.

High Tier tanks have a tougher time getting Steel Wall because it's harder to bounce rounds at higher tiers. I generally only get them on my US heavies, because people still keep thinking they can argue with 270mm of front turret armor

I find high tier tanks have an easier time getting Steel wall because it's easier to get the damage criterion. Also, with good use of armor, a lot of tanks have enough armor to bounce rounds. The IS-4 can bounce rounds if the person trying to shoot them doesn't know weaknesses, is rushed or the driver has the advantage. The E-75 seems to be half super ball it bounces so much, etc. I find US heavies the worst for steel walls because it's nearly impossible not to learn that the turrets are megaarmored by sheer osmosis. That and the hull at tier 9 and 10 may as well be made of a nice Neufchatel. I get easily twice as many in my Russian heavies as my American ones.

xthetenth wrote:I find high tier tanks have an easier time getting Steel wall because it's easier to get the damage criterion. Also, with good use of armor, a lot of tanks have enough armor to bounce rounds. The IS-4 can bounce rounds if the person trying to shoot them doesn't know weaknesses, is rushed or the driver has the advantage. The E-75 seems to be half super ball it bounces so much, etc. I find US heavies the worst for steel walls because it's nearly impossible not to learn that the turrets are megaarmored by sheer osmosis. That and the hull at tier 9 and 10 may as well be made of a nice Neufchatel. I get easily twice as many in my Russian heavies as my American ones.

Damage criterion, yes. Hit criterion is the hard part because a lot of those hits are gonna penetrate.

The IS-4 and E-75 have cheating armor though and you know it

What do you think the best gun for the KV-3 is? I'm starting to lean towards 107mm, but I want to research the other two guns so I'll have something to put on my IS come the day.

The big problem is that the ID10T gun doesn't have the damage potential to make up for its lower rate of fire, compared to the 107mm, while the 122mm doesn't have the rate of fire to make up for its higher damage potential. That's how I see it; am I right about this?

Simon_Jester wrote:What do you think the best gun for the KV-3 is? I'm starting to lean towards 107mm, but I want to research the other two guns so I'll have something to put on my IS come the day.

The big problem is that the ID10T gun doesn't have the damage potential to make up for its lower rate of fire, compared to the 107mm, while the 122mm doesn't have the rate of fire to make up for its higher damage potential. That's how I see it; am I right about this?

I would say 107mm is better overall, so long as you know to aim for the weakspots of enemy tanks when you face high-tier foes. The 122mm on the KV-3 shoots much too slowly.

I would also say that a better training for the day that you get your IS is to play with the KV-1S for a bit. Research the big 122mm gun on the KV-3 so that you don't have to grind for it in the KV-1S. Its lesser armor should let you get used to the fact that the IS isn't terribly well armored for its tier.

Once you have the IS, you get a newer 122mm gun that makes the slow reload issue of the 122mm go away.

How are people finding the French tanks on the test server?

So far I'm having a tough time judging due to the low population on the test server and the T10 sausage fests you tend to end up in. Gut feeling tells me that as a whole they'll have a poor win/loss ratio just due to their weak armor and the fact that the auto loader can't fully down a tank of equal tier without some luck. So far I'm having much better luck with the T32, I think it's because I'm never tempted to overstep myself in the American tanks with that paper hull.

S.L.Acker wrote:How are people finding the French tanks on the test server?

Once you get to the upper half of the french tier tree it gets pretty damn good. Autoloaders are pretty neat, you get 5-6 rounds in the loader with reload speeds between magazine shells that let you get a lot of rounds downrange pretty goddamn quick. Combine that with the french guns almost always having obnoxious penetration and you end up with a set of medium tanks that redefine the wolfpack.

Downside is that while you have the autoloader, once you crank your 5-6 rounds out you've got a reload time to top the magazine up that would make arty players giggle at you. Combine that with the generally Meh damage some of the french guns produce and it balances out a lot of stuff.

But all that shit is made pretty much a non issue thanks to the higher tier french mediums and heavies having speeds best described with "What the fuck did you do to my engine, Mr. Scott?"

Simon, 107. If you care about credits, 107 by a mile. You'll definitely want the D10T because you can mount that on the IS almost immediately. The 107 has massively superior dps though, and it doesn't even have the lowest alpha. I drove the 107 on the KV-3 (incidentally that's why I went KV-3, the 107 was the main selling point), then the 100 on the IS till I got the D-25-T. The D-2-5-T is just a terribly slow gun and I don't have the patience for it. The shells are also really expensive for nearly no gain.

The French tanks are fucking awesome. That is all. If you're a smart driver you can hurt people terribly but mistakes will cost you huge. I love them, they're great tools for a good driver. They have bad DPS but that spike is awesome.

Xthetenth, my reasoning more or less paralleled yours. I already have the KV-3, and have been working on it with the 107 for some time- the question was whether you thought it worth the trouble to actually put the 100mm on the KV-3, and I'm getting a "no" vibe.

Simon_Jester wrote:Xthetenth, my reasoning more or less paralleled yours. I already have the KV-3, and have been working on it with the 107 for some time- the question was whether you thought it worth the trouble to actually put the 100mm on the KV-3, and I'm getting a "no" vibe.

The 100mm calls itself the IDIOT gun for a reason . (j/k to all 100mm gun fans)

For the KV-3, the 100mm isn't worth mounting. The 107mm is better.

Some people (like Xthetenth) like to use it on the IS though because it's closer to the 107mm in terms of shooting speed than the 122mm. They'd probably like to mount the 107mm on the IS, but that's no longer an option.

But personally, I'd say that it's better to go straight to the slow-firing 122mm when you can because that's going to be your gun for quite a while.

Well, the one problem that concerns me is that I'm going to be shooting at things with, God I don't know, 1000+ hit points?

I can see how the alpha strike damage output on the D10T is unsatisfactory in that case. But then, my other tanks are fast-reloading mediums and I like it that way, so I'm a little ambiguous about a gun that takes more than ten seconds to reload...

How exactly do you make that work? Shoot, duck, wait, shoot again, I guess.

Simon_Jester wrote:How exactly do you make that work? Shoot, duck, wait, shoot again, I guess.

Somewhat. Since you're a heavy you don't necessarily have to duck though - you just need to make sure they're shooting at your better armored portions and make them waste shots with bounces.

In general, I've found that being able to shoot rapidly isn't very vital, as you often need to duck out of the way in between shots anyway. It is better to score three damaging hits on the enemy without taking any damage in return over a minute, than to hit an enemy eight times in a minute due to your faster-shooting gun but end up a flaming wreck because you traded shots with it.

The IS in particular is better for peak-a-boo shooting because its armor isn't that fantastic, but its mobility is decent. Hit'm hard with a 122mm shot, hide, then come back for another shot. It's very different from how the KV-3 plays (and much closer to the KV-1S).

I like the 122, but I have to win with it or a lose money. I currently have the 107 equiped, and it feels less accurate. The 122's long reload doesn't bother me, I'm used to my Derp wielding KV, so anything less than 20 seconds or so is an improvement.

I just started having some awesome matches in my French Tanks and boy are both the Lorraine 40t and the AMX 50 100 fun when you get them into the right spots. You might not kill what you shoot at before you need to run off and reload, but they'll be half dead or worse before they have a chance to fire a second shot at you. If the enemy has already taken a decent hit then you'll almost certainly end their match. On the flip side even lower tier enemies are a grave threat to you with your low armor and if anybody ever gets smart enough to count shots and chase you down while you have no ammo then I think the success rate in playing these tanks will fall.

The French tanks really make playing smart essential on both sides. That's a lot of why I like them so much.

About the D10T, the main reason I'd recommend it over the 122 D-2-5-T is they deliver very similar capability different only in the single shot damage, but the 122 costs something like four times as much to fire. Plus, you can mount the D10T immediately and use it to grind the turret instead of that anemic 85. However the 25-T is a much better gun, use it when you can.

I agree, the French tanks make the hiding behind a rock/building like a pussy method of playing less attractive because if you do that they will flank you. They also have less to fear from arty as they tend to be moving at a good clip when not ducking out of the way for the long reload. I don't currently participate in clan wars, but I'm curious to see what effect they have aside from making tier 9 mediums obsolete.

I don't see them making all tier 9 mediums obsolete in clan wars use. The E-50 just doesn't fit well to start with, the T-54 is only really useful for bad strategies, which leaves the Patton. That's useful for four reasons, three of which it's got a noticeable advantage over the AMX in. The first is view range. Put one in a bush and you have a great passive scout that can make a good tripwire and fight a bit if spotted. It can also stand up to a bit of damage if you have to fight on a hill, where a T-50-2 gets a lot more predictable. It's agile enough and has an accurate enough gun on the move to hunt scouts if the other side gets aggressive with them. The AMX only really overlaps in speed. It'd get wrecked by arty if it tried being a picket, it doesn't move and shoot well enough to hunt scouts, which a medium is likely to need to do and the Patton is great at, and its burst damage would be wasted in a scout which usually doesn't fire until spotted and doesn't have the armor to weather artillery.

Ah, how, exactly? In what way does the T-50-2 gets predictable on hills?

Also, I am somewhat pleased to notice that in my Matilda I've got roughly a 60% win ratio with fifty games played. I have found Tankvana.

I played the 100 on both the kv3 and IS. On the whole the 100 is nice for it's slight increase in accuracy. Missing with any of the 122's costs a lot... and on the kv3 the d10t has rate of fire for when you are caught in the open and can't duck into cover. But Since selling my IS I have been using only the 122, since it has the same stats as the D25 on my IS3 I feel more used to it (though I have a stabilizer on the IS3, which really helps the tank.)

I have enough free xp to jump right into a T4 or 5 tank once french tanks come out, should I go heavy or light? Note I haven't played on the test server.