Lol, there’s an old school sci-fi fan ;-). And I agree with you about the SU-152. Like you, I kept the 100 (which I liked), and like you, I hated the 152 until I maxed it out, when it became just okay. The ISU-152, on the other hand, is a beast once you get the BL-10. A T8 vehicle with the strongest gun the Soviets can mount? It’s lethal against the foes it normally matches up against, and can seriously hurt anything in the game.
Hehe, glad you got the name!
I try to do the same thing. It’s worthwhile to glance at the mini-map, list of tanks left and what’s in front of you. Often you can place most of the opposing forces and type out directions to your team. “All their heavies are right, push left!” What gets really annoying is when you’re playing Mister Delay, do your job and finally die only to notice that eight of your team’s tanks have been too scared to rush and take down one Stug. sigh
Dejin
3165
Couple more thoughts on TMan’s unfortunate experience. I have run into situations mostly pre-0.4.6 where I repeatedly tracked the enemy vehicle damaging the treads but not actually hitting the tank hull itself. This used to happen all the time when I hit the side of the tank. It got to the point, where I would aim at the thicker turret, just because I got tired of detracking the enemy but not actually taking down its health.
I think this happens less frequently now. However, IIRC there was something about hitting various items such as treads may reduce damage or penetration to the hull itself. This makes sense since the shot will lose part of its kinetic energy destroying the tracks before it hits the hull. Not sure where I saw thought though, so this information might not be reliable.
The other thing I noticed is that as far as I can read it, TMan’s AAR doesn’t quite seem to match what he thinks happened. It’s a bit hard to read, but I think it says he destroyed a KV. I can’t quite read the tank name that he destroyed, but I can’t think of any other tank name that matches what I see other than KV – the closest scout name match I could come up with is an M7, but it looks a heck of a lot more like it says “KV” to me than “M7”. Now TMan says he thought he killed “a scout out of the gate” and then tried to beat up on a KV-3 and didn’t get any credit for damage.
Is it possible someone else actually killed the scout? That’s happened to me sometimes where I swear I hit something and it turns out someone else killed it before my shot went in. If this is the case, TMan not only repeatedly hit the KV he killed it. While it’s usually obvious when you kill sometimes, it is possible to start a fire with a shot, and then not get notification of the kill until much later when you might not notice. This does also depend on TMan mixing up a KV with a KV-3, which admittedly is a rather big stretch. But that sure as heck looks like the AAR shows him killing a KV, and there is no way to confuse a scout with a KV.
The other interesting thing about the T-34 is that at least for the 57mm ZIS (which IMO is the best gun for it) the HE is so pathetic that taking the standard ammo loadout they don’t even give you any HE. You have to change the loadout and manually add HE into the loadout if you want anything other than AP. Standard AP shell for it penetrates up to 112mm with 85 damage. The HE only penetrates 29mm and does 95 damage which is pathetic for HE. I guess they figure it’s not worth a lousy 10 points of damage to lose all that penetration, so they don’t normally give you any HE shells. This is the only gun I’ve run into so far that doesn’t have HE in the standard loadout.
pyrhic
3166
Actually, that explanation makes sense - and also explains why the destroyed shows 25 shots as well.
JoshV
3167
Any tips on crew specialization? I got my first crew set to 100%, should I specialize and do all the same thing? Like all cammo or all repair?
I’d specialize, have all your men focus on one skill. Repair is useful to pretty much everyone and camouflage runs a close second. Skip fire fighting though, it’s marginally useful at best.
Yes, they should all be the same. Your crew’s skills are averaged, so if you split their specializations, you’ll be adding a bunch of zeroes to the equation. Decide what’s most important to that vehicle line and your playstyle, and give everyone the same ability. I tend to pick camoflage first for most everything, followed by repair.
mk56
3170
This video makes me wish I was Russian.
Wargaming TV
Wish i understood russian too, but all the new physics look nice.
Dejin
3172
My very last game with my VK3601(H) before unlocking the Tiger. Quite possibly my best game ever.
Abbey. I was in the hills, pushing forward with a T1 Heavy and a T-34-85 against several VK3601(H)s. We took them out, but I lost my two teammates, and was fairly dinged up. I notice we were way down, there were only a few of us left, so I pulled back to go on defense. Still in the hills, I noticed an SU-100 moving in on our defense. He had his side to me, so I chewed him up with several shots from the side. T-34 coming out of the gulley onto our base was focused on the defense and didn’t see me sniping from the hills. Took him out. We lost our one remaining artillery, and then the remaining defenders. It was me against 3 enemy artillery, a StuG, and an SU-85B. I went near our base and hid near some rocks (figured I needed defense against the enemy artillery, and I wanted to be back far enough that I was hard for the artillery to flank). StuG and SU-85B show up in the hills, and I’m facing the wrong direction. Hit SU-85B hard but don’t kill him. He backs away and I rotate my hull to face the right direciotn. StuG takes over SU-85’s firing position and takes a shot at me. We exchange shots. Two hits on him and he’s gone. I’m taking artillery fire. Near misses close enough to flash red. SU-85B tries to find a new firing position – blam, he’s gone. I notice an enemy artillery over by the gully – one shot and he’s out. I move over behind the house near the base, so I’m in a different location, but still shielded from artillery. I see a second artillery near the gap between the Abbey and the gulley – two shots. Now I’m really dinged up bad, and facing a relatively fast Priest in a VK3601(H) (with stock engine). I decide I need to play it safe and camp – thinking if I push forward I’m slow enough he can cap while I’m still in the middle of the map. He comes chugging up the slope trying to cap and bam. End of game.
Picked up a sweet achievement too:
JoshV
3173
That’s a nice victory.
A follow up to the skills thing, what happens to a crew’s specializations after I retrain them to a new tank and their skill drops? I have enough stuff to move from the KV to the KV-3, curious if its worth taking my 100% crew with me, I think they drop like 15%, but thats still better than paying for a new semi trained crew at 70%.
Edit: Anyone see the announcement for World of Warplanes… I smell a crossover! It could be kind of cool to have both, it could certainly break up the dominance on heavy tanks, if they can easily be spotted and strafed by planes. And of course, we’d need a new tank tree, the anti-aircraft spgs.
Dejin
3174
The crew level drops depending on how closely the new tank is to your old tank. You can reduce the amount of drop by paying for either Regimental Training (20,000 credits) or Tank Academy (100 gold).
You do need to explicitly change the tank type by opening up the crew member’s personnel file and then switching to the Training tab. Otherwise the crew skill number will be listed red, which AIUI means that they won’t gain any XP although they will otherwise function as normal. The user interface will let you know how much of a drop will occur and you can choose either to go through with the change in tank specialization or not.
As far as secondary skills go (e.g., camo, repair), there is no drop in secondary skill levels. They continue to function normally when switching to a new tank. The won’t increase though until the crew gets back up to 100%.
See this page on the wiki for more info.
Jab
3175
I think I’m still somewhat confused with how detection works. During a game earlier, I was hiding behind bushes and fired on a tank about 300 M away. There were no other enemy tanks near me and no other tanks near the one I was attacking . After my attack hit, the tank then hit me with a direct shot. I thought that only tanks within 15M or less could see someone behind bushes after firing.
Also with the camouflage skill for crew, what exactly does that affect?
I have no idea how it all works technically, but when people fire from cover I usually see them from a long way away, depending on view distance, optics, crew quality, etc.
pyrhic
3177
detection and sight mechanics continue to be my biggest complaint about the game. I continue to die to shit that I can’t even see. How I wish for even a simple battlefield sight mechanic(ie, if you can see it, you can FUCKING SEE it).
Tman and I tested sighting briefly in a training server and I continue to be unimpressed - as either one of, or both our tanks, would appear/disappear/reappear at indecipherable intervals for no apparent reason.
I like playing artillery, but sometimes it’s soooo frustrating. Not because of the game per se, but because of the players. Because they can’t see how many times I hit and damage the guys they ultimately kill, when I don’t have any kills showing, they always think I’m slacking. They also don’t understand, often, things like how difficult it is to hit targets the closer they are to you, the need to lead, the need to wait for the aiming ring to shrink, the reload time, the need for spotting for more than one second, etc. And the chat system is so bad it’s not really worthwhile to try and respond.
And yeah, spotting is frickin’ bizarre. OTOH, the Ram II is one heck of a fun little tank. Damn thing is far more useful than the Sherman freebie from beta that I sold.
Tman
3179
You’re overthinking this. I translated “I got lucky and got the last shot on the first guy that appeared” to “I killed a scout”.
1 shot, 1 kill,then 24 shots against a KV-3 that was broadside to me.
What am I supposed to do when the first several AP shots bounce and do no damage? I go to HE. I have a habit of dividing my load-out into 1/2 AP and 1/2 HE for all my tanks since I’ve been put in tier 8-9 battles where AP routinely does no damage.
The damage model in the game is fairly opaque as well. I’ve put a 152 from a SU-152 into the rear of an A-20 light at like fifty feet and had it bounce. I’ve killed KVs which were at more than 30% health with a single 6lber shot from a Ram II. From the front. Who knows what’s going on?
