3181

Why do you read chat? Who cares what others think? Get the confederate award and the two guys who actually stay till the end of the match can see that you contributed. Eg, don’t focus on kills, just do the damage you can dish out to as many tanks as possible.

I like Arty, and after getting over my initial hatefest with the SU-5, I came to love it. Now I’m in the hate-fest with the SU-8. Talk about a pathetic piece of crap arty that takes forever to both aim & reload and has the most radical random reticle resizing of any tank. Not to mention it takes FOREVER to shrink down the reticle.

I’ve got a 30% hit rate after getting nearly 50% on the SU-5. I get so tired of hearing “that was close!” when I shoot the SU-8 (I got top-gun achievement with my SU-5 twice ;-). The only good thing is I can actually put a little hurt (10-50% on a tier 8/9) when I do connect with a direct hit.

3182

Um, I read chat because, well, it’s there. I know how to play artillery. I also would rather have a pleasant environment in the game, rather than a rancorous cesspool. I don’t precisely care what dumb asses think, no, it wears on me to constantly have to deal with the bitching from ignorant twits. What the game really, really needs is better chat so things can scroll, and better combat reporting so people see who actually hits what.

3183

Intellectually, you are, of course, 100% right. The problem is that people don’t think that way. (You yourself undermined your own argument by mentioning the “Confederate” medal.)

I felt a little guilty last night when I finished off two tanks that were below 10% in rapid succession at the end of a match. I obviously am going to keep playing the same way, but I probably annoyed the KV that I “stole” the kills from, since it kept him from gaining the 6+ kill medal, and he really did do most of the heavy lifting in the match.

People respond to incentives. Living through the whole “Achievement Unlocked!” era has really made me aware of how even the smallest and stupidest “incentives” will cause people to bend over backwards in pursuit of them. Every developer should be aware of this, and should strive to make sure that the in-game metrics and rewards encourage good play.

3184

LOL, ya, you’re right of course. I’ve just given up on any community aspect of this game with the lack of any community features beyond the paltry 3-member platoon (which we all use voice anyway). FFS, they actually tell people to use STEAM to keep in contact with friends! LOL

I don’t care about K/D. I care about XP ;-)

3185

Oh yeah, xp is where it’s at. They really, really should redo the whole leaderboard though to give people props for the actual stuff they do that contributes to victory. Right now it’s not only useless, it actually encourages bad gameplay.

3186

I think you’re seeing the difference between version 0.6.3 and 0.6.4. In 0.6.4 they changed it so that all bushes with 15m of the tank lose their camo effect the minute you shoot. I’m not sure how long they lose their effect, but it’s definitely quite a while.

There are still places where TDs can snipe with impunity – for example, I’ve found it very difficult to spot TDs on the wooded side of Prokhorovka until I’m right on top of them. But things are much more difficult for TDs.

Someone claimed that a TD when firing becomes visible out to over 400m. I haven’t tried it myself. You should be safe sniping out past 500m for sure though.

3187

A bunch of us on my team got into this with KV on our team about a month or so ago. He was bitching that people were stealing his kills. I still find it hard to believe that he expected his teammates to leave enemy tanks untouched while he reloaded his slow loading derp gun. Leaving an enemy tank with 10% health left seems like a good way to get your teammates killed. In general an enemy tank at 10% health can kill a friendly tank just as well as a 100% one can. And in terms of combat efficiency it makes sense to target tanks which have already been badly damaged and take them out of the fight.

I’ve only seen kill stealing complaints once in the 6 weeks or so since the game released – and I don’t recall seeing it at all directly in any matches I played in beta. So while it gets talked about a lot, I don’t think it’s that widespread – just very annoying when it occurs. I was also encouraged that when the KV complained about kill stealing, multiple team mates jumped in and told him to STFU. I was on the other side of the map defending the base (Komarin), but I certainly jumped in and lended my weight to the “no such thing as kill stealing in a team game like WoT” arguments.

3188

To simplify things (and to save lifes :)), always assume you will become visible when you shoot. There are very specific cases when you MIGHT remain invisible (being behind multiple bushes, one of which is within 15m and others are outside of 15m) but they are pretty rare and quirky.

BTW, tanks always see other tanks within 50 m regardless of anything - through walls, bushes, mountains, etc.

Camo skill simply decreases the distance from which your (hiding, i.e non-shooting) tank will be seen. IIRC, similar to Repair skill, 100% camo crew provides 25% bonus. So, if some tank, in certain situation, would have detected you from 400 m, your 100% camo crew will bring this distance down to 300 m.

It was me, although I specifically said “high tier TD’s” since the tests I’ve seen only covered those. On Russian forum, there was a movie of the test, unfortunately I tried for like 30 min and can’t find it anymore.

All high level TD’s (JT, Ferdi, Object, ISU-152) become visible at 450 m when shooting from behind a single bush.

It’s not really opaque but like in real life there are so many variables at play… Also human nature is to remember the extreme cases (like the two you listed) and kind of forget hundreds, if not thousands, of “regular” shots.

With the A-20, your shell could have been placed on the edge of the reticle (or even outside of it, there is like 2% chance for that IIRC), which would result in it hitting (instead of the back you were aiming at) the side of the A-20 at very sharp angle, which would result in ricoshet.

With the KV, there are also a bunch of possibilities - from someone else hitting that KV a split second before you to your shell going through a viewport inside the tank and hitting ammo rack, engine and other modules there. Regular damage, plus damage from modules, plus damage from ammo rack’s explosion could result in that 30% damage.

Most of the time there is a logical explanation and with that many variables and that many statistical occurances, anything can happen. :) Plus bugs, dropped packets and lag, of course. :)

3189

Oh, I hear what you’re saying, and I’m familiar with all that, but by opaque I mean the player never really gets any of that detail or explanation. Coming from a wargaming background, I guess I’m used to seeing detailed explanations of just what happens with each shot–where it hits, why what happened happened, etc.–and in WoT of course you can’t get that. So it’s sort of non-transparent why things happen. That, and because they don’t model overpowering/overpenetration, where weight of shell actually matters, you get far too many heavy shells bouncing off of angled light armor with no damage.

None of that actually bothers me, as it all evens out in the end. The basics are sound–doing things that are smart results generally in better results, so I’m reasonably happy.

3190

They do actually, IIRC if the armor is less than 10% of the shell’s caliber, the shell will never bounce. Eg 152 mm will never boucne against anything less than 15 mm. Or maybe it’s not 10% because that sounds too low. :)

In any case, you are right, they should tweak it so that large caliber shells are less bouncy. :)

3191

Ah, cool, I had read they didn’t model this at all. Good to see they do, in some aspects at least. As I said, I don’t want the game to be uber-realistic. Just consistent and predictable, within the boundaries of expected chance on the battlefield.

3192

Has anyone else seen the E3 players in their games? They give them a top tier tank, like a T30, and at the start of the match the E3 guy will drive straight across the map, get about halfway, and get killed by 4 or 5 people I’m sure he couldn’t even see.

I’m not so sure what kind of impression this creates for the game, but it’s pretty funny.

3193

Sadly enough, I got killed by an E3 player, who was in a T29. I was in my SU-152, and was left defending our base on the Mountain Pass map, by myself. He came around the corner, my shot bounced off his lower hull, and as I was at like 15% health, his first shot killed me. Humiliating.

3194

Haha, I’m sure that the was the one E3 guy who has 2000 matches on his account at home!

Seriously though, oof, that is some bad luck.

3195

I somehow managed to bounce a 122mm shell with 175mm of penetration KV-1S shell off a Hummel today at point blank range. A Hummel with 30/10/10 plating. He then hit me, tracked me and killed my loader, ran around and killed me with his next shot before I’d reloaded.

It was pretty unexpected.

3196

Since this ricoshet stuff came up several times in the last few days, I went to the Russian forum and checked what the devs said about the rules. Here it goes: If the caliber of the shell exceeds the target’s armor at least 3 times or more at the point of penetration, ricoshet is prohibited by a special rule.

Source: http://forum.worldoftanks.ru/index.php?/topic/14080-учите-геометрию/page__view__findpost__p__510944

Of course, when looking at the target’s armor, one has to remember about angles and how they increase the armo. Depending on the armor’s slope as well as the shooter’s and target’s position related to each other, the effective armor can increase dramatically. At 60^ (hey, where is the degree character?), IIRC 30 mm can become 45 mm and 45 mm can bounce most guns in the game. One also need to consider horizontal angles in addition to the evrtical ones - combined they can increase armor dramatically.

Also, the values displayed in the game for the armor are just averages and should not be seriously considered. For example, Ferdinand’s front armor is listed as 200 mm, when in reality it ranges from 120 mm to 200 mm in different to even more in the gun’s mantel (and even less in viewports and stuff).

In short, there are a lot of variables in play. So, really, all you can do is use the appropriate shell types, minimize your chances of missing (i.e. don’t shoot on the move), aim at the tank’s vulnerable spots and pray. No matter what you do, though, shit happens and the oucome might surprise you (whether in a good or bad way).

I bet Wittmann was like “WTF! Nice hack!” when some stupid Sherman blew his Tiger’s turret off the hull.

3197

BTW it’s funny that when I looked at the above picture, my first thought was “He must have just gotten his Tiger - the turret is not upgraded”. :)

3198

Yeah, it’s very important to remember that one thing WoT does very well is simulate the uncertainty of tank combat–in WWII, pretty everything that could happen, did happen, at one point or another. With tens of thousands of tanks used throughout the conflict over the years, the sheer number of bizarre situations and statistical anomalies was probably astronomical. So when you kill something you probably shouldn’t be able to, or you die to a tank three tiers below you, suck it up and soldier on, and make an offering to the gods of chance.

Given the enormous abstractions and omissions in the game–no infantry, no towed ATGs, no collision of barrels with world geometry, no rarity considerations, and more–the lack of a truly detailed ballistics and metallurgical model for penetration is pretty understandable. And probably desirable. Having played any number of board games and a few computer games over the years that really wanted to focus on the nitty gritty of simulating tank combat, I can say with confidence that most of them simply were not fun and were only arguably more realistic in the fundamentals, overall.

3199

To be fair, it looks like it was a Sherman Firefly, and it was because it ignited his ammo.

3200

Sure it was but the outcome was still beyond ordinary.