You have a great setup for the Soviet TD’s, I am using the same.
One thing to remember though is how the moment you shoot you are not stealthed anymore. So having the net is not the “I can hide all day long in this bush” card anymore. You simply use it to have a nice uninterrupted first shot and then you need to start moving. 5 seconds after the shot, you can settle in (preferrably another) bush.
High tier German TD’s (starting with JgdPanther) IMO don’t have enough camo to begin with, so net is not that helpful to them. Their role changes a bit - they become second line assaulters instead of the ambushers. Which means positioning closer to fight and using hard cover. But you don’t care about that since you drive SU-152. :)
Other equipment alternatives are IMO not that useful to a TD (meaning they are great but you only have 3 slots). Vent provides too little benefit (~2.5% faster reload, aiming, etc. is IMO not worth it comparing to other modules). Liner is great (especially for Germans) but it’s more geared towards lower tier arty/HE (still useful), it’s heavy and slows you down a lot. Optics are great but the effect is a bit redundant if you already have the binocs and is probably overkill.
One thing you will need as you get higher (on the Object IIRC) is stabilizer for your gun. It’s a tough choice what to replace and depends mostly on your playstyle but always keep the rammer. Every tank must have the rammer, period.
Accuracy, yeah. That’s the low accuracy for you. When the accuracy approaches 0.4, it becomes very random. IIRC this kind of accuracy gives you a ~ 50/50 chance to hit the inner vs outer circle of your reticle, meaning that you have as much chance to hit thebull’s eye of your reticle as to hit its outer border or close to it. Which most of the time means 50/50 chance to hit the enemy.
About 910/2. That’s how the HE rounds work, as opposed to the AP ones. AP rounds either penetrate or not. If they do, they deal their full damage (plus change if they hit something inside the enemy) and if they don’t, they deal 0 damage (there are more details but I won’t go there sicne we are talking about HE’s).
HE rounds work differently. If they penetrate, they deal their full damage plus they deal massive damage to internal modules (ammo, engine, etc.) and crew (which also produces damage to the tank’s generic hp’s). If they don’t penetrate, they deal half of their damage anyway (reduced by the enemy’s armor, so for low caliber HE’s it won’t be half damage against Maus) and they also deal massive damage on any nearby external module (track, gun, turret ring, etc.) and they also have a pretty good chance to splash inside the tank and do some damage to the internal modules and crew.
For the SU-152, with its massive 152 mm stock gun, HE damage is 910 and pen is 85 mm. Which means that if you hit Ferdi’s side (80 mm armor), you will definitely penetrate it (HE rounds’ penetrate does not decrease with range like it does for AP) and deal at least 910 damage, plus lots of internal damage, which will most like add enough damage to one shot the poor Ferdi.
If you hit the Ferdi from the front, let’s say at its thickest armor, 200mm, your HE round won’t penetrate it, so it will deal half damage (910/2=455) reduced a little bit due to the massive armor to, let’s say 400 (the actual reduction formula is unknown).
So when you think HE or AP, compare half damage of the HE with the full damage of the AP and think how likely you are to penetrate the enemy with the AP. With the SU-152’s stock gun (AP penetration 135), you are not likely to penetrate anything tier 7 and up (plus the tier 6 KV-3), remember AP penetration goes down with range (plus penetration varies +/- 25%), plus enemy’s armor is most likely sloped, which makes that 700 AP damage a pretty illusive thing.
So most of the time it’s a good idea to switch to HE and do guaranteed 350-450 damage (with an occasional 1000+ damage “Gotcha!” when you get a lucky position on the unlucky enemy).
Whew, huge post. :)
