4361

Is the 88 only good with gold ammo?

4362

I dont have the long 88, but the short 88 only has something like a 132 pen.

Smurf, I think I can understand the regret - unlike an MMO, there’s no world to discover here, and nothing broader than a simple-concept FPS.

I’ve spent about $60 and it feels like I overspent a bit, but not too much; however, I’m really loathe to spend anything more. Right now, i play about maybe 6-10 matches a night and don’t even think of leveling my top tiers (IS and T-43) because those barely make any credits for me at all(on regular) and I can just see the situation getting worse the higher up I go. My tier 5s and arty are about the best credit makers - so there’s little incentive to go higher.

4363

Of course, not. They are good guns regardless, gold ammo makes every gun much better.

However, if you really want to feel overpowered, you have to get the “konicsh” gun on the VK3601 and use it with gold ammo. It’s the most overpowered gun/ammo combination in the game.

The new T-59 premium tank is ridiculously hard to damage. I dunno if it’s the armor thickness or the slope or the combination, but it’s like it’s invincible to other mediums. I saw a heavy and 2 mediums surround and pin one to a wall and even then it took like 30 seconds to kill it.

It’s not THAT hard to damage. It has very good front armor (about the same as Panther 2 and Pershing, a bit more bouncy though) but, as usual, its sides and rear can be penetrated by anything.

I bought the Type and I REALLY like it. I never felt tempted to buy the Lowe or the KV-5 because I generally don’t like playing heavies, especially as slow as Lowe or with such a bad gun as KV-5. I really like mediums and TD’s so the Type sounded very compelling. I like mediums, I like tier 8, I like credits. :)

So I bought it. People say it feels a lot like Pershing but I wouldn’t know - I don’t have the Pershing. From what I understand, the playstyle is very similar - it’s a med-, short-range brawler that has to keep moving and keep its nose towards the enemies. It can circle slower heavies and TD’s but not stuff like IS-3 or Tiger 2. Power-wise, I’d say, overal it’s a bit stronger than the T-44 and about on par with Panther 2 and Pershing.

It has two pretty bad and unfortunate limitations, both of them, however, are fixable. Low acceleration and ammo rack (just like the T-44). So, IMO, Wet Ammo Rack and Quality Oil are must have. The oil will cost you 5K per fight but it’s peanuts considering the kind of money the tank earns, plus if it allows you to make an extra hit per fight (and it often does), it pays for itself.

So the tank is fun, it takes some getting used to but it’s interesting. It has very respectable top speed (55kmh) but takes some time to reach it. Not too long though (especially with the Oil) as it doesn’t have any troubles keeping up with T-54’s and T-44’s. My win ratio with it fluctuates betwen 59% and 65%, which is about what I have on other mediums.

Money-wise, it’s great. The first day I got it (Friday), I’ve made about 850K in 2.5 hours. By the end of the day yesterday, I bought the 3002DB I had unlocked for awhile, outfitted all my tanks with modules and still have about 700K to spare. It averages about 50K after tax per fight over time, never goes into negative, repairs for about 5K IIRC.

The worst income (before tax) was about 15K when I got killed without ever taking a shot. The best income was in a record breaking fight where I earned 2311 exp and 137K credits, as well as Sniper, Confederate and Steel Wall (shot all 34 rounds, hit with 32 of them, killed the last arty with my last HE round). I am seeing fights earning 100+K quite often.

Matchmaker is treating the Type pretty much as any other tier 8 medium. Solo, you mostly get into tier 8 and some tier 9 fights. In platoons, it’s all over, including tier 10.

So if you don’t really like heavies but enjoy mediums, want more credits and want to feel like you matter in fights, you will probably like the Type 59.

4364

The Clan Wars side is where the meta game is. Provinces in Europe and North Africa are there to be conquered. Even better, each province provides a certain amount of gold per turn. I just got 3400 in gold as my share of my clan’s Sept income (per my clan’s policy, your mileage may differ) and have been receiving dividends for several months. Of course it’s always more fun when you’re winning. For me, clan wars makes the rest of the game grind bearable.

4365

I agree. I’ve seen quite a few fights literally won by the scouts. By either killing the arty, lighting up the heavies or sneaking into the enemy flag towards the end of the fight.

Scouts IMO is the most hard to play and misunderstood class in the game. The devs probably made a mistake by not having them as separate trees, available only at higher levels.

And they have to penalize the idiot scouts who run out in the first minute and die.

BTW, the devs are treating the new top scouts as other top tanks in their class (i.e. IS-7, Jagdtiger, T-54…) - they are not making any credits. But they are freaking awesome.

Also BTW, Chaffee’s DPM (damage per minute) with HE rounds (the ones that don’t need to penetrate to deal damage) rivals the DPM of the IS-3, even if Chaffee’s HE rounds never penetrate (i.e. they always deal 50% of the listed damage). It’s 1890 vs 1950, not even counting all the modules that will be critted by HE. And the Chaffee has speed and manuerability to circle around IS-3. Don’t underestimate the Chaffee, one on one, in a good open position, it can eat up pretty much any arty, TD and most heavies in the game.

I am noticing that, at the begining of the fight, all of a sudden I am looking not only at the top tanks on the list but also at the bottom ones. The bottom tanks now have to be taken into consideration when thinking about what to do.

4366

Wait, what? You get gold for being in a clan? There is so little information available about this.

4367

I broke down and got a Type 59 as well. My experience is that it plays pretty much like a tougher and slightly less quick T-44-100. I’d say it comes in somewhere about tier 8.25. I haven’t had it long though. It’s extremely fun to play, but that often comes from the fact that this tank has extremely preferential matchmaking. It never has to fight anything harder than a tier 6 medium will have to fight - which means, in practical terms, you will never, ever fight vs a tier 9 medium or a tier 10 heavy in the Type 59.

It makes money better than my SU-8 or SU-14, too. It’s a very strong tank where it is matched, unlike my other premium tanks (M3 Stuart, Sherman E4 or PZ 4/5)

4368

God I wish they would do this somehow. It sucks for your team to be down 2-3 players within the first minute because they just run out there and die. They need to disincentivize the behavior that we don’t want and incentivize actually scouting over time. Maybe instead of just “first person to detect an enemy tank gets a scout bonus”, change it to “for every second that you are spotting an enemy tank, you accrue a bit of xp”. That way scouting 5 tanks for like 5 seconds gets you nothing compared to scouting several tanks over the full course of the match.

Also BTW, Chaffee’s DPM (damage per minute) with HE rounds (the ones that don’t need to penetrate to deal damage) rivals the DPM of the IS-3, even if Chaffee’s HE rounds never penetrate (i.e. they always deal 50% of the listed damage). It’s 1890 vs 1950, not even counting all the modules that will be critted by HE. And the Chaffee has speed and manuerability to circle around IS-3. Don’t underestimate the Chaffee, one on one, in a good open position, it can eat up pretty much any arty, TD and most heavies in the game.

The Chaffee is scary. I have about 17K on my M5 Stuart and am slowly working towards it, but that’s lower priority than getting a KV-3 for the free tank in 0.7.0.

4369

Yes, that’s what I was trying to say but failed. :) The word is a solo Type 59 almost never gets placed in a match with medium tier 9’s or heavy tier 10’s. This might be 100% rule on the Russian server with their crazy 200K simultaneous players but, on the US server, I’ve been placed with tier 9 mediums and tier 10 heavies. Not THAT often but it happened.

Most of the time I am playing with tier 8 heavies and sometimes with tier 9 heavies.

It already like this, for both credits and exp - you receive exp and credits when your teammates damage targets that you are spotting at the moment. The problem is not many people know this and the devs don’t really educate palyers about this kind of mechanics. This kind of stuff should be displayed every time a person takes his scout into a fight.

And they should probably increase that bonus and make it more visible. I hope it’s in their plans when they mention that “improved after match report” is slated for somewhere in Q1 2012 (?).

And the “This tank will be placed in high tier matches” message should be displayed every time someone buys a scout. It’s funny how many people expect their Leopard to be placed with tier 2-3 tanks but the game doesn’t really mention anywhere that’s it’s not going to ever happen.

Oh and I don’t think KV-3 is going to be worked on in 7.0, the “Future Development” post places it in Q1 2012. But then again, their plans change all the time, it’s probably a good idea to get it and have it in the garage. Mine’s been there since April. :)

4370

I knew about the “teammates damaging people you are spotting gets you a bonus” thing but I think that should be expanded a bit to:

  1. you get xp/credit for spotting any target, per second (can use decimals here for xp)
  2. you get a bonus on top of that for damage inflicted by teammates (maybe even a multiplier on the damage based on how far away the teammate is, making spotting for arty very lucrative)
  3. remove the “oh you detected an enemy first” bonus so there is no incentive to suicide scout rush

and at the end of the round the detected breakdown would be like:
Detected:
mediumFOO (pzIIIa) 250 seconds for 50xp/250 credits, teammate damage bonus 500 damage for 50 xp/250 credits

So if you suicide scout your detected breakdown would be much worse:
mediumFOO (pzIIIa) 10 seconds for 2xp/10 credits, teammate damage bonus 0 damage for 0xp/0 credits

This would clearly and fairly disincentivize the stupid behavior that doesn’t promote teamwork and incentivize behavior that does promote teamwork.

If you go to this interesting developer post about the 0.7.0 update: http://game.worldoftanks.com/in_development

You’ll see at the bottom a link to the blog post with the revisions to the tech tree that talks about the free tanks/slots. So it sort of seems to me that that’s saying the 0.7.0 update will have those changes, but it’s certainly not plainly stated that that’s the case. In any case, as you said, there’s no harm in getting it all before I need it. The only problem is that the KV is fucking brutally unfun to play in stock form. I’m working towards the ?105mm? gun but it’s a torturous slog.

4371

This is kind of minor, but when the KV-3 moves up a tier I assume that the research costs for all its modules will go up? So theoretically I want to get stuff on it researched before it moves up a tier?

Someone want to loan me 700k credits? I really don’t want to have to sell my KV to afford it, but it might be a better long-term investment to get the KV-3 sooner and re-buy the KV later.

4372

I didnt think you could transfer credits?

4373

Overlord posted the updated matchmaking chart and according to it, Type 59 (and KV-5) are NOT supposed to be placed with tier 9 mediums and tier 10 heavies. Great news!

You’ll see at the bottom a link to the blog post with the revisions to the tech tree that talks about the free tanks/slots. So it sort of seems to me that that’s saying the 0.7.0 update will have those changes, but it’s certainly not plainly stated that that’s the case.

Well, there are LOTS of changes to the tech trees planned, doesn’t mean that they all will be released with 7.0 :)

You can have a look here (http://overlord-wot.blogspot.com/2011/09/2012-mystery-revealed.html) to see what is planned to be released when. Tentatively. :)

4374

Yeah, that was sort of a joke.

4375

You can’t. Inconvenient but it does keep hackers from cleaning out accounts.

4376

Cool, thanks! Takes a lot of the urgency out of grinding the KV line. It’ll probably be a lot less painful in smaller doses. Although I imagine it’ll get a lot better once I get that stupid good gun.

4377

The KV is ridiculously fun with the top gun. It can punch way above its tier with it.

4378

FYI, the Russian Heavy Tank tree revision is not coming till Q1 2012. It was posted in the 2011-2012 plan post.

Plenty of time to grind out those KV/KV3/IS-4s.

4379

It is terrific… A glass cannon in the heavier fights but sometimes circumstances work in your favour. Last night my big achievement was killing a T-50 with 1 shot at long range, hammering 3 T-59s, getting the killing shot on two of them, and then soloing a VK3601 (with some luck and maneuvering admittedly). He was quite angry…

4380

Derp gun is fun as long as you remember that you will be target N 1, except for the arty. God, I hate derp KV’s in high tier fights. :)