ShivaX
5701
Overall I’m really enjoying it, but I think Assault needs to be looked at. Once people figure out where they need to go attackers are going to be screwed. All you have to do is slow them down since they’ll probably run out of time.
I think the attacking force needs to have a slight edge in tanks or something.
I am finding that the defence rarely wins.
ShivaX
5703
Attackers get nothing over defenders, which is kind of an issue so far. I think if attackers would all zerg one direction it might be effective. Ironically, no one is willing to lemming in the one game type where it might work.
ShivaX
5704
Really? Defense almost always wins in my games. As long as they don’t all sit inside the spawn circle they tend to demolish the attackers in short order. Maybe its because me and my clanmates are out there spotting and tearing shit up or something…
Dejin
5705
that’s only some of the TDs though. Try assaulting with a Marder and let me know how it goes.
Lol you got me there. Marder would be a rather suicidal assault lead. But still, it should use its mobility to get in a position to provide direct fire on the enemy. If it sits in a bush twiddling its thumbs waiting for the assault to fail, it squanders its mobility and deprives the assaulting tanks of its fire support. So yea. offence ftw.
Shiva, i think the deciding part here is “me and my clanmates out there spotting and tearing shit up” . You are engaging in a very active defence, so active one might go so far as to dub it counter-offensive ;-)
Pete i play on the .eu servers. Many poles, czechs etc. they dont know much english and if they do they aint using it. i feel your pain. you get used to it. i did. just dont expect or hope to go much beyond 50% win stat on solo randoms lol.
It’s almost as if our varied experiences and small sample size are not enough to draw any firm conclusions… except that the results of random matches are still pretty random.
RichVR
5708
But the concept of assault gun isn’t so much about being a front line tank killer so much as it’s being mobile artillery. The assault gun concept is more about killing troops and opening up holes in defenses. That would be after the front line tanks did their jobs.
I just got through playing a random battle and I was the only member of my team outside our base (I was using my SU-26). It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when an arty has to do the scouting for his team and is the only one attempting to cap.
Dejin
5710
I thought some of the assault guns were development specifically for direct assaults on fixed positions particularly bunkers and in urban environments. This doesn’t mean that this occurred after the front line tanks did their jobs, in fact I think they were meant to be used instead of front-line tanks.
The T95 for example was originally designed to attack bunkers in the Siegfried line. Similarly the Sturmpanzer IV Brummbär was designed in response to lessons the German’s learned at Stalingrad. AIUI in both these cases these were meant as replacements for tanks in these specialized situations.
My personal take is that the tough T95/JagdTiger type heavy assault TDs are great advancing in situations in which the position of the enemy is known, particularly when you’ve got a very narrow corridor to assault through. The central road in Himmelsdorf is probably the best example. They don’t do well assaulting in situations where the position of the enemy is not known and the enemy could be located anywhere within a wide area – assaulting the “magic forest” in Murovanka with a heavy TD seems like a bad idea.
The main issue with the TDs is that they can be easily tracked and thus placed in a position in which they cannot return fire. Unless they are used in specific situations where this cannot happen, they are not idea for attacking. Although with the right support, of course, this could be different. I suppose a T95 could act as a scout drawing fire and hopefully highlighting targets while more poorly armored tanks (or for that matter artillery) hit whatever it spotted.
Question for those that play heavy TDs with long reload times. Do you play peak-and-poke in urban environments or just sit with your front pointed to the enemy, and count on your armor to shrug off shots? I’m always a bit anxious pulling back around the corner in a turret-less TD because I find getting tracked and not able to return fire to be very frustrating. OTOH as reload times increase, it does seem rather silly to just be sitting there getting blasted at.
Well my heavy TD is an object 704, which is decidedly less bouncy than the others, and I definitely peek and poke. I do bounce some stuff, but not enough to rely on it. Generally though people are afraid of the damage I can do and they tend to be more afraid of me than I am of them, so I tend to be the first one to be setting up around the corner.
My main TD is a JT. Where possible I follow the super heavies like the IS-7, Maus, and E-100 and support them. Opposing tanks will generally think twice about taking on such a combo. Where possible I try and avoid going solo. The JT tends to suffer due to its massive size and weak armor and is an easy target.
Assault Guns and TDs were, historically, two different things, though there was considerable overlap. The original StuG was designed to lob HE at infantry and other soft targets, or fortifications; when the Germans ran short of actual tanks and needed more mobile AT support, it got pressed into service that way and was eventually equipped with a longer 75 for killing armor. The American M10 was designed as a mobile tank destroyer with its 3"/76mm gun, but was very often pressed into service as an assault gun by infantry who, lacking tanks at the moment, wanted a mobile and somewhat protected cannon to help them out. The Soviet SU series included a mix of vehicles with different roles. The SU-100 and SU-85 were pretty much tank killers, the 152s were sort of dual-purpose, though the low velocity cannon was probably organically more suited for HE lobbing than for tank hunting, despite the massive damage it could do by virtue of its shell size.
The early StuGs, the Brumbars, SU and ISU-152s with their short-barreled guns were probably more “pure” assault guns, while the Jagdpanzer IV, SU-85/100, M10/18/36 types were more purely TDs as we know them, I’d say.
In the game, things like the T28/95 are clearly bunker busters designed to “lead the charge” (or the slow walk), but few of the other TDs really have the durability to do that. The Object 704 is a mobile BL-10, best used aggressively, but it’s hardly a front-line charge leader IMO.
ShivaX
5714
With the T95 you never peek and poke cause it will take longer than your reload time to withdraw anyway. At best you angle a little while reloading, but not too much or you wont be able to return fire.
With the 704 I almost always withdraw since most things can easily penetrate me.
I had a personal record-breaking match with my T59 the other day… it’s pretty rare that I fire every single shell in my ammunition storage, but this is probably the first time I have done that AND also earned Top Gun and Sniper, not to mention the Ace Mastery badge.
It was a heck of a match, 6 kills 7 damages, culminating with me, magazine empty, ramming and almost killing a Tiger, which was then finsihed off by teammates. 127,177 credits!
I was pleased ;)
Dejin
5716
Awesome. Hitting Ace Tanker is always a happy moment, and 127,177 credits, yowza, I’ve never even come close to that much!
How many shells does a Type 59 carry?
Sometimes this game is goofy. Last night we put in chips for two landings, one for Courland, where we’ve been off and on for a bit, and the other, on a whim apparently, for Ireland, where we’ve never tried it. We lost Courland…but took Ireland, despite (or because) our field leader was three sheets to the wind on rum shots. The battle with the owner came down to I think two or three arty and a T95 on our side vs. their arty…very bizarre.
I had two crazy games in my Bat Chat recently. On an assault on Sand River, I managed 6 kills, the last tank to go down an IS-4 defending their base. What was notable was that he died to my very last round, which netted me the rare Fadin’s Medal with a Top Gun and Scout. I don’t know what I would have done if that shot hadn’t killed him, it’s not like the Bat Chat can ram heavies to death like an E-50 can.
Later on Lakeville I scored a 12 kill round, a new personal best. I think my team actually let me take the last two, the Object 704 and IS-8 defending their base.
I’m enjoying the new game modes and how they’ve taken a few ‘bad’ maps and made them more interesting. El Halluf tends to have a more interesting brawl with a single flag in the top left, and that “magical forest” Murovanka map is far more balanced with the spawns in the north and southeast.
I go for 30 AP + 4 HE on the t59. 34 ammo is very low for top tier games (so much camping!), so just keep a low amount of HE for those times there’s just an enemy’s gun poking out that you will never penetrate, but might break with HE. I frequently get close to running out, particularly games where there’s a lot of long distance sniping.
