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 The goons channel password has changed, it is posted here, read that thread every week or so for a new one.  9.10 is here This means:Japanese heavies are available "New" game mode "Rampage" Lost your premium tank? Get it back! (currently down, but you can get it back through support anyway) A special message from Senor quote:Goon Tonks TS address is 710146.ts3.mpgs.co and no password required at the request of the populous because using passwords is apparently hard. Due to that reason a complicated system of permissions that is making some of us pull our hair out had to be developed.. thanks goons. Any verified goon can give you permissions & tags, create your own channel and have at it. If you need us to create a specific channel please feel free to ask as well and mods will be happy to accommodate your request within reason i.e. no channel names or descriptions that promote hate speech and all that. Use common sense when you ask in other words.        What is World of Tanks? World of Tanks is a free to play online shooter featuring tanks from the first late-WWI designs to early Cold War prototypes. Aside from Shermans, T-34s and Tigers, you will see lesser known machines, prototypes, and ridiculous poo poo that never ever should have made it out on the battlefield. What kind of tanks are in this game? The tanks in the game are split up between 6 nations: the Soviet Union, USA, Germany, France, Britain, China, Japan. Each nation (except China) has its tanks split into 4 tech trees: Artillery (self propelled indirect fire guns), Tank Destroyers, Medium Tanks and Heavy Tanks. China only has a Medium tree with a small Heavy branch, Japan has only a Medium branch, while older nations might have two branches for some vehicle types. New tanks are being added all the time. I am a colossal sperg. Can I expect 100% historical accuracy? Hell no. This game is pretty arcadey. Shot ballistics are modeled, and stuff like shell traps and ammo rack detonations are in the game, but there are also things like hit points and repairs for damaged components/dead crew members. I am a pretty big history sperg, and I still find the game very enjoyable. As for the tanks themselves, a lot of stuff has been changed in the name of having fun. The Maus can actually move faster than 5kph, and you can hang all sorts of ridiculous guns off your tanks. 10.5cm guns on a King Tiger? Go ahead. 107mm ZiS-6 on your KV-2? Knock yourself out. Most tanks have 3-4 guns available, including the historical one. So how does this internet tanks thing work, anyway? Typically, battles are fought in teams of 15 randomly chosen players with tanks of similar tiers. You win the match by either blowing up all your enemies or capturing their base. Whether you win or lose, you earn credits and experience, which allow you to buy and research higher tier tanks. Your crew earns experience as well, which allows them to learn skills that improve their performance a little. Even experienced players with 10k battles under their belt will be more or less evenly matched against you if you are in similar tier tanks. There are many server clusters: North America, Europe, Russia, China, Korea, South-East Asia, Singapore. Most goons play on the North American cluster, and a lot play in Europe. I don't think there are a lot of goons on other servers. Somehow, I have friends, how do I alienate them completely by playing with them? You can form a platoon with 1 or 2 other players. Platoons fight on the same team in the same 15v15 random battles, so an organized platoon has an advantage over a bunch of uncooperative pubbies. You want to platoon, because pubbies play like this:   If you get 10-12 people, you can form a tank company, where you fight against other companies. Companies get matched in limited tier brackets, and if you win you get half of your enemy's credits and experience, in addition to yours. If you have a company of players that aren't poo poo, it's a very good way to grind. Joining a clan or just hanging around the Teamspeak channel will make it easier to find people to play with you. You can also get 7 people (5 tier 8 and 2 tier 1) and play Team Battles. Team Battles are a little more organized than companies, but the pubbies are still horrible. There is also Historical Battles, where the rules are a lot different to try and be more realistic. These battles were not very popular and were taken out, but they are coming back at some point in the future after a massive rework. Companies and Team Battles have been eclipsed in popularity by clan Strongholds, which are basically the same thing as Team Battles, but with less restrictions and more rewards. Even if you are not in a clan, you can fight with one in Strongholds as a mercenary. New referral incentive If you refer a new person or a player that stopped playing for a long period of time, you can invite them to the game. If you platoon with them, you get significant bonuses, and if they get a tier 10 tank, you get an exclusive premium tank of your very own. Make sure that you re-send the invitation if it was issued more than a week ago, as it will expire. WG support can't do anything to manually fix the recruiting system, so if you start playing without a valid invite, you get no rewards. I am bad at video games, but I have a lot of money. How can I pay to win? Since even Belorussians need to eat, World of Tanks has a paid currency called gold. You can use gold to buy better ammo, train your crew faster, convert experience from other tanks, buy garage slots, expand your crew barracks, or earn extra credits (this is stupid, never do this). You can also buy special tanks that are only available with gold. Most of them are awful, so try to not pay $50 for a rust bucket. Make sure to check Hellsau's list to find out which one you'd want. Also don't buy the highest tier tank right away, as a tier 8 tank that doesn't know how to play is a huge liability to their team. As a result of Wargaming's "free to win" initiative, everything available for gold that affects combat can be bought for credits. The most popular use of gold is buying a Premium account. Premium players earn 1.5 times the experience and credits. This really helps you out and is the only way to play high tiers without going back to low tiers to grind credits. If you don't want to pay money, you can earn gold through promotions, contests, or through being in a clan. I am a pro tier Russian Hacker, and I don't play any game without mods. Are there mods? Hell yes there are, and they make pubbies bawl their eyes out. XVM and J1mbo's Crosshairs are pretty much indispensable, but the full list of supported mods changes every patch. Here is the official forum thread about them. There will be a post about most popular mods below. Unfortunately 9.0 UI changes broke a lot of mods, so your favourite anime girl tank skin may no longer work. What is a good official news source, aside from the main website? This game is written by Belorussians, so all the most advanced mod discussion, conspiracy theories and developer tidbits are found on the Russian forums. For you decadent capitalists following along, I periodically translate the latest whining from pubbies in a feature known as SerBfacts. Who is SerB? Sergei Borisovich Burkatovskiy is the lead designer of World of Tanks. He hates nazis and whining pubbies. He is the goon hero and we strive to follow his teachings.    I think that this game would be better if <Very Important Opinion>  My computer is an eMachine from 1996, can I still play? World of Tanks supports pretty low end hardware (in theory), so you might want to try out a Low Res Mod Pack and disable a whole bunch of stuff. Rumour has it that "Ultra Low" settings are in development. WG put a bunch of graphics effects in 8.10 that will drop your framerate, so here are the effects and how to turn them off: Lens flare: set Lighting Quality to Medium or lower Light rays: set Lighting Quality to Medium or lower HDR Bloom: set Post-Render Effects to Off. Cloud Shadows: set texture quality to Medium. Motion blur: this one gets its own setting, so set it to off. Clan Wars:  A clan is up to 100 people who Note: just because a clan has 100 people in it, doesn't mean it's full. A player generates a chip on the global map, whether he plays or not. Odds are that at least a handful of that 100 no longer play. A clan would be more than willing to kick an inactive player for a new active one. NA Server:  ISLAM lasted for about 12 hours. To replace them, we get PANSY: Heer as Volk. The most fabulous clan!  Join this clan if you want to NDP: No Dumb Pubs. Used to be the poo poo, died, came back, died again. PBKAC: Not a goon clan, per se, but there are a ton of goons in it. It's a pretty demanding clan, so I guess you can try to join if you think you're hot poo poo and have many tier 10s. STUG: Baby StuG. An offshoot of SGLE that NSFW: 2Grilles1Krupp. Used to be the go to place for goon clan wars, now defunct. SGLE: StuG LyfE. Everyone got burned out and it collapsed. SDP: Some Dumb Pubs. NDP's STUG equivalent, except they let in pubbies, and pubbies ruin everything. Currently defunct. MS-W: Marder, She Wrote. An awful clan full of quitters. When you see them in game, shake your head and move on. Does not participate in Clan Wars. You can get an MS-W clan tag, if you really want to. STATS and MTFT: Gold Shooting Stat Hoarders and Marder Time, Fun Time. Gimmick clans for trolling pubbies. These don't actually do Clan Wars. European Server:  Click the flag for the PGS Eurogoon thread 2PAC: "Don't give a Foch". Temporarily renamed by a corrupt moderator to "Babbyland", they are out for justice. Does not do clan wars, does not require tier 10s, join if you want to play with goons. Currently recruiting HETZ: Hetzers Gonna Hetz. Europe's first goon clan, now defunct. They obviously don't do Clan Wars. Other servers don't have enough of a goon presence to have any goon clans. Joining a clan: Clans are full of weirdos that want you to apply in precisely the way they want to in order to make sure there are no spies. Odds are you should at least post in this thread saying "I want to join <clan>, my in game name is <username>". Console peasant? Not to worry! ShankyMcStabber posted:I created a PS4 Community for those of us dumb enough to play this game on a console. It is called Goon Tonks. Have some icons:         Other resources: For the Record: WoT news, supertest leaks, and some history. Stopped updating, but the content remains. Rita's Status Report: Same thing FTR used to do but with more lolcats. Noobmeter: Track your stats, make fun of bads. VB Addict: Ridiculous amount of stats, basically everything WoT tracks about you. Archive Awareness: My blog about history, tanks, and tank history. If, for some reason, you want to be reminded of this game without playing it, the official soundtrack is available here for free (unless you click the iTunes button, in which case it's not). Test Server  The Test Server goes up a few weeks before every patch, and exists to test out new vehicles and features. Your account is copied over (you can sell vehicles and discard crews without fear, but your progress also doesn't transfer over) and given copious amounts of gold, credits, and free XP to get whatever vehicle. Aside from new tanks, this is a good chance to try out some premium vehicles you want to buy. Until we get roaming, the test server is the only way to encounter other tankers from around the world. They will kill you, since they think this is hilarious, so keep the following phrases ready in your paste buffer: Не стреляй! (do not shoot!) я свой! (I'm one of you!) я не пиндос! (I am not an American) я разведчик! (I am a spy!) On the other hand, if you want to get shot more, here is a list of handy phrases: Я американский нагибатор, вы все олени (I am an American unicum, you are all scrubs) Няш мяш Крым наш (a difficult to translate political slogan) Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Mar 14, 2016 |
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Dec 23, 2014 18:12
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Want to play with internet tanks? Follow these steps: 0. FIND A BONUS CODE. World of Tanks has bonus codes floating around that give you neat stuff like free premium, free tanks, free gold, etc. A lot of these codes are only available on new accounts. Look in this thread, someone is bound to have posted some. 1. Download the client: http://worldoftanks.com/en/update 2. While it's downloading, read this. It should familiarize you with basic game concepts. 3. Read this (the tank descriptions are somewhat out of date though) to familiarize yourself with basic tactics and terminology. If it's a lot to absorb, don't worry about it, it will all become clear very fast as you start playing. Skim the tanks for each nation to figure out what you want to be playing. If you're confused, go Soviet heavies. 4. Get on the teamspeak server (ts.goontanks.com is dead, go to the one mentioned in the PGS thread) and find someone that will platoon with you and teach you how to shoot enemies. 5. Play tanks, get money. After a day or two you should have figured out which tech tree you want to advance in. You can typically only do two at a time, otherwise you won't have enough credits to buy anything. You can also only do one, but then you'll have nothing to play while your one tank is in battle. Talking to goons There are 2 ways of getting in on the sweet, sweet goony action. One is the teamspeak. Connect to pbkac.ts.nfoservers.com or the new goon TS (goontanks is dead now), then sit around in the lobby. Someone is bound to give you permissions eventually (especially if you ask in the thread). Since Teamspeak is hard, you can also use the terrible in-game means of communication and go to the channel called "goons" in game. Click on the "Channels" button in the lower left hand corner, type in "goons", double-click it, enter the password, and you're set. Note: if you want to get in on platoons or companies, Teamspeak is usually called upon first, so you'll be missing out a lot. The password is posted in this thread, updated "weekly". Choosing a tank: There are a lot of tanks in the game. Unless you're polka, you won't have all of them. You will have to limit yourself to some. First, you're going to have to choose a nation.  Soviet Union  : a very forgiving tech tree. Pubbies rage about Russian Bias (tm) due to Soviet tanks not exploding immediately from their German or US guns. The heavy line is split with the fast and lightly armoured IS tanks or the slow and lumbering KV tanks. Both sides pack fairly inaccurate guns that deal tons of damage. Medium tanks are lightly gunned, but have good agility and somewhat bouncy armour at high tiers. Their TDs have very little armour, opting instead for very high camouflage values and amazing guns. NOTE: Now that the T-60->T-70->T-80 line exists, there is no longer a reason to play the A-20. The A-20 is one of the most miserable grinds in the entire game. Don't play it.Germany  : much less forgiving than the Soviets. Both heavy lines end up with giant bricks. Their TD line follows the same principle: big tank, big gun, no camo whatsoever. The Wafentrager line is the opposite: relatively lightly armoured vehicles, but with even better guns. Medium tanks in the line that ends with the E-50M are also very big and heavy, closer to the faster Soviet heavy line, but tanks that lead to the Leopard are much closer to what you would expect from medium tanks. Note: the Maus line is horrible and painful.America  : fairly forgiving to beginners as well. They have big guns and excellent gun depression and turret armour. Tank Destroyers give you the option to go with or without a turret, both ending up with some devastating guns. The medium and heavy lines end with very nimble tanks with high penetration guns.France  : probably the hardest to play. Low tier heavies and light tanks are slow and awful. Higher tier mediums and heavies get revolver cannons: 4-6 shots in rapid succession, followed by a lengthy reload period. Devastating in the hands of a skilled player, but the learning curve for these is very steep for a beginner. Their tank destroyers have thick aggressively sloped front armour and pretty decent guns. Their artillery moves and fires very quickly, but with low calibers compared to other arty lines. DO NOT PLAY THIS AS YOUR FIRST TECH TREE. All French tanks are either awful, require very advanced play, or both. If you are new, play the Americans (T110E5 line) or Soviets (IS-7 line). Britain  : Medium tanks have very good gun depression, are typically very agile and fast firing, if poorly armoured. This line contains cruiser tanks, if you know anything about British tanks. The heavy line contains slow moving, well armoured behemoths, with smaller, but faster, guns than the Germans. High tier tanks have special HESH shells, which work as very high penetration HE. British tank destroyers have hilariously thick armour, and move very slowly. All British artillery except for the FV304 is bad.China  : A strange tech tree. Up to tier 5, all tanks are imports or captured. After that, the heavy tree is derivatives of the Soviet IS series (fast heavies with big inaccurate guns), the medium tree is effectively Soviet mediums with massive guns. The light sub-tree has an autoloader, if that's your sort of thing.Japan  : A tech tree that's even smaller than China's. For now, all they have are light and medium tanks. Intermediate tanks are poo poo. The top of the tech tree is okay, I guess.Grinding to a Clan Wars tank Hellsau posted:Grinding to a Clan Wars tank (list shamelessly Note: this list is rapidly subject to change as new tanks are added, and old tanks are nerfed/buffed. Events and specials: World of Tanks has lots of special events, some tied to famous battles, some tied to seasons, and some for no reason at all. The events are announced on the World of Tanks website, and also typically someone posts them in this thread. Things that happen at these events very often include: 50% credit discounts for certain tanks (almost always tier 6 and under) 50% gold discounts for certain premium tanks (always tier 5 and under) 30% gold discounts for certain premium tanks (tier 6 and higher) Double credit multipliers for certain tanks (again, low tier. The M4A3E8 shows up in this list a lot) Discounts on 1 day, 3 days, and 7 days of premium x3 experience for the first victory of the day, instead of the usual x2 Rarer, and thus much nicer specials include: x2 or x3 crew experience for every game x5 experience for the first victory of each day A set of free gold consumables and a day of premium Discount on 6 months or 1 year of premium Change your password for free gold Missions Missions are like quests. You get a goal (kill 50 tanks, win 30 games, get a certain medal, drive into a lake), and a reward for it. The game helpfully keeps track of your progress. Missions can earn credits, experience bonuses, equipment, and even free tanks. Skills Prav made a giant effort post on which skills are useful, and you can read it here. Aside from the Repair/Camo/Firefighting skills the game launched with, there are now a half-dozen or so skills for every crewman type. A good write-up of currently available skills can be found here. Use this spreadsheet to figure out when you will get to a next skill. Most of your crews will have two full skills and most of a third, if you play them a lot. 4 skills takes ~1500 battles to achieve, so pick your skills carefully! If you screw up, don't worry. Unlike before, where you had to delete a skill completely to respec, you can now pay gold to reassign all your experience, pay silver to reassign 90% of your experience or pay nothing to reassign 80% of your experience. Re-skilling, just like retraining, periodically goes on sale, so you don't have to live with stupid choices for very long. Mods World of Tanks has a pretty poor interface at times, so mods have been developed to add lots of functionality. Here are some very popular ones, but this is by no means a full list. 9.0 broke everything, you will have to wait for mod-makers to work their rear end off and bring their mod back. Most mods should be working again by now, though.If you are lazy, download McGavin's modpack. If you get squares (and you probably will), download these fonts. XVM: Extended Visualization Mod. Colloquially known as "pubbie radar". This mod contains Over-target Markers, a damage log, and all sorts of other cool ways to modify your interface. Most goons have this mod. It also shows statistics for players, so you can tell who is a complete moron and who you can actually count on to help you win. Recent versions of XVM split up the stats portion and the interface portion, both available here. Follow the instructions included in the zip file, this mod is a little hard to install. J1mb0's crosshairs. Offers a lot more customization options, a reload times, and yaw indicators on tanks with limited horizontal traverse. EU Forums thread here Hitzone skins. Show weak points on tanks, as well as crew and module locations. Pubbies go berserk when you tell them you have them. Here is a set of popular ones, but there are tons of different versions. There are tasteful white ones, too, if you don't want your tanks to look like clown cars. Contour Mods. Replace existing tank mini-icons with more readable ones. Different versions also show tank stats, like view range, armour thickness, etc. POGS is one of the most popular sets, but, again, there are dozens of these. Scroll mode-switch blocker. Prevents you from switching between Sniper Mode and Arcade Mode with the mouse wheel. Handy if you use the lowest zoom setting of Sniper Mode a lot. Available here. Battle Assistant: A mod for artillery that tilts your camera to show where the shell will go. A must have if you play artillery. PROHIBITED MODSThere's now an actual official WG list of prohibited mods! Read it here. If you use these, don't tell anyone. This list can change at any time, so it's a good idea to never show screenshots to anyone, admit that you play this game, speak about internet tanks at all, or mention to anyone that you own a computer. Just in case. Other things that will get your stupid rear end banned:a) being a nazi, naming yourself after a nazi, or general racism b) admitting to account sharing c) botting d) wantonly executing teammates for cowardice Hacks We're goons, so we obviously use the best hacks there are. "Hellsau's Mods" is the best hack pack available right now, download it at the end of this post. Shanky made some changes to it, everything works with 9.0 and up. [[YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO VIEW ATTACHMENTS: wothacks.zip]] Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 20:35 on Dec 23, 2014 |
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Dec 23, 2014 18:12
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Chillyrabbit posted:I just read through the OP and noticed that you need a tier 8 artillery for CW, even though I guess you have just been copypasting the same thing each time. I do make changes and updates, but I missed that one. Oops.
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Dec 23, 2014 18:27
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Nordick posted:Also the section about gold says you can use gold to buy premium ammo, with no mention that you can also buy it for credits now. I was considering "per aspera as statsra" but it didn't sound as good.
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Dec 23, 2014 19:08
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How are the new British tanks? Any keepers? I kind of want a Firefly.
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Dec 23, 2014 19:42
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xthetenth posted:There's something right about a goofy translation for a wot thread title. I just grabbed the movie title from Rotten Tomatoes. 
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Dec 23, 2014 20:42
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Chillyrabbit posted:OMC modpack is the big one right now and some people use Aslain's Haha holy poo poo, Dragon found a new and exciting way to sell the same old Tiger kit again. They're really a company that knows their audience. The German section of the catalog is later than the armour sections for all other nations combined.
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Dec 24, 2014 03:38
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Axetrain posted:It's also a Tiger P. Dragon already does a Tiger P, naturally.
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Dec 24, 2014 04:28
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Looks like the PzII Ausf. D is doing a good job distracting you from the other terrible German premium that came out recently! The medium member of the German cat family, the Panther, entered service in 1943. The best adjective to describe it would be "controversial". This tank was complicated, expensive, and picky in use, especially during its early production. However, anyone that went up against a Panther in battle would not have described it as an easy opponent. This is why improvements to the Panther were being made until 1945 and the complete collapse of German economy. Initially, the Panther's gun was a high velocity 7.5 cm piece, which confidently penetrated Allied vehicles at ranges of 2000 meters. In early 1945, Colonel Holtzhauer from the department of armoured vehicles and motorization reported that Daimler-Benz developed a Panther variant armed with the 8.8 cm KwK 43 gun, the same gun as on the King Tiger, one of the most menacing guns of WWII. In 1945, Germany planned to begin production of a new Panther variant, Ausf. F. For this version, Daimler-Benz engineers designed a new turret, the Schmalturm (narrow turret) that had a number of advantages: it was cheaper to make, better armoured, and had a smaller front plate. The gun mantlet took the shape of a truncated cone, which reduced the chances of ricochet into the thin roof, improving the safety of the driver. Despite having 120 mm of front armour, the narrow turret was 100 kg lighter than its predecessor. The decreased dimensions did not make the insides much more cramped. The new design was technologically simpler, as it took about 30-40% less time to make it. The project mounting an 8.8 cm gun in the Panther used this new turret, slightly modified. Even with this massive weapon, the vehicle was only a ton heavier than a regular Panther. Engineers had to widen the turret ring to let the crew handle long and heavy shells in the fighting compartment. Aside from Daimler-Benz, another industry giant was working on installing an 8.8 cm gun in the Panther: Krupp. After comparing the two projects, the department of armoured vehicles and motorization determined that Daimler-Benz should complete their turret and Krupp should work on the cannon. 1945 was agony for the Third Reich. Common sense would suggest that there would be no way to begin production of new types of tanks. German industry, shaken by Allied bombings and working on a starvation diet could barely manage with vehicles that were already in production. There was no chance that the Panther with an 8.8 cm gun could have seen combat. So many changes were needed that the turret remained a wooden mockup until May of 1945. In August of 1945, it was found in a Daimler-Benz assembly plant. The Panther with a larger gun was left buried in the ruins of the Third Reich. It was hard to say what effect it would have had in battle if it was produced, for example, in late 1944. One thing can be said for certain: it would not have helped Germany win the war.
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Dec 25, 2014 00:37
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Just in case, most people tend to follow the letter of the law, if not the spirit.
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Dec 25, 2014 04:55
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It fires faster, too, one shot every 3 seconds instead of 4. If you stock liberal amounts of APCR and don't try to shove your way to the front lines, it's fun. Most fun I had in it was during Historicals though, shame those are gone.
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Dec 25, 2014 05:09
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The old way halfed the damage, made a sphere (that could also pass through solid objects) and then dealt damage through the part of the sphere with the thinnest armour, so you could reliably penetrate thin roof armour when hitting the enemy's UFP and expect to deal 40-50% damage on nonpenetrating hits.
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Dec 26, 2014 03:25
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A GIANT PARSNIP posted:So you wrote a sound mod that repeats you saying "Why would you do that? Do not do that!" Every 3 seconds? If you've ever played tournaments with Hellsau, you'd know that a more realistic rendition would be "Shoot the IS-! Shoot the IS-3!" Edit: bought myself an Archer, let's see how this dumb gimmick works out. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Dec 27, 2014 |
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Dec 27, 2014 03:38
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Dumb gimmick seemed to work pretty well IRL: As soon as heavy German tanks hit the battlefield, British military minds thought of new weapons to fight them. In the middle of 1942, the QF-17 17-pounder 76.2 mm high penetration gun entered production. An idea arose to install this gun in a tracked tank destroyer. British Tachanka Out of all tanks currently available, only the Valentine could lift enough weight. It was decided to use it as a platform for the new gun, installing it in a casemate with limited traverse. The first modifications of the vehicle used a traditional layout, but the center of mass was shifted due to the long gun, and front wheels were overloaded. The gun was flipped around, spreading the weight out equally. The length of the vehicle was reduced drastically, as the gun only stuck out a little bit over the engine compartment. A downside of this layout was a difficulty of use: the driver looked in one direction, and every other crew member looked in another. This made maneuvering in battle difficult. Additionally, the fighting compartment became very cramped. As a result, the gun could only traverse slightly in each direction and the vehicle had to turn often. Another, more critical, downside was that the gun breech was placed above the driver's seat. If he wanted to keep his head, he had to leave his position before the shooting started, or leave the vehicle entirely, as there was not much room inside. It is not difficult to imagine how much this added to the aforementioned problems. The vehicle was indexed "Self Propelled 17 pdr, Valentine, Mk I", more often known as the Archer. Happiness of Artillerymen Production of the vehicle began in the middle of 1943, but it arrived in the army much later, in October of 1944, when the fighting on the Western Front was at its most intense. The vehicle was adopted by artillery units of the British and Canadian armies. It is unknown what tankers would have thought of such an untraditional vehicle, but the artillerymen were satisfied. It was no wonder: even the uncomfortable Archer provided much greater protection for its crew than the towed 17-pounder they had to use before. It is also known that they often preferred the Archer over the more traditional Achilles, due to the Archer's smaller profile. The small size and low profile of the vehicle determined the most common tactic for its application: ambushes. The Archer took its position, aimed in at an area, and waited until German tanks approached to a viable combat distance. Then the crew of the Archer would fire a few times with minimal intervals between shots, and retreat to another prepared position. These tactics compensated for the limited traverse angle, and the position of the driver was even an advantage, as the Archer could retreat at maximum speed without wasting time on turning around. Universal Soldier The high penetration of the QF-17 bailed Archer crews out of trouble many times. It could successfully penetrate nearly any enemy vehicle at any distance with aimed fire. Not only that, but there is even a recorded event of an Archer firing at a Tiger, but missing their first shot. The Tiger retreated behind a building. The Archer's commander received the location of the enemy from a scout airplane, and fired directly through the building, destroying the Tiger through its side. Aside from fighting tanks, Archers were used to support infantry, destroying field fortifications, machinegun nests, and other obstacles. Using an HE shell with a reduced muzzle velocity, the Archer could fire from entrenched positions, hiding the weakly armoured hull from harm. Archers were used in Western Europe and Italy, remaining in the army until the end of the war. After victory, Archers remained in use for some time. It is known that the British Army on the Rhine kept then Archers until the mid-1950s. Some Archers were sold to Egypt, where they fought in local conflicts, including the Suez Crisis in 1956-57. The rapid evolution of armoured vehicles rendered the 17-pounder quite unexceptional, denying the Archer its trump card, the penetration of the gun. This led to the vehicle's rapid disappearance from the battlefield. Article author: Aleksandr Grebnev. Aleksandr Grebnev is an editor, translator, columnist, and article author for a number of magazines and websites. He took part in the localization of computer games, specifically military and historical ones. Currently, he is a historical consultant and a member of the Wargaming archive group.
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Dec 27, 2014 04:19
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Archer trip report: it's okay. The gun is very workable, aims in decently fast, shoots pretty drat well. Penetration has never been an issue (once you get real APCR with the second 17-pdr anyway), the traverse is amazing. The tank spins in place like a top, and though the gun bloom is pretty significant, it settles quickly. The mobility of the vehicle is good, but the backwards driving gimmick is weird. It also forces you to be 100% certain of whether or not you are going to have to shoot something in the next few seconds. Since the tank has next to no armour or hit points (a huge amount of tanks you fight can one or two shot you, and I have yet to bounce a single shot), you have to be extremely careful. Also you can't play corners too well, since the hull will stick out and you will get shot in your paper face. The tank is short, at least, so if you gun it backwards you can avoid being shot more than once in a lot of cases. Staying back mid-far distances is not always possible, but when you can do it, you squeeze out games like this:    If your pubbies are completely clueless, this tank can't carry worth a drat, since there is no way you can hold anything on your own, and the top speed in any direction is not enough to shift flanks before they go to poo poo. RandomPauI posted:Alright, I finished the US part of the Token Mission. Next up is the USSR. Apparently it's awful after being "upgraded" to a heavy.
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Dec 27, 2014 06:44
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DonkeyHotay posted:Quick challenger review after 10 games. It's not great but not nearly as bad as the paper stats make it look. It plays a lot like a retarded e25 with gigantism but you are still shooting really fast. Doubling them up is also pretty funny, I ran into an otter guy playing one on my second game out and suddenly we were melting tier 9s from cover before they knew what the gently caress. I think I ended up with four ace tankers and the other guy five in those nine games. How's the camo? The only reason the Archer seems to work is that it's tiny and you have enough alpha to deal serious damage in one or two shots to tanks your tier or below, but being huge and two tiers higher doesn't seem too appealing.
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Dec 27, 2014 22:20
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NTRabbit posted:The British tree really needs a heavy crew trainer premium, so they've given us exactly what we need Ahaha they couldn't even put in the IS-5 with a 100 mm gun that could at least have a gimmick, they just added a mediocre IS-6 clone. Amazing.
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Dec 29, 2014 19:55
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drat it, the Archer can't carry poo poo. I do two or three times my HP in damage every match, and the pubbies still manage to uselessly flop and lose every game. I haven't managed a single win in this thing since Saturday.
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Dec 30, 2014 00:30
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Subyng posted:Same, except I can barely manage any damage in it at all. If I'm too far front I get spotted and die immediately, if I'm far back enough to be safe I can't click on red tanks. Yeah, the effort that it takes to flip from travel mode to battle mode usually means you're either too far back to fight effectively or have people popping up without being able to shoot them. I can't wait until the next tier where this problem goes away.
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Dec 30, 2014 03:15
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Nothing but widespread pubbie executions could improve this game.
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Dec 30, 2014 23:45
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Vengarr posted:Had a game where a Jtiger 8.8 and a T34 beat 5 of our tanks. three mediums and two heavies and I couldn't get them to just wait for one of them to fire and rush the fuckers. They weren't hull down or even sidescraping, just sitting around a corner waiting for the dumbfucks to peek around the corner and eat a 400 damage shell. Which would inevitably cause them to recoil in fear, and by the time they got their courage up again, the other guy had reloaded. Repeat until dead. I once held back 3 tier 8s as a KV-2, since none of them wanted to be the one to take 152 mm of HE to the face.
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Dec 31, 2014 01:20
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Darkrenown posted:Archie and I: The worst thing is that you can't quickly engage anything, so if your team gets its poo poo pushed in, you're hosed, and if the enemy collapses, you can't chase them fast enough to get any meaningful damage in. I'm only halfway through this shitbox 
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Dec 31, 2014 22:23
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This was my guess, but that one is even worse.
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Jan 2, 2015 00:45
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Finally polished off the Archer and bought the Achilles, and man, what a difference. A rotating turret is a hell of a lot better than some bullshit reversing gimmick, and the ability to actually go forward (it's not a Hellcat speed devil, but it can do a solid 40-45 on terrain) makes getting in and out places and doing actual damage much easier. It does have a downside, and if you played Soviet mediums, you'll remember it pretty well. In order to use the gun you just researched on the Archer, you'll have to research another, much shittier gun, then the turret (mounting which requires the suspension), and only then can you have a tank that isn't poo poo. The stock gun is complete unusable, and the engine upgrade really makes a difference, so this is really a vehicle where you want to have enough free XP to elite it before you play a single game. But hey, at least the radios carry over.
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Jan 2, 2015 06:16
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An absolute lack of effort that, through the stupidity of other idiots, still ends up winning? Sounds like all of WoT to me.
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Jan 2, 2015 06:22
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JuffoWup posted:Elited without treads + gld, rammer, and binos without any weight issues. It is way better than the archer though, I'll agree to that. The archer's gimmick doesn't really work in WoT at all. I was actually surprised that treads are the last thing you could grab on it. I don't know on engine as I had the top engine already carried over because I do have a 215b, 4202, and tort (about 100k from the 215 183). Really? It wouldn't let me put on the turret until I pony'd up for a suspension. It's kind of sluggish with the stock engine, but it's still a dream compared to the Archer. Plus, it costs like 1500 XP so you shouldn't be driving around with it for more than a game, anyway, especially in while quints are up. Missing Name posted:Yeah, with all this bitching about the Archer, I can't wait to get it. The Archer isn't that bad. If you set up well, you can absolutely destroy the opposition with your low profile, good camo, and great gun/traverse. The problem is when you have to go anywhere, including setting up at the start of the match, since it's glacial when driving forward, and still pretty slow in reverse. Oh, also you have no armour and your engine will get knocked out with every shot, so if you ever get shot at first, you're basically dead.
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Jan 2, 2015 07:20
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Poil posted:Is it just me or are the Russian voices recorded in a can? That's how all Russians sound in real life. rockopete posted:http://worldoftanksxbox360edition.com/en/news/news/spotlight-soviet-t-34-88/ The Tiger's gun is L/56, and I don't think there's any actual evidence of this thing existing (aside from famous photoshop jobs). Yuri Pasholok posted a notebook scribble from one of his colleagues about something called a T-34-88 delivered to Leningrad for refurbishment after the war, but that's about it. And yeah, I'd buy this thing over the T-34-85M any second.
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Jan 2, 2015 20:37
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BIG HEADLINE posted:He said "in a can," not "in a bottle." 
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Jan 3, 2015 06:38
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Poil posted:There are too many tanks and tds in this game, and they all have stupid letters and numbers as names making it impossible to keep them apart. Especially bad when models show up from different countries with different properties. How the hell does anyone manage to keep track of all that? Forget trying to remember weakspots or guns and armor values or even telling if a tank has one gun instead of another unless it's something obvious with an old model like the KV2 with a derp or long gun. I'm the biggest tank sperg I know, and even I couldn't tell you the weak spots and gun loadouts of every napkin doodle WG stuffed into this game. It's all about heuristics and experience. Don't memorize the numbers, remember whether or not a certain vehicle is a threat to a given tier. Use hitzone skins or aim at obvious weak spots (hatches, cupolas, etc). Edit: speaking of tank sperging: M2 The M2 Light Tank was brought into life in 1935, at the Rock Island Arsenal as an infantry support tank. At first, the M2 was equipped with two machinegun turrets installed in parallel. After analysis of the Spanish Civil War experience, the tank received one large turret with a cannon instead. The modification with a 37 mm gun was indexed M2A4. The M2's armour was up to 25 mm thick and was equipped with a 7-cylinder gasoline engine. Over the production run, the design of the suspension, transmission, and cooling system improved. Mass production ran between 1940 and 1942, and 375 vehicles were produced. Despite the fact that the M2 was used exclusively as a training vehicle at the time, the British government ordered 100 units. Only 36 were delivered, since production lines were already converted to the M3 Stuart. By the Spring of 1942, all British M2s were lost in Burma. Stuart The Stuart, or Light Tank, M3, was delivered to Britain and other allies of the United States. The armour of the Stuart was up to 2 inches or 51 mm thick and was comparable with the armour of British cruiser tanks. In Britain, the M3A1 with a gasoline engine received the index Stuart III, while the same tank with a diesel motor was indexed Stuart IV. These tanks were armed with a 37 mm M5 gun, which was superior to the British 2-pdr, and five (later three) 7.62 mm machineguns. The mobile Stuarts, with speeds up to 58 kph, were used by Britain and the Commonwealth as reconnaissance tanks. British crews in Stuarts were often the first to enter battle. In the desert of North Africa in the fall of 1941 (Operation Crusader), Stuarts carried white stripes for easy identifications. By the end of the war, Stuarts without turrets were used as ammunition carriers in Europe. Grant In June of 1940, a commission arrived in the United States, whose goal was to organize production of vehicles for the British armed forces. One of the vehicles that was of interest to the British was the M3 Lee. A portion of purchased tanks was modernized to meet British requirements. They received new turrets, without cupolas or machineguns. As a result, the height of the tank decreased. This modification was indexed Grant I. The Grants first went into battle in May of 1942, at Gazala, in Africa. Despite the German-Italian victory, the appearance of the Grant was a nasty surprise. The Grant surpassed all British tanks that Rommel had to deal with so far. Its armour was no worse than that of best German tanks at the time, and armament was even better. The Grant made up the main British striking force all the way until the battle at El Alamein, at which point it was largely swapped out for the Sherman. Remaining Grants were converted to M7 Priest SPGs, engineering vehicles, and spotlight carriers. In this capacity, they served until the end of the war. A small amount of Grants was sent to Burma, where they fought until the end of the war due to the weakness of Japanese anti-tank measures. Sherman III The Sherman III was a modification of the famous American M4A2 Sherman tank. The tank was equipped with a pair of six cylinder diesel engines, with the combined power of 375 hp. The Sherman III was often called simply "Sherman, diesel" for simplicity. The crew was composed of 5 men. The hull was welded. Externally, the tank could be identified by engine service hatches, rear deck shape, and exhaust system. The main armament of the Sherman III was the 75 mm M3 gun. The standard ammunition loadout contained HE, AP, and smoke shells with white phosphorous. The Sherman was also armed with 7.62 and 12.7 mm machineguns. By the end of the African campaign, a cast transmission cover and a vertical volute spring suspension were introduced. Vision slits were also replaced with periscopes. Archer After Tigers, Panthers and modernized PzIVs appeared on the battlefield, the British found themselves in need of a weapon that could defeat these well protected targets. The answer was a powerful gun installed on a Valentine chassis, called Archer. Since the QF-17 gun had a very long barrel, an attempt to install it in the traditional way made the vehicle very large, and overloaded the front road wheels. The gun was placed backwards in an open casemate. This meant that the tank had to drive into battle backwards, and maneuvering on the battlefield was difficult. Due to the crampedness of the fighting compartment, the breech recoiled right over the driver's head. He had to leave the vehicle before shooting started, which did not let the SPG change positions quickly after firing. However, the powerful gun that could take on any German tank from nearly any range made up for this drawback. 800 vehicles were ordered, and between 655 and 665 were built before the end of the war. Archers first entered battle in October of 1944, and were widely used on the Western Front and in Italy. Read more about the Archer here. Sherman Firefly The Sherman Firefly owes its creation to two British officers: George Brighty and George Witheridge. The first came up with the idea of using the British 17-pounder gun in the Sherman, and the second put in the effort to bring the hybrid to life. The idea of the Sherman's modernization was bold: a medium tank with a powerful anti-tank gun. The problem with space was solved by removing one crew member. He was replaced with additional ammunition. These Shermans proved themselves when fighting in Normandy in 1944. Here is where they go the nickname Firefly, due to the flash caused by firing the gun. The upgraded gun allowed these tanks to fight enemy heavy tanks. Even the recognizable silhouette of the Firefly was enough to cause alarm. The Germans hunted the Fireflies relentlessly, leading to the British camouflaging their tanks, including fake barrels for regular Shermans. Aside from British and Canadian armies, Libya and Pakistan used these tanks until 1974. Achilles The Achilles tank destroyer was based on the M10. The major difference between the two vehicles was that the Achilles used the 17-pounder, a much more dangerous weapon. The British gun surpassed the American gun in penetration by 50%. Due to typical wartimes supply problems, there were only 124 Achilles among Allied forces that landed in Normandy in 1944. By the end of the year, there were 816 of them. In total, about 1100 vehicles were converted to use this gun, making it the second most popular vehicle with the 17-pounder (after the Sherman Firefly). The British envisioned the Achilles as a highly mobile anti-tank gun, which compensated for some drawbacks of the design. While tractors with towed guns slowly came up the rear, Achilles could already be in position, ready to meet a Tiger or Panther counterattack. The most successful battle in the history of the Achilles was during Operation Charnwood, where B company of the 245th Battery of the 62nd Anti-Tank Regiment. The company knocked out 13 German tanks, losing only 4 of their own. Challenger/Avenger During WWII, Britain found themselves in need of an effective tank destroyer. In 1942, as a part of the A30 project, the development of the Challenger cruiser tank and the Avenger open topped tank destroyer began. In order to achieve its combat mission, the vehicle needed the most powerful gun available at the time, the 76 mm 17 pdr Ordnance QF. It was installed in a turret based on the TOG II design. The hull was borrowed from the Cromwell, with minimal changes. The vehicle received a new Rolls Royce Meteor engine, allowing it to accelerate to 52 kph. After trials, it was found that the suspension needs work. The chassis was lengthened like in the A34 Comet, and the tracks were widened. Mass production of these new vehicles started in 1944. The main role of the Avenger was support of attacking tanks. By 1946, 200 Challengers and about 250 Avengers were built. Charioteer After the end of WWII, the British discovered that their tanks are inadequate against Soviet armoured vehicles. Great hope was laid upon the Centurion, but its production was just beginning. An intermediate model was needed, simple in production and with sufficient firepower. The FV4101 Charioteer was this kind of vehicle. It consisted of the Cromwell tank armed with a new turret and a 20-pounder (84 mm) gun. Due to the gun's large size and weight, the turret could only fit two crewmen (the commander was also the loader), and its armour fairly thin. According to various sources, 200 to 442 Cromwells were converted. Charioteers were used by the British until 1956, when production of more modern vehicles ramped up, at which point they were sold abroad. In March of 1978, during Operation Litani, Lebanese Charioteers fought against the Israeli forces. After that, they were periodically used be various factions fighting in Lebanon and Palestine. The last documented use in combat was as recently as 1993. FV4004 Conway WWII ended, giving way to the Cold War. The creation of the IS-3 by the Soviet Union required a response by Western nations. This is how the FV (Fighting Vehicle) 4004 Conway SPG came to be. The intention was to combine the mobility of the Centurion A41 medium tank and the firepower of a 120 mm gun. The size of the gun required the use of a large turret, twice as tall as the existing one. The SPG was significantly taller, but the armour was on the same level as the Centurion. Compared to its base tank, the Conway was not only taller, but heavier (over 50 tons). The 120 mm gun would have allowed it to destroy vehicles of the potential enemy from a great distance. At the same time, the Centurion's mobility was negated. The SPG could not reach a speed of 35 kph even on a highway. This drawback, combined with the difficulty of producing 120 mm guns, was the end of the program. Trials of a prototype were held for a few months in 1951, and then the project was cancelled. FV4005 Stage 2 The FV4005 project was developed during the Cold War as a means of destroying heavily armoured enemy vehicles. As with the Conway, the tank was based on the Centurion chassis. The vehicle had a powerful 183 mm gun, which could destroy any tank produced in the 1950s. There was not a turret as such. At first, the prototype had the gun, its mount, and a loading mechanism on a rotating platform. The protection of this SPG was not significant. A turret with thin armour was made. It was placed in the middle of the hull, holding the ammunition and a part of the crew. The rear had a rectangular hatch. The engine was in the rear, same as on the Centurion. The new tank destroyer was superior to the Conway in terms of firepower, turret size, and weight, which reached 60 tons. It's not surprising that the Rolls Royce Meteor engine provided a maximum speed of only 29 kph. The tank destroyer's range was approximately 250 miles. Ensign Expendable fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 18:26
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Darkrenown posted:T57: Do people generally find AP is enough or load HEAT erry day? 258 mm pens isn't bad or anything, but bounces suck when you're autoloading. In Clan Wars I fire HEAT only, in pubs, AP is usually enough.
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Jan 4, 2015 18:51
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The Archer can go decently fast if you have a nice slope, I could get it to 30 on the incline in the village on Westfield, and that's barely noticeable.
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Jan 7, 2015 06:24
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Frag Viper posted:As someone who doesn't play with KVM, what do the colors represent? Red is bot quality shitlord, yellow is average, green is good, blue is very good, purple is unicum. Black is the super special "are you trying to be this bad" level of awful, reserved for a handful of players.
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Jan 7, 2015 23:37
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I don't think that 1015x704 is a standard monitor resolution.
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Jan 8, 2015 03:15
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The Southern Dandy posted:So I can guess that's a no on the update? Just trying to get a reading on goons cheating or not. Shady poo poo like this goes into PGS.
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Jan 8, 2015 06:06
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JuffoWup posted:Ok, I know the challenger is a poo poo tank anyway. This was already covered in the achilles which didn't have a barn turret. What is the story on the challenger turret upgrade? I mean, what is the soft stat changes not being shown. 10m more view range and 2 more degrees of rotational speed isn't all that much of an improvement. But in britian's own hilarious ways, the armor scheme rotates to something that would make the french proud. 101mm front armor + 40mm rear armor on the stock turret altered to 50mm front + 200mm rear. What. Turrets have to be balanced, otherwise it may be impossible to then them if you're standing on a slight incline (see: Tiger and Panther). When you're using a long-rear end gun, you need a counterweight on the other side of the turret. Might as well make that counterweight a shitload of armour. You can see this phenomenon on the American heavies.
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Jan 8, 2015 14:38
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Valle posted:It actually helps anyone who isn't rainman when it comes to remembering/figuring out your arty's arc and the incline of that hill the thing you're shooting is hiding behind. Shots on poo poo more or less in the open it does nothing for, but partially hidden poo poo? Holy crap. I don't see much point in it, but then again the only arty I play anymore is the 261, which has a very predictable arc regardless of incline.
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Jan 8, 2015 19:13
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Baron Porkface posted:I want to get into this, what do I need to know about the referral program? No. A vanishingly small amount of players use any mods at all, and it's quite unlikely that you will see anyone using a mod that grants them a significant edge as opposed to something innocent like Jimbos Cross hairs or whatever
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Jan 9, 2015 04:42
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Axetrain posted:Is there any info on what percent of players use mods? I assumed a minority but not a "vanishingly" small amount which I read as just a couple percent. 5% of the game's players can't find the "play" button. There's no stat for mod users, but that should illustrate the technical aptitude of the player base.
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Jan 9, 2015 05:57
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 19:02 |
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NTRabbit posted:The user with this email is already registered. Invite someone else. Click on the other tab. There are separate tabs for brand new and returning players
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Jan 9, 2015 14:24
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