[MMO] World of Tanks

[stag3]

so with arty, is it pretty consistent to gauge where shots fall? as in my first shot with dot dead center on tank, if it lands left, all my other shots will be a little left as well and i need to compensate a bit to the right? assuming flat ground obviously. or is it completely random and i should center mass it every time?

 

[PowerYoga]

@blinky

Checked out the mod enabler. Haven't played with it yet but I'll look at it today or tomorrow. The skins though are rendered useless in the new patch, no?


The BL-10 is a finicky mistress. There are games where I can bounce 4 shots in a row and other games where I get 7 direct hits. Yesterday on fisherman's bay, I took up defense with 2 other tanks on the west side. E-75 on the other team gets lit up, I shoot it.... and miss. A second later I see an E-100 limping by with 75% hp.

Then I fire at the E-100.... miss. I see the E-75 come back into my sights with 25% hp (down from 75)... Wasn't sure whether or not I was happy with the outcome, but I guess all is well since I got credits.

On that game it was 7/7 BL-10 hits... all shots planted on tier 9-10 tanks. 2 on a mouse, And one poor tiger. Think of the amount of damage that caused...

 

[surfsatwerk]

I downloaded the game last night and participated in a couple battles. Don't have the aiming down yet, but I still managed to kill a couple of fellow newbs before I was good and thoroughly sodomized by more experienced players.

I think I will play a bit more tonight and read through some of the faqs before I make a financial commitment to this game.

 

[stag3]

no need for financial commitment until around tier 7/8 if you decide to play that long.
you can play free easily until then. money pours in when you get to tier 5

 

[PowerYoga]

a premium account makes the dreadful tier 3-4 grind much more pleasant (less time spent). God I hated driving a PZIII/IV or A-20. Forget about the BT-7, I just ram that stupid thing into the closest tank and call it a day.

 

[Skott]

I'd say about tier 5 is where you would want the premium. At least in my case. Depends on the your tolerance level and the various tanks you may play. I remember grinding the KV in beta without premium. That was god awful horrible. Worse tank in the game back then.

 

[surfsatwerk]

I recall driving that first American tank available. God help me if I decide to go off road in that thing. I may upgrade to premium, cause the whole time I was playing I kept thinking, "If I could just go a little faster or see a little further, I would be knee deep in the blood of my foes."

 

[Craig234]

I downloaded the game last night and participated in a couple battles. Don't have the aiming down yet, but I still managed to kill a couple of fellow newbs before I was good and thoroughly sodomized by more experienced players.

I think I will play a bit more tonight and read through some of the faqs before I make a financial commitment to this game.

If you think you might want to, slots are on sale 50% until Dec 12 game time.

 

[Craig234]

so with arty, is it pretty consistent to gauge where shots fall? as in my first shot with dot dead center on tank, if it lands left, all my other shots will be a little left as well and i need to compensate a bit to the right? assuming flat ground obviously. or is it completely random and i should center mass it every time?

Random, center it each time. But 'center' isn't always the best spot.

 

[Binky]

so with arty, is it pretty consistent to gauge where shots fall? as in my first shot with dot dead center on tank, if it lands left, all my other shots will be a little left as well and i need to compensate a bit to the right? assuming flat ground obviously. or is it completely random and i should center mass it every time?

Lol, not even close. I'm sure that this is a common belief among arty-haters. It's completely random and it seems that some days are more random than others. After some patches, I could swear that arty accuracy went to crap, but then was fixed days/weeks later. Having your shot land WAY outside the reticle after waiting 30+ seconds for reload and aiming is very frustrating. Personally, I think they should increase arty accuracy but decrease the damage (and put a cap on how many arty per game!).

[General arty tips you may already know]
Depending on the shape of your reticle and the underlying terrain of your target, it is often better to aim behind-ish of your target. Different arty's have different firing arcs, so this is different for each arty. If your reticle is a circle, you're dropping the shell from straight above, and you should generally aim more for the center of the target. If your reticle is long and stretched out, you're firing more at the side of the tank, and to avoid shooting into the ground you have to adapt by shooting more behind the target (i.e. almost shoot "over" him). After you get good with your specific arty and gun, don't let any single shot dramatically change how you shoot your next shot, unless that shot showed you something about the terrain that you didn't see before. It's pretty easy to change your target position only to realize that you had it right before. You don't often get more than 2 shots before you move on to another target.

I play about 5% of my time as arty (currently tier6 M12). It's my least favorite playstyle.

 

[Binky]

@blinky

Checked out the mod enabler. Haven't played with it yet but I'll look at it today or tomorrow. The skins though are rendered useless in the new patch, no?

I haven't read much about the new skin thing, but the current "skins" are only visible to you, not the enemy. If you're referring to the new camouflage system, that's something that is visible to everybody so its entirely different. Personally, I play with black and white hotbox skins because I'm lazy and not very good at this game.

 

[stag3]

Lol, not even close. I'm sure that this is a common belief among arty-haters. It's completely random and it seems that some days are more random than others. After some patches, I could swear that arty accuracy went to crap, but then was fixed days/weeks later. Having your shot land WAY outside the reticle after waiting 30+ seconds for reload and aiming is very frustrating. Personally, I think they should increase arty accuracy but decrease the damage (and put a cap on how many arty per game!).

[General arty tips you may already know]
Depending on the shape of your reticle and the underlying terrain of your target, it is often better to aim behind-ish of your target. Different arty's have different firing arcs, so this is different for each arty. If your reticle is a circle, you're dropping the shell from straight above, and you should generally aim more for the center of the target. If your reticle is long and stretched out, you're firing more at the side of the tank, and to avoid shooting into the ground you have to adapt by shooting more behind the target (i.e. almost shoot "over" him). After you get good with your specific arty and gun, don't let any single shot dramatically change how you shoot your next shot, unless that shot showed you something about the terrain that you didn't see before. It's pretty easy to change your target position only to realize that you had it right before. You don't often get more than 2 shots before you move on to another target.

I play about 5% of my time as arty (currently tier6 M12). It's my least favorite playstyle.

i'm using the S-51 with an 83% crew right now and i know the s-51 fires with a high arc.

the biggest thing that helped me so far was locking the hull with X. never knew that was there. and my reload time is 42 seconds ugh

 

[Skott]

Personally, I play with black and white hotbox skins because I'm lazy and not very good at this game.

And that should make you very good when it comes to inflicting damage. LOL

I considered installing the hit box skins to increase my game damage performance but I'm just too lazy to bother with it. LOL

 

[PowerYoga]

Hitbox skins are pretty worthless imo. If you play the game you'd know that 99% of the tanks have ammo stored in the back and sides of the turret (or in the t-44's case, everywhere). The engine is in the back, and for German tanks most are in the front. the gunner's in the turret, driver's using the driver's hatch, commander has that weird periscope thing... Lower mantlet is weaker than upper mantlet (except for the e-75), sides of the turret that are flatter have less armor... top of tanks are weak, etc.

I looked at the skin a few times, and honestly couldn't find anything that was of value to me. not to mention most hitboxes are so small it's completely silly to try to aim for them from less than 5 feet away.

 

[Binky]

most hitboxes are so small it's completely silly to try to aim for them from less than 5 feet away.

This pretty much sums it up. Unless you're facehugging, they aren't worth much. But when you are facehugging and you know exactly where to pen, they help a little. Overall, they are a mostly ineffective crutch.

Best game mod by far is floating damage numbers over friendly/enemy tanks. Love that.

 

[PowerYoga]

Even when facehugging, there's so much movement between the tanks that it's impossible to guarantee a hit. Especially if you're going to be wiggling your turret, you're more likely bounce because he moved his hull. It MIGHT work on tank destroyers... but if you're at their side they're fucked anyway.

 

[eLiu]

This pretty much sums it up. Unless you're facehugging, they aren't worth much. But when you are facehugging and you know exactly where to pen, they help a little. Overall, they are a mostly ineffective crutch.

Best game mod by far is floating damage numbers over friendly/enemy tanks. Love that.

Which mod is that (floating #s)?

 

[Binky]

Which mod is that (floating #s)?

I use this one, which is a combo pack including an icon mod and "over target markers." This guy makes several versions, and I currently use the more minimal one named "V1_150OTM-B." This may or may not be similar to his current "minimal" version.
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/34047-druids-icon-mod-version-67-compatible/

This mod has a relatively high learning curve, as compared to other mods.

General mod tip - ALWAYS deactivate mods before applying any patch, or you could end up with a mess that requires a reinstallation.

 

[eLiu]

I use this one, which is a combo pack including an icon mod and "over target markers." This guy makes several versions, and I currently use the more minimal one named "V1_150OTM-B." This may or may not be similar to his current "minimal" version.
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/34047-druids-icon-mod-version-67-compatible/

This mod has a relatively high learning curve, as compared to other mods.

General mod tip - ALWAYS deactivate mods before applying any patch, or you could end up with a mess that requires a reinstallation.

Uhhh I followed the instructions & replaced the .xml file, but my on screen display is unchanged?

 

[eLiu]

As for Mods, I use the below mods:
Minimap Increase Mod - 50% and Big Icons (I think the standard minimap and icons are too small. Mainly because I game on a 47" HDTV)
Nordis Crosshair Mods - Full 7.1 update. Adds a nice number count to your reload times and I like the clean cut labels
PoGS Contour Icon Mod - Sidebars/Alt key labels, pre-match/Tab labels. There are a lof of mods here to choose from. I pick the one that tells me the tank, it's tier, top average penetration and all of the relevant armour values assuming that it is fully upgraded
OverTarget Markers - This is a very nice mod that I found after making my previous videos. It can be set to permanently display player names, tank names and health, including an 1,000/1,200 health counter that will flash -200 for ex. if it gets shot.

None of those mods are necessary but definitely help improve my gameplay experience.

Hey Elcs, how'd you get those mods to play nice? When I try to activate them all in JSGME, it seems to think PogS conflicts with OTM. And I can't get OTM to show up at all.

edit: AH finally got it! pogs has its own VehicleMarkersManager.swf. You have to replace it w/the one from OTM to get the OTM stuff to work. yay! So much more awesome info on my screen now.

 

[Binky]

PoGS is an icon mod, and so is the druid icon mod. They can't be used together. Elcs also listed overtarget markers, which is the damage mod without the icon pack. You can use the druid combo pack, or OTM+PoGS, but not both.

Mods have to be put in the proper folder structure. Not all mods come with the proper structure already built for you. The druid iconmod combo has the following structure, which MUST be used:
res > gui > flash (swf files are here)
res > gui > maps > icons > vehicle > contour (a bunch of tga files are here)

Before installing any mods (and after every update) you should run the task "generate snapshot of game files" in JGME.

 

[eLiu]

PoGS is an icon mod, and so is the druid icon mod. They can't be used together. Elcs also listed overtarget markers, which is the damage mod without the icon pack. You can use the druid combo pack, or OTM+PoGS, but not both.

Mods have to be put in the proper folder structure. Not all mods come with the proper structure already built for you. The druid iconmod combo has the following structure, which MUST be used:
res > gui > flash (swf files are here)
res > gui > maps > icons > vehicle > contour (a bunch of tga files are here)

Before installing any mods (and after every update) you should run the task "generate snapshot of game files" in JGME.

I was too lazy to get the pure OTM w/o the icons, but you can use Druid + PoGS. If you load Druid first and then PoGS, it will overwrite the Druid stuff w/the PoGS one.

This overwriting lead to another issue for me b/c PoGS has its own version of VehicleMarkersManager.swf which wasn't doing the OTM stuff correctly. But if I replace the PoGS version with the OTM version, everything seems to be happy. Or at least I'm happy, lol.

Also I'll probably have to uninstall & reinstall the game when the next patch comes out. I made some changes to get rid of the black area on the screen when you're in sniper mode before I found out about JSGME, fail :/

 

[stag3]

got the long 10,5 on the KT last night, dunno how i feel about it really, it's gonna be a long grind to the E75

i'm having more fun on the 4502 A right now flanking people as it seems everything can pen the front of it

 

[Possessed Freak]

Uhhh I followed the instructions & replaced the .xml file, but my on screen display is unchanged?

There should have been 2 files in the download, both have to go into the directory.

Right now it looks like over target mod is not going to work in .7, it is the only damn mod I use and I am not happy WoT modified their code so much that this mod is non functional. What I find comical is that WoT is that they are looking at purchasing the rights to the mod, really guys, you programmed the game but you can't figure out how this mod works!?

 

[PowerYoga]

got the long 10,5 on the KT last night, dunno how i feel about it really, it's gonna be a long grind to the E75

i'm having more fun on the 4502 A right now flanking people as it seems everything can pen the front of it

the 100mm from the soviet line can't do it reliably. First hand experience.

If the KT isn't good, then it's going to be a long boring grind to the e-75 no? Though to be honest I'm really tired of playing heavy tanks lately. Last night in my is-4 landed in 3 straight games where there were 4-6 huge arties (talking obj 261, T92 and GW type Es). Got 2 shotted in every single one of those games, and they were all open field maps. No fun at all. Switch to tiger, find myself facing off against E-100s for 4 games straight... sigh.