Re: Royal Equestrian Armored Division

[hawkeye92]

It also did fairly well in France but they didn't have the numbers to make much of a difference.

The Germans called their anti tank guns the 'army door knocking service' because all the German guns would do is inform the people in the Matildas that the enemy is there.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Yeah, if the Matilda's armor was anything like what it is in WoT (and knowing WG it was probably better than that ), they must have offered a tough opposition to the Axis forces, at least until the game got stepped-up and anti-tank gun capable of defeating them got common enough.

What kind of tanks and AT guns was Germany fielding during the Battle of France ?

[Fuzzy]

Where can I find historical tales on how well or badly the Matilda fared during the war against the Axis ?

I'm curious all of sudden to know if the concept of a medium infantry tank held or not.

The Matilda II first made its war introductions in the Battle of France, where it was by far the best British tank on the field and arguably the best tank in that part of the war period. At least, in terms of "tank vs tank" anyway, it had its drawbacks as you'd expect. Low speed. However the crippling weakness of British tanks for the overwhelming period of 1939 to 1942 was a lack of a proper HE round for all their 2-pounder guns. They could wreck Germany tanks if a Matilda or early Churchill got near, heck even a Cruiser could do it up until the Panzer IV arrived, but they couldn't take out AT guns without HE to kill the crew. After that they got quickly outgunned again until the 75mm guns started showing up, the 6-Pounder on the Crusader was decent...but hardly ideal.

That was essentially what happened in France too. The Matilda was the king of tank on tank battles in that it was effectively unkillable to any tank the Germans had at the time. This became particularly prominent at the Battle of Arras. The British Matildas absolutely stomped over Rommel's 7th Panzer Division and effectively routed it by stint of being absolutely immortal to the guns of the Pz38t's and PzII's. (For your question, the Germans used mostly 37mm AT guns in France backed up by heavy Flak 88's) In this sense, the Matilda was an excellent counterattack tank, able to blunt German armoured advances and then keep advancing after their retreating elements. It was only Rommel's genius to think to start using the Flak 88's as AT guns that allows him to halt the advancing wall of Matildas. (This was, interestingly, one of the moments that made Hitler take a great interest in using the Flak 88 for, well...everything and helped gain political support for the program that resulted in the Tiger.) Ultimately, the Matilda was (for that time period) impossible to mass manufacture and it didn't have the weight of mass to support the war on its own. It wasn't an easy tank to build quickly. As such, the Valentine was primarily designed to be much cheaper to build en masse in comparison.

Matilda also served in Africa where it was decent if not spectacular. Initially it performed exceptionally well against the Italians, essentially doing to them what it did to the 7th Panzer Division. The Italians were equipped with mostly tankettes at the time and didn't even stand a chance of killing a Matilda. However its speed was a much bigger drawback once Rommel entered the fray and exploited it now that there was no crowded terrain like the borders of France. It was out in the open and could not advance readily over the great deserts flat vulnerable areas. As such it became a target for 88mm guns and other more advanced PaK AT guns too. The fact that the British still had no HE rounds issued to combat the guns wasn't helping at all even if they could handle the lower end German tanks. Eventually, it was relagated to specialist duties rather than frontline service, as it simple could not keep up with the pace of the war with all these outflankings and speed marches to get around opponents in the desert. However it did have one mighty success during Operation Crusader, where armour counted for a lot more than speed.

After Africa, it was retired from the European front altogether, being replaced with the Churchill.

However, it still went on to serve in the Pacific, where, once again it ended up causing a nightmare for Japanese forces while under the command of the Australian Commonwealth troops. The Japanese, owing to their methods and doctrine of terrain warfare, simply didn't have any heavy AT at all and ended up in the same position as the 7th Panzer and Italians with a tank they just couldn't kill reliably.

As such, despite finding many fields that it had to bow out of, the Matilda was the only British tank that served from Day 1 of WW2 all the way to the final surrender at the end. An absolutely brilliant design, I feel, that dominated its initial era and was still useful in lower intensity warfare as time went on.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Thanks for that answer, Fuzzy.

[RoboRed]

[Vergil]

Mad at the world. Playing lots of ace combat.

[RoboRed]

So, I had a couple games on campus with a friend of mine, and this happened: http://www.mediafire.com/?3vvaazhdday2y6t

I seriously thought that I was fucked. I can't believe I lived through that.

EDIT: Rewatched on desktop. Didn't even know stats since I don't have XVM on my laptop. I should count myself lucky he was a bad.

Spoiler:

[Harmony Ltd.]

Lol

that tango of death with the IS  

also, what kind of medals are those, and what kind of achievement do they honor ?

[RoboRed]

1st Class Mastery Badge, Lion of Sinai Ribbon, and Levishalo's Medal.

Lion of Sinai is for destroying a total of 100 IS-based tanks in the game.

Levishalo's is for using a medium to destroy two tanks that are at least two tiers higher than you. In this case, the IS and the SU-122-44.

[RoboRed]

I wonder if anyone's made a voice pack out of this.

[Harmony Ltd.]

"That's going to be sore tomorrow"

=> when receiving a penetrating shot

[Harmony Ltd.]

"Mission accomplished ! With extreme prejudice."

=> game won, all enemy killed

[RoboRed]

And a good old solid "fuck you" for when you destroy someone.

[Harmony Ltd.]

"Oh crap, NOW my day is complete"

=> enemy spotted when you are <10% health ?

[Harmony Ltd.]

"This is going to be sweeeeet !"

=> <10% health tank spotted ?

[Harmony Ltd.]

"What fucking moron designed this ?"
"Geez, whoever designed this was on serious crack."

=> every time a French tank is spotted

[Harmony Ltd.]

"You probably thought you weren't going to die today ? Surpriiiise."

=> enemy vehicle killed.

[Harmony Ltd.]

Yeah, there's some potential, but to get the full of it you'd need to be able to create your own custom voice triggers.

[RoboRed]

Yeah...can't really do that. There aren't specific responses for things like spotting a certain nationality of tank, or a tank on a specified level of health. A lot of those would work with the existing triggers, though.

[RoboRed]

So, today I just learned that the AMX 12t has poor gun elevation. The hard way. >_<

[RoboRed]

http://ftr.wot-news.com/2013/10/02/2-10-2013/#more-3706

- Q: “Will the Chieftain be implemented as tier 10 medium tank instead of FV4202?” A: “No, because in game terms, Chieftain is a heavy”

...I don't even.

[hawkeye92]

Well, it is a pretty heavy tank.
It would do well to replace the current tier ten heavy, but the Vickers' MBT would be a better medium.

[RoboRed]

So what exactly constitutes a heavy tank? Currently, numerical statswise compared to the FV4202 on WoT, the Chieftain has more weight and gun caliber, and a little more speed. Otherwise, the armor is equally comparable, with the FV still having more on the sides (not that it makes much of a difference at that tier anyways). And both the Conqueror and the 215b have more armor than either.

Must just be the 120. Yes, that's got to be it. Big gun = HT. Yup.

#WGlogic

[hawkeye92]

The Chieftain has way, way more armour than the conqueror from the front. Think frontally impenetrable hull and turret. Also I hear they handled like pigs trying to turn them around or get them moving and yes, the huge gun does fit more with heavy tank philosophy in WoT.

Although the side armour is... not good. That said, it was designed to counter head on Soviet tank rushes which they probably would have worked really well in, assuming a tank battle actually happened and people didn't resort to simply nuking each other's armies because hell that's where this whole fight is going anyway.

But yeah, WoT doesn't reflect reality very well so side shots are far, far more common than reality making the cheiftain pretty rubbish for this game.

[RoboRed]

Highlight from today's set of games - ELC shenanigans: http://www.mediafire.com/?8u7g88kxmyvbuix

[Fuzzy]

So what exactly constitutes a heavy tank? Currently, numerical statswise compared to the FV4202 on WoT, the Chieftain has more weight and gun caliber, and a little more speed. Otherwise, the armor is equally comparable, with the FV still having more on the sides (not that it makes much of a difference at that tier anyways). And both the Conqueror and the 215b have more armor than either.

Must just be the 120. Yes, that's got to be it. Big gun = HT. Yup.

#WGlogic

As hawkeye said, the Chieftain is most definitely a heavy tank. It was the biggest general service tank of its period, even with (again as hawk says) pretty much impenetrable frontal armour. It was thick anyway, but then there's the absurdly good sloping it had and that's before it even went hull down, which the hull and turret were designed to link with to make it even MORE resistant to fire. Combined with what was the worlds most powerful gun at the time, in WoT terms it's most assuredly a heavy tank...especially given the Chieftain isn't particularly renowned for its mobility.

Ask most Chieftain crewmen what position they were in the tank, the answer will be "the guy with his head in the engine compartment." Damn NATO and their STANAG engine requirements...we'd have had a Rolls-Royce in that thing if it weren't for "standards."

In essence, it's got very tough armour, a large weight, slow movement, sluggish turning and a very big gun. In leu of an MBT catagory I'd say it fits heavy best.

Also, we have some interetsing news on upcoming tanks, including new Soviet, German and British vehicles. I'll summarise some of them with info.

 - New German TD line's focus is high DPM/burst damage but very very light armour glass cannons that aren't exactly agile either. Expect them to cause frustration for the poor sod they target and then get immolated instantly by the guys teammates firing back. Tiers 8-10 all have rotating turrets, whether 360 or not is unknown. The tier 10 E-100 WT with a 150mm gun is confirmed to be a 4-shot autoloader. Ouch.



 - New Soviet Tier 7 Medium premium incoming. The T-5. This is actually a captured Panther in Soviet colours and...that's about it really. Not exactly exciting.

 - New Premium Vehicles in 8.9, the Japanese Chi-Nu Kai, Chinese Type 64 and Soviet T-44-85

 - New German Tier 4 Heavy Tank incoming. The Neubaufahrzeug Heavy Tank. This was an early war heavy tank of the Germans that did actually see service and is one I've been hoping comes in soon enough. I do prefer to see real tanks before anything else and this one has been oddly missing for a long time, while only five were made they did go into combat in Norway. It has a 75mm L24 gun or 105mm Howitzer backed up by a co-axial 37mm gun. Speed was about 25kph. Armour is (without serious digging) unknown at current. I'd expect it to work similar to the B1, B2 and DW2.



 - New British Tier 2 Light Tank incoming. The M2A4. This is actually a lend lease version of a tank already in game. The M2 Light. But as with the American version, it's got a 37mm gun. I honestly didn't expect to see this one as its role for the British was incredibly minor in comparison to other lend lease tanks but hey, why not I guess. It's basically just a pallete swap for them to make it so as a tank to lead into the Lend Lease line I think it'll work well.

 - New British Tier 2 Medium Tank incoming. The A7 Medium. This is one I've hoped for but generally thought they wouldn't ever spot to do given their lack of research, guess someone pointed the way. This was an early war medium tank prototype that eventually led to things like the Matilda Senior. You can sort of see the resembelence. It was armed with a 3-Pounder Gun as with the Medium MkI. Not a great gun, hence the low tier. However the A7E2 version also had a 2-Pounder Gun that would be a lot better and could be a potential upgrade if it isn't a premium tank. Armour thickness was only 14mm at max so don't expect this to bounce much, although once again that's just because it was a concept prototype, not a battlefield model and the British never really armoured up their prototypes unlike other nations who blueprinted that up first. Speed was about 40kph so this actually will be a surprisingly nippy medium tank for Tier 2! Weighing 14 tons, this could be a surprising "Ram Tank" for that low a tier with all those lights running around who can actually be slower than you.

[hawkeye92]

The tier two ram tank could be interesting. Although it has very little armour there aren't many tanks at tier two which can boast much armour anyway.
The German tier 4 heavy is a good idea to be introduced, because it has guns which are actually useful on a slow tank, as opposed to the current one which is woefully ill-equipped. Although the guns are fine on the panzer 3, the pz.3 is a much faster and more maeuverable vehicle and can exploit openings the heavy tank can't.

Also, this weekend's special is Soviat bias all the way. Even the weekend mission can only be completed while driving Soviet tanks.
It's also the 40th anniversiary of the Yom-Kippur war on Sunday and there were plenty of tanks used in that war which were in WoT. Although I don't think the Soviet tanks fared too well.

[Fuzzy]

While not actually anything in WoT, I have managed to uncover two blueprints for British tanks not known thus far. One I found a bit ago, the other I just found today. Two more of the AT TD line.

The AT-14

This one might make you go "That's just an AT-7!" at first. You wouldn't be wrong, however take a look at the bottom and notice the tonnage rating. That's 15 tons heavier than a fully equipped AT-7! In essence, this is the AT-7's layout on something comparable to an AT-15 in scale which, as you can see, permits the side gun to have a much larger traverse than it otherwise does. To be honest, I cannot for the life of me see why WG picked the AT-15 for the tree over this. It is literally just a better AT-7 in every way and would be much better than the criminally awful AT-15 which just cannot cope at the tier its at with WG's arbitrary weakpoints being shoved on it. Leave the AT-15A at its Tier 7 rating as a premium and its historic armament, while bring in the AT-14 at Tier 8 instead of the AT-15 to get more variety and it does have a historical 20-Pounder. It's not rocket science and gets us more and better tanks!

The AT-18

As you can see, this is very similar to a Tortoise. At first I thought this was an assault gun with a massive petard derpcannon on the front but unfortunately it is not the case. That's actually a flamethrower. Personally, I can't much see the value of a flamethrower on such an immense and logistically straining vehicle given flamethrowers aren't exactly designed to go up against tanks anyway, but it must be remembered that the AT series was submitted as design proposals to show off how varying the idea could be to whatever the Government wanted. As such, showing many varients is a nice way to make your project look interesting.

Serb has said flamethrower tanks would come in eventually though, so this could be a very funny tank to trundle around, block people into corners and then start spraying.

[RoboRed]

Lol: http://ftr.wot-news.com/2013/10/04/how-to-survive-8-9-common-test/

[Valikdu]

I thought the Rheinmetal heavy tank was supposed to be introduced with multi-gun support.

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