Best Heavy tank

[FM_Von_Manstein]

Originally Posted by KnightFandragon

Daaaaaaaaang....was it a side shot or what? Also, that British 40mm....its very unrealistically powerful.....go play the German campaign..2nd mission....Was the King Tiger you used the Grey one w/ the rounded Krupp turret? That one has a weak spot right on the middle of the front hull that can die to anything....BUt that sucks.....KT to Matilda.....id slap me a Matilda if that happened to me

The 40mm 2 Pounder was actually decent, better than the German 37mm AT gun IIRC but not as good as the long barreled 50mm AT gun.

[Crni vuk]

I think most of the guns in MoW work a bit ... strange. Or dont have the characteristics like one would expect.

Examples are the power of the Puma main gun regarding T34/76 and T34/85 front armor. With its 5cm gun the Puma is a quite well armored unit for a recon vehicle. But its by no means a anti tank weapon. The Panzer III with its 5cm gun could eventualy achieve on the T34 on very close distance a penetration with APCR (armor pearcing composit rigid) but the standart AP amuntion had a lot of issues with the front of the T34 and particularly the T34/85 which had a much stronger turret. I have no clue how MoW is portraying the AP amunition since the game has only either simple AP or HE available. But considering the intended use of the Puma not to engange in fights particularly with other enemy armor and the needed rare materials for APCR/APCBC amunition which would be more used for tanks like the Tiger, Panther or Panzer IV I would be extremly surprised if it got the rare 5cm APCR/APCBC available, it really had the gun more for self-defence and distraction to shoot a few shoots and retreat in the confusion.

Many of the guns should have a much higer penetration while others less regarding shoots to the flank. All of the medium and heavy guns should get a boost in penetration to the flank. Particularly the 85mm and long 88mm from the Tiger II / Nashorn / Ferdinant / Jagdpanther lack the needed power. The Panther in particular was extremly weak on its side and already the 76mm of the T34 should have here even on max distance a good chance to do almost always a damage (if it hits) of course if the angle is not to obnoxious. But the 85mm should not struggle with it as the gun would even extrem distance penetrate if it hits. One main issue of soviet guns was not inherently the penetration but accuracy. The 76mm had penetration quality good enough to destroy the panthers side on more then 800m. To hit it on that distance is a different issue though. In MoW it seems for flank shoots angle is a bit exagerated or / and penetration quality to much reduced. The SU 100 should have no issue with the Tiger IIs flank. Yet on big distance even if you hit it its sometimes a game of "luck" if you do damage or not. Same with the Tiger I 88mm shooting the Pershing, or soviet Heavy tanks (KV85, IS1, IS2 etc.) in their side. Flank shoots with the 88mm should almost always grant you a success even if you have a slight angle. The front is always the strongest part of course but if you manage to flank a heavy tank you should get a realistic revard for it. Many times enough you have to get so close to them that you can almost hug the enemy tank only to get a "sure" breach of the hull ...

The Tiger II with the Porsche turret (well both have been from Haenschel, but its easier to distinguish them that way) had the shooting trap but I somehow doubt that a 40mm shell even if it richochet has enough kynetic energy to cause any serious damage. The angle would be quite bad and it might damage the turret traverse but I doubt it would do anything more. The trap got removed quite fast with a new turret and I think there was a case where a Sherman with its 75 damaged a Tiger II heavily with the old turret cause of this shoot trap. But those are rare situations and should NOT be common in MoW. A 1 million dollar shoot eventualy. But nothing more. But well its a game afterall. Cant have everything I guess.

Gameplay in MoW is quite fun. But many of the "realism" mods prove that there is still a lot that can be improved and that there is definetly a need for it and craving for it from the community.

[FM_Von_Manstein]

The biggest problem with MoW in my opinion is the shells lose penetration so quickly. An Pak43 88 can penetrate the same amount of armor at 1km as it could at 100m. Even shells fired from a lower muzzle velocity don't start losing penetration until around 300 meters. Guns that have very good muzzle velocity will be able to destroy most targets beyond 1km. The Pak 43 88 guns should all have over 200mm or penetration up to 1.5 kilometers.

[KnightFandragon]

Gun penetration in this game fubar......Sometimes you have a green circle and a penetration number that exceeds the enemy armor and you cant kill your target w/ 3490 rounds...then there is the red circle, massivly under the target's armor and it dies in a few shots. Also, In this game, it doesnt matter the angle you hit the Panther's side....pop the side, its game over....for the Panther. Also, as for the guns themselves, all American/British weapons are better.......Only in this Men of War game though. The Russian guns, mostly the 85's on thier T34/85 and KV85 are pretty good but they lack the pin point accurate, shoot on the move thing the Brit and American 76's and 90's have. The 88 is quite the sad gun...people say they dumbed the Germans down for playbalance. If it was for playbalance then the 88 would be atleast equal to the M3 90L on the Slugger in punch and accuracy, also it would load faster then it does. As is right now all the 88s aside from the KwK43 on the King Tiger and Ferdi are slow, inaccurate and dont kill anything. The 43' is slow but more accurate so atleast it can hit something from range in less rounds then half the ammo bin in the tank.

Then we have the British stuff.....IDK why but the British stuff I fear it...in campaign mode anyway, dont face much British stuff in MP. Anywho, the reason that 2nd mission gives people such hell is b/c the British stuff is entirely way better then it should be. That 40....its not that great, it wont be 1 shotting Pzr 4's on thier front anyway. Then we have the Crusader...I looked up its armor for ingame, its like 30 on the front hull I think it was, yet this tank is the one that gives everyone hell, you fire and miss and fire and bounce and fire and miss and miss and miss and bounce. It then fires like 3 times and kills 2 tanks. Then there is the M3 Grant. I played this missions w/ my dad twice and both times those grants proved to be pretty impenetrable to most our guns and they took a pounding. The Brits may have had good armor on thier tanks and the Germans didnt have 88 KWK43s and such out yet but the 75 on the Pzr G could do the number on those brit tanks in less rounds then it takes currently. IDK how many Crusaders have just fubar'd my world. In fact I have less trouble w/ Churchills and Centurions then I do Crusaders.......The Crusader is a light tank and the Pzr III cant stand up to it at all, where they have you defending the flood plain on Op: Crusader I lined the ridges w/ Pzr IIIs in hopes of holding them off that way...yeah it was a joke. I fired, they fired and when the dust settled there was like none of me and pretty much all of them left + reinforcements

[Crni vuk]

I can understand the intention to downsize the effect of penetration and shells for gameplay sake. But yeah ... it still should be a lot more powerfull. You see way to many richochets and shoot without any effect at all particularly while engaging medium / light armor with heavy guns and tanks.

The Nashorn is litealy useless in battles cause it seems never to do much more then a Stug. And Before I spend points on a tank that has virtualy no armor (hey it dies 99% of the time in the first shoot) you save the points for the Jagdpanther or Jagdpanzer IV. If the Nashorn would at least get the penetration of its gun. To many times you shoot the side of some vehicle to see nothing happen ... or even its front. A t34 or similar vehicles should be toast. As simple as that. The IS2 and pershing. Thats a different story. I agree here to achieve penetration on highest distance. Should be difficoult of course. But not for the flank. It should almost always grant you success. I would like to use and see more Nashorns in battle. But it seems no one is choosing it for obvious reasons. If you dont get the first hit. you're dead.

This is what I mean though when I am talking about side shoots to the Panther. And this happend so many times ... its not funny anymore. And yeah it happens virtualy with all weapons and different tanks. Bee it shooting the Pershing side with the Tiger I, or Tiger II with the SU100 etc. ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6iqMJ0v2rI

[Evilsausage]

Originally Posted by Crni vuk

I can understand the intention to downsize the effect of penetration and shells for gameplay sake. But yeah ... it still should be a lot more powerfull. You see way to many richochets and shoot without any effect at all particularly while engaging medium / light armor with heavy guns and tanks.

The Nashorn is litealy useless in battles cause it seems never to do much more then a Stug. And Before I spend points on a tank that has virtualy no armor (hey it dies 99% of the time in the first shoot) you save the points for the Jagdpanther or Jagdpanzer IV. If the Nashorn would at least get the penetration of its gun. To many times you shoot the side of some vehicle to see nothing happen ... or even its front. A t34 or similar vehicles should be toast. As simple as that. The IS2 and pershing. Thats a different story. I agree here to achieve penetration on highest distance. Should be difficoult of course. But not for the flank. It should almost always grant you success. I would like to use and see more Nashorns in battle. But it seems no one is choosing it for obvious reasons. If you dont get the first hit. you're dead.

This is what I mean though when I am talking about side shoots to the Panther. And this happend so many times ... its not funny anymore. And yeah it happens virtualy with all weapons and different tanks. Bee it shooting the Pershing side with the Tiger I, or Tiger II with the SU100 etc. ...

Tsst BS Nashorns are Awsome. Sure they are risky, you can lose em many times and if the enemy has an officer or good line of sight. You may lose it.

The Nashorn has same gun as King tiger and JP so theres nothing wrong with its gun. Nashorns are really a unit you can only afford to quickly move forth shoot and then retrete.

Personaly i normaly buy em if the enemy has for example an IS-2 or a Pershing. And im too low on points to afford anything real heavy.
Then Nashorns are normaly a better investment then a JP 4 or even a tiger and panther.
Killed many IS-2s with Nashorns, trick is to make sure the enemy isnt ready for it. Sure somtimes the shot miss or hit a bad spot where it deflects.
But thats life.

[Crni vuk]

thats why you see the Nashorn so many times and regularly used in battles right ...

Seriously. I dont even see experienced player use that vehicle very often as they save the points either for infantry or vehicles with better armor.

Similar to the SU100 which is also very rarely seen on the battlefield. And that is partialy cause the SU100 doesnt offer any advantage on long range compared to the IS2 or IS3 which it should as it has a 100mm gun. But the SU100 already strugles with the front of the Tiger I. And here again, one shoot and it is many times toast.

The times I used the Nashorn are very rare. I tend to spend the points more in ifantry equped with correct weapons like assault infantry or air born troops.

I actualy dont have any issue with the fact that weapons are not correctly modeled. But that you have to get so close to some tanks that you can hug them if you want to shoot the flank is what I find distubring. Particularly when you are using guns of medium/heavy caliber. In some battles you spend 3-4 ISU shoots to the SIDE of the Tiger II and see no effect. Taking its chains out at best. Particiliarly the ISU152 should be a lot more effective even against the german heavy tanks. If not penetrating the front armor but killing the crew inside.

[Zeke Wolff]

The Brittish 2 pounder could penetrate 56~57.5mm of armor at a range of 500 yards, (it was the best light antitank gun at that time) which is more armor than the Pz4E-G had as front armor (they had 30-50mm thick armor plates, depending on which version). So this gun, just as it is in the game, were perfectly capable of knocking out Pz4´s frontal in real life.

Same thing with the 6 pounder: it could punch thru armor plating as thick as 81-83mm at a range of 500 yards. This gun can do it in the game, and in real life as well.

Both guns did suffer from one drawback though: neither one of them could use HE shells, these guns were firing antitank shells and nothing else, which is why tanks with these guns faired very poorly against German antitank guns.

The American tanks had gyrostabilized main guns starting with the M3 Lee/Grant. All tanks produced thereafter, had gyrostabilized guns which allowed them to be used whilst moving with good accuracy. The British designed tanks did not have it, until the Centurion arrived (but that tank is a non-WW2 tank really). Although in the case of the Americans, most tank crews choosed to not use the gyrostabilizing system since they thought it to be not much of use, and thus prefered the old method of stop-targeting-fire-move.

German tanks didnt have gyrostabilized guns, but of course these tanks could fire on the move as well, but by doing so, they lost all accuracy.

The Panther had 40-50mm (depending on which version, (Ausf D,A or G) we are talking about) and most, if not all guns of WW2 could knock it out by a flank shot. German crews were taught to always face the enemy with their thick frontal armor and by doing so, protect their tanks weaker sides. In other words, the Panther is just as vulnerable to flank shots in the game, as it was in WW2.

The accuracy, penetration, reloading time, etc of German guns is another thing: These has been nerfed down for the sake of balance in the game, and personally, I don´t like that kind of balance...

Also, guns in the vanilla version of MoW have two different settings: one for MP which tends to be more realistic, and another for SP which is highly unrealistic (boosted penetration etc).

~Zeke.

Ps.
I can´t belive that you´ve such problems with the Grant and/or Crusaders: usually they went up in flames as soon as I see them in the game... you must have some exceptional unluck when going up against these things...

[Crni vuk]

Originally Posted by Zeke Wolff

The Brittish 2 pounder could penetrate 56~57.5mm of armor at a range of 500 yards, (it was the best light antitank gun at that time) which is more armor than the Pz4E-G had as front armor (they had 30-50mm thick armor plates, depending on which version). So this gun, just as it is in the game, were perfectly capable of knocking out Pz4´s frontal in real life.

Same thing with the 6 pounder: it could punch thru armor plating as thick as 81-83mm at a range of 500 yards. This gun can do it in the game, and in real life as well.

Just as a question out of curiosity, does this penetration also takes eventual failing or shattering (shatter gap) of rounds in to acount ? This was a serious issue with guns that had to deal with armor that was just thick enough to alow eventual (theoretical) penetration. Like the Panzer IV H which had at least 80mm of front armor. This increased with the quality of armor which was in general excelent for German vehicles and less likely to crack, splinter or deform.

As you say depending on which Panzer IV we are talking about the penetration with the 2QF might be successfull or not. From what I can read it seems the Panzer IV G got some 80 mm of front armor with its base of 50mm + 30mm face-hardened appliqué welded and later bolted to the glacis. So at least the Panzer IV G (or the F2 which got the luck to receive the aditional armor) should prove to be a very hard target for the 2QF at any range. The front that is.

I am not that used with the 6QF, but the gun in use with the Cromwell for example wasnt the same kind of gun like the anti tank gun used by the infantry. For example the Cromwell never received any APDS or APCR amunition for its 75mm which had more or less the same penetration quality compared to the 75mm of the Sherman (if I am not completely wrong they even shared the same HE shells) So again penetrations to the front would be against the Panzer IV in its late/mid war variants not always be succesfull and the Sherman with its 75mm could only hope for a shoot to the turret. I have no clue how much issues the 6QF had with shattering shells or if that was even a issue at all for the gun. But I know that this was a reality for the Firefly with its 17Pounder which sometimes failed to penetrate either the Tiger I or Panther. Particularly with APDS shells and they had as well terrible accuracy and would often loose their fins in flight and thus hit nothing. It was really not much more accurate then maybe 400 or 500m. The Panther proved in tests to see a lot of richochets against the usual 17Pf Ap for example. It seems that tests have shown changes in quality of used armor as well ranging from very good to good and bad. Where high quality armor showed no sign of stress even after several shoots to the same spot and the bad armor cracked with the first shoot.

But the armor of the early/mid war Tiger was extremly well made and proved to be a issue for almost any anti tank gun of that time even to the famous and powerfull 17pf. So any gun which would shoot a high velocity shell at it like the Sherman with its 75mm HVAP would face eventualy a shattering of its shell on the front.

This is from what I can read a 17pf which got stuck in the front armor of a Tiger I

militaryalbum.com

Originally Posted by Zeke Wolff

The Panther had 40-50mm (depending on which version, (Ausf D,A or G) we are talking about) and most, if not all guns of WW2 could knock it out by a flank shot. German crews were taught to always face the enemy with their thick frontal armor and by doing so, protect their tanks weaker sides. In other words, the Panther is just as vulnerable to flank shots in the game, as it was in WW2.

It is "vulnerable" to the side but just simply not enough from what I can tell. Particularly to guns like the soviet 85mm or the Shermans 76w which could penetrate the side of the panther up to much more then 1000m. I think up to 1500m even. In game you often enough strugle with it already on pretty small distances ...

Usualy one doctrine was to always use the Panther in combination with the Panzer IV as protection for the flank.

[FM_Von_Manstein]

Panzer IV Ausf F2/G had 50mm armor, H had 80. The 2 Pounder was perfectly capable of taking it out. But it rarely got the chance. The 2 Pounder saw most of its action in NA. Rommel never allowed his tanks to charge head on, his Panzer IV Ausf Es would always lob 75mm HE shells at the British guns before advancing. But the 2 Pounder still could destroy most German tanks of the time with ease if they were under 500m.

Both guns did suffer from one drawback though: neither one of them could use HE shells, these guns were firing antitank shells and nothing else, which is why tanks with these guns faired very poorly against German antitank guns.

Few British guns and tanks could fire HE. The Crusader was the 1st British tank to be armed with HE, until then only the 25 Pounders were equipped with it. All later tanks usually had it.