I am not sure how people get the idea German tanks or equipment are "weak". Try playing with the Brits or Japanese armor only battles against the US or even more important the Germans and tell me its "uneaven" for the Axis. It ends many times enough in Tiger II killing most armor while the Sturmtiger do the rest. With the japanese as enemy you dont even need any Sturmtiger. Russians and Axis are somewhat the best or at least can be mirrored better. Though the ISU152 makes a bad Sturmtiger ... but thats obvious since the gun is much smaller.
The Tiger 1 can be a great tank. If used correctly and with a bit thinking. In battles with 600 points for each side its of course less usefull but you cant expect that from it when you have IS3s, Su100 or M36 and Pershings around every courner. As simple as that. And I had enough times where the Tiger 1 still proved to be a hard target on biger ranges. Angling is the key here. Anyway. The Tiger 1 can be very good. But you cant just roll it in to battle expecting to blow everything away. A intelligent player will always try to counter enemy armor so he doesnt get overrun. Either by infantry (took out a lot of enemy armor with well placed anti tank infantry!) or of course own tanks. Just never forget the moment you can get a Tiger 1 or Panther even the enemy will eventualy have access to weapons which could counter them. Talking about the 17pf the brits BEST choice, I many times go for the 17pf used by the infantry cause its cheap and the best british gun! So if you get a Tiger or Panther the enemy is loosing a lot of points, if your gun gets killed its bad but you dont loose half of your spend points and its harder to get overrun early on! Dont forget either that MoW doesnt portray "realistic" engagements. For each Tiger 1 the soviets would use almost 400(!) armored vehicles which includes everything from the T60, to the BT and of course T34. The Tiger 1 was capabale of destroying eventualy 5 vehicles before it was destroyed though. Now do the math. But that happens cause the Tiger 1 was many times facing inferior armor like light/medium tanks which could not take it out except with suicide runs. Particularly in the west. If the normandy champaign would have seen for example a large use of 90mm guns from the begining and not just with the November/December of 1944 the loost numbers of allied tanks would have been probably much smaller the Soviets already in 1943 deployed with the SU85 guns that could "potentialy" deal with the Tiger 1 from the front at least from already 700-800m which was a huge difference to the 76mm guns of the T34 which could do nothing to the front the idea to get the 85mm gun as fast as possible to the front before better guns and designs arrived was coming exactly from the knowledge of the Tiger send to the Soviets from the Brits, by own Spies and of course experiences around Leningrad when they faced it the first time the Tiger saw action on August 29th of 1942 already and later again in Semptember/November which gave the Soviets a rough estimation of its arrival and enough time to at least consider some possible counter.
The First Captured Tiger from sPzAbt 502 on display at Gorky Park in Moscow.
Interesting are as well battle reports of the British attacks in the Caen region after the beach landing so the American units could break out. But it meant at some point the British forced had to somewhat face (aprox) 70% of the German armor ~ acording to Wiki. And here they made very positive experience with the 17pf in the Sherman Firefly which was luckily ready for the normandy landing some single tankers achieved to destroy for examples a couple of Panthers and Tigers succesfully on usual combat ranges. Particularly when used defensively.
So dont expect in MoW the Tiger 1 to be a unstopable killing machine as it wasnt one in real life either. It only became one cause A ) of its very well trained and experienced crew and B ) the time it saw service it most of the time was fighting inferior tanks like the T34/76, IS1, SU85 etc. Shermans and light tank destroyers M10 etc. In such battles its no surprise the Tiger 1 achieved many victories. Just as the KV1 did some 1 or 2 years before in 1941 when the Panzer III proved to be useless against its armor. So in MoW you play most of the time "theoretical" battles then "realistic" ones. The values of armor and guns reflect only somewhat rudimentary realistic numbers tweaked for gameplay though.
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Originally Posted by Korsakov829
Thats the main reason tanks were created.
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yes and now. If we are talking about certain tank designs like the Stug (early) or Panzer IV E. They have been designed as infantry support weapons. And thats a great role for them in game as well.
But weapons like the Tiger 1 and most particularly the Panther have been designed to counter enemy armor as primary targets. Infantry support was important as well every good design should be able to deal with both tanks AND infantry in some way but many designs have put a focus on some aspect. One big issue with the Firefly for example was the weak characteristics of the 17pf (76mm) HE shell compared to other guns like the 2QF and similar they had a slightly smaller caliber but the shell contained much more explosives. The brits didnt managed before the end of 44 to supply their troops with good 17pf HE shells. And even then they still have been much less powerfull compared to the 75mm weapons of the cromwell or shermans cause the casing of the 17pf shell had to be very thick to be used with the high velocity gun. Actualy every gun of WW2 had similar issues. High velocity means high preasure in the gun which means the shell needs thick walls to not burst in the barrel increasing the thickness means less room for explosives which make it of course less effective etc. etc. Of course a 88mm shell will suffer much less such issues to the 75mm of the panther or the 76mm of the firefly. But still.
So in general you could say WW2 has seen many different designed tanks (much more then today) with specialiced roles and some have been either more or less succesfull. Today many different ideas are combined in the MBT (main battle tank) like the Abrahamns, russian modern T series ~ T70,80,90 etc. and the Leopard 2 with the intention to both support the infantry and attack enemy armor efficiently. Almost all nations today follow more or less the same principle and thus have armor with very similar classifications. No more light, medium, heavy tanks. A modern tank has to combine the versatility and mobility of light/medium armor but the protection and most important the firepower of heavy designs. Thus the idea of a main purpose or main battle tank was born. The idea is not an new concept and the Brits, Soviets and Germans thought about such concepts ~ some even think the KV1s was the first "try" in such a direction but thats not sure. But it was not possible at that time to get a project working that could effectively combine the advantages of each classification without its dissadvantages heavy gun, great protection and good mobility. Particularly since the resources have been needed to counter already existing designs like to the T34 and KV1 tanks the Axis encountered in larger numbers by the end of 41 and start of spring 42.