Again. Maus is absolutely biased

Machinery of War Discussion Ground Vehicle
21

I have the Maus and all I can really do is go out and troll with it.The rest of my line up for Germany stops at the Tiger P and I don’t use that very often.

If I play the maus I am a WW2 enthusiast playing way above my comfort zone in terms of BR.I am not sure what contribution I would make to the team or whether I would even care.This is the problem of giving that thing to anybody.It never worked in reality and it it is a joke in Warthunder and I can only recommend treating it as such and having a laugh with it.

22

Mine stops at 7.0 (Tiger H, Elephant)…i play Maus with an SPAA and M41…i am considering Ru251. M41 can move fast and kill some 8.0 stuff if it can outflank them…and lots of light tanks targets (BMPs, SPAAs, ATGM carriers) around also.
Not syaing it is easy…but allows me to play Maus+2 without feeling useless.
IT IS an “odd” tank…i just accept it as such. For instance…a recent match (while maus was being unlocked) there were 4 Maus on our team…which made for a very strange match as most other vehicles were MBTs and ATGM carriers :)

1 Like
23

I also only play WW2, so usually I don’t play above 6.7 but I make an exception for the Maus. I honestly don’t share your take that it can only be used for goofs. I’m a very average player and can still get very good mileage out of it in RB (and in SB, it’s a beast).

A few things you might find interesting:

I take somewhere around 20 rounds for the main gun and 40 for the coax. I usually bring ten PzGr 43, ten 12.8/8.8 Pzgr. TS, thirty Hl.Gr 38C, and ten smoke rounds. This setup removes all ammo from the turret and leaves most of the hull empty, save for the rear side section which you need to be mindful of.

Angle the hull a lot at all times, but also angle the turret at roughly 45° between shots. This greatly mitigates your frontal turret weakspot, where the armour normalises.

Even in an uptier, having 6 crew and tons of empty space means you can survive quite a bit.

Remember that the Pz.Gr 43 has enough explosive filler to guarantee overpressure, the TS does not. So reserve the TS for sniping or for very hard targets, and use the Pz.Gr 43 on everything else. Considering that the Pz.Gr 43 is capable of frontally penning even stuff like T-80UK, you’ll be fine with it most of the time, while the TS is the more specialised round.

Use your coax 75mm like your life depends on it. More often than not, it does.

You can use it to track an enemy rushing you. You can use it to barrel them very reliably. You can blind them with smoke. You can use the HEAT to decimate BMPs and such, and sometimes it will even kill turret crew members on IS-3s and T-54s. It also kills helicopters.

You can also use the coax to bait people out of cover if they believe you’ve fired the main gun and are now reloading.

Prioritise maps where you can engage from the get go and can force frontal engagements, like Berlin.

Trolly reverse gear is your best weapon against inexperienced CAS pilots.

Quite frankly, WT is not made for that. Realism would make Tiger IIs barely mobile, make early T-34s unable to reload while rotating the turret. CAS would have to evade after even one deterrent burst of AA fire. Tank crews would bail out in most circumstances after a disabling hit. The backbone of battles would be infantry and artillery, not tanks, which wouldn’t even be able to enter most of our city maps on realism grounds. The game would be unrecognisable.

Since we’re not doing that and focusing on vehicles alone, tbh… Might as well have fun. If I want to scratch the realism itch, I can play IL-2 Tank Crew. WT isn’t really for that.

2 Likes
24

I think by asking for more realism GhostSop isn’t asking for the amount of pure realism you are listing,which are good points by the way. My point is similar in that the OP complaining about the Maus in a serious gameplayer way(which is fine) but to me the game just collapses into a silly parody of itself after 4-5 BR and even gets sillier the moment Sweden come in.

My point about trolling isn’t to upset the game but fail to take it seriously in any way and that overall is my point about Warthunder.Everybody on here screaming and shouting abuse at each other and being super serious when the game itself plays out like an amusing joke with Fantasy WW2 tanks facing 80s modern armor on a totally unrelated map.

I find it hard to take a serious post about a joke tank seriously lol and I think the best way to enjoy war thunder is to treat it like the joke it has become and play it for a laugh.

The tips you post are extremely useful and I thank you for those I will try them.

1 Like
25

Wasnt the HL penetration only like 140mm/30° or so? It wouldnt be all that usefull.

26
27

Did you mistype and meant ‘have no excuse to not kill the damn thing’?

28

Yes, I see it of course, realism is a spectrum and all of us are going to have a different sweet spot for what is the right balance between realism and arcade.

I suppose what I was trying to say is that my own, completely subjective sweet spot for what constitutes “realism” is a bit further than usual. So to me, nothing about WT is even remotely realistic enough to, say, trigger my immersion or suspension of disbelief. I just cannot unsee the fact that I’m driving a strangely mobile Jagdtiger around Sun City with an M109 on my left, an R3 T20 on my right, and an Israeli M-51 behind me. So I have no issue with prototypes and blueprints because quite honestly, what’s different? They’re in line with the rest. Ground RB already looks like a bizarre fever dream.

As for videos and content creators, here’s a few I’ve watched recently:

2 Likes
29

Brilliant,Nailed it.Well said :) My attitude was never better than when I gave up on any notion of realism and lost respect for Warthunder. Then I saw it for what it is,a somewhat childish WoT tanks copy but a big after work ,stress relief ball rather than the cause of stress.Incidentally my score increased massively.If I die i mostly just laugh it off and carry on,same with CAS.So just play the Maus for a bit of fun.

I do hold out some hope for immersion at BRs below 5 and have some nice games at 3-5 in the T34 and Panzer IVs ,so long as we are not at Sun City,Because the Germans take all the sunbeds lol ;)

1 Like
30

I don’t think it’s necessarily childish, just that one should not project one’s expectations onto the game, which we do because of the lack of competition.

WT is very arcade, that makes it accessible and popular, it’s also very fun to play, and very competitive. That’s a good thing to be. Rather than imagine I’m playing “a WW2 videogame” or “a military sim videogame” I imagine I’m basically playing a Girls Und Panzers videogame. Like a strange and unusual sport that pits teams against each other and gives them a wide selection of machinery that is adapted for the purposes of the competition.

2 Likes
31

I think my overall point for Warthunder is to play it as you like.I think if WT has one major positive it is choice.Choice to fly or not ,choice to spawn camp or not,Hide and snipe or come out into the open.Choice of vehicle.Always a dictator dictating and it has ruined the game to a degree.

So many on the forum are against the options Gaijin give or simply don’t see it as a good thing.They want every imbalance removed and every possible advantage the enemy could have removed. I believe the Maus was even removed for a while.

2 Likes
32

Of course, occasionally sim can feel more immersive, and you can get the odd combination of maps and vehicles in RB that almost feels like a reenactment… But those moments are rare. The best way by far to get that immersion is to join custom battles that focus on historical roleplay, some are extremely sophisticated, it honestly looks sick af.

But yes, taking WT in a fun way can feel very rewarding. And it doesn’t exclude also taking it seriously on its own terms. I wrote all those tips about using the Maus in WT, knowing all the time that I was talking about the game Maus which is a completely different object from the real world thing. Compartmentalisation, I guess. You can take basketball very seriously in context and still know in a more general POV that “it’s just a ball”, you know?

That said, yes, sometimes leaning into the fever dream can actually be entertaining. When I did the challenge for the last battlepass that required killing enemies at all tiers in game, I downloaded user skins for modern German vehicles that painted them in WW2 camo style and unit markings, so I was driving around in a DAK Radkampfwagen. That was hilarious.

And whenever I look at my 7.3 and 7.7 lineups, I’m gleefully amused at the idea that this is a hypothetical “Third Reich 1946 Pz.Abt. company” and I ask myself what kind of drugs Wa.Prüf.6 must have been on to produce something that looks like this 😂

IMG_20231115_130616_800
IMG_20231115_130616_8001280×207 45.8 KB

IMG_20231115_130611_224
IMG_20231115_130611_2241280×182 42.1 KB

1 Like
33

Let’s start with the fact that the e-100 has a drive system from the tiger 2, and the tiger 2 itself has the tiger 1, which was only slightly different, the E100 irl would most likely travel a few meters and break down, the tiger 2 had huge problems already with side gears, etc., because it was very overloaded, and the Jagdtiger is heavier and it would have been even worse, when the 653rd battalion was sent on December 4, 1944 to Operation Jessiena Fog in the Ardennes and then finally the Germans moved it to another operation in Aredanch North Wind, on January 1 they were ordered to get there on their own it was about 90 km, when they left the railway platform they had to cover the rest of the way on their own, only 2 made it, Maus with the e-100 is a masterpiece, and the fact that it drove and didn’t break down was a miracle, e- 100 was a mistake, of course Maus was too, but 100 was a bigger mistake

34

It is funny how realistic my vehicles looked when I started war thunder to how they look now.
It shows the difference from my immersion/realism seeking newbie self to my current survival mode attitude.
Just out of interest ,can a Maus drive over a bridge without it collapsing? Never tried.

1 Like
35

Trust me, I know. If Otto Carius saw how my Jagdtiger does in WT compared to the real thing he had to use, he’d probably weep with joy.

At the end of the day that’s just WT.

3 Likes
36

In game? Yes, but not on the planks that are on the bridge in Tunisia.

Man. I laughed so hard the first time I discovered that.

1 Like
37

At least the sight wouldn’t decalibrate while driving

2 Likes
38

At least you could drive which is more than you could in a Chieftain :)

39

WW2 as in historical or also prototypes?

40

Tbh… Trying to do historical in WT is a fool’s errand. There is too much stuff simply all over the place.

For example, you would need to bring out the Pz 35t at a BR where you can see KV-1s. There are many many reasons not to do that:

  1. you’d be doing this on your own. The other side won’t refrain from spawning their available vehicles to match your “Normandy 1944” or “Smolensk 1941” lineups.

  2. We lack the true combined arms elements that could make this work. Pz 35ts would often lure KV1s towards AT gun emplacements - for a few short months, the advantage of doctrine compensated for German technical backwardness. In the game, this is not a factor. Not even in sim.

  3. You make it harder for your team to win.

That’s why I said WW2-ish. I play every BR between 1.0 and 7.7. I have no interest in moving beyond that tbh.

3 Likes