This is a reflection of German doctrine. Besides the blitzkrieg tactics used in Europe and North Africa, late war German tanks (so around 6.7) were heavy and slow–Hitler’s over-engineered wonder weapons.
These lumbering, giant vehicles were logistical nightmares, easily overcome and overwhelmed by a vastly higher amount of shermans, or, fireflies/m10’s if they were hand. Your point that Germany’s King Tiger is supposed to be its main strength is true, yet it is also its greatest weakness. No wonder you’re getting flanked and picked apart my SPGs and light tanks with 4 times the mobility.
You should try some of these non-flanking routes with your German heavies some time, you may find that you don’t need to be a 0.1% super elite superhuman player to pull off some cool matches.
Your Jagdtiger route is certain death 9/10, so yeah, great if lucky, not so great if somebody just fires HEAT-FS at you from 1200m away. Your KT route? LOL, whatever. If enemy is cooperating, go for it. Last time I drove like that, I met several enemy tanks who shot me to pieces,\
Typical tactics that are good when you can spot and hit single pixel while on the move from 1000m away.
Note that a good portion of that non-green middle strip will still allow rounds in most fo the time, especially at ranges within 500m (IE most ranges where you’ll be using the M4A1).
The turret is indeed solid, however it’s still not something that can be relied upon. Hulldown positions are getting rarer and rarer, and it’s rarer still to find one that isn’t at medium/long range where the American 75mm will start to struggle. A 500m shooting match between a Russian player who knows what he’s doing and a hulldown 75mm Sherman basically never ends until one of the players makes a mistake. To make it worse, said longer range hulldown positions are most commonly contested by snipers, guns like the German 75mm, American 76mm, etc, which won’t really struggle with the M4A1’s turret at most ranges.
So, yes, you can go hulldown to become a tougher target, but not consistently.
I stand by it. The stabilizer is a very strong advantage, helping both bad and good players, but it isn’t overwhelming. Players can and will still donk shots, still get pushed by multiple people at once, still get caught off guard, still push into ambushes, etc. It really only serves to save players who wander into an enemy, catching both off guard. In any other situation, the stabilizer is nice to have but not essential.
Parts of green strip are not really letting rounds through also.
Also my previous screenshot was wrong, as it was still not firing straight at a plate, but downwards.
Here it is a more level view:
Now, if Sherman is not directly facing you, it gets even worse. And we’re talking 3-4 degrees difference. Make it 4-5 and it’s a non-pen.
So is Sweden’s pay2win KV-1 turret. It can be relied upon,. just don’t use it to deliberately tank Pz IV rounds.
Now that’s not true.
Just keep firing at his turret. Even I can do that. I sometimes track them first, because when I’m hulldown, I kinda get cocky.
There’s a ton of “hulldown” in this game, f.e. wrecks with turret removed, rocks, all kinds of bumps in the ground.
Then what is “overwhelming”? Because sure as hell stabiliser reduces my time to fire by A LOT. That “a lot” is usually what gives me the ability to properly aim vs T-34, and to be sure to fire first vs german tanks (I still fail sometimes, but such is life).
I have simply recreated the routes I used in two of the videos I sent you. Since your comment in response to those videos is that they do not depict flanking, I drew the routes on the map and asked you to confirm that it was not flanking. Your response here is to move the goalposts to “it’s certain death”. So I guess we’re past debating whether it’s flanking or not. That’s something at least.
I am giving you empirical proof that it can be done.
For instance, with the JT on Hurtgen, you reach the first spot I marked on the map in relative safety from spawn. From there, you are looking straight into B. 1km shots while you’re hull down, your territory. Once you’ve gotten a couple kills, reverse down the slope and head for the hill. You can do so by staying almost completely in cover. Engage enemies as you go, until you make it to the top.
For the Tiger II, as you can see, I did run into light vehicles contesting that side of the map. I simply killed them…
Which of the kills I got in those two matches were achieved on the move?
It’s not, as it’s slow and predictable, a lot of people take that route, it’s overlooked and you basically end up shooting people in the face. In reality, taking such route is a guaranteed loss for non-squadded up normal mortals.
You can even “flank” in Maus. And probably win some games.
Is it effective?
Do most maps actully promote this?
Nope.
Yeah, I have moved a goalpost, because discussion with you always takes the same route - you get something done via some insane skill/OP tank/being squadded and “hey, look, it works”.
No, it does not.
Guess what, it’s as “viable” as me dogfighting A6M2 in Bf 109 F2.
The difference between us is, I don’t try to present th game through the vast disparity of skill between me and the A6M2 player. I look at A6M2, I look at Bf 109 F2 and I tell people “don’t do that”.
Also I’m not saying “flanking is impossible”, just that 90% of the map is useless and VERY calculated routes have to be taken, and if you just “go flanking”, which is simply move past the enemy using open routes to his sides you’ll drive all the way to enemy spawn without having a single chance to shoot anybody in the side, and if you attempt doing it - you end up sitting in the open vs people with access to actual cover. Taking a side sniping position on Hurtgen is normal thing, I’ve done it myself with Su-85M BTW, I didn’t know I was doing “flanking” as I went there shooting people in the face all the way, it was never “oh look, that guy who couldn’t pen our tanks frontally SURPRISED us with a sideshot”, which would be a proper flanking maneuver, that doesn’t work for Germany. Everyone knew I was there and eventually I got hit with 1000lbs bomb.
I’d also like to add, that this game is also strongly anti-flanking in city maps, where short-range flanks are stumped by sound-scouting.
I basically can always tell what direction the “flanker” is going. I often die anyway, as meeting M4A2 frontally in a lot of tanks is not exactly a survivable scenario for me.
The point is - the game has very, very limited set of sniping positions to the side of the map. Some can be considered “flanking positions”, for proper hit and run, but on a lot of maps Gaijin did a lot of hard work to make these routes 100% non viable for mere mortals, who do not win f.e. vs hulldown tanks while they themselves are in the open. For you it’s an easy thing - 1000m cupola shot and voila.
They can also have their screens turned off, and then you’ll definitely win!
Who do you think is most likely to donk a shot, those that have a perfectly stabilized gun anywhere below 25kph or those who have to come to a complete stop and wait for their tank to stop rocking to achieve the same level of accuracy?
Which the tank with the stronger APHE, faster, reload, and stabilizer is much more likely to win.
Which the stabilizer gives you a very good chance of reacting in time.
You think this because you’re bad at the game. It’s the only explanation.
That’s level?!? How tall do you think T-34s are? That’s the kind of shot you’d only have with an ASU-57 at point blank range (which it still pens easily).
Turn off “Consider camera vertical angle”, as doing so means that all rounds come at the armor from a completely flat angle. Doing so reveals:
Note that, again, the green areas are non-inclusive. You can hit both above and below that middle strip and still pen semi-consistently, you just need to avoid the areas where the armor is stacked.
And, as a reminder, this is at 500m, which is far from the stardard engagement range at the tier. Push it to a more common range, say 100m, and the strip of armor that can bounce becomes so small that it’d be a legitimately difficult shot to hit if you were trying to.
An M4A1 can angle to make the UFP resistance to common rounds, that it true, however:
The hull roof beneath the gun is so weak that there’s no angling that can save it.
Angling like this exposes the weak hull corner and side armor, which is just as inviting a target.
So, it can be relied upon, so long as you aren’t up against high pen guns, which is not something you can control. In other words, it can be relied upon, except for the factors outside of your control. In other words, you cannot rely on it.
This relies on said Russian player giving you a flat shot on the turret, which is why I added the proviso “Knows what he’s doing”. If said Russian player realizes he’s being shot by a hulldown M4A1 at medium/long range, he’ll just angle his turret and hull and drive to cover. You have to nail a very small target of a quickly moving T-34 at range. Him not being able to make it to cover means that he just drove out into an open, watched sightline, where I’d point back to the proviso.
Or, if you’re up against a KV-1, he just angles and laughs, because you aren’t getting through any part of him unless you’re up close and flat on.
There’s a ton of hulldown positions, but few of them are super useful at this point. Sure, if the stars align so that someone’s in a position where you can be hulldown while engaging them, that’s great. But generally sitting behind a rock or a tank wreck, exposed on both flanks, waiting for targets to drive out in front of you, is not a winning strategy.
That’s exactly what I mean. You fail sometimes. Everyone does. It’s not overwhelming in that it still leaves room for the enemy to counter. It’s not an “I win” button. It doesn’t win every engagement for you. It just gives you an advantage, much like the T-34’s armor or the Panzer 4’s gun.
So, if the stabilizers are such an incredible, overpowering advantage, then why are US winrates at the tier sub 50%?
It’s not even a minor nation thing, the Soviet winrates at the same tier are comfortably above 50%. The US are the third worst nation, only behind the Germans and Swedish.
If stabilizers are such an overwhelming advantage that you’ll always outshoot everyone you meet, and provide a lot of their advantage even to newer players who don’t know what they’re doing, why are the Shermans doing so poorly?
For the same reason their P-51C has winrate 20% lower than the japanese one despite being identical planes, or even 13% below the chinese one, which was also free?
But when the Tigers start doing poorly suddenly it stops being the fault of the vehicle, it’s definitely the players right?
That was my point. The whole premise of this thread, from the OP’s first message, was the German tanks are the reason why German teams are doing so poorly, and not the fault of the players.
So, I used the example of the Shermans to point out that even a good vehicle will be held back by bad players. Seems I forgot to conclude it there, my bad.
Anyways, the original point still stands. The stabilizer isn’t an overwhelming advantage because, despite it, US teams are doing pretty awfully at the tier. Even the minor nation clone M4s aren’t doing exceptionally well either, with all the tech tree variants hovering at around 1 K/D. They seem pretty balanced, all in all.
The premium ones are doing substantially better, implying a bit of a bit of the reverse of the usual effect premium players have on win rates. Unlike high tier premiums, which are typically purchased to speed up research down a tree and therefore are often bought by players who don’t know what they’re doing, I’d wager most low tier premiums are bought by players who enjoy low tier gameplay and want to fill out lineups.
It is player based but Gaijin doesnt nerf players, they nerf nations by internal statistics and I’m betting it was because of the large influx of Maus players, both new and returning players. This happens every year, it just so happens to be that this time feels incredibly deliberate and merciless.
Quick Update: I witnessed my first German team win finally lmao
The fact that it’s predictable doesn’t preclude it being flanking. One of the reasons I go there on Hurtgen is because I know that a rabid pack of M18s will go there, that the teams will usually not react, and they’ll get murderised from the hill. If you want something done well, do it yourself.
The two videos we are discussing now - Hurtgen and European Province - were played solo, no squads, and the two tanks used were the Jagdtiger and the Tiger II Sla, which I doubt you consider OP. All that leaves is “insane skill” but tbh, there’s none of that in either video. There is nothing I did in those two videos that you can’t also do as well. They were just good matches.
From that route, you start by sniping (shoot 1km into B) and then you end up flanking. Shooting people fully broadside who are not looking at you, from 700 metres, from a concealed position atop a hill at the very edge of the map’s red area, is definitionally flanking.
Yesterday on Abandoned Factory conquest (objective at A) I went down row 1 with Tiger II Sla and got six kills in my first spawn before I died. Even on urban maps you can flank sometimes.
Like I said though the maps did get worse. Just not yet worse enough that you can’t do anything about it.
There was no cupola shot in those two videos (and really, all nine mostly had fairly “normal” kills).
