Ensign’s Q&A 18

Previous edition

Q: What kind of crew did the KV-85 have? I found a source that gives it as commander-loader, driver, mechanic, gunner. Is there something about the KV-85 that prevented the mechanic from loading?

A: That’s almost correct, you just need to swap some punctuation: commander, loader, driver-mechanic, gunner. Soviet tanks had no dedicated mechanic crewman, the driver performed those duties.

Q: What suspensions and tracks did the SU-26, SU-5s, and SU-14s have?

A: All three SU-5 modifications used unchanged T-26 suspensions. The SU-26 was an improvised vehicle, likely also using T-26 suspensions, as the blockaded factory didn’t exactly have the option to design new components. The two SU-14 vehicles used T-35 suspensions.

Q: What do you think of the ISU-130? Would it make a good premium TD? Are there any other candidates for a tier 8 premium TD?

A: Yes, I have previously explored the subject on the old FTR. As for other candidates, maybe an ISU-122BM, so that someone actually uses that BL-9S gun.

Q: The M-64 gun on the Object 268 has a lower velocity, but higher penetration than the BL-10. Is it historical?

A: I suspect that it is the BL-10 that has too much penetration. Documents show it having much less penetration than in game, 240-244 mm at 100 meters.

Q: Is there a way to get exact measurements of a tank’s exterior parts without measuring the tank in a museum?

A: You would have to find the blueprints in archives. Keep in mind that the measurements in real life tanks might vary by as much as a few centimeters. SerB once wrote about a T-28 where one side was 15 cm longer than the other, and it worked just fine.

That’s it for this round. Email more questions to tankarchives@gmail.com!

79 thoughts on “Ensign’s Q&A 18

      • And how the fuck is a 750 alpha gun reasonable at all on a heavy tank, when devs might nerf current 850 alpha guns to 750? We all know a 240 pen 750 alpha gun will be used with fucking gold just like the e100 and how fucking balanced is that?

        • If it’s HEAT and it’s balanced out by long reload and bad gun handling, it wouldn’t be /too/ bad. I’d say E 100 is well balanced, the gun wrecks but thanks to it being HEAT it doesn’t cope with angles or spaced armour/tracks well at all and its HEAT pen is little better than most tier 10 tanks’ AP. ~320-340 pen HEAT and a 750 alpha gun with 18-20s reload, .36-.38 accuracy, 2.7s aim, and bad bloom stats could work.

          Mind you, the IS-7 has some spectacularly trollish armour, which would probably need to be factored in.

    • Y’know, I love German tanks, and the only thing I find groan-worthy on this page is your use of the word “Wehraboo”. Wargaming gets details wrong, it happens. Hopefully they’ll just own up to it and give the BL-10 it’s historical pen.

      Thing’ll still be a serious menace with that anyway.

      • Of course it will be, when people are rocking gold ammo as fuck, only differeance is that people use less gold ammo on the isu at tier 8-10 because it has good standard ammo pen. On a sidenote, does that make people use less gold ammo in medium tenks, that in higher tiers are more than capable to pen heavys frontally with AP ammo? Dont think so, a nerfed Bl10 will be a way to sell more gold ammo, just like on all other low pen, high alpha tanks, and all tanks in general. Simply WOT is world of tank destrojers, not because of the actual amount of TDs, but the huge amount of heavy and medium tanks + autloaders putting out TD like damage and TD like penentration with gold ammo.

        • I’m sure when Wargaming releases the new implaced defence line you’ll be the first to grind it and complain endlessly on all the forums you can find, about all those mean mobile tanks flanking your fortification.

          You only play one line, nobody cares about your opinion on other tanks.

  1. BL-10 needed nerf long time ago.
    240pen would be enough.
    Then IS-7 with BL-10 might be turreted TD.

    • As if 240 pen would make any difference.
      Still pens everything from every angle except Lorraine and Waffenträger.

      • “Still pens everything from every angle except Lorraine and Waffenträger.”

        Que? Since when is the LORRAINE of all tanks known for bouncing anything? And anyone that bounces off a Waffentrager either had a really bad case of RNG or just can’t aim.

      • Yea, but it’ll start to bounce tier t10′s, some tier 9s and even some tier 8s(Like E-100′s turret, Maus’s turret, E-75′s Turret front plate, Tiger 2′s UFP for example), which it doesn’t atm(few exceptions on E-100 and Maus’s turrets if bad rng comes up)

        • Who cares the only thing that will change for me is that the number of apcr rounds increases from 2 to 8.

    • Are you fucking crazy? Talking about nerfing the Bl10 and then add the gun to the is7 and make it a TD? That would be the most OP TD ever because of turret, armor, mobilty and also probably retarded pen with gold ammo (since all high alpha, low pen guns use gold ammo anyways). Funny that you seem to think 240 pen on the bl10 would be enough just because of some hisotical facts, when no stats in game are in fact historical but there for balancing.

      Imo, make the armor less strong on heavy tanks so there would be no need for high pen guns…another way of looking at it.

  2. Isn’t the M-64 also seriously buffed because the Soviets have no tier 10 TD candidates other than the 268?

    • Soviets have a ton of postwar TD designs that would fit tier 10 after some nerf. Objects 108, 116, 120 for example. All of these had different guns so SerB could’ve just choose any of these instead of buffing M-64. So I doubt that M-64 needed a serious buff.

      • Buff the M-64, what a fucking joke, it alreaddy is one of the best guns in the game at tier 10, when speaking of good balance of alpha, penentration, aimtime and accuracy. How ever talking about historical accuracy at tier 10 is a joke anyways. How the fuck would the devs expect to buff the m-64 when they are talking about nerfing the gun making 850 damage at tier 10? I have hard time beliving you need more than 299 pen with AP in tier 10.

        Also, since when are gun stats historical in wot? If they were, the 8.8cm on the ferdie would have 230-240mm pen and would do far more than 240 damage looking at historical information and context. Also the 12.8cm would be far more deadly looking at historical information, if it would be implemented proper in the game, it would probably have more than 750 alpha to make it some how reflect its real life performance. Luckily wot isnt a simulator, and I hope thje idiot devs understand that when they are making historical clames on game changes.

      • SU-152P and SU-152G don’t fit the playstyle of the entire rest of the line however. Plus, I think WG has stated a refusal to implement them.

  3. “SerB once wrote about a T-28 where one side was 15 cm longer than the other, and it worked just fine.”

    By “worked just fine”, they mean “failed just as hard in the winter war”.

    • Mechanical functionality =/= combat value.
      Stupid.

      For a design whose production started in *1932* it actually did pretty well all things considered. It’s not the hardware’s fault if the army using them is a lobotomised zombie.

  4. I dont see why the bl10 should be nerfed regarding penentration, other than to make people use more gold ammo. 240mm pen is good, but really not great beeing a tier 8 TD, where the others have more.

    • 240mm penetration and 750 damage is fine in tier 8. Do others have more than 240 penetration and 750 damage? They might have more penetration but surely they dont have more damage at the same time.

      • At tier 8 it is fine, but at tier 9 its a bit lacking, keep in mind obj 704 uses that gun aswell.

    • RHM borsig has only 215 pen which is somewhat compensated by having a rotatable turret…but still everyone prefers 128mm gun cause of better penetration….so yes bl10 could get nerfed a bit

      • Everyone prefers the 128 not only cause of the pen, but the aim time, accuracy, more RoF, all thoose stuff.

        For a TD its more important to get reliable hits when it counts instead of derping around with a huge gun, thats an arty”s job.

        • I agree, penentration and damage alone is not what makes a good TD (teede) gun, its the combination of damage, penentration, aim time and reload, and heres why the 128mm on the RHM is really good, as well as the gun on the ferdie, t28, amx 48, etc. They have a good balance of damage, penentration, aimtime and reload time, that works in most cases. Now the 150mm on the RHM is really a joke because it has bad penentration. Reload and aimtime, not so much because thats what you would expect from a 150mm gun.

          The 150mm gun with AP ammo will force you to pen tanks from the side or it weakspots from the front, or even bounce on some heavys from the front. Where the other guns with 240+ pen will pen fronts more consistent.

          Now the BL10 has both good alpha and penentration, but aimtime and reload isnt great, but still quite balanced overall on the ISU-152. Sure the pen could be nerfed, but question is how much? And why should it be nerfed anyways when one can use gold ammo to compensate?

          If the pen should get nerfed on the BL10 to be on pair with the other tier 8 TDs (~240-250mm), I would expect a buff of the other parameters of the gun, like lower aimtime or reload. But once again, having around 3+ rof with 750 damage is really too much at tier 8 anyways. What could be done is to redesign the Bl10 compleately, to give it lower pen like 245-255mm, lower damage like 550-600 and increase the rof and lower the aimtime. Now that gun would still be pretty deadly, but the 1 shot punishment would be lower which I think is the biggest problem with all whiners. In return the ISU-152 could get a few more HP so it can afford beeing exposed and take some hits, beeing able to use its more “fast” firing lower alpha gun. This would make the isu 152 similar in playstyle to the jpII and ferdie, where you have to expose yourself more to make damage with the relatively fast firing “lower” alpha gun.

          Simply, high alpha low penentration guns is kinda derpy and trollish and also a way to sell more gold ammo. With AP kinda retarded, but with gold ammo kinda OP in terms of penentration (like all gold ammoed guns). Lower pen on the isu-152 would most probably increase the gold ammo usage and I would expect that the gold ammo on the bl10 would be over 300mm anyways. What is really important is to add other balanced guns to the game that would not force the user to have gold ammo to be competitive and on pair with other TDs. IMO a Bl10 with 240mm pen today is retarded.

          • agreed. but as there were 2 guns tested on the isu 152 ( BL10 and BL8) WG could simply add the BL8 as the topgun for the isu with “only” ~265 penetration and better softstats than current bl10

            • BL8 with lower alpha, but better aim time, accuracy and reload would be intresting. How ever why even make a change at all when there are no indications the isu-152 is OP? I dont agree to a change because some people feel the gun is too powerfull, mainly because they only focus on alpha and penentration. The tank itself is kinda easy to kill in close quarter battles, and even on long range if its spotted.

              If the gun should be changed other stats of tanks should alsp be changed to reflect the new gun, like I mentioned before. I dont get why people think you can balance a tank by just hardnerfing one aspect of it. Yet dont touch other tanks in the game. For example, is 400 alpha and 248mm pen on the t34 tier 8 premium tenk reasonable? Thats more penentration than some tier 8 TDs and most pen at any heavy tenk in tier 8. But this is balanced by “bad” accuracy, aim time, and reload. But still, if we should focus on penentration values alot of tanks should get buffed and nerfed to be “fair”.

            • Oh lets talk about then Panzer 4 it lost its turret and 75L70 gun did they buffed anything after that? No they didnt so I fail to see any reason why ISU should get some buff after BL-10 nerf if it should happen. And if you try to tell me it got better mobility then thats just a joke. Better mobility came from lost of weight not somekind of buff.

    • 240mm pen is fine for tier 8, but tier 9 Object 704 uses the same gun. And it really needs least 260-270 pen to be any good.

      • You dont get it, 240+ mm is okay, but not on the BL10 in its current form at tier 8. As I mentioned above, damage and penentration alone isnt what makes a good gun, and by nerfing the pen you put even more emphasis on the alpha solely.

        As it is now the TD guns are balanced around alpha, pen, aimtime and rof. Nerfing the pen on the bl10 alone not touching any other single thing is not the way to go, unless WG decide that the ISU-152 has too good global WR and therfore needs a nerf. By using this logic, stats can be changed on all tanks just because “it feels OP or UP”. And idiots will come up with “lets put the bl10 on the is7, lets put the 128mm on medium tanks, lets nerf autloaders, and this and that”. Just because they feel its the way to go because they dont understand the balancing factors around the gun parameters.

        And even if the isu-152 and object 704 would be too OP globaly, the nerf imo should consist of other parameters than the gun penentration itself.

        The reason the RHM gets 215mm alpha is many, one is to sell more gold ammo and one could be that the tank would simply be too OP to have pen values on that gun even similar to the BL10, because it has other superior features, like camo, turret and mobilty. I leave the historical pen value of the 150mm gun out of this because its all about balance.

        • Also, If im not wrong devs mentioned earler that some tier 10 TD guns making 850 alpha may get alpha reduced to 750 but with better rof (making the same dmp). This is reasonable since the 1 shot punishment will be lower, as well as they dont have to wait so long to get the next shot off. The tradeoff would probably be they have to expose themselves more often to make those shots, but that isnt really a issue since many tier 10 TDs have good armor and good HP. By only lowering the pen, devs could might as well say “270″ pen is enough at tier 10, lets keep the alpha the same. But that would be a retarded choice, since people would most likely use gold ammo anyways and get that 350-400 pen anyways, and with the same 1 shot alpha.

          This is specially the problem I have with the tier 8 and 9 2nd german TDs. Not so good with the low pen 150mm gun, but beasts with gold ammo, and I think people will use those with gold ammo, just like people in e100 use gold ammo, t69, t57, fv2 183, etc. One option would be to give those guns with too low AP values, standard ammo, which would be gold ammo, but nerfed and with lower price. Now those guns wouldnt have retardedly OP and expensive ammo, but a standard choice of ammo cost less and have a more reasonable penentration.

          In other words, even if the BL10 would have 240-244mm pen on AP, just give it standard gold ammo with 286mm pen and now you have solved the “historical issue”. Unless, as mentioned before WG making a nerf just because they know people will use gold ammo and want to milk customers, which could might as well happen since a 40mm pen nerf on the Bl10 is really something to think about. On the sidenote some guns still have lower pen on AP than in real life i suspect, and that is also “funny”.

          • There is still a lot of ppl using normal ammo on tanks like t69. Those tanks arent too weak, they are perfectly balanced. Only reason of gold ammo abusal is the fact that it makes those tanks so overpowered. Making normal ammo better would just unbalance those tanks even further. FV doesn’t have any real gold ammo and it still rocks so I think the only way of solving this is removing gold ammo for those tanks. Nerfing or limiting just isn’t going to stop ppl from “buying some skill”. And if they can’t play t69 without gold they should never get T57. Ever.

    • it would be easy to be done if it was an only gun of the isu
      it is only obj 704′s gun which need that pen to be a good td without the need to spam gold ammo
      we have enough of gold ammo spamming tanks
      a good idea would be to let’s say we have the bl 10 at isu lowered at pen
      then in obj 704 will be the bl 10S which would have more pen

      • i think that the bl10 could do wit about 15~25 pen less ( and keep it on both isu and obj) and indeed maybe lower the alpha a bit, but then it would need a buff somewhere else… if not in reload then aim time, i think that would be a pretty balanced tier X gun ( you need to keep that in mind)…

        if you have played the second russian TD line (towards obj 263) you wish you 240 pen, at tier 8… the gun you get is doable suits the playstyle of tank ( more mediumish then TDish) flanking other TD and so one. but having played the tier 8 TDs with both the lowest and the highest pen on its tier, i would say 286 pen might be a bit overkill, 250~260 should be good enough with an aimtime and maybe a slight accuracy buff..

        • Really is the AP pen on the Bl10 really the issue, because these is gold ammo for money? Wouldnt it be kinda silly to ner penentration and still have gold ammo avalable? People with high alpha, low pen guns do sure damn use gold to compensate. I dont see why people wouldnt use gold ammo if the bl10 pen got nerfed, because they are all used to that high alpha.

        • yeah i am grinding the 263 line now the thing is that
          the line of the 263 is complete diffrent in every aspect
          the 268 line has the Alpha dmg and the while the 263 line have fast moving td’s with pretty accurate gun in comperison to those in 268 line and need to be played as medium to long ranges also they have better dpm then the most td’s on 268 line
          it is like the new german td’s which are completly glass long range cannons and yeah the
          263 line suffers from a good pen at least on tier 8 and tier 7 tanks

          • Glass cannon is kinda useless term because the new 2nd germans have as much HP as the older ones, and the older ones rarely bounce shots anyways. I would say since some of them have turret and decent mobility and camo and usually faster firing more alpha and pen guns, they can be more effective in close quarters. I have met a couple of RHM TDs in my ferdinand, and they usually get me in close quarter battle due to them having a 128mm firing at 5.5 compared to my gun thas has 5 rof, as well as turret, making them be more flexible in brawling where there is partly cover. So I pen them? yes I do, dut so do they since they have 246mm pen.

      • And if that would be the case, then the Bl10 on the isu-152 would need to get other good treats like better aimtime and rof unless nerfing the isu-152 specially, which would be pretty funny since that could be said with any specific tank and as far as I know WG hasnt mentioned anything about the isu-152 beeing OP.

  5. A: Yes, I have previously explored the subject on the old FTR. As for other candidates, maybe an ISU-122BM, so that someone actually uses that BL-9S gun.
    ____________
    Imo they should give bl9s to the other soviet t8 TD, SU101. That way bl9s would finally be useful on some tank and it would increase the performance of the SU101 which is quite poor nowadays.

    • That’s why I have researched BL-9S on ISU, even if I never have used it. I knew they are going to invent some use for all those modules in game. Same goes for seemingly useless engines and radios.

    • That gun, yeah, it’s kinda redundant in ISU. Why u use it, when there’s BL-10 u can use. Just like there’s D-25T on IS-4, but what kind of idiot would use it at tier X battle?

      • have seen it so yeah idiots are in large numbers
        remember WoT logic is not the real logic :P
        but yeah that gun on isu is just there for nothing actually

      • Just to make players grind and spen money on free XP. Despite from that I see awfully alot of TDs with stock guns, or not the top gun. Some times I ask the players and they say they play lower guns because ammo is cheaper. And yes its true. Alot of high tier players are running around with no premium account and therfore play with the cheaper gun and no consumables, etc.

  6. “I suspect that it is the BL-10 that has too much penetration. Documents show it having much less penetration than in game, 240-244 mm at 100 meters.”

    Pretty much ALL >100 mm guns have inflated penetration values, but this is a conscious balancing choice.

    • Not really ..the idiot gun has lower pen than is historical 190 pen vs the 175 in game . and this is from 500 meters away as opposed to the 100 meter range all other guns use.

        • Well anyways, the devs could give the gun 190 pen and add APBC as standard ammo with standard cost, as I mentioned before. There is no issue, other than making up stats to balance it. Imo think if a kv1s would have 390 alpha and 190 pen with standard ammo (AP or APBC), wouldnt that be kinda OP?

          What I think is funny is that the game can still have the same guns, but only make some ammo avalable to some tanks and hence get more pen and even damage. For example same gun on heavy tank and TD but different ammo on them as standard = different damage and penentration. This would be better instead of having the same gun, with some times the same crappy (or OP) damage and pen on both medium, heavy and TDs with the only differance of aim time, rof, and accuracy. These parameters are important yes, but even damage and penentration to some degree. This would kinda solve the issue with historical/game balance gun values.

          For example:
          Heavy tenk, damage 350/350/400, penentration 220/300/60. Ammo AP/APBC/HE
          Medium tenk, damage 250/250/300, penentration 200/250/50. Ammo AP(lower grade or different type)/APBC/HE
          TD, damage 400/400/600, penentration 245/320/70. Ammo APBC/APBC(higher grade or different type)/HE.

          Now you see in this example, all tanks have the same gun, but different ammo as standard ammo and hence different damage and penentration values.

        • We use the apbc values for the mid tier German guns . No that is the ap round stat . apbc gave about 20 more pen but better performance against slope .

          • Pretty sure that would be APCBC, as the thin “windscreen” ballistic caps didn’t mean shit penetration-wise. And just about all the guns oughta be shooting that shit (usually APCBC-HE-T actually) by default already, as AFAIK that was the “industry standard” of the time.

      • I meant all guns of caliber GREATER THAN 100 mm. US 155 mm guns are highly inflated, but not as much as high-caliber arty AP shells, sometimes getting in the order of 100 mm pen boost. This applies to all nations.

        100 mm IDIOT and its relatives are reasonably good, but even their pen values are quite wild. The gun had three different ammo types, in WoT spread over different guns for sake of balance (D-54 and D-10T2C). Historical (adjusted to WoT standard) pen goes:
        BR-412 – BR-412B – BR-412D ammo
        171 – 176 – 220
        In WoT it is
        175 – 216 – 201

  7. “SerB once wrote about a T-28 where one side was 15 cm longer than the other, and it worked just fine.”

    Natural head on sloping of the frontal armor.

  8. “..240-244 mm at 100 meters.”

    Maybe nerf that fucking OP cannon. It just ruins the game and value of armor, especially in lower tiers. Having these values probably would be somewhat balanced…

    • Why not consider how bad the vehicle turns and how weak the armour is other than the gun mantlet and how long to get that aim circle to maximum accuracy and how low hp that tank is compared to other tier 8 tanks other than arty and some light tanks.

    • Eh…since when is the isu-152 OP? Just because a tank has a high pen and damage gun doesnt mean its op. If that was the case the tier 10 TD jagdpz e100 would be on top of the global WR, which in fact has the lowest gloal WR of all tier 10 TDs, despite 299mm pen gun and 1050 damage.

      The object 704 use the same gun, but with a buffed reload and accuracy, and still has better global WR than the isu-152 depite the same penentration and damage at tier 9.

      So no, while 286mm pen and 750 damage might seem dangerous, and it should be dangerous beeing shooted by such a gun, the whole tank is okay balanced. Thing with isu-152 is that due to the weak armor and bad mobilty and bad gun movements and slow aim time, exposing yourself making a shot is risky, because you will most likely get shot back and lose more then 2/3 of your healt to a heavy. Unless people scout for you which rarely happen nowdays. Also in closer quarter situations isu-152 is weak due to the long reload. Wheres the other TDs which are similar (ferdie, amx 48, jpII, t28, at15) they can afford to expose themselves because they have a little bit better armor as well as faster reload making them return fire faster to enemies closer to them.

      Giving the isu-152 more HP and add a lower pen, lower damage, fast firing gun with better accuracy and aimtime would in the end not make it less deadly, it would just force people to play different. its not only about the 1 shot capability and penentration, alot of other factors determines how strong the tank is.

      I play alot of ferdinend teede, and really im more affraid facing another tier 8 tds than the isu-152 due to them shooting faster and have a little bit better armor. I also know they will try to charge me while im reloading, wheres the isu-152 only stays in one place = I can back off and flank or call for help.

      Also, as mentioned before, having gold ammo in game, dont you think people will use it to get 300+mm pen on the BL10 since they lost 40mm pen on AP shells? Once again, since when did people NOT use gold ammo on derpish high alpha guns?

      People focus too much on “750/286mm”, when in reality they should be worried by this “180/250/60″, where a gun with 180mm AP pen does 250mm pen with gold ammo.