Grosstraktor – Short Review

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Hello everyone,

around Christmas this year (and a bit later on), I made a series of posts on not-so-public tanks, such as the MTLS-1G14, Panzer IV Hydro, T-44-85 and A-32.

Because I got my hands on a press account once again (thanks to the same person for high quality screenshots), allow me to continue this series with one more piece – the Grosstraktor.

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First and foremost, you can’t get this tank in the game – yet. It is one of those tanks, that were introduced some time ago (the model is not yet made in HD quality) and it is just not sure yet, when and how will the players be able to get them. It was speculated that given the recent Wargaming policy changes about the premium tanks (basically, lowtier tanks are awarded, not sold – either for clanwars, or during events), it’s going to be some sort of anniversary gift or something, but who knows? I don’t. The last piece of info was from like two months ago and said the tank would come, but nothing more than that.

However, the real question is… should we really wait for it? Here are its basic modules:

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As you can probably see at first glance, this tank is not the best thing to hit the battlefields with. It’s terrible. Basically, it has three major problems:

- the 75mm L/24 gun, which is very inaccurate, doesn’t fire too fast and, while adequate for its tier, is not enough to “carry” the tank
- the armor, which is practically nonexistent
- mediocre mobility combined with HUGE size of the vehicle

After playing a few battles in it, I instantly grew to dislike this tank. As I mentioned, the mobility is mediocre – for its 16,15 tons, the engine output of 250 horsepower is sufficient (the power-to-weight ratio of 15,47 hp/t is good) and the vehicle accelerates well at first, but it is not very fast (the “paper” speed of 44 km/h is not reached easily). It turns okay, faster than what you would expect from such a vehicle, but you won’t be chasing down anyone or circling around anyone because of the speed.

The armor is poor. On the paper, it looks okay – frontal upper part is heavily sloped, the side armor has a layer of spaced armor over it (8mm side armor, 6mm spaced plate) and the 15mm tracks cover the edges of the plate – they however do NOT combine with the side armor and the spaced plate – basically, the track area is 15+8mm. The frontal armor is 14mm thick – the problem is, that’s also the thickness of the lower frontal plate and the frontal unsloped part, where everyone is shooting, so everything goes through. The turret has very thin armor as well.

gross

In battle, it just doesn’t work – your only chance is to stand sideways and wait for the enemy to be stupid enough to shoot that spaced side plate, which they almost never do. The side armor seems even more durable than the frontal armor, but generally, everything that hits you goes through. Strangely enough, I didn’t have much module damage or crew dead with this tank.

And then there’s the gun – as mentioned, the 75mm L/24 – its shells are really slow and it is inaccurate, which means you either have to close up, or you have to stand on a spot to aim properly and fire, otherwise the shells will go all over the place. That’s a massive problem, because when you stand on the spot, you make a really, really big fat target. The size issue is actually possibly the worst issue this tank has – I am sure TOG drivers will be able to relate – you are simply too big and won’t hide in the “usual” places – for example at one point, I made a mistake of trying to hide behind one rock on the Malinovka map – and I didn’t notice my rear end is sticking out. Didn’t end well.

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The gun however has good depression (-12), so you can manage a hulldown position successfully (tried that on Komarin map). As customary with this gun, the AP shells don’t work too well – against very thin-skinned lowtier tanks, HE shells seemed more effective (the fact the 75mm L/24 can be a successful gun is undisputable – just try the Tobruk historical battle, where you get it on Panzer IV and StuG – HE rules with it).

Conclusion

I am really not sure how to play this tank actually. Passive hulldown? It’s definitely one of the worse lowtier tanks, even amongst premium tanks. Not the totally worst, but also not worth buying. I am not sure what Wargaming will do with it – if they give it out for free as some event reward, it might work. On the other hand, that would mean there would be tons of them around, which in turns means the Micromaus will have a field day again.

35 thoughts on “Grosstraktor – Short Review”

  2. I would disagree.
    First and foremost, it is the first DERP gun possesing premium tank we get!
    Secondly, the gun is not adequate, it is god like on this tier. Only few vehicles carry something comparable – PZ 4A, M 2 Medium, T-46, T18, AT-1 and stock T82. Out of these, only 3 have a turret, and only one has more gun depression.
    To sum up: you get an awesome gun with a turret on a shitty platform. If you manage to keep this thing in 2nd line, if can murder tier 2s an 3s. Also, as far as I had heard it has limited MM(not sure about it though), so worst thing you can meet would be an amx 40. And you can hit it for 20 dmg in the front, which is more than most tier 4s can…

    • I am actually not quite sure it has limited MM, would have to look. The problem is, this vehicle is a medium and it really stands out on the battlefield (although I attribute a lot of it to “oh look Grosstraktor” effect of unreleased vehicles), it can’t take much punishment (or rather, any punishment) and if someone catches you while moving, you’ll be at a bad disadvantage. On the paper it looks good, but in praxis… nah, won’t work for most people I think.

    • It is not a real derp, trust me. HE on this tank do not work (because of lack of peterate ability) and because of that you are not able to oneshot a single one enemy.

      Do you like 105mm on Hetzer? Okey, 75mm on GT is really something different.

      • Right? Tried it on the new PzIVs excepting some derping, but nah. Might as well shoot AP.

        As for MM I saw a video somewhere on YT where the guy took down T-34 with GrossT., so it seems to be regular… which kinda sucks. Maybe they’ll fix that to 3-4 on official relase?

        In that video the guy also suggested sidescraping. If the side armor is really the best, it might actually “work”, despite the frontal turret. Would like to hear/see more opinions on that.

        • T-34 killed by GT? Well, it has to be really retarded T-34 player. Even I am really able to win T5 battle for my team with Pz38(t), every single T5 battle with GT was really a hell…

          And sidescrap? How often you will be able to use it in the fast and dynamic lowtier battles? One PzIC and your sidescrap will gone…

          For me – terrible tank. Try it, you will agree.

          • Well yea he only really finished it with a HEAT shot in its ass :D

            Well, they are not *that* fast and dynamic. PzIC will fuck you up either way.

            Try it? Um… I’d love to :D

        • Stick the back of the tank against a wall and pretend you have a rear turret? That way you have the best angle on your side armor.

    • And what about the FCM 36 PaK 40? This thing’s gun is true hellstorm cannon on tier 3:
      -110 dmg for standard AP and 175 for HE(HE shells have 38mm pen and can oneshot most tier 3 tanks)
      -98mm pen for the AP
      -16 rounds per minute
      -1.5 aim time and 0.37 accuracy.
      -400m view range
      -good front armor(will hold some shots in tier 3 battle)
      -Good gun depression.
      The only flaw of FCM 36 is it’s speed THE THING IS SLOW AS S*IT!
      This little french beast currently holds my kills record of 11 kills so it outclasses the Grosstraktor.

  3. “- in summer, there will be a new “mission” with the possibility to get a premium tank, the tank will be low tier”

    I hope that tank will be NOT the Grosstractor.

  4. I’ve heard from a few people on Youtube that it’s decent if you know what you’re doing, so I’ll hold judgement. Maybe you just haven’t found its play style yet. It might be good side scraping.

    • IIRC HP pool is massive for the tier. Unfortunately that still doesn’t matter much when a 105mm (or even other 75mm) derp will go right through the front and smack away all your HP. The best comparison really is the TOG – good gun on a massive, thinly armored, slow-for-the-tier chassis.

      • Except that the gun isn’t really THAT good. It’s fine for a tier 3 tank, but it’s pretty derpy. While the TOG can engage targets reliably at range with the 17 lber, the 75 mm howitzer on this thing requires you to get close to hit anything consistently. Furthermore, the TOG doesn’t need premium ammo to do pretty well (I can probably count the number of premium shells I’ve actually fired from that gun on one hand), but this thing…well…you CAN just spam HE all day, but the AP shells are pretty much useless, and you might want to bring some HEAT for tier 5 games (since this thing doesn’t seem to get preferential matchmaking, even though frankly, it SHOULD get it)

  7. This gun with HE in tier 3 is quite effective. I would say this tank just begs for sidescraping in city maps.

  9. so its huge tank with no armor, that can easily penetrate howitzer HE shell, that use sealpadders, i just wonder how much people will actually pay for this thing…

  10. but one thing that i see as a big plus is the fact that its a medium xD
    i mean, its still able to train your crew with it
    so you got this one, the other tier 3, the t-25, the pz4st, the panther/m10 and the upcoming tier 8 thing
    if you ignore the hydro (and the mediocrity of some of the tanks), you get ~6 german premium mediums to train your crews with – so in my opinion thats rather nice

    • Indeed. The German mediums currently have the most premiums of any type of tank in the game. If you have this, the Panzer S35, the T-25, Panzer IVS, Panther/M10, Panzer IV Hydro and Panzer V/IV (good luck getting one of these outside the RU server), along with the upcoming tier 8…that’s 8 premiums (and of these, I already have three – I would get the other five if given the opportunity though, since I’ve enjoyed driving German mediums quite a lot)

  11. Actually it doesn’t look to be that bad – as long as it doesn’t end up in tier 5 games, a competent player can make it work. Just limit the maximum tier it can see to 4 and it’ll be fine.

  12. What is the crew layout? If nothing else it could be an ok crew trainer if it doesn’t have an odd layout. :)

  13. 3个月前，中国服务器送了大概100000辆这辆坦克给玩家作为礼物

    • Let me translate this (which is what I’m going to post anyway):
      With patch 9.0 (months ago), about 100k GT’s were gifted to players on CN server (it is now sold for RMB28 =1120 gold).
      The requirement to get the tank “for free” at that time was to achieve like a total of 20 wins between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. in the designated two days OR buy 800 gold (its not the price, you can use the gold later).

      In a word, NO vehicle is rare on CN server. Whatever is already in game (can get into battles, even if it’s press account exclusive on other servers) is purchasable for RMB in China.