Controlled Impact, the SU-85i, and the Schmutzmobile

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RAMMING SPEED!

On Jerm's stream last night there was a discussion of the Controlled Impact crew skill.

For those of you who aren't familiar, this is a skill for your driver that increases the damage you do when you ram somebody, and reduces the damage they do to you.

 There is something important you need to know about Controlled Impact, however: It only works if you're moving. So if you're going to put it on your arty thinking you'll foil people who try to ram kill you at the end of the game, you're going to need to move your tank before impact or else Controlled Impact won't help you. You don't have to be moving much; just press W and head towards them in the last second or two.

 There is a bit of a controversy about whether Controlled Impact works when BOTH tanks are moving. Apparently at one time it only worked when the target tank was stopped. In 2015 4TankersAndDog tested this, as you can see in this short YouTube video. Their conclusion was that it DOES work when both tanks are moving.

 The discussion on Jerm's stream was around whether or not that had changed since 2015. So my clanmate OurBoyRoy and I jumped into a training room and we replicated 4Tankers test, in every regard. Same map, same tanks, same conditions, same actions. I drove the LTTB and Roy had the 13 57.

 The first run, with no Controlled Impact, I did 349 damage to him and took 147 damage myself. The second run, I had added Controlled Impact to my driver. This time I did 434 damage to him and took only 112. We did a third run (exactly the same as the second run) and on that run I did 417 damage to him and took only 70 myself.

 Is it possible that we're just seeing an extreme RNG effect? Sure. But more the more likely conclusion is that Controlled Impact does have an effect when both tanks are moving.

 How important is this skill? On most tanks I'd get it after camo, BIA, Smooth Ride and Off-Road Driving - except on arties where I'd probably get it before Smooth Ride.

 At some point I may do another test to see if simply traversing your tank is sufficient - for example an arty, who has Controlled Impact, about to get rammed just holds down A or D.

 <O to OurBoyRoy for volunteering to get crashed into in the name of science. :) 

The SU-85i and the Schmalturm

There's a TD for sale (at least in NA) in the Premium shop right now. It's the tier 5, USSR casement TD called the SU-85i. High DPM, but in every other respect it's kinda meh. It is pretty cheap though, especially if you just buy the basic tank for less than $15.

Here's a comparison to some of the other casement TDs in its class: https://tanks.gg/compare/su-85i?t=stug-iii-g%7Eikv-103%7E60g-ft.

After seeing that comparison I decided not to bother. I already have Soviet TD crew trainers though. If you don't, then maybe it's for you. Maybe.
Also in the Premium shop on NA is the PZ IV Schmalturm. Funny name for a tier 6 German medium (it means "Narrow turret"). It's almost exactly like a VK 30.02 M, but a lot less mobile thanks to a badly underpowered engine. I didn't play many battles in it, but I wasn't super impressed. But hey, for $20 if you want a tier 6 German Premium medium for crew training or something...

TankRewards Today

Last night I made an Excel spreadsheet to track my TankRewards progress and discovered that tier IV of TankRewards is still possible. This morning I knocked out the tier 4-6 and tier 7-8 missions quickly, so I decided to take a couple of my tier 9 tanks out and see if I could get the full 70 TankRewards points today. Second battle out, in my BC25tAP I got it. Nice!


GLHF

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