The TCS - Tank Classification System

Late last night I had a bit of a Jerry Maguire moment. I was pondering different tanks and which should be played how...and which were actually good tanks. And I came up with what I'm going to call the TCS - or Tank Classification System.

The purpose of the TCS is to help the player think about how a particular tank should be played. Let me state from the beginning that it's not intended to be scientific. You're not going to get a score to 3 decimal places that tells you definitively how to play a particular tank or if one tank is .03 better than another. It's subjective and, honestly, might be bullshit. But I figured I'd share it and we could talk about it.

Also I think this is something that experienced players just kinda know. This concept will probably be more useful to newer players. It's not anything revolutionary, just more like a way to think more structurally about something we all already think about anyhow.

So let's dig in.

The Four Categories

The TCS starts with four categories: Mobility, Survivability, Firepower & Vision. For each category you only need to decide if a particular tank is good for its tier. It's a yes or no. Don't worry about trying to grade it 1-10.

• Mobility - How comfortably can you move it around the battlefield. This includes speed, acceleration & traverse.
• Survivability - How tough is this tank? Mostly this is armor, hit points and how comfortable you are angling the armor of this tank to get bounces.
• Firepower - How's the gun? Does it reliably pen? Is it fairly accurate? Decent rate of fire? Good alpha? Do you feel like you can deal good damage in this tank?
• Vision - This is a combination of camo and view range. Do you feel like you've got good view range and can spot folks? Do you feel like you have good camo and can spend large amounts of time unspotted?

Remember: you're going to grade these things FOR THEIR TIER. It doesn't matter that a Tier IV Hetzer would struggle to pen Tier VIII tanks. Only consider how you feel it does against tanks it will actually see in the game.

Also it's fine to consider the crew and equipment you have in the tank. You're trying to come up with a guideline to help you decide how to play a particular tank.

Finally, these are subjective. You and your friend can argue about whether a tank has good firepower or not, but really it only matters how you feel about the gun.

What do you do with that info?

If a tank has good firepower and survivability, but lousy mobility and vision, then it's more of a brawler. You want to get up close and trade. Playing out in open field maps is probably not your best strat. 

Maybe you have good vision, mobility AND firepower, but not good survivability. First of all, that's a pretty good tank. Secondly, you're probably going to be a sniper. (Thirdly, you might be an UDES). You're going to use your vision and mobility to keep your distance while you dish out damage.

It's important to note that these are just guidelines. Battle circumstances and team composition may have you make a different decision in the moment.

Examples

Let's take a look at a couple...

T92 - Tier VIII American Premium LT

• Mobility: Good
• Survivability: Poor
• Firepower: Poor
• Vision: Good

The T92 is very quick and agile (even if not exceptionally fast), and has excellent camo and view range. It's got 1,000 hit points, but essentially no armor (especially considering the tanks it can see) and it tends to take a lot of module damage, especially the engine. The gun is accurate and the pen isn't terrible, but the alpha is worse than many Tier VIIs which means you won't often get a High Caliber in this tank.

So if I have a tank with good M & V, but poor S & F that means I'm usually going to play it as a scout. Scamper around, light enemies, work with the team to let them deal damage. Ideally you have several teammates who have excellent F that will sit back and deal damage. If I'm in my T92 I love having a couple of top TDs and SPGs on my team who will deal big damage to the enemies I spot.

M4A3E8 "Easy 8" - Tier VI American MT

• Mobility: Good
• Survivability: Poor
• Firepower: Good
• Vision: Good*

The Easy 8 is fairly mobile with a top speed of 48 and decent traverse. It's a MT not an LT, but it can get around the yard. It's not going to trade very well with mediocre armor and only 750 HP so you probably want to avoid brawling if you can help it; even a Chaffee can pen it frontally if you're not well-angled. The gun is pretty good, with a fast rate of fire and decent pen for its tier. Not great alpha but the rate of fire makes up for it to give you a decent DPM in the right situations. 

I rated the vision as good with an asterisk because with my crew and equipment I have 447m view range, but only 20% concealment. So it can spot pretty well for its tier, but isn't really going to be a scout.

With a tank that has M & F, some V, but not S, you probably want to play as a flanker. Because of camo you're might not win the vision game too often (you'll get outspotted by a lot of LTs and TDs) and you probably don't want to trade frontally, especially not with HTs, but you can be very effective using your mobility and working with teammates to get to the sides of enemies and dealing key damage to their weakpoints. You will occasionally spot enemies on the flanks, but they'll probably spot you too.

In a city map I'll often go with our best HTs and look for opportunities to "go around the block" and see if I can get side or rear shots on enemies. On a more open map I'll see if I can scoot to a different angle making the enemy have to decide if he's going to shoot at me, and give my HTs side turret shots, or continue to focus on my HTs allowing me to chew him up from the side or rear.

T29 - Tier VII American HT

• Mobility: Poor
• Survivability: Good
• Firepower: Good
• Vision: Poor

The T29 is somewhat slow. Not TOG slow, but it's a HT and it drives like a heavy tank. Survivability is excellent, especially if you can get hull down and force people to take shots at the 280mm of armor on the front of your turret. Firepower is pretty good for Tier VII, though you may struggle a bit with Tier IX HTs and rate of fire may be an issue if you don't have a rammer and good crew. Vision is pretty typical of a HT - 350m view range and camo is essentially non-existent. 

A tank with good S & F, but no M or V is a close-up brawler. You want to get in the phone booth with your enemy and slug it out. In the case of the T29, as noted above, you'd like to get hull down to slug it out and try to draw shots into your massive frontal turret armor. The T29 has really good gun depression at 10 degrees so makes a good ridgeline warrior, but isn't a great sniper generally.

O.K., now what?

I'm envisioning a bit of a grid that might help codify the decisions a little bit though it'll take some thought and I'm already seeing a few issues. Random thoughts:

• If you have a tank that is only good at 1 (or none) of these things, you might want to rethink if it's a tank you even want to play. That's a struggle I'm having these days with the KV-2, which I consider to be terrible at mobility, survivability and vision and even the firepower is a little shaky because while the meme version of the tank has a boomstick, the accuracy and reload on that gun is awful; which makes it difficult to reliably deal damage. Ideally you need to get up close to slam people, but even some Tier IVs can pen it frontally and it's fairly slow so getting up close without losing most of your hit points is tricky.
  
  A tank that's not really good in any (or more than 1) of these categories is probably not going to be much fun to play. So why are we playing it?
  
• If you have a tank that is good at 3 (or all) of these categories then it might not matter much how you play it. That's the kind of tank that should be extremely strong on the battlefield in almost any situation and you can probably just cut loose and dominate. Those kinds of tanks are where the term "OP" starts getting tossed around.

Any thoughts or constructive feedback? :)