AutoLoader: Credit grinding, the FV201, and being lineup aware...

I've already unlocked the two On Track tanks I don't already have (The T110E3 and the Progetto 65) now it's just a matter of grinding enough credits to buy them. 

Secondary goal - I'd like to buy back the IS-2 and 110 from the Chinese line just to complete the collection. That'll take another 3.5M credits though so we'll see.

As of this morning I'm back up to just over 3M credits (having been down to about 300K a couple of days ago) and I'm pretty much just playing Tier 7/8 premium tanks with 50% credit boosters running. With the pace I'm going at, though, I'm feeling more comfortable that I'll get enough credits to buy both 10s by the 22nd or 23rd of this month - assuming I don't have any big interruptions in paying time.

Took the FV201 (A45) out for a battle

It's been in my garage for a while, I don't even remember when I got it - probably from a mission or something - and I'd never played a battle in it. So I decided to take it out for a spin this morning. First problem - it's got a radio operator, and none of the Brit tech tree heavies after the Black Prince do.

At some point I apparently repurposed my Black Prince radio operator (I don't have the BP or previous tanks anymore) so I had to grab one out of the rental TOG in my garage to use this AM.

I only did about 900 damage in my battle, but in the FV201 (A45) that's like 20 shots of damage. No, not really, but it does run the same 17pdr gun that the Black Prince does, which means it's fast firing, but only 150 alpha. Which makes it hard to trade with people, especially higher tiers; and no, it can't reliably side scrape with only 51mm of side hull armor.

Anyhow, I did fine, and we won (the other team was pretty bad) so happy with that. Not especially anxious to take the FV201 out again.

Know the lineup and the map

Had a tier 9 game on the West spawn of Malinovka this morning in my SkorpG. Generally as a TD (especially a sniping TD) you're pretty happy to see that map. Each team had one light tank - ours was a T92 and theirs was an LT-432. 

Right from the countdown our T92 drive straight to the top of the hill and parked in the A0 corner bush. Leaving aside the fact that the T92 is pretty short so spotting down that hill is sometimes problematic there was a much bigger problem...

...there were no arty in this game. Which means even what he did spot, nobody had any shots on. By the time he lit them they were already north of C0 so our TDs at C5 (if we had any, more on that in a sec) had no shots. Our heavies and armored MTs were going up the hill, but that fight happens at 50-150m generally, and they can all spot for themselves. So congrats T92, you lit 2 enemy tanks which nobody had any shots on. And the people who DID get shots spotted for themselves - so our T92 got exactly 0 in assisting damage.

Once the enemy reached the windmill the T92 was spotted, and he had no exit at that point so he was stuck brawling T-10s and Emil IIs...in a T92. He hit 3 shots, naturally didn't pen any, and was quickly dead having accomplished...nada. No direct damage and no assisting damage.

Of course the other issue here is that because he raced to A0 at the outset it meant we had no real spotting on the rest of the map, and the enemy B-C 25 tAP was able to slide, unspotted, to the D6 ramp pretty much right from the start. Their LT-432 was spotting middle, then the tAP was on the ramp and that meant that we couldn't get any TDs or MTs in C5 or D5, and in fact we got spotted almost any time we came off the A line. 

With our TDs suppressed, and our LT dead, even if our HTs had won the windmill fight (which they ultimately didn't) they wouldn't have been able to push down off the hill. The enemy outspotted us and even when we did manage to light one of their guys, we'd discover we were 1 v 3 against two other enemy tanks we never saw.

The lesson

1. Know the lineup - With no arties there is no point in pushing your LT into a position where nobody is going to have shots on what you spot. Additionally he was the only LT, so by taking that position he left the entire rest of the map basically unspotted. See Tankers Workshop #1: Look at the Lineup (wotguy.blogspot.com) for more.
2. Know the map - the A0 position CAN be useful, but the terrain on that hill drops off a bit and it means that short LTs have trouble spotting any but the tallest enemy tanks. He probably wouldn't have lit the T-10, for example, until it was <200m away, and you really don't want to be <200m in front of a T-10 in a T92.
3. Know the mechanics - The T92 is mostly useless in a HT brawl. The gun has 175 standard pen and only 210 gold pen. And with 150 alpha you're going to have to pen a lot of shots to do anything useful with a T-10.
   
   You've got 1000 HP, which means that at best you're a 3 shot to a T-10, who will have no trouble at all penning you. You're a 2 shot if he high rolls.
   
   And most importantly you're not helping anybody. Our HTs can spot for themselves at that range. Putting yourself in a phone booth between two heavyweight boxers is just a recipe for getting knocked out quick.

I'm not mad at our T92. The thing is, he's a noob. He's got less than 5300 battles and he just bought himself a shiny Tier 8 premium LT, he has no tech tree tanks above tier 6 and his most-played tech tree tank is an M44.

And that's totally fine. It's a game, people can play how they like, and everybody has to learn somehow. We were all noobs once.

The enemy LT-432, who ended up tops on his team in XP did 4.4K spotting (and added almost 2K damage) has almost 30K battles. Lots more experience - and that was the difference. It was a 5-15 loss, even though XVM said we had more green players. On that map, LT play is critical. It's rare that the team with worse LT play wins on that map. 

Just our bad luck to have a new player playing at a tier he wasn't ready for as our only LT.

Taking chance positions in a LT

One other comment on the previous story. If I'm in an LT I might take a chance and play a high risk/high reward position; but I only do that if I know that I'm not critical to my team. If we have 3 LTs, and I'm bottom tier, for example, I'm more likely to take a chance on getting to an unusual, or aggressive, spotting bush knowing that if I get killed (and I probably will) that the team wasn't really depending on me anyhow.

If I'm the ONLY LT on our team, though, I'm a lot more likely to make the conventional play, try to save my tank for later in the game, and play my role.

GLHF!