Is T-34/85 as sad as I think it is?

Jump back to quoted post25 Sep 2015, 05:12 AMhannibalbarcajr

Played a game against napalm in automatch with my brand new advanced warfare commander. Got 2 T-34/85s against his Stug/Pak/PG schreck and while they did pretty good vs Stug they took forever to kill infantry. I was really thinking they would be great generalists and be mobile flankers of tanks and punish infantry. What is the 34/85 good for except sucking a little less than T-34/76? I can attach replay of desired

Jump back to quoted post25 Sep 2015, 08:42 AMNecrophagist

So, you got 2 medium generalist tanks against 3 dedicated tank busting units.
The T34/85 is far from sad. I'd say it's the best soviet tank after the IS-2.
How it fares against infantry is 90% dependent on the terrain, which is a bummer, but if you learn how and where the shots will land you'll have a different experience.

Jump back to quoted post25 Sep 2015, 09:27 AMStallion319

Can you elaborate more on the terrain issue?

Just want to see if anyone here finds that T34/76 is still worth producing. If yes, under what circumstances?

Jump back to quoted post25 Sep 2015, 08:07 AMCadianGuardsman

It's decent against infantry, definitely better than the T-3/76. For pure wiping power however you need a IS-2, A Replay would be nice to see how you're employing it. A lot of units require micro to be strong, like the 105mm Sherman the T-34/85 needs that micro (or relic may of nerfed it into uselessness.

TL;DR They're good with micro, a replay of the game would be nice.

Jump back to quoted post25 Sep 2015, 08:26 AMturbotortoise

stop me if i'm wrong, but especially with mark target, i think the 34/85 is pound for pound in regards to firepower, maneuverability, and survivability one of the best medium tanks in the game. i would however mention based on my anecdotal experience, it only seems marginally more effective than a PzV against soft targets.

Jump back to quoted post25 Sep 2015, 09:27 AMStallion319

Can you elaborate more on the terrain issue?

Just want to see if anyone here finds that T34/76 is still worth producing. If yes, under what circumstances?

Jump back to quoted post25 Sep 2015, 09:27 AMStallion319

Can you elaborate more on the terrain issue?

Just want to see if anyone here finds that T34/76 is still worth producing. If yes, under what circumstances?

Scatter


A bit on scatter...

Scatter has two components, horizontal and vertical

Horizontal scatter is determined by angle_scatter, and is simply the amount of degrees that the round can deviate from the target position. Multiply by distance to target to get how far horizontally your round can be off from the target.

Vertical scatter is determined by distance_scatter_max, distance_scatter_offset and distance_scatter_ratio. Distance_scatter_ratio is the important bit here and works like angle except vertically. So again multiply by distance. The result will be capped by distance_scatter_max, in case the range*ratio value would be higher.

Distance_scatter_offset will determine the percentage of rounds that over or undershoot. As 0 means an even distribution in the area, a value of 0.57 (which is also the highest overshot in the game) like on the IS2 means that 50+0.57*50 = 78.5% of shots overshoot. This is why standing in front of shotblocking objects and thus letting overshot rounds hit you is a particularly bad move against IS2. No weapon used by a unit actually has a negative value here, everything is either neutral (mortars) or overshoots to some extent (everything else). As such you should generally go towards the thing shooting at you if you want to dodge a shot.

As an example for the soviet 82mm mortar, barraging at range 53 (midpoint as min 25 max 80), your barrage area will be 0.08(angle)*53 = 4.24 horizontal and 0.075(ratio) * 53 = 3.975 vertical. Most weapons don't have much of a difference in vertical and horizontal scatter so you can just ignore the difference in numbers.
This is a bit smaller than the area shown on the barrage reticule ingame, which starts off at 3.75 at 25 and ends up at 7 at 80, while actually the barrage area will start off at 2 and end up at 6.4. Generally speaking very few targeting reticules are completely accurate and almost never take veterancy bonuses to scatter etc. into account. Some like the Ostheer mortar barrage at 14 max (actual: 7.2) are just ridiculously off.