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Nah, Panthers had twice the HP than T-34/85s... We had little chance.

It was great fun, I'll surely join another historical battle!

I'll say maybe there where to many panthers. Something to look at for future battles I reckon.

Great fun all, see you on the next if I have tanks for it

Even a Jpz IV has almost the same amount of HP like a T-34/85. This + the fact that russians where massively outnumbered in quality and didn't have quantity almost made the outcome of the battle determinated before it even started. Our tactics in the second round did bad too. I don't know if you didn't know it but fighting downhill is only a good thing in real life. In WoT it's actually not working as you can't depress your guns far enough to hit something without showing your whole tank to the enemies waiting downhill...

I was rather surprised by my Panther's performance. After it exploded after one ISU hit in round one that is. But I remember battles when Panther was still a Tier higher an it did not do that well.

Somhow my Teamspeak client got messed up after battle 1. It is a ahame nobody could hear my cursing during battle 3.

P.s.: BenderUnit, are you the Benderfellow from navyfield?

nope. I'm BenderUnitGER from Navyfield... Long long time ago I played it on EU server. But that Bender-guy (who actually stole my name ) was in my fleet for some time. Good old HSF-Times...

I can only suspect that the Soviet team fired on the Panthers's hull instead of the turret, cause even the lowly M3/L37 of my Sherman could easily pen that during our last battle and the 85mm of the T-34/85 has considerably better pen and dmg values.

Additionally, we Ferdinands were lucky to be out of harms way for most of the time. In the first battle I was one IS/ISU hit away from certain death, though.

I do believe that you could have won the first round by pushing through to the mill in our base with the T-34/85s followed by a combined push of your heavies and TDs from the church ruin towards our base. That way the T-34/85s would have been out of sight of our Ferdis and Tiger and while facing either group we would have been forced to present our weak sides and rear to either of them.

In the second battle the Soviets digged their own grave by capping the hill.

Third battle you should have waited for the German team to go for the cap as we would have done eventually simply because there was nothing to lose for us.

We'd have still gotten our arses handed to us.  Without an ammo rack hit it takes three T-34-85s to kill a Panther.  I and another Russian had one flanked on both sides and were pumping shots into him at point blank range.  He killed us both and drove off looking for more kills.  The story was the same anytime our mediums came across yours.  It's all well and good saying we should be aiming for the turret, but you can hit us ANYWHERE and penetrate, and at the worst, you only had to hit us three times to knock us out.  By contrast it takes us 8 or more shots to knock you out and your guns fire faster than ours and always penetrate.  Yes, this is historically accurate, but if we're going down that road can we outnumber you four to one?  

Was a fun game anyway, but tactics aside, we stood no chance.  All of your mediums had double the health of ours, fired faster and were more accurate.  JgPz IVs had double the health of the SU-85s.  Ferdys had nearly 400 more health than the ISUs, this is the equivalent of sticking another SU-85 on top of the ISU and still needing more health to break even.  And finally, the Tiger(P) outclasses the IS (not that I can remember ever seeing the Tiger).  Of course, this is all hindsight, and it's easy to sound like an Armchair General after the battle.  It looked perfectly evenly matched to me before the game too.  Just goes to show that planning these battles isn't as easy as we all assume it is.

Having said all that, it WAS fun to play games with intelligent teams, regardless of the result.

The Ferdies and Tiger were killing us from 400m+ ... the atmospheric conditions must have been good for the German radios  

1st battle we pushed everyone except our 4 TDs on the south flank and were murdered. Close up we saw 3 Panthers and a JagD IV but could not kill them quick enough to stop the long range shooters

2nd battle we lost discipline.

3rd battle we had given up caring so decided to suicide charge.

Nothing to do with shooting at turrets or hulls, the German team had equal numbers and massive amounts of fire power!

I just can't agree for the life of me. Especially the first battle had tons of potential for a Soviet win. Or would you say you had won if we only had 4 Panthers instead of 6 and therefor had 2:1 T-34/85 - Panther rate?

Let me show you my impression of that battle.



You pilled up ALL your T-34/85s INFRONT of our base buildings because you ran into three Panthers and a JPIV. Why on earth did you not push through to the windmill in our base? We Ferdis and the Tiger, which was standing next to us, would not been able to hit you at all and you would have killed the Panthers and JPIV as you outnumbered them 2:1.

Next mistake, why did you send your heavy tanks to crawl through the swamp which is the lowest and slowest part of the entire map? Granted, they managed to hit me, but I still destroyed both IS as I could easily pull back out of their line of fire.

During the entire map I was never aware of any Soviet forces by the church as there was no pressure from that side at all.

Had you pushed through with your T-34/85s and had kept all your heavy fire power together and pushed it from the church ruin we would have stood no chance.

Sure you would, because it takes three T-34-85s to kill one Panther and we didn't outnumber you three to one.  A T-34 has 690hp.  A Panther has 1270.  A Panther has nearly double the hull armour and more turret armour.  A Panthers' gun is more accurate, aims faster, shoots faster and has more penetration.  If we'd pushed from the church we'd have just died on the road instead of on the hill.  We were totally, completely, 100% outclassed in every way that mattered.  This isn't sour grapes from me, I didn't understand until today how tough it is to make a balanced match for these games.   Not all Tier tanks are created equal, just ask a Tiger(H) driver.  The problem is that the Panther's a decent Tier 7 Medium, and the T-34-85 is a great big stinking pile of Tier 6 crap.  Standard matchmaking just doesn't work when gimp tanks like this are used.  Technically, eleven Tiger(H)s and an M3 Lee are the equal of ten IS-3s, but my money's on the IS-3s.

Edit:  Please note, I'm not trying to say we only lost because you had better tanks.  There's ANY number of different ways we could have screwed up even if we'd been driving T-43s (and our tactics in the second game were just one of them!)  But if you throw a bunch of Tier 6 mediums and Tier 5 TDs against a bunch of Tier 7 mediums and Tier 6 TDs there's usually only going to be one outcome.  The problem's with the game, really.  Matchmaking isn't the simple number game Wargaming would like us to think it is.  As an example, say the Germans had used Tier 6 tanks instead of the Panthers, but those Tier 6 tanks were VK3601s?  Yeah, same result.  Not all tanks of the same Tier are equal, despite what the Matchmaker would have you believe, and when you start mixing the Tiers up and trying to balance things it gets very, very hard to make an even matchup.  I undertand this, shit happens.  It's not something I'm going to lose any sleep over and it was still an enjoyable game.

Oh, and incidentally, yes, we piled up all our T-34-85s against those buildings because it turned out that that's exactly how many T34-85s you need to kill two Panthers and a Jagdpanzer.  And no, we didn't send anyone up to the church because if eight T-34-85s aren't enough to punch through (and they weren't) it wouldn't make sense to dilute forces by splitting up further. We didn't send our heavy tanks to crawl through the swamp, we sent them with the mediums.  They just chose to do whatever they liked and go through the swamp by themselves anyway.  Sadly our NKVD psychics were having a day off so we were unaware that the church/village side was only defended by two Tank Destroyers, but even if we had gone that route, the one IS and two T-34-85s that would have survived probably wouldn't have been enough to destroy the Panzerwaffe that was waiting for them with superior view range and hard cover in the buildings around your base.

Of course, if a T-34-85 was able to kill a Panther in one on one combat, or even two on one combat, things might have turned out differently.  But they can't, so it didn't.

The second battle was a complete FUBAR on our part of course.  And by the third we just didn't care any more so decided we may as well have a laugh out of it.  All the same, thanks for the battle.  Despite having as much chance as a snowflake in a furnace, it was still infinitely more fun than the depressingly retarded gameplay I see in any random.  

On the third battle you should have gathered before storming our base. You almost entered one by one and the IS was late. So due to this and the hill climb in battle two the result of 3:0 might not reflect the real strength of the soviet tanks.
However judging from battle one the Panthers were too strong.

Maybe one should do some testing before making the balancing. Like sitting T43/85 in front of a Panther and let them take turns shooting each other. Basically some ballistic tests and not taking the values from paper.

It was my first company like match ever and very interesting to me. The Jagdpanzer IV didn't leave my garage for a long time so I wasn't good with it and I'm also not used to having this little firepower anymore. Its mobility was useless on this map.

Still looking forward for the next battle and I hope nobody was frustrated on the soviet side.

Maybe the battle would be more interesting if the ammo was limited. People might be shooting more carefully and play more tactical with less rounds available.

 Jingles, on 12 September 2011 - 04:52 AM, said:

Here i must say i disagree with you since you are looking at it on a tank by tank basis which you cant do for these battles. What you should try doing instead is think about how certain tanks synergize (compliment each other) and then apply that to  whatever tactic you are using. A specific example in this case would be your failure to use the ISU-152 in any meaningful way (especially in the first round with them being left as a dysfunctional rearguard leaving your attack force severely weakened)

In the first one you were kinda screwed because fortuitously I and my mighty panther radio operator (which has now been shot) had gotten the wrong information from command and I was somewhere I was not suppose to be. (historical accuracy ftw) So you unfortunately had to deal with a veteran panther that you would not have had to deal with otherwise. That I think spelled your doom  

(A little light humor to brighten up the day)

 Jingles, on 12 September 2011 - 04:52 AM, said:

I am still reading but i just want to clear this up ASAP: The Panthers use stock turret so they have 1200hp not 1270. Though it did make me wonder how much the total ammount of hitpoints on each side is effecting the outcome in historic battles in general...

Okay so i read the rest now, there is no doubt the tactical failures of the russian team in this battle. Besides the almost equal numbers, there was no attempt of a 2-pronged attack whatsoever to make use of the inflexibility of the Ferdinands involved, which if anything were the main firepower in this set-up. I think things would have been almost entirely equal with the addition of a single IS-2 on the soviet side. It's hard to call what is wrong with the set-up since i do not believe any of the soviet's tactics used their vehicles to their best abilities, like i said, every attack was virtually head-on, no flanking of any sort was involved, everybody aimed in the same direction == germans have more firepower than the soviets, since most of the soviets do not have the accuracy nor the penetration/HE DPM to burn down the Panthers, Tiger P and Ferdinands from the front. If you think about it, all these vehicles, Ferdi's and Tiger P especially, have all of their armor located in the front, with toothsticks, some glue and sheet metal holding the rest of the vehicle together, but that never ever in all 3 battles got into play, their frontal armor was all you got to see.

This reminds me of the Battle No.34, 1st Tasman. Besides the argument the Easy-4 might be slightly OP for this match-up, it can atleast be proven. When we (german side) noticed the americans were all spread out all the time, we decided to bunch up and be alot more aggressive in the second battle, as the americans were spread out again this actually worked and we got within 2 Easy-4's of winning this second battle, the other battles, where we basically defended not knowing if we found a fraction of the american army or the whole bunch (thus hesitant to attack) it always turned out to be a small fraction holding us up and locating us, followed by americans coming from all sides which means they always had someone to shoot someone else's rear, while the germans were forced to fire on frontal armors in every direction as well as being unable to respond effectively when a flank went down because everybody was preoccupied holding their own. This situation never occured in this battle. (No.34 was a 15 vs 14 scenario, this was a 14 vs 13 scenario, the numbers are not that different, firepower disregarding, positioning could have been exploited).

 GroundTrooper, on 12 September 2011 - 08:51 AM, said:

Here I must disagree with you since ISU (and Su) has
- zero chance in open field to survive (too slow and too low armor for going through to village with T34)
- zero firepower in open field to be able hit some one (50% crew and 152 trolgun by moving)

IMHO only way to use our firepower was to be hidden in forrest where we were and waiting for our chance to hit - I was able shot 6 times and made 4 hits and 1 Ferdi kill ... I am 100% sure thah if I will run to open field with T-34, I will be dead in 5 seconds without shot at least 1 shot.
What we could do better - we could try push little closer to you and ferdies with our ISU's but again, there was many meters through open field and 2 Panters on left side on hill

2nd battle was failure, be on the hill was really mistake.

3rd battle was only suicidal fun-attack

 GroundTrooper, on 12 September 2011 - 08:51 AM, said:

Exactly.

Your T-34/85s at the base buildings were not killed by the Panthers/JPIVs, they were killed by us Ferdis and GT in his Tiger from across the field. That is what he is on about, combining forces. You completely wasted your ISs, ISUs and SU-85s in that round by not linking up your tanks in any meaningful way while parking your T-34/85s in the mid of harm's way.

For example, in battle no.2 one of your ISUs one shot one of our Panthers, something not one of our tanks could do to any Russian tank. I knew the ISU is capable of this and that is what the balance was build around.

 sego, on 12 September 2011 - 10:47 AM, said:

Had you had your ISs and SU-85s and KV-85 with you, they would have been the ones to advance to and through the village revealing targets to you, while themselves being able to use the village buildings as cover to shoot from and take out the Panthers with your help.

There was ZERO pressure on us German heavies. Had our Panthers on the hill reported trouble from the village at least one Ferdi and our Tiger would have had to respond to it, therefor leaving only one Ferdi to support our own guys in our base.

yes Zorin, I can agree with you on that. I wrote also the same, we could made a little push to Tiger and Ferdies.

But the plan was defend the forrest side with TD's and therefore we haven't IS with us (KV was not in 1st round).

I am also now general after battle but yes, in case we will have tank support and we will push with TD's to your heavy forces, we could change the result.