Supertest: British Light Tanks

[kariverson 180]

[Matross 145]

How much ammo in the Manticore??? Looks like a funky tank, almost thought it was an autoloader.

[tajj7 560]

Bad, very bad, 1.6k DPM on a tier 10, bad accuracy, meh penetration for a tier 10 even with premium ammo it only has the same pen as Cent AX, horrible gun elevation and they are even giving it limited ammo count for even more 'fun'.

Bad gun handling as well, together with average speed, agility and hp/ton. 

They also lie about the size, they say its smaller than a T-100 lt, and then show a comparison picture where they measure the top of the T-100 lt being from an infra-red light on top of the turret, which isn't in the collision model, so its actually taller than the T-100 lt.

Contender for worst tier 10 tank on those stats and it makes zero sense as a tank, they make it sound like it should be like some sort of tier 10 hellcat, a mobile sniper, but then the alpha, pen, accuracy, aim time etc. is nowhere near good enough for that role. 

[Kymrel 185]

Very much not interested. I like light tanks but not enough to play the German and tier 9+ Chinese. And not enough to play this line, from what I can tell. 16 rounds of ammo on the Manticore in the supertest, by the way. How often do you run out in a bat with 30 rounds? Now half that number and cry every time.

[Ogopogo 55]

Just before anyone asks, the Chimera (Manticore is a fake name) was an STT project that existed on paper, with no prototypes or mockups built. It's intended role could described as a 105mm gun carrier, or broadly just a self propelled anti tank gun. Crew of two, with the driver also serving as the loader, and an automatic loading system (somewhat). Other than that, its designed armour was 25mm hull and 28mm turret (compared to the 50/80), and originally a 198hp engine. The higher powered engine is less surprising given the pattern across most light tanks, but the armour surprising.

[kariverson 180]

1 hour ago, Ogopogo said:

Just before anyone asks, the Chimera (Manticore is a fake name) was an STT project that existed on paper, with no prototypes or mockups built. It's intended role could described as a 105mm gun carrier, or broadly just a self propelled anti tank gun. Crew of two, with the driver also serving as the loader, and an automatic loading system (somewhat). Other than that, its designed armour was 25mm hull and 28mm turret (compared to the 50/80), and originally a 198hp engine. The higher powered engine is less surprising given the pattern across most light tanks, but the armour surprising.

Hmm I'd gladly take an autoreloading system, 2 or 3 rounds, progetto style in exchange for less armor. And some gun handling buffs. They do describe it as a pocket TD than a scout. 

[Ogopogo 55]

8 hours ago, kariverson said:

 They do describe it as a pocket TD than a scout. 

It was quite literally designed for the purpose of being a vehicle mounted replacement anti-tank gun for the 120mm BAT RR.

[kariverson 180]

16 minutes ago, Ogopogo said:

It was quite literally designed for the purpose of being a vehicle mounted replacement for the 120mm BAT RR.

That was pretty badass, 400mm of HESH penetration.

Give the tank a 520 damage, 270mm Hesh standard ammo and leave the reload and gun stats  the same. You have a meme tank that can't pen sides but atleast it's something different and it fulfills its role. 

[Ezz 1,770]

I'm confused why the blurb keeps saying it's controversial. Either way you suspect this will play similar to other lights on most maps except with worse dpm, while get chewed up by wheelies on the open maps.

[Tman450 210]

The high tier light tanks are almost all useless and this one will be no different.

[Ezz 1,770]

Rhm pzw worst tier 10... wg... hold my beer! (altho it will be a toss up)

Obviously early but to try to look objectively - woeful dpm, 'bad on the move stabilisation', and a playstyle aimed at being a camo'd damage doer / passive scout. This is kinda what the leopard was theoretically doing, but compared to the old pre buff leo this will have a considerably worse gun, considerably worse dpm, worse view range in exchange for camo and mobility. It's like they are genuinely hoping that being able to be a passive scout is going to make for the rest of the shortcomings. Unless they are planning on extending the blocked maps to half a dozen or more, then i can't see this being all that effective.

[MagicalFlyingFox 1,022]

So, a tier 10 worse EVEN 90. Nice. 

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

11 hours ago, MagicalFlyingFox said:

So, a tier 10 worse EVEN 90. Nice. 

Without like..the burst, or the size protection.

@TheChang and i were talking about this yesterday - it definitely looks like trash. They already have a "high" pen derpy 390 alpha LT at tier X, its the 132-1 and it's the worst. This will be a slightly improved version of the 132-1, but still terrible because more fragile and 6200 max damage. The blurb makes it clear that WG still has no idea what LTs do, or should do, at a given time, or how the decisions of a LT driver are influenced in a given battle. And this design is a return to the original release of the tier X LTs, when they were frankly trash (360 alphas, no ammo capacity). 

Now - do i think they'll up it to like 24 rounds at release? Hopefully. And that will help a little, but it'll still be totally undistinguished.

It's fairly disappointing that WG passed on the chance to make an interesting LT concept. The old-school VK2801 is dead and ready to be resurrected in the form of a HESHer LT series. Again Chang and I were theorycrafting this, and thought that having a set of LTs where HESH was the primary balancer would be a lot of fun. Guns with high calibers, normal AP rounds, and then lower pen HESH rounds with big damage, and then a cheap HE round for splashing. Imagine if the tier X were running a version of the Conway 5.5 gun for example. Say 500 dmg on the AP round, 660 on the HESH. 250 Pen on the AP, 200 on the HESH. A 90 pen 660 HE round as well. Then sub 2k dpm (16s base reload maybe) would be justified, as would 0.38 acc and poor aim times. You'd have an extension of the T49/VK2801 concept but with *gasp!* ammo choices that matter. It wouldn't be OP but would actually bring back a LT flavor that is actually fun and effective. 

[CraBeatOff 5,741]

Chang reminded me of the details we'd discussed. Having 3 levels of alpha and pen specifically. We'd discussed something like a short 105mm with AP/HESH/HE at tier 8. 190/170/90 pen and 300/360/410 damage. A shell for each situation but an actual choice on how much damage and reliability. Meaty hits but lower dpm. Maybe 2100 at peak. 10s base reload, 6 rpm. That was for Senlac.

Give the 9 a longer 105, Charioteer gun as the base APCR/HESH/HE. 232/210/105 mm pen. 360/480/510 dmg. You get the EBR 105 memes on a far less mobile tank and without the godly gun handling. Reasonably good base APCR. Low caliber though so the splashes won't be crazy.

And then a 5.5 at tier X. AP/HESH/HE. 250/200/90. 500/660/750. The lower pen is made up by better caliber and non pen splashes.

To quote Chang, based on what we know works with the EVEN90:

"And it gives a bit more of that spike that's needed for a low dpm, aggro bush sitter (even 90)"

[Diriz0n 1,000,043]

Are the brit light tanks not going to be provided secondary HESH ammunition? Seems very unusual, considering Senlac is slated to get them. Excalibur has them too. Perhaps not like the HESH pen on main munitions, like Cent 7/1 or Conway running 14Omm,  but more of secondary high pen HE like the ltalian medium line and French AC line. 

[Madner Kami 405]

On 6/28/2019 at 4:48 PM, Kymrel said:

Very much not interested. I like light tanks but not enough to play the German and tier 9+ Chinese. And not enough to play this line, from what I can tell. 16 rounds of ammo on the Manticore in the supertest, by the way. How often do you run out in a bat with 30 rounds? Now half that number and cry every time.

Given it's stated reload speed, those 16 rounds are enough to sustain continuous fire for 3 minutes and 44 seconds, quite respectable actually. If you ignore the related alpha that is.

[westybig 1,393]

it looks like someone was wondering about how big a gun you could stick on a go kart

[kolni 69,670,872]

oh look, free damage

[hazzgar 730]

Whoever at Wargaming thinks using low ammo is a good way to balance a tank should get punched in the nuts. Yeah lets make people not shoot their guns and make the game more passive. Good job wg.

[CardinalMite 21]

The problem with low ammo count is not so much that you will run out per se but that because it is low you will be highly limited in the types of ammo you will carry. Removing tactical options is pretty much always a crap idea.

If you can always only carry such a small loadout then you might as well fully load premium ammo. It isn't as if running tier 10 is normally credit neutral and with such low dpm it won't even cost that much to be 100% premium loaded.

And when you know that you have to wait a glacial ice age between shots you don't want to fall foul of RNG and pen drop off to waste the precious few opportunities to deal damage. 

Really poor balance design.

[hazzgar 730]

19 hours ago, CardinalMite said:

The problem with low ammo count is not so much that you will run out per se but that because it is low you will be highly limited in the types of ammo you will carry. Removing tactical options is pretty much always a crap idea.

If you can always only carry such a small loadout then you might as well fully load premium ammo. It isn't as if running tier 10 is normally credit neutral and with such low dpm it won't even cost that much to be 100% premium loaded.

And when you know that you have to wait a glacial ice age between shots you don't want to fall foul of RNG and pen drop off to waste the precious few opportunities to deal damage. 

Really poor balance design.

Naaah mate. With low ammo you will be limited by what ammo you can carry but some lights carry so little ammo you rutinely run out of ammo. Quite a few french mid tier autoloaders have that problem. When 3 marking the 13 57 GF I ended up with 0 shells quite a few times while many times I died because I tried to conserve shells

[CardinalMite 21]

5 hours ago, hazzgar said:

Naaah mate. With low ammo you will be limited by what ammo you can carry but some lights carry so little ammo you rutinely run out of ammo. Quite a few french mid tier autoloaders have that problem. When 3 marking the 13 57 GF I ended up with 0 shells quite a few times while many times I died because I tried to conserve shells

You are quite correct when you talk about the French LT autoloaders, I have played them all and own the 1357. Running out is a real issue. However this is different, the French LT autoloaders have relatively short reloads and then burst their clips fairly rapidly.  You can't compare a tier 7 amx1357 with an 18 second reload, then 8 low alpha shots with a 1 second intraclip; with a 14 second reload 390 alpha single shot tier 10. 

The real point though is the Manticore in its current iteration will very strongly encourage the use of premium ammo only. Its alpha and RoF isn't enough to risk getting in close, to be able to circle and get weak side and rear armour. You can only do it if you are sure the enemy is a one shot and god help you if you miss with that crappy on the move dispersion.

So if you are smart you will only be shooting at range, but then you will suffer the general weakness of LTs which is extreme pen  dropoff plus your accuracy 0.38 isn't even that good to ensure hitting weak spots at any distance.

Therefore you won't want to miss out on the rare chance to deal damage you will get, hence you will fire premium. You won't  switch for soft targets most of the time either,  because you have little chance of knowing that 14 seconds later, whether your next opportunity will be a hard or soft target, except maybe late game if all the remaining enemy are soft. 

[Archaic_One 1,853]

Except they made the premium ammo essentially the same as the regular ammo.

I'm just envisioning this thing getting one shot off and eating an entire clip whenever it encounters a french light tank in a dark ally, thats going to be so much fun!

[kolni 69,670,872]

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[Ezz 1,770]

Could be the first person to support the brit lights. Best contact them.