Equipment for medium tanks

I have covered equipment for heavy tanks, for tank destroyers and for light tanks and artillery earlier. Now, it’s time for medium tanks. It is kind of difficult to choose one set of equipment for all medium tanks, both because not all tanks can fit all equipment, and because it depends on your play style. But I’ll give it a try.

1. First: If your tank can fit a vertical stabilizer, use it. Your gun will be much more accurate, and your aim time will decrease. However not all medium tanks can fit one.
2. All medium tanks can fit ventilation, and it is a good all round equipment to fit.

These two are easy to choose. But what about the rest? Here, I can only suggest you choose from the following:

• Coated optics, which increase your view range by 10%, to give you an advantage compared to especially heavy tanks.
• Or you could choose binocular telescope. I have mounted them on my Cromwell, and it works quite well, especially in the beginning of a match.
• A gun rammer will come in handy, to reduce your loading time by 10%.
• Last, you can also consider an enhanced gun laying drive, especially on some russian mediums with a long aim time, like the A-44.
• On a lightly armored medium you may actually find that a camo net can be useful, be not very often, since mobility is a strength that medium tanks should take advantage of.

A-44

Equipment for heavy tanks

I recently wrote about the equipment you should use on light tanks and arty. Here, I will describe equipment to use on a heavy tank.  First, you should decide on whether you want to keep the tank or if you want to sell it when the next one is unlocked, because this should affect how you want to equip your tank.

If you want to keep them, you should mount the following:

1. Ventilation (“vents”) – always mount ventilation on tanks that can use this equipment. All heavys can, I believe.
2. Gun rammer – decreases reload time by 10%.
3. Vertical stabilizer – if you mount it, do. This will increase your accuracy and decrease your aiming time.
4. Enhanced gun laying drive – decreases your aiming time by 10%.

Vents

If you do not want to keep the tank, mount the following:

1. Ventilation – always mount ventilation on tanks that can use this equipment. All heavys can, I believe. I would mount this also on tanks I do not want to keep, even if it costs 10 gold to remove it.
2. Tool box – 25% faster repairs. Since heavy tanks get tracked a lot, this one is very useful. And you can move it to a different tank without cost.
3. Binocular telescope – increases your view range by 25% when stationary, when you have stopped for 3 seconds. This is only partially recommended, but you can move it to a different tank for free.  And you should use all three equipment slots. It’s better to use telescope in the third slot than leaving it empty.
4. If you absolutely want to avoid paying 10 gold to remove ventilation, you only have one more type of equipment you can use, and that is camouflage net. On a heavy tank this isn’t very useful, even if it increases the tanks camo value by 5%.

Equipment for light tanks and artillery

One question you will come to ask yourself is “what kind of equipment should I use on my tanks?” I will try to answer this, based on recommendations I’ve seen and heard, and based on my own experiences.

The type of equipment you should use depends on what type of tank you are driving. Let’s run through them type by type. But first a few words about my “philosophy” when it comes to using a tank’s strengths and weaknesses. Very few tanks are good allround tanks, maybe except tier IX and X medium tanks. Most tanks and types have certain strengths and weaknesses, and you have to play them accordingly. When it comes to equipment you can either use it to compensate for weaknesses or to enhance it’s strengths.

My personal philosophy is to equip tanks to increase their strengths, and to use their relative advantages to the fullest. This also includes what kind of crew skills I choose.

Light tanks

I may be a bit controversial on this one. Really good light tank drivers will certainly recommend something different than I do, but my choice is what I think is the correct setup for newbies up to medium good players:

1. A camouflage net increase your tank’s stealthiness by 10% when you have been standing still for 3 seconds or more. Even if there are fever and fever maps with bushes for passive scouting, there still are enough possibilities. (Only yesterday my passive scouting in a match resulted in 4.250 assistance damage, and I became the best player on my team.) If you move, the camouflage net loses it’s effect, but it is a great equipment on the right map. And you can move a net from tank to tank without any cost.
2. Binoculars increase your view range by 25% when you have been stationary for more than 3 seconds. Therefore it is – like the camouflage net – for passive scouting only. Remember that even if your tank has a view range of more than for example 500 meters, the maximum view range in the game is actually 445 meters. What those extra meters of view range means, is that your view range will be used to reduce the effect of the enemy’s combined camouflage “effect”. (= camouflage value on a tank + camouflage net + camouflage skills on the crew)
3. You can not win a game only by passive scouting. So the third equipment I use on light tanks is coated optics, which gives you an extra 10% view range when on the move. This might not sound like a lot, but remember that light tanks keep their camouflage values when they move. A good scouter moves a lot when passive scouting is not possible. So that extra 10% will be enough to spot a heavy tank with a low view range.

Better players than me will definitely choose equipment that increase the performance of the gun, for instance a vertical stabilizer. I have played the tier VI american light tank T37 a lot lately. At first I used binoculars, coated optics and vents, but then I swapped the vents for the camouflage net, and I think my performance in that tank increased after I change the equipment.

On tier VIII light tanks gun performance is more important, but for tier IV to VII I believe my setup is quite okay. On tier I to III you can use a toolbox instead of coated optics, since you can move it for free to other tanks. (Spending 500.000 in game credits for equipment on a tier I tank is a bit….. silly?)

Arty

It is in my opinion a lot easier to choose equipment on an arty than on and other type of tank. To maximize the strengths of an arty you have to focus on reload and aim time. Therefore the setup is:

1. An enhanced gun laying drive increases the aim speed by 10%. Anyone who has played an arty knows how frustrating it is to wait for the gun to aim fully.
2. An artillery shell rammer decreases the reload time by 10%. You just have to use one!
3. The third equipment is a difficult one to choose. I have tried different ones, and on my artillery I now have three different equipment in the third slot: A spall liner (increases the protection from light vehicles which will find you), camouflage net (see above) and vents, which will decrease reload and increase aim speed. Choose any. When your crew has got reasonable camouflage skill, you might want to choose not to use the net. Vents might be the best all round equipment.

On a later post I will recommend equipment for medium tanks, tank destroyers and heavy tanks.