Category Archives: Sherman Tank Games

Post #71, War Thunder PART II: A more fair review after an extended time playing the game.

Thoughts on War Thunder and World of Tanks MK II

In the beginning: WOT was clearly better, but WT has grown into a better game.

I’ll start by saying; I have not played a game of World of Tanks in months. At one point it was my main game. Sure, I didn’t play much when GTA 5 came out or Fallout 4, but I always came back to WOT. I’d been playing since closed beta, and had 16k battles in the live game, and some rare cool tanks, the A-32, the beta Sherman, the M-60 and VK7201, and even the T23, attesting to some good clan experiences. I was a solid 56% player and liked T5, and the Sherman, the standard M4 was my most played tank. 1083 battles, 56.14% win rate. That was an honest 56%, I rarely platooned, and had moments of great online glory, and terrible gaming shame. Key clan battles were both won, and towards the end of my time with a competitive clan, lost because of my play. I will freely admit I was never a great player, just a little above average, but I did really like the game.

The game itself is polished, physics are great, the models beautiful, and I liked how you could play a few quick games and quit. I also liked mods, because the vanilla game interface sucked, and who doesn’t want extra zoom? Me dropping out of WOT was long in coming, and I remember the glory days, where knowing the view system allowed you to do awesome shit on most maps, the tears were glorious, and medium and light tanks were fun. I don’t know anyone who plays anymore, at least on the regular, I know a pal logged in this weekend, I can’t be bothered. I think the glory days for WOT are long in the past, years of patching ago, when the clans and player base still had some heart. Before the draconian and sometimes indefensibly bad moderation ran anyone remotely interesting off the forums.  The only thing that sparked any interest in me at all is a game mode, not being offered on what was the premier version, PC.

If you cannot tell from my previous review of War Thunder, I wasn’t a fan in the past and talked some mighty shit. I’ll say some points still stand, but overall, I could have been fairer and should have waited longer to review it.  I will stand by it being a copy of WOT, at least in a few ways, though also an improvement, with its own spin, that makes it is own game and offers more options than WOT does, and I think Gaijin has a better outlook than Wargaming. Wargaming produced a great tank arcade game and ruined it, then produced a shit airplane arcade game and an almost passable, but still boring, and shallow, but pretty ship game.  Gaijin has produced an amazingly pretty airplane game, with a good arcade mode, and decent realistic and simulator modes, though I do not agree with some of their flight model choices, I enjoy the hell out of Air Arcade mode, and love the selection of planes being able to do air missions really adds a fun aspect to the game if you like airplanes, and I do. Tank arcade, realistic and simulator battles are also available, and they keep things interesting with various events, and a PVE mode for both tanks and planes that gives a nice booster as a reward, win or lose it can be a nice fun daily diversion, and I’m only covering co-op PVE and PVP modes, the game has a lot of standalone air missions and campaigns that are single player PVE.

War Thunder also includes unguided rockets, ATGMs and smoke shells and launchers on tanks and most tanks have at least a share of the machine guns on the tank as usable weapons. Machine guns are not as useless as you would think, some of the most annoying TDs in the game, like the stupid waffentrager can be killed with the coax and, .50 machine gun on most US tanks. The machine guns can be used to knock down shacks and shoot down aircraft, and are a fun addition to the game. On vehicles with exposed crews, you can see them, allows you to machine gun them.

One thing War Thunder does not include is player driven self-propelled artillery vehicles. They must have recognized the cancerous effect vehicles like this have on a game. They do have a mechanic to call in an artillery barrage, but it’s nothing like being shot by an artillery sniper from across the map while on the move like in WOT. In War Thunder, Artillery rarely kills you if your tank has decent armor, or you drive out of the area when you get the warning. This factor alone makes WT much more enjoyable than WOT.

Let’s compare the two, in Arcade mode, since that is all WOT offers.

The interface: War Thunder edges out WOT.

On the surface, War Thunder looks a lot like WOT.  Various nations, a bar with planes, and later tanks very similar controls, the tech tree and tank upgrades at first seem very close, you have an in-game currency you can buy with real money and one you earn in-game, and in this way, War Thunder has more options that could be viewed as pay to play than WOT. Specifically, you can just max your crew’s skills with real cash, if you were willing to drop a fair chunk of money on the game.

X-Ray: WOT has nothing like it.

This is an option in the vehicle viewer and WOT has nothing like it. It shows, in a somewhat generic way with the component, where everything important inside the tank is located. The crew, the gun, the optics, the turret ring and drive and transmission and final drives are all shown in generally the right places, though they do not always get it right, it’s still a very nice feature.  In a game when killed, it shows the shot hitting your tank then what it takes out inside if anything.

Armor view: WOT can do with mods, what WT has built in. 

This nifty little feature lets you look at the armor layout, and on planes and tanks and it calculates the thickness of a plate from the angle you are looking at, and gives you that, and the actual thickness based on its angle to the camera. WOT does not have a feature like this, but there were mods that added it.

Social: Like, talking to people or something…

The social options are about the same, or they seem like that, but since I do not care about anything but being able to have a chat room with some pals, social stuff is not interesting.

Free Exp: Bypassing shit tanks, and weapon grinds, you can do it in both.

In WOT, you always earn a small amount of free experience, and each tank is its own bank of available experience to convert. This allows you to burn real money for a large chunk of free exp you can sit on and use on any tank tree. It is very easy to run out of if you are willing to do things like burning through several tanks with free exp to get a T110E5 on release day for clan wars that evening, you can zero out your available exp, and no amount of real-world cash gets you more, you have to build it up on tanks by playing them.

In WT you end up with a massive bank of experience, and then you pay the currency purchased with real money on conversion right at the vehicle, and you get so much overtime, you’d have to drop a large chunk of cash on the game to burn through it all, and could max out a nation’s tree with ease if you wanted to with and had the cash. In just over a year of playing, I have nearly 6 million convertible exp points. At low levels, you can deck out a tank or bypass it for a few bucks, but at the high end, you’re looking at much higher amount of real money. You, of course, can, just like in WOT, earn the exp on the vehicle by playing it, and spend no money at all.

How free exp is applied to vehicle parts is different in one key area, in world of tanks your researching a new type of item. So, if it’s a gun, motor or radio used in later tanks or other lines, it’s unlocked in them all. This is a huge cost saver, and I like this version better than WTs version. In War Thunder, you are not unlocking new technology and putting the new better part on, you’re paying for a brand new barrel, or motor, or tranny, etc, because your brand new tank isn’t brand new with inferior parts to upgrade, it just warns the hell out, and you fix it up as you go. Although I like the World of Tanks approach better, it’s not a deal-breaker in War Thunder, and from perspective of getting players to spend money, I think WTs works better and a key advantage to the WT system is, you can unlock a tank and move past it without being forced to unlock a bunch of crap on the tank itself, so if you don’t want to play it, in most cases you can unlock it, then start on the next tank, and not be penalized for not unlocking key parts on the earlier tank or anything on it.

In both games, the tanks are pretty bad stock, but rarely in War Thunder is a tank straight up useless stock. I’m looking at you M7 Medium (when WOT was good) and your crappy 37mm gun at T5.

I think that’s the extent of uses for free exp in WT. In WOT, on rare occasions, it can also be used to train up crews, but it was a very rare and hugely costly thing when they did allow it.

Crews: Too many in WOT, just right in WT.

War Thunder has a simpler and better system, this is an area War Thunder is much better than WOT. In World of tanks, each tank has its own crew, and if you want to store them when you sell a tank, they have to go in a barracks you pay to upgrade with real cash. You can retrain a crew to another vehicle, but it can only be the crew of one type of tank at a time, or of a premium tank in the same class, light, medium, etc. This means if you like having a lot of tanks, you have a ton of crews, each crew levels, and has skills. A great crew could make a big difference in a tank’s performance, but having a ton of tanks you play a lot means you skill your crews up slow. You can retrain, but if you do not want to pay a fairly steep price in real money bought currency, you lose a big chunk of exp from the crew; this part of the game can become a big money hole quick.

War Thunder handles crews in a very different way, and if you really had to, you could get away with only three ground vehicle crews for arcade mode, since you can only spawn in three tanks. This means if you want, you can divide up all the vehicles from one nation up to those crews, each one requiring currency earned by playing the game, or spending bought currency, for the very highest skill, after you dump a ton of in-game cash too, making leveling a crew without playing it plausible but very very expensive in real money.  I go with six crews for each nation, but only use three or four for ground crews, and then all six as aircrews.

In my opinion, the War Thunder crew system is better, and even though you can dump cash into it, doing so doesn’t offer much of an advantage for the huge cash dump it would take to max out six crews, but it does help you keep a smaller number of crews so you can focus the experience earned by playing. When you couple in the cost of garage slots in WOW, and how much real money that costs, War Thunder wins out there too for the player who likes to collect tanks, and you can’t sell anything so no worries on what tanks you want to keep WT.

The Tech Trees:   WT wins again.

I was never all that bothered by the prototypes making it into World of Tanks, and I think many of them belong. Tanks like the T23, Vk3002DB, and M7 Medium (it’s a damn medium!!!) either saw limited production, serious consideration, with some real blueprints, or made a whole factory for the damn things, so they make reasonable additions. Strait up making up overpowered tanks from very preliminary drawings, and then making game ruining tanks out of them takes it to far. Tanks like the T10 TDs, the Waffentrager, pretty much the whole E series I think helped ruin the game. I hit a point, years ago, where there was not a single tank in the game I cared to get, so I stopped playing anything past T8 and mostly T5, and then not at all.

The Vehicles:  War thunder wins in variety and customizability.

Almost a tie, but War Thunder wins, since Wargaming’s plane game sucked and looked like crap, and was not integrated at all.

The early models still in the game are pretty bad at this point, but the new model’s World of Tanks has been releasing are very good. They look a little sharper to me than corresponding War Thunder models, but it’s very close on how pretty the models are.

War Thunder models look a little softer, giving them a slightly more cartoonish appearance, and I run both games at max settings with no issues. War Thunder edges WOT out though because the tank decoration system is so much better.  In World of Tanks, you get decals you can apply to a tank, for real money if you want it to be permanent; they have fixed locations only, two emblems, and two inscriptions. The same for camo and camo gives a small view distance reduction bonus. If you want to use the same decals on different tanks you pay for it again the same with the tanks camo. They do let you rent them for extended times in in-game earned currency.

In War Thunder, tanks have individual camo, and it can be purchased for a similar cost to WOT. But you can also earn it by playing the game with that tank and getting kills or just battle count in some cases. Most tanks you will have all the camo by 300 battles. That’s not all the customization you get though. In WT, you have two other categories, six slots for decorators, 3D decorations, and 4 decal slots.

The decorators range from various tree branches, that actually make your tank much harder to spot in realistic and simulator battles, to animal skulls, various road signs, some German crosses and a red star, a French SMG, and dolls, an accordion, gas masks, helmets, guitars, grenade racks, garden gnomes, Jack-o-lanterns, and even a bar sign. These are 3D items and can be fairly freely placed, though not over some items on the hulls.

The decals are like the ones in WOT, but better in all ways, since in WOT they are fixed in size, location, and orientation. They can be rotated, duplicated on the other side, and resized. There are a ton of them, from kill markers to historic tank and airplane decorations, some can be bought, there are many earned decorators too, but not the camo branches or most of the more silly decorations.

This variety of decorations and the surprising ways you can use them to make for some very interesting vehicles makes War Thunder a much more visually diverse game. The War Thunder tank models are better in one other way too; much of the exterior of the tank can be damaged and even blown off, while the tank still fights on. I’ve seen storage boxes and tools completely blown away, even fenders and other items can be knocked off some tanks.

Premium Vehicles: It’s a wash, so close in execution it’s almost the same.

The system is very similar in between the games. In WOT, a premium tank was supposed to be a tank not quite as good as a decked out regular tank in the same tier, but any crew from that class could use it without training, and they made more exp, free exp, and credits. WOT has not always held to this guideline, and some premium tanks ended up being better than fully decked out tanks in their tier, in most cases these vehicles were removed from sale, but the players with them kept them. Older premiums tend to be worse than newer ones on WOT though, and a few premiums were out and out duds.

In WT, the premium vehicles are just tiered based on their performance and will be generally as good as anything at the same rating. Crews have to be specifically trained on it to use it, but it’s cheaper than a normal vehicle and they make more exp and credits. Like in WOT they can be variants of vehicles in the game already, copies, or oddballs, but in WT most are copies of a vehicle on another nations tech tree like the lend-lease M4A2 76W tank you can buy on the Russian tree. It is the same tank as the one on the regular tree on the US line, just premium. But they do have a fair number of special vehicles only available as a premium, the P-38K and several other prototype planes, RAMII, the T14, and T29 both US Heavy Tanks only available as premium tanks. They also have some premiums, where you have to buy another premium first, to unlock the second. The prime example being the Sherman Calliope has to be bought before the M26 T99 can be purchased. Both these rocket equipped tanks are a riot to play. Nothing says ‘hello’ like a bunch of rockets to the face! I even got an airplane with one!

Since this is the Sherman tank site, how do the Sherman models compare: WT edges WOT out again, but its close.

War Thunder:  All the Shermans used in the war

Lots of solid Shermans, it has more Shermans and has them tiered better, and the models, for the most part, are more realistic. The early war DV M4A1 Sherman in WT tiered at 3.3 is my favorite tank both in model and gameplay. When you get in a 3.3 game you can dominate if you don’t go stupid like I do about half the time.  The M4A1 76W model is also very nice, with only a few small flaws. The game has just about all the important versions of the Sherman in game. WOT does not. WTs Sherman models are all solid, and for the most part, since there is a feature called X-Ray, you can use in the garage to view the interior components inside the tank, even the insides are pretty accurate. They were a little off here and there as you can see in the old review, but they’ve done a good job with most of it, but the M4A2 76w tanks still have the add-on side armor they shouldn’t have. So lots of good solid models, at all the right tiers, balanced well enough. Not many rare versions, even in the premium line, and there is enough precedent for tanks like the M7 Medium to show up as a premium tank since the T14 and T20 are in the game as such. They are releasing new vehicles at a high rate, so who knows what we will see, but true napkin tanks are very rare in WT, with just a few scattered in the German and Japanese and French trees.

WOT: Franken Shermans, miss labeled models, and rare tanks.

WOT is a more mixed bag and still has a turret that was never used on the hull their T5 M4 model has, and they call it an M4 when it’s an M4A1. This is a silly flaw that has been in the game since beta. In the American tree, they have the messed up M4/M4A1 at T5, and the M4A3E8 76W at T6 with the Jumbo and all have decent models, though they have weapon options never offered this is somewhat normal in WOT.  Where WOT shines in the Sherman department, is in its oddball Shermans, it’s got some good ones.

Here’s a list of WOT’s oddball and interesting Shermans: The M4A2E4 this Sherman was the testbed for torsion bar suspension on the Sherman the original model was recently replaced with a very nice new model, it was only given to US beta testers and is pretty rare in the game. The M4 Improved, a proposed improved all welded Sherman with a better turret, also a very nice model, and a standard premium. The M4A3E8  Thunderbolt VII premium Sherman, based on Creighton Abram’s 7th  wartime Sherman, the model features the common to the 3rd Army’s field modified Jumbo with a bunch of extra armor welded on. The M4A1 revalorize a French premium Sherman with a big 105 gun wraps up the oddballs. It’s an ok model, not fantastic. There is also a Fury premium that looks just like the movie tank.

Airplanes: WOT HAS NO PLANES

The War Thunder airplane models were always better than the World of Warplanes models and gameplay is better too. The tank decals can be used on the planes and vice versa. They have a lot of very cool airplanes in the game, planes I haven’t seen in other games. They have all the cats, including the late war F7F and F8F, in the Bearcats case, there are two versions. There are five F4U Corsair variants, two F4U-1A  models, but no birdcage -1. The rest make sense though, 1d, 1C, -4, -4B. Lots of P-51s, with and without Merlins, including the H and Twin! P-47s galore, including the 47N, and they are all great ground attack planes. Like the tank models, many are not perfect, things like the early Corsairs having cockpit floors, and the late Corsairs, the -4s, have a B series R2800 modeled when they should have a C series but these are small complaints. The inclusion of the P-38 and a lot of versions is overshadowed somewhat by them having terrible air to ground load outs, but they include the prototype K, and it’s rad, so, still a win.

The plane side of the game being fun was a surprise, but I really enjoy arcade mode, I’m just not good at it though. On occasion, I’ll pull off a good game or two.   If you like WWII and Korean War era air warfare, the air game is pretty damn fun.

Gameplay: The real Meat and Potatoes

General: Skill-based play wins out

In my opinion, War Thunder rewards players with good hand-eye coordination and good reflexes more than World of Tanks. The aiming mechanic in WOT is stupid and adds inaccuracies for gun traversing, elevation, the speed of movement, and you have to hold the crosshairs still for an amount of time that varied gun to gun for the shot to be accurate. This was one of the most frustrating aspects, and an aspect used to balance the game way to much, in WOT.  WT has no such mechanics, you get the crosshairs on target and pull the trigger, and accuracy is only based on base gun accuracy and crew skill. Both games use random number generators in their shooting system, but WT’s is much better, and not used to balance nations. In this single way, War Thunder is leaps ahead of WOT.

Both games require more thought than I can always put in, but skill seems to shine out a little more in WT. The tier system helps, they are decently balanced, and you rarely end up in battles you can do nothing in, it happens, but far less than in WOT. Both games have very skilled players, but they really seem to shine more in WT, and the player base seems less criminally stupid most of the time.

Mods: WT keeps it pure, and wins again.

War Thunder has none. At first, this seemed bad, but as I learned to play the game, I enjoyed being able to just jump in and play post patch. Frankly, the mods in WOT ranged from downright game breaking to perverted distractions. No mods mean an even playing field other than the tanks specs and the player’s skills. Not some mod that lets them zoom in a target exact locations, or shows the last place a person was on a map, or where trees were falling or worse. There are known cheats in WT, but they are actively banning accounts, forever, for using them. In this area, War Thunder wins hands down.

There are a ton of very well done player made skins you can add, mostly to airplanes. If you know of a historic aircraft, and the plane is in WT, there is probably a skin for it. I found skins for Ira Kepford, Richard Bong, Tommy McGuire, Charlie MacDonald, Greg “Pappy” Boyington, etc.

WOT has MODs, some are almost cheating, many slow the game down, and they are a pain in the ass to keep up to date like in any game. WTs interface is good enough vanilla.

Maps:  No game is perfect, but WOT ruined all their good maps.

WOT had some cool maps early on, but even the originals in the game now have been tweaked to reward close in fighting. Almost all the new maps, no matter how cool they looked, tended to be the kinda map that forces fighting in one or two corridors, with maybe a flank option that was easy to guard. Even after physics, they found ways to keep areas off-limits in ways that seemed artificial, and ruined light and medium tanks so why bother caring about physics anyway. Another thing sad about WOT is how little of the world is destructible in battles. Sure, a few houses here and there can be knocked down with a tank, but structures that should not stop a tank do in WOT.

War Thunder has some very cool maps and some crappy ones, but they all feature more destructible items, including large buildings that eventually collapse if heavy fighting goes on around them. I’d say the WT maps do not look as good, they have the same slight cartoonish feel, but they are more interesting and varied, and allow a bad tank driver to get places he should not go, a much rarer occurrence in WOTs much more gamed up maps. Surprise flanking happens all the time in WT, the maps are so open in many cases it’s impossible to guard against clever and determined players. I think that’s a good thing, and some of the most fun I’ve had in War Thunder have been cases where I snuck a Sherman or light into the enemy’s rear and get a bunch of kills before they even know I’m there. I die trying to replicate these games a lot.

Game Modes:  WT has multiple modes people actually play so win for it again.

WOT toyed around with various modes, they added a historic battle mode that flopped and they removed. Clan wars were or are a thing but at this point, who cares, the rest of the game is a nightmare. Classic arcade battle mode changed little two sub-modes that could be toggled on being fairly unpopular in particular on maps not designed for the mode.

WT has an arcade mode, with a much tighter tier system. It also has a realistic mode that mixes in Airplanes of the same tier range, and is significantly harder than Arcade mode, and has a big enough following I never wait long on my limited forays into it. The lack of markers alone is huge, spotting something to bomb with a plane is tough. This mode is more rewarding, but slower paced and requires careful attention. I plan to play it more when my crews and tanks are all decked out.  There is a simulator mode, even more, hardcore, like rip the wings of a plane off if you maneuver too hard, realistic. This mode is to much trouble for me, but I do not fault the people who want a challenge, and the thing to remember is WOT has none of these modes.

The way the match is set up is different as well since the battle is one by taking objectives, not the player’s flag. The are several variations on the basic them and fewer maps, but also fewer dud maps.

There are Arcade, realistic, and simulator battles dedicated to just air battles as well. There are also a whole series of single-player air missions, you can play in any mode, and they offer a few credits and experience, and offer a lot of missions loosely based on real historical ones.

There is also a PVE air and land battle option, that the first time played gives you a booster the better you do, the better the booster once a day, but you can play the mode anytime. I do the land battle one at the Sherman tier, 3.7, and can win if the rest of the team is decent; the M10 GMC is great for that mode. With the PVE modes having a large variety of tanks and crews can be an advantage over having just three.  Also, some of the special event modes don’t let you respawn a dead tank, so having five or six trained tank crews can be good.  The PVE mode, in both air and land battle, involves protecting a location from 12 waves of enemy tanks or planes. You can actually make good exp and credits in this mode with a win where you kill lots of stuff.

Three tanks a match versus one life: A second and third chance if you mess up is nice!

One of the biggest differences between WOT and WT in arcade mode is in WOT, if you do something dumb and die early, game over. WT, you can spawn three different tanks, so you can get back in and try and not die like an idiot two more times.

It’s nice to be able to have a few fast games, and then hit the road, but overall, I’ve grown to like running three tanks, and it makes platooning more fun. It also allows good players to have a much greater influence on the match. It also explains why there are so many vehicles, even models of the same vehicle, at the same tier.

Conclusion: WOT is dying, WT is still moving along, and seems to be doing well.

As WT grows, adds countries and vehicles, and polishes its system, the game is getting better. This is not the case for WOT, and for the last several years, every patch seems to make the game worse, and Wargaming continues to pump out cheesy premium tanks at outrageous prices to milk the player base. Is anyone dumb enough to buy a T-34 black edition?  Anyway, without something changing, I think WOT is slowly going to die off.

War Thunder I think will continue to grow, and they are in a good place to add even more modern vehicles. I could see them adding attack helicopters and SAM tanks. They already have some hardcore ground attack planes in the game, helicopters would be easier to shoot down.

My conclusion is, WT has a future, if they pull it off, with ships planes and tanks in the same games. I see WOT fading away. But then again, what do I know; I’m just an old gamer and Sherman tank freak. But I did spend a decent chunk of money on WOT, and that’s money Wargaming is not going to see again, and what’s left after the Sherman tank site eats my hobby funds, goes to WT now.

Some Final Thought: Things I’d love to see in WT.

There are already infantry models in the game, on some of test flight maps, if you look around the base perimeter, you will spot infantry standing around. You can shoot them, they fall down and fade away.  How cool would it be if they added waves of that infantry to the PVE tank mission, that you could machine gun! They could also make infantry a consumable like artillery, you activate them, and they appear and attack the nearest enemy, or even allow the player to pick a target like with artillery. You could even make it so if they got close to a tank they could start shooting bazooka or Panzerschreck rounds at the tanks.  I would like to see them add more single-player missions, but for tanks instead of just planes.

I’d also like to see them fix the Corsair line, and it would be easy. What’s wrong with it you ask? Well, they have two F4U-1A models in the game and no F4U-1 model. The F4U-1A was a later model than the F4U-1, the -1 has a canopy with much more bracing and a lower floor, making it harder to see out of.  It could be down tiered because of this and over a thousand were produced this way, and these were the planes that first saw combat in the Solomon Islands. The -1A was not even an official model number, but it was the generally used term for the -1 models that got the longer tail wheel leg, the improved valving on the main landing gear oleo struts, and the cockpit with an improved slightly raised seat, with canopy with much less bracing, and the spoiler on the right-wing, so the wings stalled at the same time. What the game shows as the F4U-1A and -1A USMC, these two versions could be merged, and the lower battle ratting used on the regular -1 model.

Note the canopy on these Fleet Air Arm Corsair Mk Is. These early corsairs had some serious teething problems that made them very tricky to land on aircraft carriers. The main problem was with that big nose, and the cockpit so far back, the pilot, while in landing configuration could not see anything in front of the plane. The cooling flaps on the engine cowl didn’t help either, and had a tendency to leak oil, they were hydraulic, and fowl the corsairs windscreen. Note the tail wheel and how short it is, and though you can’t see it, and it was gas-filled, and caused the plane to dart on landing (I may be remembering this one wrong), and didn’t help with visibility. So these problems made landing the beast on a runway hard enough already, but there were more problems. The oleo struts on the main landing gear were bouncy, on carrier landing and could bounce the plane right over all the landing wires! On top of that, the hook design, on brand new wooden flight decks could get stuck in new wood, and rip off. I’m sure you think, well Hell, what else could be wrong with it? Well, the big prop causes the wings to stall at different speeds, this meant, unlike a docile plane, like the wildcat, the Corsair, when it stalled, it stalled one wing first, and caused the plane to flip over. This was by far the most deadly of the problems but it was also the easiest to fix. They put a small spoiler on the leading edge of the right-wing, causing it to stall at the same speed as the left, taming the worst problem.
You can see in this image, the cowl flaps at the top are pinned on this bird, but that seems to be the only fix.
I love this photo, it’s a very nice shot of a very early F4U-1 Corsair, probably at the ramp at Chance-Vought. This was the Corsair that earned the name ‘ensign eliminator’, and would have been a very tricky airplane for a novice pilot to try and learn to fly.
This is the very nice F4U-1A model in the game, and this is the model that should be merged with the F4U-1A USMC, since they are really the same plane, and then add the F4U-1 like in all the images above, as the 2.7 Corsair.

I would also like them to fix the load outs on the Corsairs and P-38s. the -1D Corsair should be able to carry 8 HVARs and two 1000 pound bombs, as should the -4 and 4b. The -38J and L should be able to carry a pair of 2000 pound bombs, and the L 10 HVARS with it. These were documented wartime load-outs.

This review got stupidly long, sorry, see you in WT.

#50 Computer Games That Have Sherman Tanks in Them: The Sherman Has Been In A Lot Of Games

Computer Games that have Sherman Tanks in them:  WWII and or Sherman Tank games

There have been far more games with Sherman tanks in them than I can really cover here, I’ll just try and cover the ones currently available.  I’ll start with the biggest tank game of all time.

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World of Tanks: The best Tank Arcade Game on the Market

World is a great game. I could be accused of being biased, I do have over 20k games in the beta, and a little more than 15K since release. I’ve been playing computer games since I was a kid, in the 80s, on an old Apple II. Since my dad was also a military history nut, and like computer games as well, I got to play an awful lot of games involving tanks, going as far back as SSI’s Panzer Commander game, and Kampfgruppe games, and then SSI’s last Hurrah, Steel Panthers.

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Random in game shot with interface turned off.

World of Tanks is a different type of tank game, since it is really arcade based, but it’s very fun.  The problem with most simulator type tank games is they take to long, and then you finally make contact, miss the camping sniper tank and die. They claim to be realistic, but really, when they get past the set PVE scenarios, are not more realistic in PVP play then the arcade games, because of the limitations of the platform.  War Thunder suffers from this along with a lot of other problems.

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An M7 medium on fire, in game shot, interface off, as you can see the HD game is very nice looking.

Having played WOT from the almost the beginning, having started in the early closed beta, before there were any other tech trees than the German and Russian lines, I really know the game. I saved up free exp and gold (you got like 200 gold a day) before the American Tank release, so I have a T29 the first day it came out.   This was back in the old days when if you ran over a dog house, (since removed) a dog yelped, before the whiners got them to soften it up.

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An M3 Lee and A-20 light that killed each other in a live game, interface turned off

I clearly still like the game, since I still play, though Clan Wars nearly burnt me out. I am glad I was in a clan good enough to get the special tanks for the first three campaigns.  PBKAC was a great clan, and they kept me around long after my skills had become low rung in the clan.  The real problem with clan wars is the time it takes.  Now compared to games like Worlds of Warcraft or other MOLRPG games, the CW in WOT is great, and far less time consuming, but it’s still an hour or two 3 to 5 nights a week, or more of the clan was really active. They also went a long way to make being active give you some in game extras.  As for all the whining about CW sucking etc., or the game in general, especially from the elite class of players, whining is the in thing, talking shit about something you’re good at and play all the time seems to be the thing with elite gamers. I’ve seen in in every PVP game I’ve played, and I’ve played a lot.

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This is what Clan Wars in World of Tanks looks like, this pic has the full interface in place. This is not the stock interface, I use Webium’s Modpack

My thoughts? Negative whiners suck, if you don’t like something, don’t bore us with the crying and moaning, leave and find something else to do.  Does the game have issues? Sure, what game doesn’t? Do they make the game less fun? Yes, Arty I’m looking at You, but they do not make it so bad, you need to dbase yourself and whine about it like a little wimp. State your case to the people who mater, and then either move on and or deal with it until fixed. No one wants to hear you cry.

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A nice glamour shot of an M24 Chaffee shooting, in game footage, interface off

How this all relates to Shermans? Well, as a PVP tank versus tank Arcade game, where you start with old, weak tanks, and by killing other players, win exp and credits to unlock and buy new tanks. The game is free to play. Though there is a play element, it really only makes advancing in the game easier and quicker, and really offers no in game PVP advantage.  You start running into Sherman tanks or Lees really, at Tier 4.  You get the Basic M4 Sherman at Tier 5 and the M4A3E8 and Jumbo at Tier 6.  There are some other Shermans in the game, The British line has an M4A2 Sherman III at T5, and the Firefly IC Composite hull at T6.  There is also an M4A2E4 Sherman as a rare tank given out to beta players with more than 3000 games. The latest Sherman to be added is the French M51 105mm Sherman tank, as a premium.  I’ll discuss each tank and it’s model below.

M3 Lee: The Combat RV in WOT, Tier 4, US Medium Tank

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The M3 Lee got an HD update early in the HD update process, but it’s still a fairly decent HD model. The biggest flaw I can really see is they have the points on the sprocket stabbing through the track end connectors, instead of between them. The model is an early production M3, with the 37mm gun lacking the counter weight needed to work with the stabilizer for that gun.  It still has hull side doors, another sign of an early model. It has the two fixed forward firing hull machine guns that were eliminated early on as well.

The tank in game has a reputation for being poor. There are a few reasons for this, one, it’s a holdover from when the games matchmaking spread was larger, so the M3 would see T7 tanks, and it’s one shotable to many of these. That has been fixed.  Another reason is the large crew, for the tank to shine, it needs a 100% crew, and many of the advanced crew skills help this tank. With a almost three skill crew, a rammer, binocs, and enhanced gun laying drive, I was in the top 50 players in the Lee the last I looked, and with this crew and setup, in a T4 match, the tank is a monster, and not as a sniper TD wanabee.  It high damage for tier, high rate of fire gun, make it deadly even up close at T4, and it can shoot fairly well on the move!

Both the model, and tanks in game performance are very good.

M3 Grant: The Combat Caravan, Tier 4, British medium Tank

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This HD model was added a little later than the M3 Lee, and they fixed the problem with the tracks. They put the Grant specific turret on it, without the machine gun cupola, and added sand shields.  The 37mm gun lacks a counter weight, and the hull has the paired machine guns, and I’m not sure if that was the case with the Grants, I’ll have to look. It’s still a very nice model of the Grant.

In game, it plays like a Lee, but you can put the 6 pounder on it in place of the 75mm. I don’t like the swap, and do not actually play this tank much, though I have one in the garage. When I want a T4 tank, I play the Lee since it’s crew is better.

Overall the tank and model are both good in game.

M4 Sherman: The M4A1 Mishmash, T5 US Medium.

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What can I say about this model, well other than it’s a mess, it’s also historically impossible.  If you put the 75mm turret, the and M3 gun on it, it’s almost passible, but still has later heavy duty suspension on a direct vision hull with fixed hull machine guns and three piece differential that would not have had that suspension, and should have the suspension on the M3 Lee. There are also many little accuracy problems with the model, the driver and co drivers hatches are off a little, the suspension units are not spaced evenly. The model only gets more accurate if you put the top turret and gun on. Since it’s a small hatch M4A1, it should not get the T23 turret.  These were only installed on M4A1, A2 and A3 large hatch hulls.

What they need to do to fix the model is, remove the T23 turret, add a later 75mm turret with full gun mantlet at the upgrade turret, and allow the M1A1 gun to be the top gun on that turret. They also need to fix the mantlet of the 105 model on this turret, it’s all wrong, but would be easy to fix on the full mantlet 75mm turret, though it really needs a second ventilator, and no 105 M4A1s were ever made.

Anyway, in game, it’s a very good T5 Medium. At one point, before the HEAT nerf, the M4 was actually very OP, as were all the 105 derp tanks, like the Panzer 4. Since, it’s been balanced, and a decent tank. You can run it will all guns and still contribute to your teams win. Even it’s basic 75mm gun can take on a KV an pen it from the front. Derping in it is more art than science now, but still viable, but the best gun overall is the M1A1.

The tank is good in game but the model is subpar as the HD models go. It is supposed to get a model update soon, so hopefully they fix it.

M4A2 Sherman III: This Model, as First Unlocked is Very Pretty and Accurate, T5 British medium

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This model, as unlocked is one of the best HD models in the game. The model is a M4A2 Sherman III, with a 75mm M3 with the shorty, no ear mantlet, DV ports, fixed hull MGs, sand skirts, and the proper turret box the Brits added. It also has the proper, early Lee style suspension bogies.  The hull may be a touch to long since the wheel spacing looks a little wide. One final flaw may be the antenna bracket near the co-driver. It looks like a type not installed on M4A2 tanks with the fixed hull guns, but that’s a detail only the geekiest of Sherman geeks would get so faulting Wargaming on it is a tad unfair.

The Model goes south when you add the upgrade turret, a T23 turret, that is wrong for a small hatch hull. They could solve this the same way I suggested with the M4, or they could update the M4A2 hull to a large hatch hull and ad a later set of T5mm turrets to fix it.  It is a fine looking T23 turret though, and it’s not like it couldn’t have been built, and there are a few Franken Shermans around with the T23 turret on the wrong, small hatch hull, this is not something Wargaming needs to put on the critical fix list.

It plays in game just like the American M4 T5 Sherman. It can hold its own in any match with any of its guns.

M4A2E4:  One of the Oldest Models in the Game, and not Very Pretty, T5 US Premium Medium

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This tank is fairly rare on the US Server, since it was a Beta Reward tank. If I recall right, it is purchasable as a premium tank on the Euro an Russian Servers. It is a classic Premium tank, in that it is not as good as it’s fully upgraded T5 piers, but its slightly better than a stock T5 tank.  This was an experimental M4A2 with torsion bar suspension, and they now have all the parts to make a very nice model for this tank, but who knows when they will.

They could fix it by taking the Sherman III hull, and the turret off the Firefly IC minus the 17 pounder and loaders hatch.

The tank in game is a pretty decent T5 medium tank. The gun is decent, the armor is decent, the mobility is decent if it’s flat or you start on a hill. Honestly, I play it because it’s rare, and I like tanks that are not the ‘best’, and it can play my best crew.  It will never go on sale again though, since it has improved match making, and that makes up for its flaws, since it will not see T7 matches at all.  I’ll never sell mine.

A premium tank in WOT is a tank you can buy for gold, or real money through the WOT website. You can also win them through events and missions. They allow you to put any crew from the same class tank into it without retraining, and they get an experience bonus from the tank. This makes the tanks nice for training a crew, but also nice for making extra cash, using your best crew.  Premium tanks also make more money than regular tanks.  There are a lot of premium tanks in the game, and they range from T2 to T10, and a few over the years have been considered overpowered and removed from sale, but not the game. Most are balanced on the weak side.

M4A3E8:  Ugly Old Model, But Still A Great Tank, T6 US medium

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This tanks model was one of the original models in the game, well, it has been unchanged since the American line was released in beta and the model shows it. It’s plain ugly and looks out of place in a game that has come really far graphics wise since its release.

In game once fully upgraded this tank is everything a medium tank should be, mobile over all terrain types, decent armor, and fairly good gun. It has good gun handling, and can shoot well on the move. Some like the Cromwell better, since it’s a little faster, and has a slightly better gun, but I think the Easy8 still holds its own.  The thing really keeping this tank rare, and probably holding back the HD model is the Fury Premium tank, basically a E8 with a stock turret and slightly slower, with an ok HD model based on the Movie tank.

M4A3E8 Fury: An American Premium Medium, Just Like the Tank in the Movie Fury, T6 US Premium Medium

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Turrets can be blown off, if you get hit in the ammo rack, or hit someone there

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Fury was a big deal in the WOT community; it had a lot of tie ins with the game and War gaming, including this premium tank. The model is HD, but not the best one around but it’s still better than the Model on the T5 M4 Sherman. I’m not sure if it’s still for sale, but since it’s basically a slightly nerfed E8, it will probably be available on and off for years.

The Model does show off what a late war Sherman looked like from a storage perspective, and has all kinds of junk draped on the tank.  You can see the same kind of thing in period photos. The Model has the wrong sprockets though, showing they based it directly off the tank in the Movie that was NOT an M4A3 76  HVSS tank, but it was an M4A2 76 HVSS tank made by FTA, not CDA.

It plays just like the E8, but it makes very good money. It came with a crew with the same names as the movie crew as well. Everything said about the E8 above applies to this tank,  meaning it’s a pretty good medium tank too.

M4A3E2 Jumbo: A Good HD model, but a Confused Tank In Game, T6 US Medium

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The Jumbo model is very good. It just has a few minor flaws, the first being it has CDA not FTA sprockets. ONLY FTA made Jumbo tanks so their plain sprockets were the only ones used. It also has sand skirts, and they were removed before being deployed into combat. The other problem with the model comes with the upgraded turret, basically a T23 turret, with the Jumbo mantlet, IE a fantasy turret.  Very few tanks have completely fabricated configurations like this, and I suspect they did this for balance reasons, since the M1A2 gun in the full armor turret may have tipped this tank just a tad to the OP side. This leaves you with a choice, good armor, or good firepower, since if you chose the top turret and gun, you can be easily penned anywhere on the turret but the mantlet, thus defeating the whole purpose of the jumbo.

I run mine with the 105 derp gun, not historically correct, but not impossible either. At T6 the 105 Derp is really at the bottom end of its effectiveness, and I would run the M1A2 if they let you put it in the stock turret, but nope…  The Jumbo is a good tank, it’s armor can bounce a lot, with good angling and clever terrain use you can really bounce a lot of stuff.  I’ve got almost 300 battles in mine, but really prefer a more mobile tank.

All Wargaming needs to do to fix the model is remove the second turret, and make the top gun the M1A1 off the T23. They could then remove the skirts and put plain sprockets on it and the model would be perfect. Oh, they also need to swap out all the road wheels for the stamped plain ones.

Sherman IC Composite Firefly: This Model is all Kinds of Good, T6 British Medium

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This model is good overall in both the stock, and fully upgraded configurations, but does have a few minor problems. Someone should really send the modelers, who do the Shermans at Wargaming a copy of Son of a Sherman, but really, these models are very nice, and some of the best of the Sherman models.  Problem one, these composite hull M4 tanks, were large hatch hulls, built by CDA, by this point, they should have the fancy CDA sprocket, like wrongly used on the Jumbo.  The next model problem involves the turret, the stock turret has no loaders hatch, and all if not the vast majority of M4 Composite hull tanks had a loaders hatch.  There may have been a batch early on that didn’t but I’m trying to confirm this. In any case, by the time production really got going the M4 Composite production tanks were getting late production 75mm turrets with loaders hatches cast in, or were using older turrets left over from the ARV program and updating them by adding cheek armor and cutting a loaders hatch in. This means the upgraded turret on the IC Composite Firefly should have a oval loaders hatch not the British square one.

Other than these minor things the model is beautiful, and may have been based on a post war restoration with the wrong sprockets.  It has many very fine details and is toped with a very nicely modeled M2 .50 machine gun. I think this is the prettiest Sherman model in the game at this point.

It plays in game more like a TD than a Medium tank.  It has a very nice gun that can pen just about anything you’re going to see, but it’s got a slow ROF. It’s slow for a Sherman, and is not good in a close in knife fight.  I do not have a large number of games in this tank and am only average in it at this point. It’s play style is not really one I enjoy so I rarely play it.

M4A1 Revalorise: The Most Awesome Sherman of them All, T8 French, premium Medium

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This is a T8 Sherman tank. That’s two tiers higher than any other, and in some ways it shows, the tank is slow, has no armor and really only has one thing going for it, a gun with nice pen. The model is a little odd. It’s an M4A1 76W VVSS hull, and it’s well modeled.  This is the only M4A1 large hatch hulled tank in the game so the hull model was new, and they did a great job with that part. The turret looks a little fat, but it was modified, with new parts welded to the front and back, but the all-around vision cupola looks a little off.  It is supposed to be a limited Premium, so it will only be sold on special event weekends and stuff, and it’s a fun tank.  I have not played it much though, simply because I have so many T8 Premium tanks to choose from, I usually pic something I have a really good crew for.

The Tank plays like the classic glass canon. The gun is decently accurate and handles ok, but is really slow on the rate of fire. This is a sit back and snipe and anoy tank. It does make good money if you get some good damage in.  I really bought it because it was a Sherman, and I must have all things Sherman.

I’ll add the Tanks based on the Sherman Chassis later.

. . .

World of Tanks has come a long way from its release, and unlike most games it’s really only gotten better. As a 15 on 15 tank based PVP Arcade game, there is really nothing that can touch it. I think what’s really kept me playing is the companies push to improve and add to the game, even years into its release. For example a new physics system and sound system are about to be implemented.  The biggest advantage to the causal played, and as much as I  play, I’m now just a casual, is a battle can take no more than 15 minutes, and most of the time it’s less than 10.  If you want more action you can stack games, playing tank after tank, rack up the games, exp, and credits, but you don’t have to. As a casual with a huge tank base, I can play tanks I like, and burn a little real money on gold to keep premium and convert exp, and get any tank I want in a short time. I can jump on for three games after work, and even if everyone is a loss, still have a little fun.  Many a night after a hard day at real world work, when I’m dead tired, dehydrated, and hungry, I’ll play a game or two before I go to bed, sometimes on weekends, I can crank the games out like the old days, or get on with a few pals, and platoon up and spread T1 Conan tank Terror through T5. For the type of gaming I do now, this is just about the best game I could ask for.

4.5 out of 5 stars

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A variety of Heavy Tanks fighting it out on a ridge, in game shot, no interface.
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M4 Sherman in game shooting into a Valley, in game shot, interface off.
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Another shot of those heavies on the ridge

Combat Missions:  The Originals, Beyond Overload, Barbarossa to Berlin, and Africa Corps, Oldies But Goodies

So these games are pretty old at this point and can be purchased from the Battlefront Website for fifteen bucks each. They will run on very low power computers so for the price, if you like turned based, tactical combat simulations based in WWII, but these games. The guys who make the games are a small team, and I’m sure can use any cash the old games generate, and they are well worth the price.

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Combat Missions: Beyond Overlord was the first game in the series. Each one stands by itself, and incorporates improvements to the basic game engine. Africa Corps came last, and is the most polished of the three.  The games work in a interesting way, not like RTS games, these games work in 1 minute of battle turns, were between each minute, you can give units orders.  They focus on squad level, and individual vehicle level battles, but you can have some really huge battles with more than a battalion of troops on each side.  The interface is a tad clunky but easy enough to learn and you can modify any of the scenarios and campaigns that come in the game.  In these versions troops are available from the Germans, British, Americans and Russians, depending on the game version.

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Game play is great, each game has a huge number of premade battles and campaigns to play, they can be modified, and many actual battles are in the game. The unit selection is very good.

The main difference between each version is the setting, Beyond Overlord covers from D-Day until the end of the war in north west Europe, Barbarossa to Berlin Covers the beginning to end on the eastern front, and Africa Corps covers North Africa and Italy.  This may be the biggest flaw, as three standalone games, to get all the features of the interface, you have to buy the latest game, and they do not update the older ones.  This is a limitation of how these games were designed, and is a fairly minor thing.

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The game is fully 3d, and you can spin the map and zoom in and out to fixed points. For their day they were really great, and they are not so dated now that they are not fun. I find I play Beyond Overlord the most, simply because it has M26 Pershings in it, and I really like the tank.  My second favorite is Africa Corps, because it’s fun to kick German but in the M3 Lee.

I’m going to give these games a collective 4 out of 5 stars, since I still play, and the only game that really pulled me away was World of Tanks.

Combat Missions:  The Updated ‘Improved’ Version, Battle For Normandy

 

War Thunder: An ok Copy/Twist of WOT with an Air Element

Ok, I’m going to admit it, I had some bias going in, but the game was better than I thought. I’m still playing it, though really not enjoying it, much like I tried it when it was in early Beta and just had planes, but I will play it enough to give it a fair shake. Back when I tried it the first time the plane models were very nice, and still are, though many are inaccurate in big ways it was nice to see them go to the trouble to put cockpits in the game, it never struck me as all that much more realistic than WoWP, though it was clearly the superior product of the two. I have high standards as far as airplane games that want to be considered simulators, and WT really doesn’t cut it, simply put, their flight models in many cases just suck and don’t match history. I also know some people involved with the game modeling who said they strait up picked and chose their sources for model info based on how they wanted the game to work. When I want a online flightsim with realistic models, I’ll go back to the best, AcesHigh, by Hightech Creations. The game may be ugly, but the flight models are top notch, not some BS based on a bad Russian flight ‘sim’, or the whims of WT staff.

So then ground forces came out, and I heard so many unkind things about it, coupled with a very toxic forum experience, I never felt the need to try it. All the stories about how bad it was were enough for me. This became a slight problem when I couldn’t get one of my comrades to do the review for me. So, I decided to download it and have a look.  The game is easy to jump into; the looks, interface, and controls are all pretty much the same as WOT.   WT does have more game modes then WOT, and offers “realistic battles”, and “Tank Simulator battles”, but one thing I’m sure of so far, is none of it is as fun as WOT.  The game has some nice features that WOT does not, in some cases, these features highlight the WT teams lack of attention to detail though.

The cool features that stand out are the ability to look at internal modules on the tanks in the ‘garage’, and being able to preview anything on the tech tree. Something WOT took years to do.  The other is the window that pops up to show the damage done when round penetrated the tank, an interesting, if not a tad bit distracting. Some of the models are very pretty, and the game overall looks pretty good, though a lot like a few year old FPS game. Yes, this is with every option set to max. The game also looks a bit cartoony to as well. Popping off the co-ax and roof machine guns can be fun though. The multiple turret/gun support is nice. The customization options for your tank are pretty nice, and the WT system offers more variety and options to make your tank stand out. This is a good and bad thing; some tanks can get pretty garish.

The things I don’t like are glaring; the way the game plays is annoying. Driving the tanks around feels like work. It’s not a smooth fun thing to do in like in WOT. It’s a frustrating effort, often requiring more correction than is fun, and makes it hard to maintain any speed. The faster the tank is the worse it is.  This was described as ‘cow on ice’ syndrome by more than one friend, and until you’ve played it, it’s hard to image just how bad the tanks in War Thunder drive. This was an instant turn off when your test driving a tank, and when in an actual game, and there is some lag, it is a game killing disaster.  I want the tanks to be fun to drive, and since WOTs latest physics update, they made the tanks realistic enough to make driving just challenging enough, but kept the fun factor very high. The way the tanks in WOT drive feels right to me, granted I’ve never driven a tank, but I have spent a lot of time four wheeling jeeps, and the way WOT feels when one track has better traction feels right. I know someone who’s played WOT, WT and driven real tanks, and he came up with the ‘cow on ice’ term for WT and mainly plays the air portion of the game.

Another thing I don’t like is respawns, I like the short WOT battles. I like running a game, getting knocked out and then writing something, or fixing dinner, or watching TV with my wife, I don’t like to have to commit more time to the game. This was one of the things that really made me fall in love with WOT, 15 minutes at most, and my average is like 5 minutes, I’m aggressive.

So War thunder is doing better than I thought, and even though I don’t really enjoy it, I bought the Firefly bundle, so I’ll play it enough to get a really good feel for the game, but it’s not something I’ll jump into for a relaxing thing to do after work. I will continue to play it though, if for nothing else, to give it a fair review, but unlocking all the cool Shermans in the game is sounding somewhat fun.

Ok, so now onto the Sherman tanks and Vehicles based on the chassis, and like WOT, there are a lot of them, and a lot of model problems, just like WOT.

War Thunder Lee/Sherman Models.

Medium Tank M3 Lee:

This model is pretty good, nothing glaring stands out, the base model has the shorter M2 75mm gun with counter weight, so its modeled as if the stabilizer is there, and the counterweight is also on the 37mm gun mount indicating it had the stabilizer for that gun installed as well. I love how the site for the 75mm gun actually moves with the canon like it should; showing at least whoever modeled this tank understood how it worked. I love how you can use both guns and the 37mm turret is fully functional.  It has both bow .30 calibers installed, indicating an early production Lee, and other than the suspension seeming to be a little squished down, the model looks great. The WOT Lee is an early HD model, and is not as good, but they are close. There are no real problems with the x-ray view with this model either. If I have a minor complaint, it’s the tracks not fitting the sprocket very well.

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X-ray view of the M3 Lee showing internal modules and crew

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Medium Tank M4A1 Sherman:

This model is not as good as the M3 Lee, the final and transmission housing looks off a little, and the welds on the lifting hooks on the front of the hull are overdone. Some of the tools don’t look right and the rear hull proportions seem off, but it’s not a bad model. It is much better than the WOT M4(M4A1), since theirs doesn’t even really make sense. They get away with that being an arcade game with all kinds of what if and inaccurate tanks, mostly German granted, but all nations have a few. The X-ray view has no glaring flaws as either, so this model is another win for WT.

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Medium Tank M4 Sherman

This model is great on the outside, it shows an D-Day era M4, really the same tank as the M4A1, but with a welded upper hull instead of cast, with all the quick fix upgrades to help resolve some of the problems the tank had with ammo fires and known weak spots.  It has the cheek armor on the turret, the armor added in front of the drivers hoods, and the armor over the sponson ammo racks. In real life these additions had some internal changes that went with them. The ready rounds around the base of the turret were removed, and are still present in the x-ray view. There should also be a small exhaust deflector mounted in the rear and the things just look a little off there. WOT has no corresponding Sherman really, so we can’t really compare, but this is a nice model for sure.

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Medium Tank M4A2 Sherman

This model is pretty good but has more glaring problems as well. Fisher produced many small hatch M4A2 tanks that would look the M4 more than this later production M4A2. This model is of a late production M4A2 75 dry tank with a large hatch hull, but with the old improved dry ammo setup.  The turret should also have at least the cheek armor cast in, and probably a high bustle, and the turret in the model doesn’t seem to have either.  Then there is the X-Ray on this one, it shows the radiator in the completely wrong place, and still has the ready rounds around the base of the turret. In real life, most of these tanks went to the Soviet Union as lend lease.

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You can see the misplaced radiator in this image.
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Another shot, showing the radiator in the wrong place. The radiator should be behind the motor.

Medium Tank M4A1 (76)W Sherman

This model is really well done, with just a few flaws. It should have rubber chevron tracks, and the fenders are wrong, like the wrong ones Dragon used on their M4A1 76W model. It also has a cover over the hull blower vent between the hatches, that shouldn’t be there. It also has all the steel bar stock welded to the mantlet for the canvas cover, which was not done until much later in the war. The .30 caliber co-ax machine gun is sticking to far out as well. Still, great model on the outside and no problems with the x-ray model either. In real life this tank saw widespread use starting with Operation Cobra.

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No real major flaws, though the suspension seems to be compressed to much, or maybe scaled a little small, overall, this is a very pretty digital Sherman.

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Medium Tank M4A2 (76) W Sherman

This model has some issues, first off the huge glaring ones, it’s a wet storage tank, all factory 76 tanks were, yet this model has the sponson ammo rack armor in place, when it was not installed on these tanks. It has the mantlet cover the M4A1 (76)w model has the mounting bars for, and some tanks sent to the Soviet Union apparently had them so this is a nice feature, though the color seems, off.   They got the motor type right in the x-ray view, but the radiator location is hilariously wrong. Other than these glaring problems, it’s a nice looking tank.

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This model has some glaring flaws. It is also a model that was not used by US forces pretty much at all. The flaws start with the welded on armor over the hull ammo racks, but since the tank is a wet tank, there were no racks in the hull sponsons anymore, so they stopped putting those plates on. That should have been an easy one to fix, since no T23 turreted tanks had these extra plates added.

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Radiator placement is the other flaw on this one.

Medium Tank M4A3 76 W HVSS Sherman

This model is really nice on the outside, representing a great example of a Korean War era Easy 8. The model looks great except for the package shelf, it doesn’t look right. The real problem with this model is the engine compartment in X-ray view. They have the twin diesel 6046 in place, when it should be a Ford GAA V8. They did get the radiator in the right place, but it’s a tad small. This is a more accurate M4A2 (76)w then the modeled M4A2 (76)w. Since the WOT M4A3 (76)w HVSS tank has not gone HD, this one wins hands down. It even has the post war torsion bar assisted engine bay grill doors.

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Such a pretty model, but they got the motor completely wrong!

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No M4A3 ever came with the 6046 twin diesel as shown.

  Medium Tank M4A3 (105)

This model is messed up pretty bad. The Hull is ok, but it has the post war engine deck hinges that should not be there. The place this model really goes wrong is the turret. They have a poorly modified low bustle turret, whoever modeled this didn’t know all M4/M4A3 105 tanks has special turrets with two ventilators, and they were all high bustle turrets final general 75mm turrets.

On the X-ray view they got the size and location of the 105 ammo storage all wrong, and the tank has an GM 6046 twin diesel instead of the proper Ford GAA, though, they did get the radiator in the right place for a change, though it’s still to small!

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Better radiator placement, still the wrong motor though.

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Take a close look at the back of the turret, it should be almost flat, since it should be a high bustle turret, but its not, they just added a second ventilator to the low bustle turret and slapped the 105 gun mount on it. Sloppy.

Assault Tank M4A3E2 Jumbo/M4A3E2 76

A decent model, though the suspension appears to be a little to compressed, it may just be me but all the Shermans WT seem to be a little compressed, maybe they don’t like the environment.  The only glaring thing wrong with the model that stands out to me is the little machined spots in the gun mount on the turret are flared back, when they shouldn’t be, but this is minor. The only flaw is the tracks seem to be spaced to far out from the hull, almost like it has the E9 mod. It’s also missing the exhaust deflector, and the rear hull area is not a strong point on any of the Shermans in the game. X-ray view still has a GM 6046 in place of the correct GAA, and the radiator is the right size and in the right place! The 76 version is the same model with a different gun.

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Other than the wrongly modeled machined holes in the turret, a pretty decent model.

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Will the same wrong motor problem.
Jumbo with M1A1 gun, same model same flaws, longer tube. Threaded barrel is also wrong, the guns used were all unthreaded.

3-inch Gun Motor Carriage M10

This model looks like a pretty decent model of a mid-production M10 TD. It has the proper 6046 exhaust at the rear hull. The X-ray model is where the issues show and this is an amusing problem, this model has the Ford GAA when it should have the 6046, and the radiators are to small.

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A pretty nice M10 model, with an amusing flaw.

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Look at that, a Ford GAA, so they have the right motor modeled, they just can’t get it into the right tanks!

90-mm Gun Motor Carriage M36

This model is not as good as the M10, the turret doesn’t look quite right. On X-ray this did finally get the right motor in, but the radiator is still to small.

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Right motor, in the right tank, with the radiator in the right spot, but still to small.

17pdr M10 Achilles 65th Reg

This model looks pretty good, though I would have to really look over Achilles Photos to find any major flaws on the exterior. The X-ray model has one amusing flaw, it has the Ford GAA that should be in all the M4A3 tanks, and their GM6046 should be in this tank!

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So this tank should have the GM6046, but has the GAA, is this stuff really that confusing?

Sherman IC Firefly (Premium)

There is nothing really wrong with this model, at least nothing major, the armored cover for the hull machine gun looks a little off, but not to bad. Everything else seems right at first glance, even the X-ray view everything is correct. This is a very nice looking IC Firefly, the rarest version of the C tanks. I liked it enough to buy it. It has the add on armor for the sponson ammo racks, the add-on on cheek armor, and all the extra boxes the British added to their Shermans, it is missing the extra hull mounted fire extinguishers.

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A nice solid Ic Firefly, and everything’s in the right place, I liked this one enough to buy it.

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Sherman VC Firefly

This model is a little off, they got the wheel spacing for the longer hull right, but it has a lot of crap on the hull I’ve never seen in pictures before. It does have the external fire extinguishers the Ic lacks.  It also does not have the proper A57 Multibank motor, and the radiator is in the wrong spot, even though they put the bulge in the upper rear deck for it. Other than these flaws, the model is ok.

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I really like the Sherman V/M4A4, so I was disappointed to see they didn’t bother to get the right motor in it. That and the weird things on this model are it’s only big flaws, well, plus it has the wrong sprockets.

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. . .

 

I would say, after looking the models over, the modelers have never heard of the Sherman Minutia site. I would also say they don’t know the difference between the high bustle and low bustle 75mm turrets. They also don’t know the actual sizes of any of the components inside the tanks.

My overall take on War Thunder has changed a little, I still think they borrowed far more than most rabid fans will admit, from WOT. They game also has serious flaws if you like fun, but that’s just my initial impression, I’ll play several  hundred games and see how I feel then.

Now considering some of the amusing comments I got from my glossary entry on Warthunder, keep in mind this is a game review, IE opinion based, so try and keep calm, the world isn’t ending because someone on the Internet thinks WT is subpar.