A Guide to playing SPGs

ZZR1100

Not mine obv. its long but well worth a read.
edited down a bit . here is the original full version.
http://forum.worldoftanks.com/index.php?/topic/26877-the-spg-manual/

Demonic Spoon’s Definitive Guide to SPG Play


Theory: What is the purpose of an SPG?

Most of this is intuitively known by players but isn’t often discussed or thought about. What are the benefits of playing an SPG instead of another tank type, say, a TD?

Is it raw damage? No, not particularly. Long reload times combined with a reliance on high explosive shells mean that your total damage output over time is actually very small compared to most tanks in the battle. Is it the ability to avoid getting hit? Not really. While it may be beneficial for you to not get hit, one less body on the front lines means that some poor teammate of yours will gets hot at more which hurts your team.

SPGs are effective because they can provide fire almost anywhere on the map, wherever it is needed, and can be effective against anything they see. SPGs’ high caliber HE shells allows them to put the hurt on everything they hit. Most of the time, the enemy has at least a few tanks that are difficult to damage with conventional AP weapons thanks to heavy armor. Or, maybe they don’t have such heavy armor, but they have overwhelming firepower in that area of the map that a normal tank sticking its head out to shoot will get blown apart.

SPGs exist, simply, to kill stuff others can’t. In practice, this means high tier heavy tanks, tank destroyers, and enemy artillery. I will explain the process behind counter battery fire later, but needless to say, there aren’t many opportunities for most conventional tanks to deal with them. Heavy tanks have formidable armor and large guns that makes taking them on head on a bad idea. Tank destroyers tend to hang back. Between their long range, low profiles and giant guns, dealing with them directly is often a bad idea. Naturally a tank’s threat becomes more visible the higher tier it is. An IS-4 has a bigger gun and more formidable armor than a KV-3.
But it’s not enough to simply think “Okay, I need to target high tier TDs and heavies”. Not all heavy tanks are equally threatening. Sometimes it may even be better to target a medium tank that is causing your team particular problems. You have to really think about what types of targets you should be shooting at, based on how much of a threat he is to your team, how easily you can hit him, and how much damage you can do to him. Target selection becomes even more important in higher tier, slower-firing SPGs. Taking a shot at a low-priority target means that in a few seconds, when something juicier comes into view, you’ll still be reloading. Sometimes not firing at all is the best course of action.

Now, movement. You won’t always be able to hit a given target due to cover, range, or other issues. Sometimes it may be good to reposition yourself to get a better shot, or reduce the time it takes your shell to travel to the target. This depends on the SPG. My SU-14 is very slow and very easily spotted, yet has good accuracy. As such, you will never see me anywhere other than the back of my base. However, the Priest and M41 (and, hell, any American SPG) are quite quick and able to reposition very easily. Use this advantage.

Basic Mechanics

Here I’m going to go over basic game mechanics that drastically affect SPG play. Just because you’ve played before does not mean this will all be obvious.
Firstly, all SPG drivers should know how to do this, but many do not. In the overhead view, hitting X will lock your hull in position and will only let your gun move.
Why is this useful? Look at the bottom left of the interface. I’m sure you’ve noticed that SPGs and TDs have black lines extending from the front of the gun to the side that indicate how far your gun can move to the left or right before having to move the hull. When you turn the hull, your accuracy suddenly turns to **** and you have to sit there and spend crucial seconds aiming again.

Instead, use this to line yourself up against the group of tanks you are shooting at. Your targets should be roughly in the middle of this indicator (e.g. your SPG’s hull should be centered on them), maybe with a little bit of exaggeration to the left or right depending on which direction you think they are moving. Now, you can aim and fire at will without having to completely re-aim until you want to target a completely different group of tanks.

This is crucial. I believe most of the complaints about aim time on the forums stem from not understanding this concept.

Secondly, you can lock your gun in place by holding the right mouse button, and you can CTRL + right click on the minimap to zoom to different locations. You can use this to check out other parts of the map without totally borking your shot (this is obviously more important in SPGs with low reload speeds). ALWAYS keep appraised of the situation on all parts of the map. The situation may demand you switch focuses quickly. If you see a teammate going deep into the enemy base and lighting up a bunch of targets, look for possible enemy SPG sightings.

In my SU-14, I use the time inbetween my long reloads (30+ seconds) to look around the enemy base and see if I find any SPG tracers. If I don’t, I can just snap back to what I was shooting at before and fire again. if I do, I know exactly where I need to aim to get a quick, easy SPG kill.
Also, if you lock the gun in place, you can rotate laterally (A and D) without breaking your aim! Done correctly, you can follow moving targets without having to completely refocus your shot.

Now, I’m going to go over high explosive shells, as that’s what you will be using almost all the time.
For the basic mechanics behind HE shell damage, here is a quote from Overlord:

Quote


How HE damage works. Brief description:

1. If HE shell managed to penetrate the armor.

- Similar to AP shell, it goes inside the vehicle and explodes there.

- Full damage according to the specs is inflicted, plus HE deals additional damage to internal modules and/or crew. Apart from its basic damage value, each shell has additional value that determines possible damage to crew/internal modules if penetration was successful.

2. If HE shell didn't manage to penetrate or exploded near the tank (eg SPG shot)

- If the explosion took place directly on the armor the damage is reduced by 50%, if the explosion took place near the tank the damage is reduced by 50% plus it gets some extra reduction depending on distance to vehicle.

- Heat wave of HE shell "seeks for" soft spot on the armor, where it is possible to penetrate. Heat wave makes cone-shaped aperture in the armor with approx 45 deg cone angle.

- Vehicle's armor partly absorbs heat damage (each tanks has its own value), including installed spall liner.

- Heat wave damages crew and decreases vehicle's hit points. Modules are not damaged.



Now…
All gun damage is determined almost solely on its caliber. One 57mm gun does the same damage per hit as every other, all 76mm guns do the same damage, and all 105mm guns do the same damage. (EXCEPTION: Low tier German SPGs have 15cm guns but low damage. This is an artificial change for the sake of balance. The SU-5’s 152mm is also guilty of this). Unlike AP shells, however, penetration for HE shells is also determined by shell caliber. As you read above, penetration for HE shells is critical.

So, how can we use this information to maximize damage? Firstly, just like every other tank in the game, you want to aim for the parts of the tank that have the lowest armor. If you can hit the side or rear of a tank, that’s great. If you can hit the top, it’s even better. For those who don’t know, a tank’s top armor is always its weakest. The Tiger has anywhere from 120-80mm of armor depending on where you hit it. However, it only has (as I recall) around 30mm of armor on the top. Hitting this top armor is the difference between not penetrating and doing less than half of your stated damage, or penetrating fully and doing full HE damage + module/crew damage. If you’ve ever wondered why some shots do ~20% damage on a successful hit and the others kill the same tank outright, this is why.

Another consideration is module damage. Hits at the base of the turret are most likely to cause an ammo rack explosion (as it’s near there that the ammo is stored on most tanks). Hits on the rear of the tank are most likely to nail the engine and/or fuel tanks causing a fire. However, it has been my personal experience that causing fires with SPG shells is quite difficult to do.

The ability to hit the upper parts of the armor is determined by two things. One is, simply, the gun. Some guns fire at a higher angle than others. The second is your range; at a longer range, you will fire at a higher angle. The former is always good; high angle guns let you hit the top armor easier and get around cover better. The latter has a significant trade off in that it takes longer for your shell to land, and your shell will be less accurate overall.
Optimum range to position yourself at, then, depends entirely on your SPG. I find my SU-14 performs great from the other side of the map, whereas the Priest is often better off getting a bit closer.

Next, aiming! Here is how aiming works, for all tanks… It’s very simple, but has rather subtle ramifications. The game aims your gun at whatever angle is necessary to, assuming perfect accuracy, hit the exact point you’re aiming at.

Why is this relevant? As an SPG, you will be aiming at the top of the tanks die to your camera position. The top of the tank is obviously at a higher elevation than the ground under it…you’ll notice that when your aiming reticule moves over a tank, the small green/red dot moves back. This dot indicates where the shell is aimed at the ground’s elevation. When you aim at a tank, you are actually aiming at some point on the ground behind it that, when fired at, will result in a hit on the point you aim.

This is important any time you are either aiming at a moving tank, or at a tank that has disappeared into the fog of war. You don’t want to fire a shell aimed at the ground underneath the tank. You want to fire a shell at the tank. To hit a moving/hidden tank the same as if it were fully revealed and stationary, you will have to aim a bit behind it. How far behind? It depends on your range and angle. Watch how the green/red dot changes when you mouse over that tank, and use that to estimate how much you must offset it by.

Counterbattery Fire

As stated way at the top of this guide, you are the best counter to counter enemy SPGs. This often does not become common until higher tier matches, as lower tier SPGs both harder to hit and lower-ranged. However, depending on the circumstances, counterbattery can be useful in all games.

Firstly, the very basic principle that all counterbattery works off of: you can always see shell tracers, especially HE shell tracers. This means that even in your overheat view, you can watch shells leave the barrel of an enemy tank and travel towards your unsuspecting teammates. Counterbattery fire works by waiting for the enemy SPG to fire, and then shooting at where you know he must be.

Now, when should you do this? Firstly, look at the situation. If there are a large number of SPGs on the enemy team, then the chances of seeing one fire at any given time are much higher. If there’s only one other SPG on the enemy team, however, it’s often not worth it. If the enemy SPGs tend to be lower tier than you, it likely is not worth it (would an SU-14 really waste a shell on an SU-26?). However, if the SPGs are generally of the same or higher tier (meaning they will likely be inflicting as much or more damage than you can), and you’re still capable of killing it quickly, then killing is a great boon to your team.

Are you in an SPG that can counterbattery well? You have to have both the accuracy to hit the target, and enough frontloaded damage to kill it outright before it can move. A low shell travel time (either due to high muzzle velocity or close range) is also good as they will certainly attempt to move after firing to avoid this.
Are there any overt threats that need taken care of? No matter how many awesome high tier, unprotected SPGs there are on the other team, if there’s an urgent threat your team can’t deal with on its own, such as an IS-7 demolishing your flank, deal with that first. Enemy SPGs are very much a secondary target for when you do not have anything absolutely critical to shoot at (naturally, being able to recognize what needs to be shot at vs what doesn’t is the mark of a good SPG player).
Lastly, don’t go into it blindly. Have an idea of where the enemy SPG is –before- you start hovering over his base looking. Ask your team to ping the location of SPG tracers they see. When you’re playing normally, look for enemy SPG tracers and, figure out where they must be based on the shells’ trajectory. Only then should you really start looking to counterbattery.

You can also look for little clues as to the SPG’s general location. If you see downed trees in the back forests of Malinovka, for example…you know that there’s probably an SPG in that general vicinity, as tanks do not normally take that route. Destroyed walls in the middle of their base, however, mean absolutely nothing.
Obviously, when doing counterbattery, your targets will not be spotted. Remember last section where I explained how the aiming system worked, and how you need to aim a little bit behind where the target is to hit them square in the hull and maximize your chances for a direct hit? If you don’t, read it again, because it’s pretty useful here.

So, what happens if you’re being counterbatteried? If you suspect you might get fired at by the other team, it is good practice to move after firing. Naturally this is easier in SPGs with a low fire rate, and less of an issue in low tier games. Sometimes you can get away with not doing this; use your instincts. Moving does have the significant downside of forcing you to reaim and possibly miss shots you might have otherwise gotten, but it can save your ass.
If the enemy team is actively counterbatterying you (e.g. you see shells exploding next to you), then you must move after every shot. Do not even sit still long enough to see your shot hit. When your shot leaves the barrel, MOVE. Done properly this will save you in the vast majority of circumstances. Depending on the situation they may stop if they’re unsuccessful for awhile. If you’re in a fast SPG, you can easily relocate well outside of their field of vision and they will not be the wiser.

Conclusion

All of this information is very general, but should get you well on your way to being successful in an SPG (whether you’re a new player just starting to play them, or an experienced one hoping to get better). Later on I will likely add a section on individual SPGs, which I may need assistance on as I only have experience with the Russian tree and part of the American tree.

As stated above, I welcome comments and suggestions and other useful tips. Thanks for reading my giant wall of text, and enjoy.