Pro Tip: RO 2 Tank Tactics, Cunning, Exploits, Binds & Noob Manual
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=70550
http://oi39.tinypic.com/21evm6r.jpg
http://oi39.tinypic.com/x0o32s.jpg
http://oi40.tinypic.com/21ju05u.jpg
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595825891495964432/26F4112C51AAA2739AA6C735FE179D06A490DEA7/
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/595825891495962524/ED1054C882DA8C7B7F0A6A926A68337E7BD011A0/
RO 2 Tanking
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=65420
Movement while not driver
You can use the normal movement keys (default = WASD keys) to give the driver orders to move. It is kind of clumsy and delayed, but have to do it sometimes. Practice getting the hang of it rather than always switching to drivers seat.
Commander of the T-34
The T-34 has the commander also doubling as the gunner (baaad). In many of the possible views, left clicking will make the turret rapidly swing to the direction you left-clicked at. Useful for acquiring targets, turning the turret a certain way before trouble hits, etc.
Situational awareness
Tanks have terrible situational awareness. Compared to a soldier, they have greatly impaired hearing and can barely look outside. When moving it is super loud from the engine and the inside is bouncing around. You must have situational awareness to find out what is going on, where the threats are (especially enemy tanks) so you can avoid getting killed while siezing opportunities - such as popping out of cover and killing a P4 or rushing to some better cover on their flank.
You have the following options:
1. The PERISCOPE. Is the main method, is safe from small arms. Also mated to the gun for shooting. The view is terribly narrow though so not a good way to get an idea of what is really going on all around. Press the use key to toggle it being slaved to the main gun. When detached, you can look around 360 without the main gun or turret moving at all. When re-attaching it, the whole turret & gun will quickly swing to aim at what you were looking at, like a modern main battle tank. Great for looking for acquiring targets with, much less cumbersome than mousing around with the whole turret. As a bonus, I don't think anyone is really aware you can do this. They just assume you are only looking straight along the main gun. Infantry (AT especially) tend to hide out of sight whenever the main gun of a tank swings toward their direction, then pop out again when the gun is pointed elsewhere.
2. Turret left-side view slit: There is a view slit on the left side of the turret. Mouse left in the turret and you will see it. Then, I think, left click (or is it right?). You can use the sprint key to zoom in and get a very good view through it. Left clicking the mouse while in its view will make the main gun turn to where you left clicked at (as usual), which in this case is 90 degrees to the left - where the slit is facing. You can do a 360 rotation drill, left clicking continously while looking out the slit zoomed in. Will give a quick idea if enemy AT infantry are closing in on you. Also, rememeber that they only think you are looking through the main optics along the main gun, and they won't try to conceal themselves unless they see that gun about to swing over them. The problem for me is accessing the slit in a practical way. Have to navigate the interface. A bit slow and cumbersome.
3. Opening the hatch and sticking your head out. The commander of the T-34 has a big nice hatch that he hunkers down behind (doesn't look like it from first person, but from third person he does). Like a bullet shield. Here you can see and hear everything from a commanding position. Can use the binoculars to spot stuff far away, and you can see over obstacles that obscure the entire rest of the tank. I don't recommend spending more than brief moments up there then hatching down again, just in case someone takes a shot at you. The shield protects the commander though but only if facing the right way. It is usually safe to be turned out while on the move. Too difficult for most infantry to hit. Left clicking makes the turret turn where you were clicking.
4. Talk to people on the team. Get them to feed you info about what is going on. Especially the enemy tank positions.
Did some testing with a friend. T-34 vs P4. Various distances, angles, spots. Some interesting data:
1. T-34 penetrated P4 armour universally, including the turret head on, 9/10 times (or so), within 650 meters. Literally could shoot anywhere on the front of the turret and smash through. Could kill one or two crew and breaking the turret armour. In general however, overall interior damage was limited. Aim for the ammo bins.
2. The P4 did not penetrate the T-34 universally within 650 meters. Even at 100 meters frontal armour, many shots would deflect. A slight upward incline for the T-34 made big difference. Angling it slightly at 1 o'clock also helped. Frontal armour was often tough and deflected or absorbed plenty of punishment. The hull MG seemed to be the most reliable spot to penetrate. It was inconsistant, where long range shots seemed more deadly and reliable than closer range. The turret behaved similar to the P4 turret except penetrating hits seemed to do more damage (killing commander/loader more reliably). Penetrating shots from the front right chassis would kill the hull MG crewman and break something on the rear left (damaging the brakes).
3. The tracks seemed highly resiliant to punishment on both tanks but can be broken.
4. The sights are often messed up whenever the tank has been involved in aiming and rotating turret while on an upward, sideway or downward incline. Usually it starts shooting to the left of the sights. Something seems to be amiss when the tank isn't on flat ground. When having driven only on fairly flat ground without aiming, the sights tended to be completely accurate.
5. T-34 periscope rotation does not appear to move visually when seen from the outside.
6. The main guns were almost never damaged.
7. Frequently, the turret rotation is out of sync on the enemy tank. The main gun facing maybe 20-30 degrees to the side of you, yet shots come flying sideways dead on target.
8. Graphically and sound wise: A shot not hitting a tank gives off lots of dirt thrown in the air and a muffled explosion sound. A deflected shot gives off a small spark and a "plionk" sound. The shell itself can visually be seen bouncing off and landing somewhere sometimes. A penetrating shot often give off a small explosion graphical effect, and a more metal crushing sound effect, no matter what real damage it did inside the tank. The same appears to apply to AT rifles where shooting at a vision slit can bring small explosions each time, without damaging anything on the tank. Unclear if the FX is different when an armour plate is damaged by a hit or not.
Lessons learned
1. Stay away from non-flat ground (with one exception). T-34 should park on an upward slope.
2. P4 armour is non-existant within 650m. But T-34 frontal armour is still viable. Getting as much of an angle as possible is important. 1 o'clock angle towards enemy. Park on an upward slope (to raise the front of the tank slightly). Strongly avoid doing the opposite - being shot at while parked downhill.
3. P4 best defence is hull-down with only turret exposed. Shots will penetrate the turret, but will not reliably kill crew or damage components.
I should probably have mentioned that the testing was not extensive enough to cover ranges beyond 650 meters. :S Will try to get to that stage next session. Pardon for being misleading.
I don't remember testing shooting at T-34 turret at an angle. However, I think that there were many cases where the shells would deflect if shot far enough to the side of the turret. Hitting dead on is easy on these shorter ranges though, with pretty disastrous results inside the tank.
Regarding the "T-34 front armour deflecting at 100m". It did not do this if flat and head on, but when angled a little to the side and on a slight upward slope, the P4 could shoot all day and not penetrate the front (more than 9/10 shots) - unless hitting the hull MG port or some other critical place we did not discover. The driver's hatch slit took direct hits (I was in there, saw it) without penetration also.
I am also of the impression that the armour is mostly irrelevant at these ranges and maybe the interior damage does not spall enough. During our testing when shooting at the P4, often counted many "hit, penetred" when shooting the front of the turret and chassis, without it having any effect on the crew or components inside. I don't know enough about the extent of spalling on that metal & shells back then, but I imagine there would be lots of hot metal fragments being torn off and bouncing around a bit (striking crew memebers) in the tank if penetrated.
If knowing where to aim on the P4, and being able to accurately put a shell there = boooooom. This is in the chassis only. The turret is un-boomable, but can be decrewed.. eventually, or if being lucky. Don't know, seems to be hard to do it consistently (but not hard to do on the T-34).
EDIT: When angling the T-34 to 1 o'clock, the deflections were more likely (at any range) from the front but the best benefit by far came from being at an upward slope, which increases the angle of the already nicely sloped frontal armour. Considering how thick that armour also is, I do not find it implausible that shells could deflect even at 100'ish meters. Note also that P4 hits on the (slightly) exposed right side of the chassis when in the 1 o'clock position, did a mix of penetration and deflection. The right armour plate would get damaged quickly, and the right track could also be damaged. But don't recall any catastrophical effects.
Will attempt a systematic test at 100m, 500m and 1000m. Center shots from flat ground on turret, turret ring and chassis. From 12 o'clock and 1 o'clock.
How to aim and hit properly from a distance?
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=64202
When to use which artillery-option?
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=68171
As there is no detailed information about the artillery strikes, my experience while playing commander is the following:
1. Mortar barrage is useful for short, intense small artillery fire on a small area with lots of enemies in. Very useful for clearing out capzones.
2. Regimental gun-barrage is useful for areas with more spread out enemy inf and armor in it, not that useful to clear out capzones but useful for blocking paths since it takes quite long for it to end
3. Katyusha's for a wide area, powerful against enemy armor and hidden enemies camping outside
OP has it right. Mortars are intense killers dropping in three barrages, artillery is a minute long area denial using six barrages and rockets are a more spread out mortar attack with a single barrage.
Personally I find the artillery barrages being the most useful support for a defender. You basically disable a large part of the map, stalling the attackers and funneling them to the other flank.
Mortars are good for punishing passive attackers that stay in packs but advance very slowly, making their approach very predictable. I also use these when firing close to my team as they don't deviate too much and so they are very easy to stand clear of. The street in front of Town Hall on Spartanovka is a good place for mortars as artillery would spread too much.
Rockets, because they are so brief, are only really good for softening up an objective for the attackers, especially if you intend to move up yourself immediately after calling in the strike. In public games it is safer to place an artillery strike behind the objective to prevent defenders from getting back on to the objective while you fight your way on to the objective with firearms and smoke, because teammates love to run into obvious artillery barrages even when you warn them about it.
Improved controls v1.0
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=71477
How to get hold to crouch (100% functional)
http://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/showthread.php?t=58226
Since launch I've been tweaking the controls to my liking. The result is now a quite large autohotkey script. In my opinion, it falls in the catgory 'using existing controls to create control scheme that is more smooth and user-friendly'. So I most definately do not consider it cheating or exploiting. However, I won't share it without admin/dev approval, as I'm not sure I'm allowed to.
Movement Features:
- zoom and sprint split to different keys
- Tactical Display shows up while holding the sprint key. Reasoning: it's a good time to receive tactical info during sprint, as you're not aiming at stuff and hopefully moving towards objectives. This feature can be switched on/off on the fly.
- Pressing fire while sprinting will stop the sprint, thus allowing you to fire. No tactical display is shown to allow clear aiming. Once the fire button is released, the sprint is resumed.
- Walking key (already in the game)
General Weapon handling and zoom Features:
Provides a system with 2 levels of zoom and easy switching between them. The standard IS zoom (found in ROGame.ini) should be set to none or very little to fully differentiate the 2 zoom levels. The mouse wheel is used to control zooming levels as follows:
- when entering IS, there is almost no zoom, good for close quarters
- mousewheel-up brings you to a full zoom level + holding breath (no button holding required). Also a separate button on your keyboard is available to go into zoom state quickly
- mousewheel-down brings you to a no zoom again
- while in zoomed state, click mousewheel-up again to take another steady breath. This is only possible at an interval of 1.4 secs (this limit is already build into the game). Also this will issue a spot enemy command. Reason: since you're taking a deep breath again, it is very likely you have an enemy in your sights. Your teammates will be grateful for this information.
- The following functions ends the zoom and brings you to normal view again:
+ reload
+ entering / exiting IS
+ selecting a weapon (note: separate buttons should be used to select each weapon)
+ melee
+ prone
- Pressing fire while holding a weapon select key will throw away current weapon to quick select new weapon
LMG Features:
- pressing and holding IS while walking around will make you walk. This allows for better recoil handling.
- pressing prone will keep you crouched behind cover while deployed
static HMG Features:
- when using the HMG, 2 extra levels are added to the 2 general levels:
+ level 0: crouched behind HMG
+ level 1: unzoomed over the sights
+ level 2: zoomed over the sights
+ level 3: zoomed IS
Again, the levels are switched between with the mousewheel.
- when undeploying your HMG, you will always be in crouch
sniper Features:
- when using the sniper, 1 extra level is added to the 2 general levels:
+ level 1: unzoomed IS
+ level 2: zoomed IS
+ level 3: scope
Again, the levels are switched between with the mousewheel.
Various keybinds
Since I ran out of easily accessible keys to use, I added a few extra 'combos'
- IS + melee = drop weapon
- hold weapon key + fire = drop weapon, quick select new one
- mouse wheel down while not in zoom = to cover
- 1 button for both lean directions (in combination with strafe keys)
I figured out how to use the tactical display while running:
find thid line in your input.ini
Bindings=(Name="X",Command="Sprint",Control=False, Shift=False,Alt=Fa lse,bIgnoreCtrl=False,bIgnoreShift=False,bIgnoreAl t=False)
and modifiy it like this:
Bindings=(Name="X",Command="Sprint | Tactical_Display",Control=False,Shift=False,Alt=False,bIgnoreCtrl= False,bIgnoreShift=False,bIgnoreAlt=False)
Remember that there is a blank before and after the |
Red Orchestra 2 Obscure Tactics & Features
You can change fire mode on stationary MGs. [?]
You can doubleclick on the class instead of selecting and clicking "continue".
Also see:
"Red Orchestra 2 Game Manual" (for noobs)
http://raw-recruits.com/red-orchestra-2-game-manual
and
http://insurgencymod.blogspot.com/2012/12/pro-tip-red-orchestra-2-t-34.html
IMSIDBAE0C77EF39F91A3549E04B2734A507E050E5B7E