Ramming with a tank... why?

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Is it just a bad habit from WoT or is there some strategic benefit to ramming an enemy player with your tank? Fair enough if you know that there's a friendly coming around to finish off the tank you're ramming (who might not be able to get away) but surely it would be easier to just blow the enemy's tracks off and then move into cover as your teammate flanks them?

Just got me wondering when a T-34 rammed my Sherman earlier. It was on the Jungle map in Realistic and he'd managed to pin me between him and a rock. I could only get shallow-angle shots on his turret but he could only get shallow-angle shots on my front armour (which is tricky enough to penetrate at the best of times unless you can take your time to shoot through the MG port). Can't really say he helped by taking me out of the fight because he was taking himself out of the fight as well to keep me pinned.

Eventually his constant driving into me and my attempts to turn my tank and force him away gave me a clear shot at his side so I could plant one in his engine block and set him on fire. His wreck didn't pin me either so I was able to drive off and help cap the point for the win.

So is there some strategy to tank ramming that I'm not seeing or is it just people falling into the trap of Ramming Always Works[tvtropes.org]?

EDIT: To save time and post-space - ramming them into environmental hazards, like into lakes, off cliffs, etc, goes without saying. I had my first character in Rogue Trader own a grapplehawk solely so that I could use it to pick up bad guys and drop them off cliffs, hab-blocks, into a pit of Emperor-knows-what, etc so applying that concept to ramming tanks is kind of a no-brainer for me.

[Pentanix]

If theyre on a cliff or something like that you could push them off and watch them burn at the bottom :)

[Some Smug Gryph]

Well, sometimes when you ram at high enough speeds crew can be knocked out, transmission damaged, and tracks destroyed. But most of the time people do it to pin you to a wall and shoot at the closest possible range

[Mandalorian_Hemi]

I lost my gun and pushed a TD into the ocean and drowned him in Jungle, I also tipped over a flak truck so he couldnt shoot me anymore. It has its uses. :)

[Captain Michael Vulpi]

I have found that if you do this against some tanks they actually can't depress their gun low enough to shoot you but you can still shoot them

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Guess I should've said that using the environment to kill an enemy tank went without saying. I haven't seen anyone ram me with enough force to knock the crew out although I can see that as a possibility - the number of times I've accidentally driven full-force into a tree...

And I'm not sure how it could help you kill them just by being able to shoot them. That T-34 that rammed me last night could only hit my Sherman's upper glacis, the strongest part of just about any tank, and at a bad angle to boot. He had no chance of penetrating me and I don't see how that was a better option than moving back and trying to shoot my side or blow my tracks off as I came round the corner after him. I can see it having a use if you ram someone and still have a clear shot at weak spots like the driver's hatch or machine gun port, but it feels too risky. And if you ram them from the side or behind, why even ram? Why not just make the most of them showing you their side or rear and start putting shots into their engine or the like?

[Quincy Jones]

There are valid tactics for tank ramming. U could royally screw someones aiming up, and even mess up their turret position enough to make them useless. Take something like a stug for example. You could ram a stug so that he can't turn his turret to you or any other target, and then procede to bombard it with your offensive weapons, until it's dead.

[Grizzly Summoner]

Ram-Arty-Suicide if all else has failed. Also if you have a really fast turret and they don't.

[Zero Signal]

Ramming to shove them off a cliff is good..and so is ramming them to seriously throw their aim off..Its may even be a more viable tactic than ramming bombers is

[Raider]

Theres an interview with a german tanker from WW2. He Relates the story of being on the eastern front in a PZIII crossing a field with other tanks when suddenly the soviets were into them. T34's and KV's. he said before he could even fire a shot he was rammed by a KV, who backed up and rammed him again to put his tank out of action. so if a KV of all things was ramming enemy tanks in WW2 just think how often T34's did it

[Egro]

Originally posted by Venger:

Theres an interview with a german tanker from WW2. He Relates the story of being on the eastern front in a PZIII crossing a field with other tanks when suddenly the soviets were into them. T34's and KV's. he said before he could even fire a shot he was rammed by a KV, who backed up and rammed him again to put his tank out of action. so if a KV of all things was ramming enemy tanks in WW2 just think how often T34's did it

Yup, Ramming when all else are failed. It common for bunch of T34 to Ram a Tiger out of commission.. :D

[Procrastinating Gamer]

Originally posted by ARC8Egro:

Originally posted by Venger:

Theres an interview with a german tanker from WW2. He Relates the story of being on the eastern front in a PZIII crossing a field with other tanks when suddenly the soviets were into them. T34's and KV's. he said before he could even fire a shot he was rammed by a KV, who backed up and rammed him again to put his tank out of action. so if a KV of all things was ramming enemy tanks in WW2 just think how often T34's did it

Yup, Ramming when all else are failed. It common for bunch of T34 to Ram a Tiger out of commission.. :D

Oh I don't doubt it happening in real-life, I just mean why you'd do it in War Thunder. Some of the damage from ramming in real-life would've probably been bending, distorting or jamming the actual wheels of a tank, but I just have never seen it achieve any appreciable results in War Thunder that, in my opinion, couldn't have been achieved more easily by just shooting them from range.

Also, going to edit the first post to point out that ramming them into environmental hazards (ie; cliffs, bodies of water, etc) should go without saying. It's been mentioned a few times now and it's kind-of obvious (hence why I never mentioned environmental hazards; I figured that they went without saying).

[Egro]

well unless you are playing a turret less Tank, I don't really see any real advantage of Ramming. In the case of Turret less Tank like the Stug, you often found yourself Ramming other Tank in mele range because You want to stop them from moving which if you fail to do so they will ultimately shot your butt.

I think people who do most of the Ramming are from WoT, It's a force of habbit.

[GoldenBears]

I've only ever actually seen ramming do damage was when myself and another T-50 collided at full speed. He survived with a dead driver and broken tracks, where as my T-50 had its crew knocked out.

It seems ramming is only about speed, and not weight, as I can charge at a T-34 from down a hill at 45 km/h and not do any damage in a Tiger II. Tiger II weighs 68 tons, T-34 weighs ~30 tons.

The use I've found for ramming is just flipping people over or making it difficult for them to shoot at me. In larger tanks like the Tiger II, you can ever flip over enemy tanks. That was what I did when a T-44 managed to break my cannon barrel in a Tiger II (gaijin pls fix), so I flipped him over and ran off, to come back later and finish him.

[KillerAceUSAF]

I like to ram German tanks in my T-34s all the time. It usually forces the German tanks to go up on top of my T-34 which gives me a clear shot into their belly that has little armor. It is a lot of fun to do!

[SilentHorizon]

Well, at least tank ramming is much more useful than air to air ramming in air battles.