Panzer Kampfwagen VIII MAUS, presentation and tips

This guide will give tips that you more or less aready know, suited for people who don't know much about the MAUS or jus tget their hands on it

Presentation

The MAUS is the overall most armored tank of the entire german tech tree (and arguable of the game), that's why I personnaly call it "Bunker on tracks" as it can easly be angled and become a real hard nut to crack (still watch your tracks , they aren't) it has 6 crew members:

-2 in the chassis

-4 in the turret

The tank should be used like a mobile defence and a slow pusher your slow and therefore can barely flanck anything in it

First of take this sentence in mind "A MAUS is only worth its support", going alone is suicide and you will only turn yourself into a RP/SL piñiata

A MAUS alone is easly killed by any half decent tank

Pros:

• Most overall armored tank of the game (side/rear/front)
  
• Nearly impossible to penetrate when angled (HEATFS/APDS however will rather easely)
  
• Decent main gun (Heavy post penetration damage but lackluster penetration vs opposition) and co-axial 75mm secondary gun
  
• partial artillery immunity (See HE weakspots for more infos)
  
• Top speed is also reached with reverse
  
• Rather large fighting compartement (with maxed out vitality, you got high chance that you loose only 2 crew member when the turret is penetrated)
  
• Reload fast for the size of the gun ~20 sec, about same reload speed with ony 2 crew member left alive
  
• More resilient to bomb but it won't save you
  
• 75mm coaxial canon can be turned into a smoke dispenser

♥♥♥♥:

• Slow (don't exceed 20 km/h)
  
• Bad maneuverabilty, even if for ist weight/size its pretty maneuvrable
  
• Suffer from front turret weakspot and innacuracies on the armor model
  
• Easy target for bomber/attack aircraft (especialy rockets)
  
• Co-axial 75mm has no AP shell
  
• Can't target most enemy medium tanks that stick to your tank chasis
  
• Suffer heavely from having the worst optic magnification of its BR (x2) compared to x8-x16 your opponent have
  
• Suffer from lack of competitive ammo (Lack of Treibspiegelgeschoss-Mit-H-Kern APDS), APCBC tend to bounce too often on postwar tanks and/or lacks penetration

Weakness/weakspots

Most common weakspots




In red is what will be targeted by most of the opponent facing you, in yellow less likely aimed at but can be penetrated

HEATFS

Due to its size and speed the MAUS is a perfect HEATFS target practice and since most of your opposition can use HEATFS you should avoid exposing yourself too often

Your amor is rather a situational advantage

Close combat or what I call "gun right up your ass close"

The MAUS has a big chassis, in fact so big you will be barely be able to land a hit on a medium/heavy tank as you just can't aim down at them if they keep themselves glued to you, leaving you with nearly no chance to fight back

Also the closer they are the easier they will be able to shoot your turret cheeks giving you 3 choice :

-Point your gun and get shot in the weakspot (resulting into inoperable turret and gun)
-Reverse to the nearest cover
-He shoot on the angled armor even if he knew he couldn't penetrate and you can shoot back safely

You can still try to move your chassis with your turret to try a snapshot, but its a high risk/reward maneuver

In short : stay away from areas without allly or many flanck spots until you know what your doing

Ammorack

Don't take too much 75mm ammo as a ammorack is right behind the turret weakspot (50 leave you with with the turret ammorack empty + 1 empty chassis ammorack)

You usually won't need more than 30 128mm ammo

Both ammorack are stored like in the picture bellow for each side of the tank, the 75mm ammoracks being only half the size of the 128mm racks



Air strike

Your a turtle and with an incredible high visibility (+200%), any aircraft with rocket or bombs WILL target you whenever they spotted you wich they do very easely, make sure you have some AA on your team or stay in places where you can easely escape a air raid

Other risk maneuver (highly discouraged) is to fake that you didn't saw the bomber and abrupty change direction (reverse) just before he drop the bomb

-If he aim center mass well you ♥♥♥♥♥♥, end of story

You can also exploit the terrain to evade a bomb, depending on the landing spot the bomb can deal no damage at all even when your next to it



HE

HE round will only be able to penetrate the following highlighted spots on your tank, mostly this is for when you get an artillery strike called upon you



Possible outcome

-Behind : ammorack explosion/transmission

-Front : Engine disabled and fire

Gameplay

"How do I play the tank?"

Multiple way to play it but 2 main gameplay styles :

-Slow pushing with allies
-Heavy support
-Defender

Its appropriate to secure some strategic position and just hold them back, and since its a behemoth not many will dare to attack it alone (hence why I say keep allies near, I ALWAYS get swarmed by 3 or more tank when its not OS by rocket armed aircraft)



Angling or "Side scraping"

To angle your turret correclty against a opponent straight ahead without moving the chassis you can start by angling your turret, as long they can't hit the cheeks you should be safe however

-They will be trying to hit the gunshield to destroy your breach/gun barrel

-They may try to trap shot you using the lower gun mantlet (rarely though)

-Or just spam HEATFS/high power APDS

The best position is when the enemy can ONLY hit the 200mm side of your turret, beware to not turn too much or they can pen the side, use solid cover to hide the cheeks, a house do the job

Then avoid having your lower glassis penetrated, for this just go into diamond position to heavely reduce the odds of this to happen

Avoid to drive out in the open

When too far to flanck or not powerfull enough to damage you, the enemy will try to shoot your track and make you a easy target for enemy with HEATFS, any aircraft or potential flanckers

When close they will destroy the tracks and swarm you with he's allies or alone, do not ignore SPAAG, if they aren't scared they might

-Shoot your optics so you can't aim

-Try to destroy gunbarrel and tracks

-Distract you from he's allies

Tips

Increasing your turn speed

Gear 5-6 is your friend for this job, just accelerate until you end on it and your going to turn twice as fast than you would with the other gears, this only work on flat ground

When going downhill depending where you turn you may experience a even faster chassis traverse speed

You may use the manual transmission control to just lock yourself into the "turning gear", but its too much of a hassle to handle

EX: once kiled a T54 that was behind my turret this way, pulling out a 180° turn in a few seconds in a downhill turn

If you can't kill it stop it

If you know you ain't gonna kill the tank and he's too close to allow you to reload, then shoot off the tracks, not only it will give you more time but also tend to make him drift and expose he's side armor and throw off he's aim as he make a sharp turn

The 75mm HEAT is very good to destroy tracks, 1-2 shoot is largely enough for this

75mm gun IS a usefull weapon

Some people say the 75mm gun is of no use. Wrong for 3 reasons

- Some people might still be fooled with the 75mm into thinking you just wasted your 128mm shot

- The 75mm gun were equiped on the MAUS to deal with AA gun/infantry and other soft target so the 128mm would be ready for a tank, if you shoot the 128mm on a SPAAG just before a tank rolls by, your mostly ♥♥♥♥♥♥, so fire the 75mm on SPAAG when not sure if he's alone

-A single well placed HEAT from it will damage/destroy gun barrel (at least require it to be repaired) and tracks without big issue, its a VERY usefull asset to have, even if its situational, if you aim for the barrel try to hit the muzzle break when there is one, it works every time

-As of the addition of smoke shells/launchers the MAUS is a efficient weed smoke dispenser : USE IT, smoke allow you to do much more such as assiting allies and crossing terrain without getting shot at

128mm HE round

128mm HE pack a punch with 3.7kg TNT equivalent, a 128mm HE is able to

-One shot any AA vehicle on direct hit (since hull break implementation a 75mm HEAT does the same)

-Detonate front hull ammorack when shot at the turret base or wreck the entire turret when hitting the top of it (wich is usuay not well protected), this however rather RNG

Other usefull guide I made

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=532834540

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=518651366

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=508855830

[Foxtrot39]

Update :

Fixed typos

Changed text a bit (obsolete information)

Added some text regarding smoke shells

Added 2 new cons and 1 pros to the presentation

[Foxtrot39]

Updated, removed some screenshot added other info here and there

[Foxtrot39]

Well I saw, on the devblog Q&A they may add the E-100 in the long term plans as rare tank (certainly a rare event with low chance to win it), but if they add it we might know it in a few years

[76561198154340209]

as it wasnt put into plans but now it is

[76561198154340209]

btw i heard that they are working at it after too many requests

[76561198154340209]

O cmon Fk gaijin
o fair is 3 vs that tiger

[Foxtrot39]

Also the tank Entwicklung or E series won't be added as no finished prototype were made

[Foxtrot39]

Glad I made a correct one, its also my first guide I made, the turret angling is just a bit tricky, the antenna is just to give you a idea of how to do it

[76561198154340209]

good guide barely waiting for the maus]
I hope they ad e 50 and e 75 soon