Difference between revisions of "Light Tanks"

Most light tanks are fast, mobile scouts which are used to detect enemies for their team or to destroy enemy artillery. However, some were designed for head-to-head combat during the early period of the war and so are slower yet are much better armored.

Due to having generally high power/weight ratio and high top speed, Light tanks benefit from physics more than all other classes, able to gain speed and hurl themselves up slopes too steep to climb for heavy and medium tanks. On the other hand some low tier light tanks which were designed for combat are much slower; some rival the speed and maneuverability of heavy tanks.

Light tanks share some general characteristics. The heaviest light tank weighs roughly 42 tons (fully equipped), and no light tank has more than 85 mm of armor plating. The fastest light tanks can reach speeds of 79 kph, and have mobility unparalleled except by the most maneuverable medium tanks. Due to their low weight, light tanks have little in the way of armor and do not generally carry much firepower, so they are not well designed to trade shots with a medium or heavy tank. There are some exceptions to this rule, as some light tanks are slow and have good armor, such as the AMX 40 and Valentine, and some LTs carry medium-caliber High-Velocity guns, such as the AMX 13 90 and WZ-131.

Light tanks have a unique feature that no other type of tank shares: they have the same camouflage value while moving as they do while not moving. This means training the camouflage crew skill is very helpful on light tanks as you can remain undetected by the enemy at astounding ranges while the light tank can detect the enemy way before that; with maximum camouflage training on vehicles with the best camouflage values a light tank can remain undetected at up to around 240 meters. In addition to this, they usually also have great camouflage values comparable to tank destroyers thanks to their small size.

The great speed, mobility, and usually small size of the light tank allows them to have a better probability of avoiding artillery fire, and can take advantage of gaps in the enemy's defenses to locate and destroy enemy artillery or sweeping in behind enemy defenders and attacking their weak rear armor. If a light tank flanks an enemy tank destroyer, it can use its mobility to keep out of the tank destroyer's firing angle while destroying the helpless vehicle. However, medium tanks will have the firepower, mobility, and armor to easily destroy light tanks. Heavy tanks will generally have enough frontal armor to ignore lower tier light tanks for the most part, so coordination with the rest of the team is required for those light tanks to engage these enemy vehicles. On the other hand, most heavy tanks will have trouble keeping up with light tanks because of their slow turret and track traverse.