Hidden Gem: Stingray

[Haswell 294]

With the BP once again active and placing stupid restrictions on the repeatables, I figured this would be a good chance to revisit less used vehicles that people will be forced to use. No particular bias towards premium vs progression, but I'll focus more on progression vehicles since they are free and still really good.

Stingray comes first, because it's the only free option for a tier 6 light.

 

Firepower: pretty good and versatile

450 alpha HEAT tends to be your bread and butter at tier 6 for most 105mm guns. Because balance 3.0 didn't propagate down to tier 6 and below yet, the HEAT shell still retains the bonus damage against thin armor. This means your effective DPM is actually somewhere in the 6000-7000 range, which is pretty respectable at tier 6. Single round reload is on the slower side, but you get 2000 burst damage from the RR to compensate.

Gun handling is a bit derpy, aiming in feels sluggish despite the fast aim time but this is a common straight for all lights in general. Accuracy is on the low-ish side, but still workable.

Remember to use the Zero In ability whenever you can afford to sit still for a while, this will boost reload by 10% and increase accuracy too. I tend to only use it for recharging my RR, this shaves around 2-3 seconds off a full reload.

Mobility: good enough

Overall acceleration is a bit slow and the top speed is disappointing, but it's fast enough to get you to where you are supposed to be. I suspect the sluggishness is due to the poor terrain resistance.

Hull traverse on the other hand is very good, you are nimble enough to dance and weave around corners even at full speed. Not a particularly important trait, but something to work with nonetheless.

Vision Control: good enough (again)

High view range but middling camo, typical traits for lights. Remember that lights don't suffer camo penalties with movement, so you are still relatively sneaky when running around. Still, it is best to sit yourself in good positions and stay still to take advantage of stationary bonuses like camo and view range.

DPM for squishies in general rely on being able to fire uninterrupted for long periods of time, so don't get spotted or shot at.

Armor: meh

Nothing to special to speak of. Somewhat reliable against dakkas and you can rarely get lucky against AP, doesn't really work against HEAT. Be very afraid of missiles because of your frontal ammo rack.

Conclusion: good enough to get results

It's not like you have a lot of choices for tier 6 lights that aren't premium vehicles. Luckily the Stingray isn't bad at all, though it will require some finesse to make the most out of it. Learn the map positions that will let you leverage your DPM and exercise good vision control, you will rarely be let down by the vehicle.

 

Build recommendations:

Commanders: Taco or Ms Ireland, take your pick depending on whether you want more view range or more camo. I get better results with Taco, but you do you.

Crew skills: off-road/hull traverse, aim speed/turret traverse, reload/module damage. Pretty standard, but feel free to use whatever you want.

Consumables: food/repair/medkit. Take advantage of the hooman loader and use food to buff the reload. Food is standard for hooman loaders anyway.

Retros: camo/optics/binocs. My style of play rely on uninterrupted fire to maximize DPM, so I like doing full vision builds for squishies. Go with rammer/optics/filters if you prefer to take a more aggressive approach, just remember your sacrifices in vision control.

[Yxlouvia 1]

helped me a lot in assist damage and eliminate missions thanks to ready rack

[knutliott 41]

I used to use my Tier 7 Stingray II Black Eagle to complete the LT missions for SpecOps because I perform better in that in a Tier 8 mission than I do in the Tier 8 M8 Buford.  LTs are squishy, so the ability to dump a few shots and then hide to reload is very valuable in the confined spaces of most SpecOps missions.

I use either Juan Carlos, Erin, or Ophelia depending on the mission.  Erin is the best camo, but Juan Carlos is better vision with at least some camo.  So if there are reasonable spotting positions in an otherwise open mission I'll use Juan Carlos, otherwise I'll use Erin and just snipe.  (Carefully.)  Ophelia is for missions that aren't open enough for vision/camo to be useful, such as Plague.

[Beeda2004 2]

Stingray

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_light_tank

https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/coldwar/US/Stingray.php

https://army-guide.com/eng/product928.html

https://www.valka.cz/15031-Stingray

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