Here are my first impressions of the new Chinese tier 10 heavy: Roadrunner and Coyote edition. I will share my setup, my thoughts of its capabilities and I will try to assess its overall power level.
My setup
I equipped the tank how I would use it live. I used Standard equipment, Food, small consumables, 2-3 HE shells and a roughly even number of AP and HEAT shells.
I used Hardening, Rammer in a Firepower slot and Stabs. Obviously Bond equipment is always an option, but I wanted to see what the tank is capable of with this budget setup.
I also think this is an optimal, generalist setup. You can, of course, pick various other pieces instead of Hardening, be it Turbo, IAU and whatnot, but IAU is not really useful for an otherwise inaccurate brawler, Turbo is not needed because it's technically built in and Vents are not good enough. So you're left with Hardening.
Why I think Turbo is not needed?
Because you have the boosters. I have a feeling that, in a sense, WG looked at Turbo and thought 'what if we give this tank a Turbo, temporary, but more useful'? In a sense the boosters are even better, because they give a huge boost to top speed and more importantly engine power, and you're left with a free slot. The boosters are strong enough to keep you going at 50kph. When you're brawling in a corridor, you don't need Turbo anyway. So essentially you have the most useful effect of Turbo, on demand, multiplied, for 10 seconds, six times per battle. All in all, it's a very useful tool and frees up an equipment slot.
Firepower
Typical high alpha gun and it's also Chinese. I had .36 accuracy with my setup, so this gun ain't really fit for anything else than close range brawling. DPM and gun handling are acceptable, these two stats are slightly worse than on the 60tp. Close range snapshots work. The AP shell has 1100+ m/s shell velocity, so if you want to shoot at longer range, better use that. HEAT shell is nothing exceptional with 315-ish pen. HE can be useful with its 90mm of penetration. Obviously you can spam HEAT, but a budget setup can work and the AP shell has its use cases.
Survivability
So generally the tank is well armored, BUT…
You have two cupolas. And you have a big fucking rectangle between the cupolas. I don't know what others' experience is with this fucking rectangle, but I have been penned there with regular shells once or twice. I can also confidently affirm that it can be penned with gold shells and you don't need something out of the ordinary like Jagpizda HEAT, your average heavy tank gold shell is enough. Interestingly nobody tried shooting and the turret front, but this is understandable. The cupolas stand out quite obviously, so no need to gamble on a turret front penetration.
The hull is also decently armored, but nothing special. The sides have spaced armor (learned this the hard way). The upper frontal plate isn't as soft as on the 5A, but it's definitely not something similar to the 279e or something. It offers some protection, but don't count on it always. I tried sidescraping and sometimes got away with it, but it's not really a reliable tactic. May work sometimes due to the thickness of the plate, but it's angled in a way which doesn't help when sidescraping.
To conclude I think in this shape, with the boosters and without bullshit derp guns the tank is fine. It has strong points and obvious weaknesses, similar to the 60tp. I think of this tank as a Chinese 60tp anyway. The boosters themselves are a very useful tool to help the tank to reach important spots, the gun slaps thanks to high alpha and the armor offers decent protection, especially when using the gun depression. I don't think it's a game breaking tank, just a regular high alpha heavy tank.
I can comfortably say the tank is 3.5/4 out of 5. If you like heavy tanks, you will like this one too.
