So I got the Chi-Nu, and after a few hours of mind numbing frustration and blinding rage, I have come to a conclusion.
Use gold, or let the game part your ass like the Red Sea. My analysis of the tank is in the spoiler.
The stock gun for this thing is just so terrible I just wanna break down and cry it's so frustrating. Now I can deal with the low damage, I may even tolerate the terrible accuracy, despite the fact that the accuracy works against the general role the tank is to play(support), but what I CAN NOT tolerate is the terrible fucking penetration. We are talking about a tier V tank, with only 87mm of penetration.
Now you may say to just aim at a tank's weak spots, but that is what is so terrible about the gun, it's terrible accuracy destroys any attempt to aim at any weak points short of close engagements.
And close engagements is a nightmare for the thing because of it's utter lack of armor, along with it's not small profile, this thing is worse than some tier 4 tanks.
Now the top gun for the tank instead has 124mm or so pen, so you just gotta grind for that sucker, but the catch is that you have to grind almost 10k xp to get the bloody thing, having you get the tracks, and get a turret and 2 other guns, all costing about 2k each, and the 2 guns I mentioned has 70mm, then 90mm pen, thus in my opinion, border line pointless.
Thus, this thing is a VERY painful grind, and the only possible way for you to gain ANY progress xp wise is to use gold rounds, which bump the penetration of that stock gun to 131mm.
Now for the T40 I have been using, I had quite a few games with the thing before I got the wolverine and sold the little trooper. The first match that I had that was noticeable was when I managed to outplay an AT2 buy going down a small cliff and stick to his side, letting a Church III get the kill. We lost the battle, but I felt like a bad ass.
The match after that had me on Karelia, in another tier 5 match. In this one, it started off slow, picked off a couple lucky kills. I then notice our east flank has fallen, and I go back to the flag, where an AMX 40 is pinned by a Churchill III and was being flanked by a Matilda. Took out the Matilda, but took some damage, then I went up and played peak a boo with that Church, again using the kickass gun traverse to barely peak out and pop rounds in his turret, and luckily, he never charged me. After killing him, simple job of finishing the arty, but with the AMX 40 and myself being the only survivors, and the artillery, a M37, already took out 3 of our team mates who tried to charge him. Managed to get the top gun and Ace mastery for the T40.
The final match was on Himmelsdorf, and what made this match memorable was that I did the full damage to an AT2, the majority from across the court yard, the reast when I chased him down across the valley to the east alleyway, where his ass was ripe for the picking. After 2 more kills, I was binned behind the remains of an SU-76 and a KV-1 by a Pz.SLF.IVc, but I managed a shot on a large corner of his by a sliver between the remains. Took a few shots from the accuracy of the gun, but I managed to rock the kill, and we won.
That was a good day.
Also, I just got me a new mouse today, and I am loving it! The best prospect of this thing is that the mouse wheel doesn't fight me, which my old one used to do, scrolling up whenever I tried to scroll down. The coolest thing is that this new one has lights. I am fucking captivated by this.