FTR QA 2 – Answers

Hello everyone,

here are the answers from the last session. As usual, I changed the wording of the original questions to make them more comprehensible – but the merit is still there I think.


1. Is it possible for battle results (debriefing) screens to be saved into replays? If so, how high a priority does this have?

This won’t be touched for now. We are working on server replays. (Storm)

2. We know the developers are thinking of high-level (tier 10) content, similiar to 7/42 battles. But are there are plans for any low level content, based on the same principle? (7 players, tier 4-6 maximum as an example)

There are no plans for such content. (Storm)


3. The French and the Chinese currently have their light branches up to tier 8 and we know there are such plans for the Germans (RU251) and Americans, while the Soviets have only “paper” tanks for those tiers. What about the Japanese and the British – are there any hightier candidates for the light tank branch?

We haven’t found yet any fitting Japanese or British tanks. If we find data, we will implement tanks. (Storm)

Cannoneer explains this issue further:

The most powerful light tank of the Imperial Army (eg. until 1945) is the Ke-Ho, that we will have on tier 4. Many know already, that there will be Type 61 (first mass-produced Japanese post-war tank) and STA-1 (first Type 61 prototype) in the release tree. Before STA-1, there were technical requirements issued for a 20 ton tank with 76mm gun and after that for a 25 ton tank with 90mm gun – and after that the weight was increased to 30 tons because of the thicker armor. That means there is some potential, but unfortunately we don’t have information about the projects, that were presented by the company as an answer to the requirements. One player on the US forums collected all that is known at this moment about those projects here.

For Britain, there are two potential candidates. First is the A46/FV301. A46 is a project from 1943 to replace the Stuart and Chaffee with something carrying the 77mm gun (the same Comet has). FV301 is the development of the A46 project. Unfortunately, there are no drawings found for A46 yet.

The second is the light tank project by Vickers-Armstrong from 1960 (Vickers Design No. 45569 T), armed with the same gun as the Centurion (20pdr), but two times lighter. The development of this project led to the Vickers MBT. Again, there are no drawings of this tank yet.



4. Are there any plans to implement player activated skills or perks for the crew?

No, there are no such plans.

5. Is it planned to increase the visual customization of vehicles, like adding of achievement markers, extra toolboxes, sandbags and the like, if so, could we expect that feature possibly next year?

Completely possible. But I will not reveal the details yet. (Storm)

6. On several meetings with EU British tank expert Challenger, it was openly said that the current British tier 10 medium tank FV4202 is not historical and that the armor was much worse in real life. Will the FV4202 see any changes, aside from the possible 20 pounder stock gun? Specifically, bringing the armor to historical parameters and replacing it with something else.

Yes, we are thinking about that question and adding the 20pdr gun as the stock gun on current tier 10 tank will be only a half-hearted solution, influencing balance.

7. Is there a chance to see the Chieftain tank (prototype) in 2014?

There is a chance, but our only guess for now is first half of 2014

8. The multiturret mechanism: if it is implemented, will it be possible to unlock secondary gun modules too? (for example, M3 Lee upgrading both the 75mm and the 37mm turret gun separately)

Yes, definitely.


9. Can we expect to see South American tanks in the game at some point?

Yes, one way or another they will appear. (SerB)

10. Has the fate of the S-Tank been decided yet, given its complicated suspension and aiming system?

For now, we don’t plan to implement it. All’s fine with the Swedes even without this tank. (SerB) (as in, Swedish branch is filled)

11. Will you add tanks and proposed tank designs from 1900 – 1921? Like the Motorgeschütz (Burstyn tank), British Mark series, Saint-Chamond and A7V?

For now there are no plans for that, but principially it’s possible. (SerB)


12. Is there a plan to implement an American premium tank destroyer? Is there any (even vague) ETA other than KTTS? (this is a very popular question)

With high probability next year.

13. Do skill bonuses such as improved ventilation or the commander bonus have any effect on the Jack of All Trades skill effects? For instance, if the commander fills in for one crew member, will this virtual crew member always be 50% trained, regardless of ventilation, etc?

Yes, all bonuses apply.

14. A very common question: from previous communication with developers, we know that the developers will not be banning “troll platoons” (for example one tier 10 tank platooning with two tier 1 tanks) – could we please hear the official reason, why are such platoons allowed, because many feel they bring nothing to the game and are a destructive element only.

Such a platoon is compensated by other vehicles on the team being stronger compared to the opponent. Battles consisting of only tier 10 tanks (with the inclusion of Chaffee and tier 8 light tanks with 12 battletier) are insignificantly few. (SerB)

15. The developers talked about server-side replays – if that happens, does this mean the replays will be compatible with old versions?

No. The versions will be incompatible the same way (as it is), since the content, on which the replays are viewed is in changing (maps first and foremost). (Storm)

16. Will they extend the friends list so that you can have several friends there?

Yes. The next chat version the contact list will be made longer and improved. (Storm)

17. Is there a possibility of low and high velocity ammunition for artillery being introduced in the future as an option? (So an artillery player must choose whether to fire a high velocity shell with flat curve, or “lob” a low velocity shell under high angle, allowing him to reach behind obstacles better, but sacrificing the velocity)

Maybe in the future, when we reach the artillery balance point we desire with current simple rules.

18. I understand that the current 8.9 new German TD line is set for now, but I’m curious however what led to the choice of the Waffentrager E-100 as the top-tier, versus – say – the Waffentrager Panther in its various proposed forms (such as the Rheinmetall’s “Skorpion”, see Doyle and Spielberger’s work). The transition to the much larger and heavily armored (hull) E-100 seems jarring given the progression and playstyle of the line.

Scorpion is not strong enough for tier 10. No way. The point of the E-100 is the fact it can mount more powerful and heavier AA system without such a loss of mobility like the Maus has. And you can’t mount anything more powerful than the tier 9 normal 128mm on the Panther chassis. (SerB)

19. Was it ever or is it considered for very good players (with “good” being defined by Wargaming-picked criteria such as winrate) to recieve visual rewards for their mastery (new camouflage, possibly a reward tank in extreme cases) as an incentive to “learn to play better”?

Such rewards were considered. For now, this will not be implemented because of the possible “toxicity” of bad players. (SerB)

20. Storm wrote recently that he expects a break between the Japanese tanks and any new tanks added after them. Does this break also concern (subjectively highly requested) French tanks (second heavy line) – or, specifically, when it comes to tanks added after the Japanese, how high a priority do the French heavies have?

For now we won’t comment on tank plans. There are many changes. (Storm)

116 thoughts on “FTR QA 2 – Answers

  1. Fv4202 with a 20lber? Sounds awesome…. Hahaha. Now just toss it into tier 8 as a premium when that happens. Imo I enjoy it the way it is but wg won’t leave it well enough alone.

    • Indeed. Considering what the GW Tiger was designed to handle in terms of recoil (17cm and 21cm guns) and that fact that AA guns have a long recoil which limits the impact on the tank.

      I smell something fishy in their response to #18.

        • The E100 WT fake BS tank uses an advanced AA gun (automatic fire) developed until about 19440/41 upon which development was stopped. Recoil lengths on AA guns are typically long which limits the load going into what ever its sitting on as well as stress on the working parts.

          So, no I meant Recoil. Recoil also dictates the space needed and available to work the gun.

          You can either have large, fat and short recoil cylinders or very long and slender recoil cylinders. Or even somewhere in between. But they will affect the design of the tank and the use of the gun depending upon how it is mounted and if there is a “turret” or “pedestal mount”. You also have to transfer the load into the tank through either option and the amount of recoil and choice of cylinders can also affect that short of charge you can load into the gun and thus its velocity of the shot flying out of the muzzle. (unless you start using sabot and squeeze bore stuff… )

        • No, recoil. To have a shorter recoil (when you want a gun to fit in a given turret) you need to absorb or disperse the energy. If a gun has a long recoil – which means less energy is absorbed and the gun is allowed to have more freedom – there are smaller forces exerted on the chassis.
          TL;DR – you might be able to mount an x cm caliber gun on a given chassis if it has a long recoil because it doesn’t “kick” that hard, but mounting the same caliber gun with short recoil on the same chassis might not be possible because the recoil energy absorption/dispersion will destroy the chassis.
          That why you on one chassis, a turret-less TD has generally bigger guns that a turreted tank.

          • No recoil system can change the TOTAL energy dispersed. What can change is the RATE at which energy is dispersed. If too much energy is dispersed too quickly the tank could suffer structural damage — imagine the difference being in a car accelerating to 60kph, and being hit by a car traveling at 60kph. Same speed, same energy, but only one kills you.The more space a gun has to recoil in, the smaller the rate of energy dispersion is.

            • Not entirely true. There were many attempts to rigid mount the tank gun without any recoil systems at all. Those were dropped mainly because of the long-term wear effects. But comparing it to a car crash – certainly not.

      • I appreciate SS asking my question, and SerB’s answer, to the extent that it can be deciphered. There are likely clearer ways to ask such a question. Thanks, Captain Nemo, for adding clarification.

        What do we know? SerB presents:

        1. Skorpion is not tier X material.
        2. Rationale for E100 chassis is recoil and mount for the gun system, requiring such a heavy, long platform.
        3. If they do the Skorpion, it will likely have the tier 9 128mm as top gun.

        Ok, I’d like to ask “are you going to put the Skorpion in sooner than the third/fourth TD line”, but I’m sure their answer would be the same as for question #20.

    • as e.g. the “Scorpion” was not a single tank,but codename for all tanks of this manufacture?

      • Skorpion is not tier 10 material with a standard Panther chassis, but how about an E-50 or Panther II one?

        Not to mention 12.8cm is more popular than 15cm, and dev can jam any gun on anywhere like the always did.

        As for no drawing for British tanks…..god they are lazy.

        • Panther II is not that different from Panther chassis. In all seriousness.

          Most projects, if you start to dig, were based off the reliable Panzer III and IV chassis.

          the advantage of the later chassis is more mass and more suspension for the recoil to be transferred through and a overall more stable platform for firing. However wasting an E100 hull for a anti tank platform is beyond stupid. Using a gutted and knocked out Panther seems more practical. Its what was done with the Pz IIIs and IV’s and even a few Tigers I’s.

          Not all records survived. Also the military might not have kept the drawings and returned them to the company and or the company lost the originals. If anything its possible its hidden away on microfilm. It was popular in the 40′s and 50′s to copy it all to microfilm and toss the paper copies. Saves a lot of space.

  2. It’s worth noting that the “battle results” screen is already saved into replays of battles you stay in until the end — but the client isn’t programmed to display it. Try uploading a replay to a site like wotreplays.com; if you didn’t leave partway through the match then the site will display the results screen.

  3. ”And you can’t mount anything more powerful than the tier 9 normal 128mm on the Panther chassis.”

    But you can put a long 12.8cm and a 15cm gun on the Panzer IV chassis?

  4. “5. Is it planned to increase the visual customization of vehicles, like adding of achievement markers, extra toolboxes, sandbags and the like, if so, could we expect that feature possibly next year?”

    I just reinstalled WoWP and noticed on the main page that there will be an option to paint decals on the planes for destroying ground targets and enemy planes. So starting from this thought, I hope this will contain the gun rings too. For example if your top destroyed tanks in one battle is 5, then you can paint 5 white rings on your gun’s barrel or something like that.

    • that’s a great idea, since IRL the rings where kills, it wouldn’t be practical to implement them that way. +1

    • lol, I don’t think 11 rings would fit on the 2cm flak of the Pz2J ;)

      Would be funny tho.

      • SerB has commented this case. According to his answer tehre two complications. First – different countries had different ways to put marks for confirmed kills on vehicles. Second some marks hard to implement – for example, he has stated “some guns aren’t long enough to put circles on it”/

        • The different marks for different countries should be a complete non-issue. WoWP has different marks for different countries. The thing about the short barrel guns seems like a lazy excuse to me. Should be able to figure out something.

  5. Frank, shame that you chose 12 only USA TD and not all missing premium trainers :( …

  6. Oh come on, Sweden wont get its most iconic tank.
    “For now, we don’t plan to implement it” still gives me some hope but i feel like this is the same as saying the tank is indefinitely postponed.

    I understand that the tank does not fit the swedish med/heavy branch but it still has potential as a high tier TD or medium

    • but Swedes will get other tanks.. I don’t really see the point of introducing tank that would need so many new features and game mechanics added exclusively for it and maybe few other tanks.

        • 1. TD’s can’t rotate hull in sniper mode with mouse and if you know how to aim with just keyboard you gotta be unicum.
          2. Current suspension system in WoT makes it only react to terrain, you can’t manipulate it otherwise
          3. Oscillating turrets aren’t different mechanic from regular turrets , top of turret that moves is one with gun model while the real turret that game sees is the base that rotates.
          4. There’s no mechanic in game that forces you to be stationary/prevents from moving, but it might be doable if you toy with destroyed tracks on wish but it would be stopgap at best
          5. There’s no mechanic that allows you to change whole hull elevation and tilt with a mause.

          All of this needs one way or another making changes to game, not just adding stuff and polishing it.

          I don’t want to judge if this tank would be fun to play for other or not but definitely a tank that can’t move its gun and aiming is strictly bound to your hull would be… difficult or confusing for some players.
          I mean you’d have to press a button to switch between keyboard to ride and mouse to aim. I don’t even want to touch issues with balancing such vehicle.

          Oh god, if they gonna add this tank I’m sooo buying artillery.

          • If you read detailed descriptions of the critter you’d realise the whole tank effectively operated as a turret pivoting on the tracks. The fire control was directly linked to the steering and elevation controls – where the driver/gunner pointed his sights, there the vehicle turned. In principle one man could operate the tank to full effect – the TC had backup controls should something happen to the designated driver – but a dedicated commander had its usual benefits and in practice a third man was found necessary, not so much to “fight” the tank but to share the workload of the routine maintenance.
            Hell, comparative tests (by the British IIRC) suggested the thing could even fire pretty accurately on the move though obviously within the arc limitations of the rigid “spinal mount”.

            Should be doable by having the engine treat the whole hull as a “turret”, basically. The actual completely new mechanic would come from the gun, as it was a full-blown autoloader in the modern sense of the word – the gun breech, loading mechanism and the whole ammo load were behind a bulkhead at the very rear of the vehicle, completely isolated from the fighting compartement. (The rear compartement was apparently also designed as one big “anti-blast magazine”, ie. to vent a detonation through the roof panels to protect the crew and most of the hull proper, but that’s not really relevant for the game.)

            • I can´t imagine a Swedish branch without our most iconic tank, if this is the case I guess all we will have are lend-lease Centurions, license-built Pz38t’s, and some Landsverk-built tanks between 10-30 tons and conversions to TDs on same platforms. So the top tier will be pure prototypes, even thou we had a competitive tank to defend our self against any incoming threat.

              Now I know how the British feels about the Chieftain…

    • Depressing? WTF? You will get a Chieftain, FV4202 rebalance is considered and there are two possible light tanks (if more research is conducted), what else do you want.

      • Obviously we must make the brits have 10x health, 10x damage, and 10x rof in order for them to be barely UP…

      • what utter rubbish your speaking, either you mistranslated or your english isn’t quite right, check again ss. from what I read they cannot introduce light tanks as they don’t have the technical data (difficult to believe)

    • but you’ll getting two light tanks a chieftain is promised by devs to come , a historical “tweak” to FV 4202…. did you actually read all what SS wrote ?

        • And that’s only because there wasn’t many major ship-to-ship battles in the Atlantic, compared to the Pacific. And hell, who wouldn’t want to captain the Iowa or Yamato? Though I’d love to have the Hood, Vanguard and Nelson as well. Probably the most iconic ships of the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine are the Hood and Bismarck which IMO are max. T9 material, compared to the Yamato and Iowa which will be T10′s unless we get the proposed Montana-class and Super Yamato-class. On the other hand, if we go with proposed but never implemented designs, the RN would probably get the Lion-class and Kriegsmarine the H39-class.

  7. I wonder what kind of idiot decided to put Type 61 in T8 and it’s PROTOTYPE STA-1 in T9. There’s no logic in this stupid move. It’s like putting Tiger in T6 and VK3601(H) in T7…

  8. So no adequate reason for allowing troll platoons. the usual bs about MM compensating….

    • DUH

      That was the original reason why people started making troll platoons, to have more strong tanks than enemy team. In earlier versions of MM it was possible to drag a tier 9 tank to tier 8 battle with troll platoon, but that was some time ago.

      Current problem with troll platoons isn’t THIS bad.

    • But it’s true. The team with T1s usually just starts whining and doesn’t focus on the battle, though. That’s what decides most of those battles, not the T1s.

      • So whose fault is it? T1′s or stupid whiners’ who are too much bothered with the T1?

    • The MM has this thing called “battle weight” it tries its best to equalise between teams. People even passingly familiar with tabletop wargames and similar should have no problems grasping the basic concept.
      Basically, that T1 leaves a surplus of “weight-points” the MM then tries to account for by “buying” more heavily-weighted tanks into the team.

  9. Can’t understand why the FV4202 decisions is taking so long. Its been clear from day 1 that the tank was not up to other tier 10s and needs replacing with a more fitting tank. Make the 4202 historical, make it a tier 8 premium and then replace it with the Chieften prototype. Job done.

      • “everyone has moved on to WT ”

        Please hold your breath waiting for that to happen. I *insist*.

      • Says who? Chieftain was designed as a successor to Centurion series.
        Yes, the armour was a big deal, quite the opposite to parallel projects of Leopard and AMX-30, still we don’t have Leo as light tank, and won’t be getting the AMX-30 as such.

      • I thought it was designed as a MBT which is basically both a medium and a heavy. The Chieftain seems to be a med with a poor engine so meh.

        Its very similar paper stats wise to the chinese tier x med I think its actually lighter and less well side armoured.

        • basically Chieftain, like the centurion before it, was designated Universal Tank, neither heavy nor medium. It was the size of a leo 1, but much heavier.

          • The “universal” term came from the fact it was effectively a “cruiser” tank with the armour of an “infantry” tank though. Do recall that the British used to make such a distinction.

  10. i think the idea in question 17 is great! hope they implement it in the future. arty coul’d play it’s role as strategic fire.

  11. SS i have to ask if the rusian devs are actually aware this questions are asked by EU/US/other players?

    just wondering :)

    • Yes, they are completely aware of the entire thing. It seems that due to the wording on wot-news, some Russian players seem it’s just me asking, but no. I only collect the questions.

      • thanks for the reply

        just to clarify, i was aware players asked the questions and SS would collect them to send them to a legit ru account folk so he would ask directly without incurring into OVL status

        just was wondering if the wg ru devs were actually aware on how this mechanism worked, its great to see they caring about our concerns

        • these questions arent asked through the russian QA, WG are doing a special QA just for FTR :)

  12. Regarding SS question #20, would not the previously discussed hull modules implentation be one particulars answers for this significant break from the past for all post-Japanese tank lines?

    This observation has implies the French 2nd Heavy should be added BEFORE the Japanese tree, as that particular line has been finished for a while now.

    • Yeah I’m heart-broken too bro but they keep telling they got more important stuff to add …

      I think that what they add is influenced by which nation is the most popular and most people play.

      God damn it…. muh chinese ;__;

  13. The depressing part is that its just all talk, both the medium and heavy tier 10 are average and therefore not really that useful in CW as there are better alternatives for both. Plus the FV215B is completely fictional, the only reason to rear mount the turret was to fit the 183mm naval gun as per the TD line.

    All they said and yes I did read the whole post is they will look at the FV4202.

    Yes, we are thinking about that question and adding the 20pdr gun as the stock gun on current tier 10 tank will be only a half-hearted solution, influencing balance.

    Thinking about looking at that question is miles away from doing anything about it.

  14. I love my fv4202, now if they can ‘create’ an E-100 TD variant out of the imagination atleast keep something in the british med tree that is competative.

    Who is to say the FV4202 may not have been upgraded to carry L7 or have better armour?

    • That’s because SS carefully selects questions that are more untenable to troll, and perhaps there is existing some sort of good will, considering the devs are going out of their way to answer these questions specifically (instead of the nigh-unchecked masses of idiots that submit questions on the RU forum).

    • That’s because here the decent questions aren’t outnumbered twenty to one by retarded bullshit. I got the impression SerB is the only guy in the dev team pervy enough to wade through that crap more or less daily and like it.

  15. I feel like these questions are more productive and better quality than the random questions we get everyday.

    Thank you SS for doing this. Since these questions are generally about mechanics and things that normal players don’t consider.

  16. I got a question: when are you guys gonna fix the bug where shells with guaranteed hit/penetrations are ghosting through tanks? ….i just had a very frustrating game in the new Tier 5 German TD “Toaster Tank” where i had 4 shells sail right through the middle of an M7. I had a guaranteed kill on that thing but lost it cause 4/6 shells ghosted through the tank -_- And yes, i will post the replay on wotreplays.com for anyone wanting to see this.

    I just want this thing fixed… :/

    • Nevermind haha, wotreplays.com says that the file directly from my replays folder is an unknown file format xD

  17. No Stridsvagn 103 means a fail Swedish branch, given it is THE signature tank of Sweden. Give it a buffed L7 variant (higher pen, better accuracy and velocity as it is a longer barrel in calibres than regular L7) and make it a TD, not hard to work out the aiming, just make it have almost no spread when turning but spread when going forward or backward… auto-aim is your friend if the enemy isn’t too far away :P

      • No, it wasn’t dumb, I’m not sure if someone answered it before or not though. My question was just one of the last ones to be asked, so I’m pretty sure you already had all 20 before you even got close to my post, that’s all.

        It had to do with the fact that we have a square for drawing distance and why it has never been changed to a circle (which would make more sense).

        Can’t remember ever seeing something about it anywhere.

  18. Regarding question 3 where is Listy when You need him? If he could do a full branch of TD’s why not Lights?

  19. Very good SS, not bad questions, reasonable answers, just as it should be. It’s a shame for WG, that you are doing what the EU/NA community managers should do… I can understand, that on daily basis they communicate on the RU forum Fine, and understable, but the complete lack of even an occasional opportunity to ask direct question form the users from other servers didn’t help the feeling, that the RU users are priviliged.
    So, I’m very glad that from time to time there will be such an occasion, just maybe leave the window for asking questions wider, or chose one, permanent day when the thread for asking questions would be open, like i.e. every Monday every two weeks or so on.

  20. Hey, SS can you ask him if we will see even a EU tree branch of the Isrealies? I’m wondering if it’s even possible with the recent news on no Israeli tree.

    • thats a no, Israel didn’t even exist during WWII, so that is just too far a stretch for WWII era vehicles…