On complicated armor models

Posted on by

Hello everyone,

this is just a line of thinking about why World of Tanks armor, War Thunder damage model and all the things that these games have in common and all the things they are different in. Please note that this is my personal opinion, that I am not only not forcing on you, I fully admit I could be wrong – up to you, whether you agree with me or not.

First and foremost, no matter how much ANY producer brags about realism or historicity (some stuff in War Thunder German tree still makes me chuckle, but then again, Waffenträger E-100 is a complete fake), both World of Tanks and War Thunder are arcade games. From that title alone it is relatively pointless to talk about some realism, when you watch the vehicles from 3rd person and have literally a sniper mode in both games. And that’s fine – they are games after all, meant for as wide audience as possible. This however means one thing: in this case, too much realism doesn’t help, it hurts.

As you might have noticed, War Thunder developer Gaijin recently released two posts about the War Thunder tanks armor model. The articles are available here (part 1) and here (part 2). The only notice I’d have here is this: the translation into English is shit and I had to switch to Russian two times to figure out what exactly is meant. Please, Gaijin, next time you publish stuff in English, don’t act like Wargaming EU and don’t use google translate.

Anyway, back to the armor model. To be honest, having “grown” on World of Tanks, I consider the model Wargaming uses to be the ideal blend of realism and playability. It’s simple enough to understand (apart from some weird situations), the basic principles are clear and even newbies can grasp it fairly easily. Looking at the War Thunder damage model however, I am worried and I would not want this level of “realism” in World of Tanks. I am specifically referring to the following points:

- the amount of armor groups

Detailed armor model is good, right? Well, not exactly. This is a typical example of “too much realism hurts”. You see, it’s really cool to have your armor model behave the way it (to an extent) did in real life, but this will also introduce unpredictable results. The entire frontal plate being (example) 120mm thick under 45 degrees? Nice and understandeable. 10 armor groups on upper front plate only? Ugh. Basically, it means that you cannot rely on shooting the general area, you have to aim at a specific armor group and unless your tank has laser-like accuracy, this will produce totally unpredictable results. It is also completely unhistorical (in real life, actually hitting the entire tank at combat distances was a success). In this case, less is more and looking at the disassembled armor model of the T-34, I cannot help but wonder, how will Gaijin deal with the amount of “why the hell did THAT happen” complaints

- the amount of “modules”

Yes, I understand War Thunder damage model works differently and I think that after reading up, I have some understanding how roughly it works. The thing is, there is a reason Wargaming did not go this way and the reason is “cripples”. Basically, unless you introduce real life rate of fire (if I remember correctly, the 122mm D-25 gun in IS turret was rated at cca 2 rounds per minute, which roughly corresponds to World of Tanks artillery), you will have tanks “spamming” shells, that could not exactly destroy a tank, but cripple it, because the entire damage model is based on module destruction. Realistic, yes, but again, possibly not the best game decision. Imagine a rapid-firing tank spamming one shell after another, each destroying or damaging something critical. The danger is that if implemented improperly, in the end, you will have swarms of half-dead tanks without crewmembers, with damaged engines and transmissions etc. limping around the battlefield. Doesn’t sound like fun. Let’s hope this situation will be avoided (but quite honestly, the way the modules are “packed” in the T-34 tank scares me). By the way, why separate radiator from the engine module? What will its destruction cause?

- separation of transmission from the engine

This is actually a good thing! This is also something Wargaming should do. The entire “front transmission” engine fires bullshit (that concerns German tanks) is not historical (as Hilary Doyle confirms, there were no specifical fire cases caused directly by transmission fluids), it is a game decision and a de-facto nerf of certain tanks. Speed reduction sounds more like it. Good idea.

- spalling

I think modelling spalling effect like this is a terrible idea. For one, it can obviously potentially create more cripples (crewmembers being hit by the metal shards). The way it is displayed in the second part of the damage model preview looks really complicated and complicated in this case means bad. Spalling will produce even more unpredictable results. Once again, Wargaming has it better. In World of Tanks, you shoot and you can roughly guess, what the shell will do. In War Thunder, it looks like the RNG factor will be through the roof, as you will roll a RNG hit on the gun, then on the armor group it lands on and THEN you have the spalling effect. Again, realistic (spalling was indeed a real threat), but unpredictable. The way it is written, it reminds me of spamming lowtier HE: completely random effects, sometimes you get nearly 0 damage, sometimes you get oneshots. This is NOT what I’d like in a game and this amount of RNG will make the game unviable for e-sports.

- armor quality

Oh god, not this shit again. Wargaming basically cancelled armor quality modifier very early on (some of the older players might remember there was such a thing), because it was unintuitive (producing even MORE unpredictable results), but also because it was partially unhistorical. Take for example the German armor. There is this bullshit myth running around about the German armor being inferior by the end of the war (Doyle answers otherwise, even though US reports point out the general brittleness of German armor). It’s mostly a myth – but then again, so is the crap about German armor being somehow superior. The truth is, the only nation, that was using truly inferior steel for tanks was Japan (and partially Italy, Hungary steel was for example on par with German in quality up to RHA plates of (IIRC) 60mm). Soviet steel quality was also actually good, but welding was problematic (according to some sources, IS-3 “pike nose” welds were breaking up after being hit by 100mm shells). How do you want to model all this? No. This is completely pointless.

Conclusion

Once again, I am skeptical of the way Gaijin decided to take their tank game. I prefer the Wargaming way (and no, this is not because I am a “Wargaming blogger”, like someone on War Thunder forums moaned, my attitude towards WG EU is well known). Simple is good. Personally, I hope Gaijin will manage to refine or simplify the model somehow so that even a layman can understand what just happened and doesn’t just aim roughly in the enemy direction, close eyes, press the button and wait, what will happens. However historical that is (the truth is, various reported kills on several kilometers by German tanks for example were completely accidental), it is not fun. You might as well roll the dice.

139 thoughts on “On complicated armor models”

  1. Interesting read I actually would like to know if WoT will introduce different type of armour like aluminum and how WT’s tank game will look like only time can tell

    • correction not what it looks like I already know what it looks like :p, How it will play compared to WoT

      • More CoD vs a blend of BF and Arma, considering different available realism levels in a single game…

        • It looks more like Counter-Strike vs CoD

          CS looks like shit, isn’t realistic much but it’s addicting as hell and CoD… well… you know… realism and 12yr olds all around, rushing with sniper rifles…

        • CoD or BF vs Red Orchestra or ArmA or Operation Flashpoint. Arcade Shooters vs Simulators. Now it depends on the taste. You play a game for fun and to kill some time or you want to see realism and historical things.

          • all this FPS are unrealistic.
            in real you get one shot in your leg -> war is over for you
            in this games you get one shot in the leg -> you lose some HP and keep moving

  3. I can see it now.

    Most kills in WTT would be either from miracle crew kills, miracle ammo racking, and miracle engine failures and don’t forget MIRACLE FIRES.

    “By the way, why separate radiator from the engine module? What will its destruction cause?”
    - from what i remember (at least in planes) it will result in the engine slowly dying due to overheat- same as shooting the engine (and not having it on fire) or the oil tank.

      • It would be like Air kills in WT:

        you pour tens of large caliber shells on an enemy. only for a passing Panzer 2′s 20mm to score the kill and rob you of your credits and experience.

  4. I do agree WarThunder Tanks will have a lot more rng then WoT. I play WarThunder instead of wowp and the rng with their aircraft is insane sometimes, where sometmes i kill a plane in a single hit othertimes it takes 100,200, or even 300+ rounds to down the same aircraft depending on rng.

    • Haha! It is pretty weird sometimes. Some days you can sit next to an enemy battleship and get next to no damage, other days you get one-shotted from 2000m away.

    • I do love that the transmission being sperate. WTB fireproof transmissions on my german tanks, loseing the engine hurts enough i dont needa be roasted too.

    • This is what new / very bad players always say.

      In WT, it is really true:
      Knowledge is power.
      If you know nothing about how planes and their weapons work, you will loose, loose and loose.
      And cry of course.

  5. Impossible to reply directly to any concerns without leaking. All speculation on it could work. No one even close to how it actually does…

    Also radiator DMG means periodic engine DMG from loss of coolant… Same as planes.

    • So you’re into closed beta ? :) Nice for you. I’ve started playing WT recently and I’m not too worried about their integration of ground vehicles into the game’s nicely handled damage model.
      RNG to me isn’t an issue when it is actually the result of a phenomenon (spalling, bolted or welded armor being hit, etc) rather than what a dice says. Physics is itself full of randomness after all !

      • Im not. Im basing mi opinion purely on what we have all seen so far :)

        Im a big fan of the damage model as well, you cant have as much fun destroying stuff in WoT since it only makes small white holes on the tanks :/

        Randomness is refreshing for casual players as well.

      • Sorry, but no: “Macrophysics” are virtually not influenced by randomness at all. In Tank combat (WoT) terms the same AP round hitting the same spot on armor will always create the same effects. [Spalling in that case would always create the same amount of shrapnel as both the round and the armor would behave exactly the same. As would their interactions; this is not Thermodynamics or another statistical part of physics. The same sort of armor on another tank hit by another AP round, and thus potentially changed internal structures, would behave different then the first, but always the same again.]

        The felt “Real World Randomness” is created as we can’t hit the exact same armor with the exact same AP round at exactly the same spot: all parts will, at best, have their properties seriously changed by the “first” impact. The only way to to really depict randomness, in the physics sense, is with creating specific, changing, ratings for every AP round (when loading/firing) and every spot of armor (when entering the battle). This would mean that all players will not start on even footing. Along the lines of: “This battle the front armor of your Tiger is very brittle and will be easily penetrated.” or “The third AP round you fire will have seriously reduced penetration, because the steel wasn’t hardened properly” and so on.

        For all players to start on even footing and give some RNG one really doesn’t need more then simple DMG, Penetration, Bounce percentage ranges as used in WoT.

        • People will be more worried about how stable the tanks are and who can get the first shot off, no aiming circle after all, just where the gun the pointing….
          Old HB dif in WT you need to change gears, with optional clutch.

        • …

          We have Einstein on the blog, he can predict all macrophysics!

          Gwess what, i’m not ok with you, and my father works in macrophysic (study of the structural reorganization of semi-crystalline polylactide under tensile drawing, for exemple ), and, he is not too. Random in material deformation is normal.

          • In all of Solid State Physics or Solid Mechanics I’ve never heard that material constants (be it Young’s modulus, Kirchhoff Tensors or whatever) would change dynamically…
            Phonon interactions are indeed QM, and thus random, effects, but I’ve never seen those included in the description of macroscopic effects. It’s all about the entries in your Cauchy stress tensor, as far as I can see. Though, of course, a helpful paper would be appreciated!

  6. At the end its a good thing that games actually differ a bit. We must remember that any game after release got plenty of issues and long “todo” lost just as any other mmo. Players often need to wait a year or two until developers finish what they had in mind in first place. Even if WT armor model may look a bit shitty, no one is saying that after a while, ganja wont simplify it under constructive criticism from players.

    • WoT badly need proper competition cuz this could help change wargaming attitude towards players from ‘fuck you’ to ‘what u have in mind sir?’.

        • According to Noobmeter, you’re one of those players. It’s funny how retarded players always think they’re actually good.

          • Actually according to Noobmeter she is one of the top say 80% of players. Keep in mind. Noobmeter’s ‘average’ is based on the scale. But the actual ‘average’ is far below because a majority of players are far far below average.

            • Oh, I do know that. The smartest person with down syndrome is still a complete and utter retard – doesn’t matter that there are people worse than her. It’s worth noticing that stats of her high-tier tanks are abysmal. She reminds me of 45%wr potatoes calling everyone else “idiots” when losing – different scale, same mindset.

              • You do realise who you are talking about right? First, lemme make something clear. I hate smarmy littlw shits like you. Why? Because you accuse others of things you yourself could be accused of.
                “It’s funny how retarded players always think they’re actually good.”
                Well, buddy, the conclusion is logical. You come here acting all superior, yet there is no evidence of your superiority. I couldn’t find your name on noobmeter, therefore all your arguments are invalid – you just might be one of those retarded players. Also, against Daigensui we are all inferior, because she achieved something, a little thing called THE JAPANESE BRANCH. You have no right accusing her of anything until you can prove you actually do have a superior standpoint. So provide a link to your noobmeter proving you’re No1 and we’ll talk then.
                Good day Sir.

              • “The smartest person with down syndrome is still a complete and utter retard”

                And you are a dickhead. GTFO.

          • Your stupidity made my day :))

            Dude, you think that if you have bad stats in-game you’re supposed to ask retarded questions?

            She just released you an entire japanese branch with more to come and has enough ideas of how tanks work.
            You on the other hand…nothing so far from you except having a mouth bigger than your brain.

      • I wouldn’t like another hypocrite ‘what u have in mind sir?’ company.
        Beauty of WG is exactly that honest “fuck you” attitude.

  7. What will happen if u get tracked in WT, will u be out for the rest of the match? Should be like that if they want real realism. I look forward to trying it out soon we might have 2 good tank games to play:)

    • Might be like landing on airfield to repair ur heavily dmged plane, where sometimes it takes like 3 mins to repair. Just had that happen to my plane in warthunder a few mins ago lol.

        • I never said WT is realistic, Nor would i believe the devs if they claimed that. all planes in arcade mode are ufo’s and historical battles isnt much better. I dont play the full real battle mode tho. I was just saying if theres track repair at all its not going to be short like WoT.

  9. While pointless for Esports Id love to play it just for the fun random moments :D

    I always felt like war thunder was never about serious balanced competition, but rather fun destruction. Also crippling stuff is hilarious :)

  10. I’m suprised you compare a game that has its tank damage model still in beta, to a game that had its damage model fine-tuned for years. I mean we just had patch 8.10 in WoT while WT tanks are still in closed beta.
    And you pointed me to this yourself while refering to WoT beta armor models.

    Also, you still have to consider WT operates on three game modes, so armor behaviour might be fine-tuned for each.
    Plus, in the arcade one, which might be closest to WoT, you use your whole garage of tanks, so you can just drop off a crippeled tank and roll out in a fresh one. I wouldn’t be suprised if you’d also be able to use more then one tank in the ‘more realistic’ game modes, which again makes cripple battles less of a concern.
    And in WT you have airbases which repair your plane if you manage to land it there – wouldn’t be suprised to see that also in tank battles.

    While I understand your concerns SS, I think you’re making the mistake of applying WT mechanics to WoT conditions, while they at best should be looked at taking the WT air combat in regard.

        • 1. WT is hardly a simulator
          2. Using “realistic” tank combat on an online game is ridiculous. It was basically on hit, one kill, especially at short range (500m average range in the western theatre). No one is going to play that except hardcore simulator gamers.
          3. If you want a true tank simulator, you would have to have something to simulate your crew bailing out of the tank even after a glancing blow.

          • T-72 Balkans on fire – true tank sim
            can’t recall how many times, the crew fled from a non-critical hit to the tank

      • Well, WT armor concept would also be bad in an RTS.

        You can’t take a mechanism and compare it out of contex of the whole game it’s build into.

        I enjoy both WoT and WT, but until we’ll see how it will work in-game, and if it’s fun, analizing it seems a bit pointless.

    • Havent you noticed that EVERYONE compares War thunder and world of planes even tho WT bought developed game and adapted it for multiplayer and WOWP is new game developed from scratch?you strike me as person who will bash wowp and then when someone say something against WT you jump amd start comenting that its pointless to compare them :)

        • WT is “beta” with an already running business model and the possibility of spending money . I consider that “beta” argument is pretty bs for Warthunder..

        • Most companies are hiding behind the guise of “beta” so they can release an unfinished game and defend any bugs or faults with “lol beta”. When you compare WoT and WoWP’s beta stages, there was no business model in that as you couldn’t buy gold and instead earned its equivalent through regular battles. Once you actually implement the business model and real money transactions you have a full game “beta” or not.

          • Wow I fucked up grammatically in the middle.

            “When you compare…” ==> “When you look at…”
            “…no business model in that as you couldn’t buy gold…” ==> “…no business model as you couldn’t buy gold…”

        • WT ground forces is in real CBT
          planes part … not, it’s a release; Gaijin can call it “beta” all they want, doesn’t make it so

          • I still see WoT is 0.8.10, so doesn’t that still nean its in a beta?
            The bashing of WoT and WT pisses me off. They shouldnt really be compared as they both are niche games. Both games have positives and negatives. Least now there is a choice of playing tanks with seperate identities. Who seriously wants a clone of WoT? Id rather have diversity.

            • +1
              Diversity is always good, and conpetition is good too – WoT is gonna lose some players to WT and will be trying to get them back by improving the game. Untill now WG could slack off – they had the only tank game and you were basically “forced” to play it. Now that there’s an alternative, they will actually pick up on developement to retain players. So I guess HD models will actually come on time :D hopefully ;)

  11. The metal quality is an interesting thing, as an Engineer(ing student) I do quite a lot of work on Metal quatlity, and it is insanely complicated. When a shell impacts you have one set of equations that govern the impact, and another that quantify crack propagation (the more complex side). There are better solutions than others, tough plate with another more ductile plate backing, but I don’t even want to know how they bonded them. For a recent project, I conducted an interview with our materials professor to evaluate various attachment methods. Afterwards I concluded that bolting the things on was the best option. To model this interaction correctly would take ages. (imagine a shell hitting and then a couple minutes of “WoT is performing calculations, please wait”)

    If you want SS, I could put together an article on armour materials, but I warn you, it will be a bit technical.

    • Could be interesting, but after seeing a Soviet and a German fan “slug it out” with real life documents describing armor properties for pages and pages, I am not sure it’s such a great idea… :)

    • Well the point in games is not to run a full physical simulation of what’s happening (except if you’re a licenced simulator like X-Plane) but to empirically determine outcome statistics and simplify them into a logical model that in practice works like a simulation. :)
      I don’t know if I made my point right, the matter you’re studying is indeed complex and interesting.

      • Maybe, although my opinion is that everything is far too complicated to be able to compare accurately, and to do so is to make a gross over simplification.

        Turawanaa, if you do something like that, then you have do decide where to draw the line. for example, WoT make the MASSIVE assumption that riccochetts don’t damage the armour (which would making overhardened metals OP, if they were modeled) If you however then decide to model damage, then you open up a massive kettle of fish. Any form of statistical modeling would be a massive oversimplification, as the interactions are too complex to determine statistically.

        • Maybe I’ll write it anyway (I have to get back to uni a week early to use the labs), and then if SS doesn’t like it I’ll just post it on the forums

          • I would be interested in such a thing, too. If you stick to general principles, you should be able to avoid fanboy BS discussions.

  12. Well, you are still forgetting that WT has quite different game system. As you know, you can have multiple tanks in one battle, so if your tank is really badly damaged and it is no good for team to have that tank in battle (and in place where it is located) you can just leave it, and play with another, undamaged but possible weaker tank.

    For example, if you have KV1 with destroyed tracks, broken transmission but working gun and turret near your base which is under attack – you stay in battle, fight to your death. But if you have same KV1 somewhere in the middle of the empty field, you just abandon it, and get in the battle in your t34, as it is much more beneficial for your team, and more fun for you.

    It is also quite realistic, as many crews often abandoned their damaged tanks, even when they were partially functional.

    And I really can handle more realistic “crippling” of tank, when I can just leave it if it is beyond limit, than having to play for 10 more minutes in T54 with damaged ammorack and dead gunner…

    And that spalling idea – I dont thinks its gonna be that much of problem, basically when you hit and penetrate tank, you can be quite sure you damage or destroy something or everything what is in the trajectory of your shell… or much more if you have cavity shell (which is ofsetted by having lower pen ofc). Pretty straightforward imo. Much better than penetration to the cupola of my tank doing 1000 damage, while my shell right in the center of side armor doing 300damage hehe…

    • TL;DR we will try it, and then we will see right? :D But I am glad that WT is trying to make it different from WoT, as I wouldń t like two almost identical games, this atleast bring some variety :) And quite important thing is = simplifying is almost always much easier than creating more complex mechanics, they can now atleast always say that “spalling is working only in Full real battles” while in arcade it will work like in wot.

    • “you can be quite sure you damage or destroy something or everything what is in the trajectory of your shell…”

      The player hits something and it does no damage (it’s surely possible): “WTF, why did it do no damage, there should’ve been spalling, this is BS”.

      Basically this. That’s why WG simplified penetration/ricochetting recently, because the forums are FULL of people whining, not understanding about what happened.

      • It seems that WG cater to the sheep so to speak, while WT is trying to cater to the history buffs/simulator crowd. Both are targeting different demographics

  13. i would be interested in your opinion if wt would have been released sooner.
    also, the supressd WoT fanboy inside you is quite funny tbh, in your place i would have waited until I actually play the game.

  14. Nice post as always but I have something to add…
    I don’t know if you are playing War Thunder uhm… let’s call it “Airforces” already, but there is already such a “What the hell, why did this happen” armor model – and it seem to work.

    For example you can attack an enemy plane with your MGs on, let’s say, 700 meters. You’ll do a few hits but the enemy is still alive (e.g. my personal record are about 8000 7.7mm bullets (2 Belts) with a Hurricane into a Ju 87 Stuka on the mentioned distance) – It stil has been in the air).
    Otherwise you can fly closer to the enemy, place your shots into his engine, on his flaps, on his gunners etc, but this needs short distances of about 20-100 meters and staying there is mostly very risky – just mention a bomber like the B-17 which allways has a 12.7mm pointed on you. Now we slowly get to the point…

    If it comes to a discussion about WoT or WT, my only answer is “apples and pears”. War Thunder is more a simulator with simplyfied controls (Remember Microsoft’s combat flight simulator? Hell yeah, 5 minutes of trimming before getting into combat -.-) than an acarde game like World of Tanks, so I think the complicated, but realistic armor model is the right choice.
    As you mentioned hitting a tank at all was the Task in WW2, not aiming for modules, and so it is in War Thunder. To get back to the upper example of “Airforces”: you can hit an enemy tank on 1500m, but don’t know what you really did hit, or you get closer to him and aim on a specific spot, but you risk to get hit by yourself…

    And to end it in an arrogant way: If you don’t understand how mechanical damage works stay at WG and don’t try on Gaijin – You are going to fail. This is the main fact why I think War Thunder is mostly free of “50 eff on 20k Battles” retards, they would just have no fun when spamming bullets on an enemy and nothing happens. Quallity over quantity.

    Greetings from Germany and sorry for my english ;)
    Chr15

    Oh and before I forget: Red Ochestra 2 nearly 100% realistic DMG Model: You can even damage a single steering Brake O.o If you compare WTT to RO2 it looks like WoT to WT ;)

    • WT free of retards? really? I dont play it that much but from what I see in most battles majority of players do nearly fuck all just like in WoT, not to mention that a lot of players just want to dogfight even though most battles end with ground targets being destroyed.

      As for the damage model, it works pretty well for planes (much better than the one in WoWp in my opinion) even though I often find it frustrating, but in tanks I am not so convinced. I fear that this will make things even more random than in WoT especially at long distances, you’ll be driving along when suddenly someone one shots you from 900 m away, sure it makes it more realistic, but in my opinion a fun game should be interactive, that is you should have a chance to react when something happens, and turn tings around with your skill, not press the button to chose your next tank in your lineup.

      • I prefer not to have a health bar. Nor getting destroyed by someone shooting my cupola

      • You think your skills can save you from the Mighty RNG GODS?
        Let me give you the bad news: when RNG decides to f*ck you, nothing can save you. Nothing
        you will miss a target at 100 metres because of sudden lag spikes
        you will fail to penetrate because your shell is a troll and will hit the tracks

        ı’m not saying WT is perfect, but ı’m getting real tired of this RNG

        note: feel free to check my stats and call me a noob.
        I was a noob for 5000 battles, but not anymore. I know and understand how WoT works

        • and WT is not random? Sometimes I take a plane out with one burst from 600m other times I’m flying 300m behind it, empty a whole belt and it’s still flying.

          And dont worry, it looks like it will be possible to take out your loader, commander, gunner and most likely ammo rack by shooting the cupola in WT

  15. That’s exactly what i was thinking when i read this articles. I think that they are trying to be soo realistic, even in Arcade mode. And that’s already happening in WarThunder planes, especially after the last patch you can see a lot of 1-shoot kills when someone kills your pilot, (and you can have full HP plane) your plane is destroyed. I think that it’s ok for Reality/Historical mode, but i don’t expect this behavior in Arcade mode.

    • What is this ‘full HP’ plane you speak of in WT?

      Also, to avoid your pilot getting killed, don’t do head-ons and avoid getting attacked from above.

      • Sry for this term…. i caught it from another games :).. i thought “not damaged plane” (im not playing WT so much.. im pretty noob in planes) what is for me little annoying and what’s not happend in WoP or WoT…where it is more difficult to oneshoot someone… on the other hand in WP you can just choose another plane and continue in battle (like planning Garage battles)

  18. Right now my biggest worry is that with Gajiins garage battle arcade mode, random battles will be just tanks driving towards enemy positions, dying from one/two hits then just jumping into the next tank. Completely defeats the point of a tank game in my opinion

    • No it won’t be. War Thunder doesn’t have noob friendly economy like WoT. You suck – it hurts you. A lot.

      About the amount of armor groups, WoT is not rly that simple as you think lol

      As for the “unpredictable”… World of Tanks is one of the most illogical and random games I’ve ever played, this game is so messed up that sometimes even WG developers don’t understand it , WT thanks to the pursue for realism beats WoT in this case.

      Also WT isn’t suppose to be pure arcade game. Sadly cost of that, like SS mentions is no chanse in Esport. Esport is basicly the only one thing that can keep WoT alive in competition with WT (well and utterly dumb people who barely handle WoT so no way they could way harder to master WT).

      • first of all, I think I know a thing or two about WoT

        http://worldoftanks.eu/community/accounts/500684552-Fedajkin1989/

        Second, apart from the randomness of the gun accuracy and the +/- 25% penetration WoT is very predictable, especially if like me you know almost all the tanks’ armor layouts by heart. Anyway it’s not the damage model complexity that I find problematic, in fact I welcome it, it’s the fact that it looks like that as long as you penetrate the armor and hit a module you will destroy it, which will make it possible to take out your enemies with just one or two good hits, sure it might be realistic, but in my opinion it makes for poor gameplay since it is very uninteractive, its the same reason why I don’t like the inclusion of so many high alpha and autoloader guns in WoT, it makes the engagements too short and uninteresting, as well as giving a huge advantage to whoever shoots first. Anyway it’s still to early to tell how exactly it will work, I’m really sick of WoT and I really hope WT tanks deliver, but I am far from being blindly optimistic, I have seen Gajiiin do some questionable things in the last year.

      • If you suck in anything tier 6 and above in WOT it hurts as much . (If you don’t spend real money)

      • Don’t you mean to say that WT has a shit economy that just got even worse with 1.37?

        It’s so bad that WG don’t need to worry about Gaijin because Gaijin will put themselves out of business if they go anymore P2W.

  19. I don’t completely agree with the first point. WoT already has +/- 25% penetration to RNG-fuck/please you with. 1/4th is a significant chunk. The WT armor scheme seems to give players more control in skewing RNG in their favor. That is, if WT doesn’t also have penetration variance.

  20. “German in quality up to RHA plates of (IIRC) 60mm)”

    So, armor quality isnt the same for every thickness? Is this due to physical limitations or due to production limitations or something else?

    Thx,

    Crazytony

    • It is not, there are production limitations. For example, one of the reasons Hungarians could never copy a Panther was the fact they were unable to produce rolled homogenous armor plates of the required thickness, I think their limit was actually 75mm (Rába Ajax steel), thicker plates could not be produced in more satisfactory quality. There were some late war plans to produce 100mm or even 120mm plates for the Tas project, but nothing really came of it. The issue here is (the way I understand it) the metallurgical composition of the metal: unless you get the steel “right”, it starts to lose its hardening properties and plates of certain thickness become brittle. This was mostly a problem for German style steel (which Hungarians tried to copy, but in the end they developed their own version).

    • If you take out the EU fail people, yeah, wargaming is doing a decent job. But now, with competition on the rise, we can only expect better results. Remember how physics were promised in like 7.5 or whatever and came five patches later? Well, there will be none of that anymore, because they will actually try to stay ahead of WT, so the HD model remakes may even make it on time :D

  22. So if War Thunder fails at Tanks and WG fails at planes….its a stalemate?

    RUSH FOR THE SHIPS!!!!

    • Lol. Yeah that’s true, if it does end up like that, we will see both companies on somewhat equal footing (since they’re both starting from absolutely nothing with ships) trying to duke it out to se who can make the best naval simulator.

      +1 to you, you made my day.

  23. All the tomatoes running to WT because they get owned too much in WoT will simply cry more…

    How terrible.

  24. quote: “both World of Tanks and War Thunder are arcade games”
    here’s where you are wrong, well partially wrong

    all due respect, this is not the 1st time, me and other people who played WT tells you this … WT has 3 models: an arcade game, an intermediary type, and full blown sim model

    because of this, your assumptions are wrong
    yes the damage model is borderline a sim, but so is the war planes part of WT (arcade damage models)
    a single hit from a hi caliber cannon can and will fuck your plane up
    the difference is that in arcade mode, you can chose and switch from a number of planes in the same battle

    you only wrote this article to defend WoT, and frankly I have no idea why
    if WT’s ground forces will be so broken, as you say, no one will play it … WG doesn’t need defending
    let them duke it out, someone will win, it’s competition – it’s good for us

    • well, even though FRB is much more challenging than the other types as it is more focused on “realism”, i wouldnt call it a “full-blown sim”.

      Yes, it requires more knowledge, better piloting skills, but it is still more casual than other sims out on the market, for example the IL-2 series, which puts a higher emphasis on realism than birds of prey or war thunder, however i have to admit that Gaijin did a fairly good job for a console-flight title ;)

      War thunder tries to provide entertainment and aims at a large mass due to it’s different difficulty settings, you can click on FRB and you’re immediately placed inside a cockpit, ready to climb in the sky, which is fun, but merely a sim. Think at games like DCS:A-10C, which requires you to study its manual for understanding at least most of the keys in your cockpit. Complexity like that is missing in WT, which is fine, as it shouldnt have it… it would diminish its playerbase greatly and just make it accessible for hardcore-flight-sim-players, which will ruin gaijin after some time…

      the same occurs to WoT: for F2P you need a large playerbase, and easy access & long term fun is the key to it ;)

  25. Freaking yeah, the transmission! This is the best part of WarThunder! WG is so STUPID, that they think that transmission and engine are the same. Shame on you, how can a lil company like Gaijin come to their senses and separate transmission and engine (as the case irl which are both different modules) while you Russian biased fellas didn’t think of it! So stupid of WG.

  26. Haven’t read all the comments but I am pretty sure this has been addressed, but I love your site and thought I would comment on why the radiator and engine could be counted as separate modules. The radiator is what cools the engine and usually the transmission. Say I knock out your radiator, but not your engine you are going to have a little bit more time before your engine overheats, and typically blows a head gasket or worse. This being said I do not like the idea because I agree with what you said about having to many modules being a bad thing for faster firing tanks. Yes, it ads realism, but at the same time how likely is it that a radiator would just be damaged and not the engine also?

    Keep up the great work love your site, and thank you for posting the article.

  27. I think I will actually prefer WT to WoT out of that very reason, there is no magical +/-25% RNG that lets people survive with 1% of some fucking health bar because the RNG decided to roll low for you.
    And if the driver is injured the controls will react slower, instead of the tank only driving half speed because of magic vodoo. I like that, but then again I also prefer ARMA over all the BF/COD kiddy shooters, so that’s just me. I agree that too much could hurt the game for alot of people, but that doesn’t really matter since WT has 3 different stages of realism with planes, and will have those with tanks, too. If you don’t want realism, play arcade and enjoy flying UFOs. Thats there to appeal to most of the players.

    • I’m currently playing disciples 2, and I was screwed by rng (miss or low dmg roll at a critical moment) countless times. Losing a lvl 5 city because the last attacking unit gets lucky and has 1hp and finishes your last unit. And your hero is several turns away, so you cannot re-capture it immidiately….

  29. To be honest the biggest turn off for me on the WarThunder tanks is the fact that they all look like unwanted trash that some jackass left in a salt marsh for a decade or two. The seriously kills the immersion.

    I’m playing a tank game, not fallout.

  30. Ur… I think everyone becomes too excited or too defensive that they think one system won’t work.
    Really I am a WT close beta tester and also playing WOT(I am not QB like pro, but at least I make my way to a T10 Patton)I can’t say anything about your worries SS,but what I can say is it works fine, for now. Your view is very interesting and say things that I never thought of. I think all of you should stop defending WOT or WT and just wait for yourself to test WT tanks out when they release. As a COD and BF player also, I think this is becoming like the fanboys of both games yelling at each other, really guys? Play the game first before making judgements.

    BTW, SS if you want to express such opinions to Gaijn, you can also ask dev questions in the forum. Your view is very interesting and I am pretty sure the dev would love to hear a 3rd party opinion.

  32. SS – why the hell are u talking about pros and cons of WT:GF, while u have never played it before? Everything (in ur opinion) is bad in this game. Too detailed models? Wrong! Good quality textures? Wrong! Mud, dust etc ground shit which sticks to tanks? Thats very bad idea!
    Simple is best!
    Simple is good!
    Lets make then two squares with pipes, moving on flat area! I gues this gonna be best game evah in ur opinion.
    With whole respect but last two articles about WT made by you, were contained huge amount of bullshit. Play, and then rate.

    • There was a dev stream today, and from what I saw the entire “complexity” boils down to, you penetrate = you kill the enemy, plus constantly re-spawning. I want a game that is better than WoT but from what I seen of WT gameplay I have a lot of doubts right now. Right now the only good thing is the tank graphics (environment on the other hand seems a bit meh)

  33. The “myth” about German steel is interesting when you think about it. Germany has always been famous for good quality steel. I do actually believe that the Russians used mostly this “cheaper” steel variant that doyle is talking about. They had a higher amount of coal in their steel, making it more brittle and more impure. So that is in fact, fact, not necessarily a myth at all. The funny thing is that doyle is used for a source sometimes, then people ignore him. While he actually stated there was a difference between steel quality, and says that Germany was ahead of all the allies before the war.

    Then again, I never expect to find impartial things said about anything here, though it is, albeit very clumsily, disguised.

  34. I think you also HAVE to mention how will the differences between ammunition in WT work. Because – honestly – this is the reason why I disagree with you that Wargaming “has it” better. Also there is a slight possibility that the arcade battle (damage) model could be easier while this already presented damage model could be in historical battles. But mainly, do mention the ammo types for all your readers. This is the crucial point of Gaijin’s tank gameplay. In my opinion. Like it really was in reality.

  35. “I cannot help but wonder, how will Gaijin deal with the amount of “why the hell did THAT happen” complaints”

    The same way that WG does: “How terrible.”

    That’s an awful way to deal with valid criticisms, but not unexpected when 95% or more of the criticisms you get are utter rubbish.

    As for the “realism” thing, WG’s game designers are (correctly) not at all about realism for the sake of being realistic. The attempts at “realism” are applied only to certain narrowly defined areas.

    The question is, why? I suspect that WG, consciously or unconsciously, is using a standard artistic technique where you place certain limitations on what you can do in order to inspire creativity. Shakespeare did this when he wrote dozens of plays in iambic pentameter (a certain specific format of syllables and stress). There was no need for it, and plenty of works were written in simple prose, so why would he do it? Well, it turns out that by forcing yourself to work within certain limits, you can often get more interesting and creative results than if you allow yourself to do anything.