First and foremost, I appreciate all the donations so far, thanks guys. I think it’s best not to publish any particulars, but you know who you are and I am grateful to all of you.
As you all probably know, tomorrow the second round of 8.7 test starts, with following changes:
- Fixed the T-50-2 tank conversion error. Now the equipment from T-50-2 transferred to the depot and the remaining modules (turret, suspension) are sold by a purchasing price.
- Fixed some errors and mistakes on the “Belogorsk-19” and “Highway” maps.
- Changed the icon in the Battle Score Panel for the Bishop SPG
- Changed the price for the E-25 Premium TD. Now it costs 6700 gold.
- Switched off the Assault mode on the Westfield and Malinovka maps.
- Corrected errors in the ‘Sniper’ and ‘Lucky’ achievements receiving description.
- Fixed collision-models of some buildings and object.
- Reworked voiceovers. Some of the game actions received new voiceover texts. Now the sounding of the events will become more vivid. Also reworked the “radio effect”.
Regular Q&A:
- for now, there are no plans to introduce wheel-cum-track mechanism itself
- there actually was a Soviet artillery vehicle with autoloader, it was a competitor to the Msta design, but it won’t be implemented to the game (SS: too new I believe)
- the historical documents about the MT-25 mentioned a mysterious 47mm gun. There is no such gun on the ingame MT-25, as SerB thinks it’d definitely a typo, the drawings clearly show (specify) a 45mm gun, Soviets didn’t have ny native 47mm guns and trophy 47mm guns were not available in sufficient amounts
- the problem with the wheeled vehicles in WoT was the turning mechanism. Developers were working on one Havok option apparently (“pushing” static objects – namely trucks) and “accidentally” made a mechanism allowing the implementation of wheeled vehicles
- Q: “Mines, encounter – the upper spawn is closer to the target base!” A: “How terrible…”
- no plans to introduce consumables, that would increase crew gained XP (2x, 3x), but the developers are thinking of another, yet undisclosed, option
- Havok will bring more features to the game than previously announced (SS: which was turrets getting ripped by explosions, parts of tanks flying off, realistic detracks, destructable objects and houses), SerB will even demonstrate, but later
some of you might recall that not so long ago, Storm stated that they want to introduce more reward T10 vehicles (like the M60, Object 907 and the Failowe), obtainable thru random battles – but they have a problem: all of the tier 10 candidates are already “scheduled” to appear as regular vehicles with lines of their own.
As a reaction to that, Kankou, Zarax and me did make a tier 10 proposal: the E-75 Ausf.W:
Two things. Basically, I asked an “unnamed developer” (I don’t want to bring pressure on him, my question was informal), whether this design would be viable. Basically, his reply was that it’s as good as any other proposal. At the same time, I gathered feedback, which was actually quite positive (more than I expected at least).
In the meanwhile, Kankou did propose it to Wargaming officially thru some other contacts. But honestly, we all know, every project needs support – your support, the support of players, who like it and would like to see it in the game.
So, this is where YOU come in, dear readers. This project needs your approval and some good hype. I can see you asking one (the most logical) question – “Why should I support it?”
Here are a few reasons why:
- first, it’s (semi) historical. The historical background is described at length in the aforementioned article
- it’s not another German huge metal box. You probably could find more heavy tank “historical” candidates for the German T10 position, such as the “Tiger Maus”, or the “E-100 Ausf.B”, but all of them are basically Maus/E-100 clones. This proposal is different, it’s more mobile, has sloped armor and packs quite a punch, it’s like E-75 on steroids
- it’s essentially a player-described evolution of the original Weserhütte hull proposal. In other words, if your feedback can get it in, it might as well be the first “player-suggested” tank in the game.
- it’s as good a design as any, when it comes to T10 random battles. If you have a different idea for the T10 reward tank, sure, that’s cool too, but you have to consider the fact it can’t be anything “common”, as those vehicles (for example the Chieftain tank) are scheduled to appear at some point as regular vehicles. If you care only about getting some rewards for random battles too, you might as well consider this tank
Regarding the third point – make no mistake, the chance to get this tank in is most likely small, but I still think it’s a good idea and it’s worth trying.
So, what can you do?
Talk about it. Propose it. This appeal goes especially to EU (and possibly SEA) server, where every community has its own language section (especially the EU German, Polish and others), you can translate a part of it if you want to, post it in the “suggestion” section. Stuff like that.
Of course, if you don’t do any of that, that’s just fine. All I am asking for you, dear readers, is to at least consider the idea and the reasons I posted above.
For past 2-3 days, Wot-news.com was running a review thread of the new artillery. I decided to translate some of it (well, not literally, I will add some comments) in hope it will bring the prospective arty players (who should should be summarily sacrificed to Khorne would like to try the British arties) some info to decide, what’s what.
Author (tester): Madspider
British arty review
As everyone knows by know, patch 8.7 will bring the British artillery. It’s a whole new branch, that looks basically like this:
Tier 2 – Loyd GC (150XP and 3900 creds)
Tier 3 – Sexton II (1350XP and 49000 creds)
Tier 4 – Birch Gun (5250XP and 152000 creds)
Tier 5 – Bishop (14750XP and 405000 creds, 19600XP when researched from Valentine)
Tier 6 – FV304 (31000XP and 930000 creds)
Tier 7 – Crusader SP (64750XP and 1440000 creds)
Tier 8 – FV207 (118200XP and 2730000 creds)
Tier 9 – FV3805 (202000XP and 3560000 creds)
Tier 10 – Conqueror GC (267000XP and 6100000 creds)
Loyd GC
A proposal to mount a 76.2-mm gun on the chassis of the Loyd Carrier artillery truck. Developed from 1940 through 1941. No prototypes were manufactured.
This vehicle is characterized by very thin armor, good speed (which it can however reach only when going downhill) and good traverse angles. The rest of the properties however are pretty sad and the gun is mediocre at best, not being really good in any respect.
Sexton II
Modification of the Grizzly tank, mounting the British 25-pounder field howitzer. Mass production was launched at the Montreal Locomotive Works in Canada, with 2150 vehicles manufactured from 1943 through 1945.
A decent, but unremarkable arty piece. Her “brother”, Sexton I, is going to be a premium vehicle and is very similiar to this arty (the only difference is the engine, Sexton II has a 460hp one, while the premium Sexton I only has a 390hp one). This vehicle kinda resembles the US M7 and M37. It has a good gun and relatively good mobility, plus a really good armor as a bonus (during its testing, one player was able to acquire steel wall with it, when facing the Panzer IC)
The first SPG originally designed in Great Britain. Development started in 1923. The prototype was built on the basis of the Vickers Medium Mark II in 1925. A few prototypes were manufactured, and underwent trials starting in 1925. The project was canceled in 1928 due to lack of interest by the British government.
First and only British SPG with a turret – if that thing can be called a turret at all. It’s basically a cool cabriolet, that made its way to tier 4 od the British SPG branch. It uses the same guns as the previous Sexton, they just fire a bit faster and are a bit more accurate. The HE shells of the top gun are a problem however – while they are sufficient to destroy enemies of tier 2 to 4, they lack penetration to destroy tier 5-6 enemies (the tester fired 6 premium shells at KV-2 and has done 0 damage). The only way to play it is with the AP rounds, with all their joys, such as “that one bounced”, detracks and 0 damage crits. Even that is however better than constant useless dings of the HE shells.
Developed by Birmigham Carriage and Wagon in June 1941 on the basis of the Valentine II infantry support vehicle. From 1942 through 1943, a total of 149 SPGs were produced. In general the vehicle was unsuccessful. The vehicle was used for training purposes since 1943.
This arty is based on Valentine. It looks like a KV-2 and Valentine crossbreed in fact. The chassis belongs obviously to the Valentine tank – with a boxy construction on top of it. If you expect a turret however, you will be disappointed – the casemate construction is rigid and the gun itself has a horrible, horrible traverse arc, only 4 degrees! Furthermore, this vehicle has a horrible range of only 499m, which is worse than the tier 2 arty has. When you fight on this vehicle for the first time, you are in for a shock: it’s somewhat slow and huge (this arty sticks out, literally) and with no traverse, it an simply fire only forward. Frontal armor is not bad for a tier 5 arty (60mm), but it doesn’t save this vehicle. The top gun has only one type of ammunition (which kinda sucks in both penetration and damage). Really, not a good vehicle overall.
Prototype light SPG developed by Vickers. Development started in 1947. However, the prototype was not manufactured until 1953. The design of the SPG was already obsolete by this time, and the project was canceled.
This is basically not even an arty vehicle, it’s a scout in disguise, equipped with a howitzer and the guy who tested this vehicle had the feeling that it will get a lot of XP for scouting, instead of dealing damage. The vehicle indeed is “original”, but it’s practically impossible to play it as classic arty. It’s possible that the developers ran out of ideas and basically inserted a TD and a LT on tiers 5 and 6 and did set them up as arties, because neither of these vehicles plays as a regular arty.
Hull armor: 25/25/25
Hitpoints: 280 (! that’s less than the tier below)
Hull turnrate: 22-24 deg/sec
Traverse: +14/-17 degrees
Viewrange: 310m
Radiorange: 450-700m
Maximum speed: 72,4 km/h (!!!)
Gun:
QF 25pdr (44/92/71 pen, 280/180/180 dam, 6,98 ROF, 0,66ACC, 4,5s aimtime)
QF 4.5in How (57 pen, 450 dam, 5 ROF, 0,70ACC, 4,5s aimtime)
Shell range: 499m (!)
Crew: 5 (notice the annoying crewmember changes)
Armor model:
Crusader SP
A modification of the Crusader featuring a 140-mm howitzer. Soon after WWII a prototype was completed. However, the vehicle never entered mass production, nor saw service.
An interesting vehicle, based on the famous Crusader British tank. The real question is, how come it’s so slow? Only 14 km/h? Well, if you look at some of the screenshots, you will understand:
See that seat? That’s drivers seat and it’s facing backwards. The whole hull is backwards in fact, so this arty can go as fast as 45km/h when driving backwards! Therefore, it can (and has to) run away from scouts backwards, while shooting at them from the move (yes, that works, if you manage to hit and drive at the same time). But that’s where its advantages end. The top gun of this arty has one of the lowest damage and penetration characteristics on its tier, while rest of the vehicle’s stats remain mediocre. Interestingly enough, the golden HE shells have a huge splash (4,5m, compared to the 3,15m of the regular HE), but there is not much sense in buying it. Well, basically it’s a fast tank (when going backwards), with a huge gun.
An SPG variant on the basis of the А45 Conqueror. It was planned to mount either a 105-mm, 140-mm, or 152-mm howitzer in a closed armored cabin. The vehicle existed only in blueprints.
Tier 8,9,10 vehicles are kinda similiar in their layout. First of them is the FV207 – it is also the slowest one. Just like on the previous case, the gun has quite a low penetration and when it comes to other parameters, it kinda resembles to top gun of Lorraine 155 51. The vehicle’s biggest advantage lies in great gun traverse (44 degrees altogether!). In general, this vehicle is pretty good and the tester had no specific complaints about it.
A modification of the Centurion featuring a 140-mm howitzer. A total of 2 prototypes were built in 1956. The development of the FV3805 was discontinued in 1960. The vehicle never saw service.
This tier 9 arty is very, very well balanced. It is reasonably mobile, reasonably accurate and has good gun traverse angles. It’s a very good vehicle, that allows you to be on top of the battle damage in almost every battle. The tester’s impression was that it’s the best British arty, even better than the tier 10 one.
A proposal to mount a 234-mm howitzer on the chassis of the Conqueror. Existed only in blue prints.
Conqueror GC is not a very well profiled and ambiguous vehicle. On one hand it is quite inaccurate (when tested, the tester couldn’t hit a standing WZ-111 at 500m with fully aimed circle, all 3 shots missed), the gun is also the slowest reloading in the game. On the other hand, this vehicle has awesome armor (even better than the one of some tier 10 meds!), which makes it really problematic to deal with for light tanks, it’s also quite mobile and with such a long reload time, it allows you to drive around half of the game map before you reload. As a bonus, it’s probably the only top arty, which can install Improved ventilation equipment.
All in all, it’s not a bad vehicle. The shells have huge splash (11,1m), allowing you to “carpetbomb” more enemies at once and installing rammer and ventilation somewhat compensates the long reload time and horrible gun inaccuracy.
British arty is not for everyone and only the most hardcore arty players will be able to survive the horrible tier 5 and 6 vehicles (or pass them entirely with free XP) to reach the trio of good hightier arties. Another annoying thing in this branch are the changes in crew numbers, forcing you to shuffle your crews around, not allowing them to train consistently and properly.
I am sure many people noticed the trend with new Wargaming branches that the lowtiers tend to be bearable, mid-high tiers tend to be pretty horrible with only hightiers catching up the pace. I guess this is an arguable matter, but to me, it seems intentional (you know, to not make, but at least push a bit the players to skip some vehicles with free XP). Still, if you survive this, you might get to a decent set of arties, but somehow… I don’t think many will.
as it happens once in a while, new pictures of Sturmtiger emerged in this thread:
Are they fake? Are they real? Is Sturmtiger coming soon?
Well, first and foremost it doesn’t matter whether they are fake or not. Sturmtiger is not coming in 2013, that much has been confirmed numerous times. In fact, it was mentioned in Q&A today that the Sturmtiger might be a part of a whole new German branch of assault guns. It’s not even sure yet whether it will be a tank destroyer, or an arty.
The pictures could be “real”, because Sturmtiger was supertested several times this year (and in 2012), or it could be “fake” (there are a bunch of models and skins, that can turn any vehicle into a “Sturmtiger”).
Either way, the Sturmtiger will not come anytime soon I am afraid – we’ll just have to wait a bit more.
Edit: The pics are a fake, the author of the thread (Ilosz) is a modeller, who wanted to get some “fame”.
As some of you probably noticed, the new EU Q&A issue is out. The only interesting thing in it is that:
- in 8.8, there will be national crew voices
As always, take it “cum grano salis”, this guy was wrong it the past, several times in fact. I’ll doublecheck it via Russian Q&A.
Another piece of info from the Russian server is that Wargaming is currently looking for closed-alpha testers of World of Tanks Generals. At least the game wasn’t scrapped or something.
Now to the regular Q&A:
- Object 212 too expensive, when comparing it to S-51? “Don’t want it? Don’t pay” and “Most of the vehicle properties are published in vehicle description. It’s possible to test it on the test server. No need to whine about the price here.”
- SerB doesn’t like the Sixth Sense perk and wants it removed. Whether it will be nerfed or how, he will warn players in advance
- there will be no rule about balancing TD’s in teams (SS: the player probably means either a hardcap on TD’s, or the rule that both teams have to have the same amount of them), SerB states: “I predicted that the next whine target will be the TD’s :)”
- in 8.7, the MM will be modified so both teams have the same amount of scouts
- SerB doesn’t like “mirror teams” and is even against forcing MM to give the same amount of scouts to both teams, as it is possible that with the reduction of arties in the game, this rule will become pointless
- tier 6 heavies have roughly the same balancing weight as tier 7 meds and TD’s
- T-50-2 player statistics in 8.7 will remain on the MT-25, “because MT-25 is a direct replacement for the T-50-2″
- devs are not issuing FAQ posts, because noone reads them
- SerB says he doesn’t appear in public (in media) more (apart from the Wargaming business) because he’s not interested
- there is a developer idea to actually give each clan player some new points (as in currency), which could then be turned in for tanks. But no guarantees, promises or details.
- there will probably be more “special high level content” vehicles such as TD’s (SS: I think there will, SerB is unclear here), such special arties are not planned for now
- tier 4 light tanks too weak? “Don’t play light tanks”
- if you have FPS increase in 8.7, it’s probably because you updated your graphic card drivers, not because of game optimization
- the rule where HEAT shells lose penetration when penetrating (the first layer of) spaced armor, when traversing the gap between the spaced and main armor does not apply to other types of shells
- analysis of patch effects data usually starts after 2-3 weeks from its introduction
- Brummbär and Sturmtiger were considered as a part of new separate German branch
- SerB didn’t get any offers from (Russian) national TV (SerB: “Thanks Cthulhu!”), he appeared only once on Belarussian TV one and half year ago
- WoWp: there will be premium tier 8 planes, but not soon
- for now, Wargaming won’t disclose the configuration or pictures of WoT servers
- the engine sound, running on neutral gear (when you stop), has no influence on camo factor of your vehicle
- captured T-34 in German tree? “When it’s done it’s done”
- new pictures for crewmembers? “When it’s done it’s done”
- will the Panther changes influence all Panther-based vehicles? “That’s a question for Zlobny, he’s doing that”
- SerB himself is testing the Xbox WoT, he owns a Xbox360 Development Kit, but he’s generally not a console player
- actually, there is a (theoretical) possibility, that flamethrower tanks will make it to the game
- also, SerB was surprised to find out that thanks to some sort of Havok implementation, WoT could theoretically have wheeled vehicles
- it’s theoretically possible to implement minefields on some maps, but SerB doesn’t think it’s needed, because it’s stupid to die by a mine and not by enemy fire
- it’s possible that within a month or two, SerB will publish the data on tier 10 Japanese heavy
- currently, the developers are “pulling” one of the O-I Japanese heavy variants to tier 9
- SerB himself didn’t test the MT-25 yet, because he didn’t like its predecessor T-50-2 either
- SerB won’t buy consoles for his relatives (kids), because he thinks that PC is more versatile
- free camera in replays and other additional replay functions? “When it’s done it’s done”
- XboX WoT will probably not have its account integrated with WoT (due to some Microsoft conditions), mobile WoT (blitz) apparently has really easy gameplay
as you might have noticed, there is a new “Donate” PayPal button on the right side under the rest of the bars/menus. Here’s a little background explanation.
Every since FTR started (and I mean the old FTR in January, not just the wot-news incarnation), a lot of people asked me, whether they can contribute somehow and if so, how. At first, I thought – “okay, cool, I really appreciate your support” so after moving to wot-news, me and Edrard (the guy who is hosting this site) did set up some banners.
What happened afterwards was I recieved a bunch (well, okay, maybe more than just a bunch) of e-mails, saying basically the same thing: “I like FTR and I’d like to help, but I hate banners and I won’t turn my Adblock off.”
Well, after recieving one more mail like that just yesterday, I decided to introduce the Paypal donate button. Huge thanks to Edrard for helping me set the thing up (to be fair, he practically did it himself, as my IT skillz can be compared to those of an average gorilla).
As with the ads, the money raise (I am an optimist, I know :) ) will be used for FTR purposes: I was thinking something along the lines of a nice, summer competition for August, with prizes and stuff. You’ll like the rules, trust me :P Please note that coffee for myself IS a FTR purpose.
Anyway, I am not so sure what I did there with that button, but I think it lets you donate to the FTR paypal account an amount of EUR
Well, I hope you guy don’t mind this whole thing and as always, thanks for any and all support you give me :)
Edit: I just replaced the CZK currency with EUR not to confuse people, sorry for the mess :(
today, we are going to have a look at some of the weirdest (but most interesting) Panther variants there were. Most will come from W.Spielberger, so the info is as solid as it gets – no fakes here :)
The Panther is the ultimate medium tank of the Second world war. Despite being plagued by its own problems, it was a perfect blend of mobility, armor and firepower. Where other famous mediums lacked quality and made up for that by sheer numbers, the Panther was facing the opposite problems. There were simply too few. Despite the fact there were never enough Panthers around however, a number of interesting projects and upgrades were developed for the Panther chassis.
Obviously, thanks to the game, everyone noticed the Schmalturm – the “narrow” turret for the Panther. This was of course a real project, but the 75mm L/100 is… well, semi-real. In early 1943 (January, in fact), Hitler demanded this gun to become the Panther armament. At that point, the gun was not even developed I believe (long barrels have problems of their own – most notably the vibrations, in fact reducing the gun accuracy, they are also very expensive and notoriously difficult to make) and nothing came of it. But, it was proposed. What WAS however developed, was the Panther with autoloader. Basically, Škoda Pilsen developed an autoloading mechanism for the Panther KwK 42/2 (to be ready in April 1945) – so yes, Panthers with autoloaders could roam the battlefields of WoT one day. This is sort of conencted with SerB’s remark that eventually the E-50 and E-50M might merge, with the “Turbopanther” jumping to tier 9.
This is how the ultimate Panther (last historical Ausf.F) was concieved:
Following upgrades were also considered for the Panther:
- Stabilized gunsights, April 1945
- Biwa infra-red scope and searchlight and a built-in range finder, April 1945
- Gummisparende Laufrollen (rubber saving, steel-tyred roadwheels), May 1945
- Dreschflegelpanzer (mine-clearing flail tank), May 1945
- 900 hp Maybach HL 234 engine, August 1945
- Air cooled diesel engine by Simmering and water cooled diesel engine by Deutz
- Stabilized main gun
- Hydrostatic steering gear
- Hydrodynamic steering gear
- New turret with 8,8cm KwK L/71
What’s a “Turbopanther”? Well, what we can guess is: the ultimate Panther with various steering mechanism and drivetrain upgrades, sporting the heavies weaponry historically concieved for Panther (88mm L/71 in a Schmalturm), equipped with the GT-series gas turbine, giving it roughly 1200 horsepower to run around with. In real life, the turbine had a number of drawbacks and serious flaws, but in World of Tanks, it could work. Could work.
GT101 schematics:
Back to the Panther chassis, though. Four basic categories of vehicles were planned for the Panther chassis: scout tanks, anti-aircraft vehicles, self-propelled guns and tank destroyers.
Scout tanks
I will sort of skip the scout tanks, because there were only two models – the recon Panther (that is in the game), if you are interested, I wrote about its history earlier here. There is one more thing: an artillery ranging vehicle on Panther chassis. You can read about it in the article I linked, but basically, it was a Panther with all sorts of ranging equipment and a dummy gun (or a 50mm one), used to direct artillery fire. This is how it looked:
I will also skip the AA vehicles, as they have very little chance of appearing in World of Tanks. Earlier, I kinda thought one of the AA Panthers would make a cool scout (twin 37/55mm or so), but I guess we can’t really expect that, can we. Anyway, this is how it would have looked:
Now, however, we are getting to the interesting stuff: the self-propelled guns and tank destroyers.
Let’s start with the Jagdpanther. An 88mm with autoloader (PaK 43/3, 3 or 5 round drum autoloaders) and 128mm guns were both considered for the Jagdpanther (it was announced by Krupp during the November 1944 “tank re-arm” program proposal). The 128mm Jagdpanther was also considered (12,8cm PaK 80 L/55 that is). Doyle states that this vehicle would weight roughly 51 tons and would have to switch to the rear casemate design. Basically, it would be extremely uncomfortable for the crew and its performance would be limited by that. This design (along a bunch of others) was scrapped in February 1945 by Waffenprüfamt (German weapons testing office). Here’s how it would have looked:
Note that this design has nothign to do with the Jagdpanther II, it only adopted the rear casemate solution. By the time this vehicle was introduced, both Panther II and Jagdpanther II projects were long dead.
Part 2 will deal with the Waffenträgers, Panther artillery pieces and the 150mm Sturmmörser Panther assault mortar.
Sources:
W.Spielberger – Panther and its variants
H.L.Doyle, T.Jentz – Panther Variants 1942-1945
H.L.Doyle – Panzer Tracts
Posts by Daigensui (US forum)
- apparently, Wargaming actually did a survey to find out, where is the best location for the garage “battle” button (up or down)
- Skill MM: “There will be no skill MM. If you improve your skill, you will have the right to pwn”
- SerB explain the “free to win” Wargaming concept, compared to “free to farm”: “Free to win is a system, in which all the combat options (including gold ammo) are available to both paying and not paying players. Free to farm is a dream of noobs (SS: literally “freeloaders”), who don’t want to farm neither in the game, nor in real life. That won’t be implemented.”
- according to SerB, the autoloader tanks are not imbalanced. Although realistically in real life they actually had to stop to reload the shell magazine, this won’t be implemented because the game would become too static
- the tier 6 British arty size is correct (it’s not too small) – according to SerB, British designs were typically compact: “Take Matilda and Churchill as example. Everything is correct.”
- Q: “Will you introduce high penetrating premium tanks?” A: “How about a ‘pwn everyone’ button?”
- Superpershing sale for gold: “When it’s done it’s done”
- T54, T69 and VK3601 further gold ammo changes? “If needed, while taking historicity into account”
- Q: “Autoloader tanks are overpowered!” A: “How terrible. Get one autoloader too and pwn. Of course, skilled players will destroy you while you reload your drum and you will start whining again – too bad, in this case, medicine is powerless.”
- Foch 155 overpowered 1v1? “This game is not about 1v1 combat. Flank him, catch him when he’s reloading.”
- it is known that a newly researched (!, not bought) tank has a certain number of battles with preferential MM after its unlock (preferential as in – you have lower chance to drop to hightier battles), this also applies when for example the tank is bought one month after it is unlocked. It is however possible that during low server population hours, MM overrides this rule.
- Q: “I have too little FPS!” A: “Upgrade your abacus at least to calculator, clean it up inside, update drivers etc.”
- Foch 155 disadvantages accoding to SerB: “Long reload, thin side armor”
- if you have the elite status on KV-1S, it will stay elite even after MT-25 is introduced
- Q: “Arty was overnerfed…” A: “Oh my, we forgot to ask your opinion when we did it :( But yes, your opinion is very important to us.”
- T2LT nerfed MM? “Don’t play T2LT”
- light Soviet assault tank with short 76mm on tier 5? “Short barrelled 76mm on T5? How terrible…”
- the plan is to remove unhistorical Panther/E-50 engines, while improving the terrain resistance, so the vehicle mobility will remain the same
- if your T-50-2 tank commander has radioman perks (since in T-50-2, commander was serving as a radioman also) and he gets transferred to MT-25, his radioman perks will stay (in other words, it will be possible to have TWO crewmembers on MT-25 with perks exclusive to radioman)
- the amount of arties after 8.6 was “reduced three times, compared to pre-8.6″
- no plans to limit the number of TD’s in battle
- according to SerB, there were attempts by players to sue WG, but none have made it to the court room: “Apparently, he who has enough time for a trial also has enough money for lawyers, who then advise him not to put this in front of a judge, because the whole claim is futile.”
- MT-25 getting a new crewmember, screwing up the T-50-2 4-man crew with Brothers in Arms perk? “How terrible” and “The switch was announced a year ago, you could have chosen another”
- it’s possible that grinding the E-50 to elite status will be easier, as the top engine to grind will be removed
- according to SerB it’s technically not possible to introduce free consumables and shells for training rooms
- new detracking sounds are planned apparently
- it’s theoretically possible that Object 430U (Object 430 with 122mm gun and other improvements) will appear as a tier 10 Soviet heavy, but there is a problem with the branch leading to it
- SerB is not aware of a player-mentioned Japanese “Type 100 Te-Re” tank, he states the name itself doesn’t fit the Japanese naming system
- it’s possible that free XP will be shareable between WoT, WoWp and WoWs
in recent Q&A, SerB was asked about the machine, mysteriously known only as the “Gavalov tank”. SerB answered that this tank could be tier 6/7 Soviet light tank (not that it will, it would just be on that tier). After a quick search, I found the abovementioned article, which I will summarize here.
The light tank proposal from I.V.Gavalov (an engineer of some renown, he worked on several light tank designs, including the T-70) is an attempt to combine the concept of a light tank with a powerful gun. In an effort to make the vehicle more stable and easy to drive, the driver was moved to the turret and his seat was “stabilized” in order to compensate for the vehicle movement.
Despite the fact that in second half of 1943 the light tank projects were mostly stopped, some plants continued their light tank development. And so, in 1944 in the Gorky plant, I.V.Gavalov developed this technical project of a new tank.
In this project, the crew compartment was situated in the turret,w while the engine was apparently in the back in lying position. Fuel tanks and a part of stowed ammunition were located in the “nose” of the vehicle. In the turret, on the right side from the gun was the driver, the commander of the vehicle was behind him and on the left side, there was the gunner and loader. Furthermore, the engine was placed horizontally (the cylinders were horizontal), which, along with placing the crew in the turret, reduced the height of the vehicle.
As mentioned earlier, the driver’s seat was “stabilized” – when the turret turned, the driver stayed looking forward – this was possible thanks to a special chain transmission and the fact that the whole turret was “sitting” on the bottom of the tank on a pivot, not unlike the one of the anti-aircraft lafettes. Effectively, the driver was sitting on the turret axis and the whole thing rotated around him. The driver was also sitting above the rest of the crewmembers, looking out via a roof-mounted periscope, which was also stabilized.
As for the armament,in player-suggested trees, this tank is equipped with either a 57mm ZiS-5, or 76,2mm ZiS-4 and S-54 and characterised as a small, fast vehicle. Historically, it was to be equipped with a long-barelled 76mm gun and a machinegun. The vehicle was supposed to be 1,3m tall, 4m long and was supposed to have 7 large roadwheels. Armor was most likely probably non-existent. Altogether, when talking in game terms, it looks like a Soviet version of AMX ELC.
Since the same plant focused on light SPG vehicles (SU-85A for example) in the war, this light tank was only further developed after the war, eventually leading to the T-100:
