Hello everyone,

just to let you know, TOMORROW at 20:00 CEST I will be a guest at Circonflexes’ stream. My first streaming ever, so I hope I won’t screw up…. too much :)

Silentstalker

Hello everyone,

so, here’s an idea: this year, I plan to visit Gamescom (for those who don’t know, it’s a huge game fair in Germany in late August) and I kinda decided to have my own T-shirt made for the occasion, something with our beloved and favourite game developer: SerB.

What I was thinking is something along the lines of:

Nevermind the low picture resolution, it’s just a stupid preview system. I’ll probably have something like the second made, “How terrible…” with SerB giving a finger.

So, I was thinking, anyone else is going? If so, does anyone else want a T-shirt like this? I could obviously have more than just the one for me made and the price would get lower. Of course, shipping would be a problem, but if there aren’t too many, I am willing to have them made and send them around Europe just for the manufacture+shipping costs.

Or you can just make them yourselves in your country, would probably come cheaper… dunno. It’s just a thought for now.

Would anyone be interested in something like this? Could be kinda funny to wear them around Wargaming stand there, especially the one with SerB giving a finger… :)

Hello everyone,

this article continues with the introduction of the (potential) 8.8 Soviet vehicles. Earlier:

Tier 6 – A-43
Tier 8 – Object 416
Tier 10 – Object 430

The A-44 project was initiated by the Kharkov KB-24 construction bureau, under the supervision of famous Russian tank designer, A.A.Morozov. Morozov himself worked on the project to improve the T-34 tank (the A-43), but was always wondering, whether the armament of the medium tank could be improved even further.

The basic idea that led to the development of the A-44 was: if you equip your heavy tanks with the same armament as your medium tanks (or rather, with the guns taken from the medium tanks), they lose their combat worth. Consequently, if you manage to equip a very light tank with a very powerful gun, it becomes a rather cheap to produce, but very dangerous enemy (the same line of thinking actually led to the German development of light tank destroyers, which proved to be rather effective). And so the idea was born to equip the A-43 suspension (that could withstand bigger loads than the T-34 one) with a sleek hull and the 107mm F-42 gun, or with the 57mm ZiS-4.

The 57mm was probably the most suitable gun, because it was basically a re-worked 76,2mm F-32, with longer barrel and a different breech. The F-42 gun, developed by F.Petrov’s bureau, was probably more suited for heavy tanks, it was big and had a long recoil, but even so, according to Morozov’s calculation, the weight of the vehicle wouldn’t be over 34 tons (the armor was counted on to be cca 45mm). Results of firing tests of captured German guns were also taken into account and in March 1941, after seeing Morozov’s tank idea, it was decided to develop such a vehicle under the designation of A-44 (sometimes T-44, but do not confuse this tank with the ingame tier 8 T-44, they are not related).

The technical documents for this tank mentioned two variants: a “faster” and a “slower” one. Both variants were to weight around 35 tons, with the “faster” having 75mm and 65mm frontal and side armor, while the “slower” had up to 120mm frontal armor and 100mm armor on the sides. The projected speed was to be somewhere between 50-55km/h. Three guns were considered: the 57mm ZiS-4, 76,2mm F-34 and 107mm F-42. In the end, it was decided to implement only the 57mm one.

In order to archieve all this, the vehicle had to be designed unconventionally – with the turret in the back. In the frontal part of the vehicle, there was the transmission and steering mechanism, the engine was in the middle and the crew as in the back. The suspension was (just like with the A-43) solved by implementing torsion bars, the vehicle had 7 roadwheels, 4 idlers and the frontal wheel was propelled by the engine.

The preliminary project was ready on 20.4.1941 and in May, a 1/10 scale model was built and introduced to the mock-up committee. It was basically approved and there were plans to build a prototype by 1942, but as with the A-43 project, the war intervened: the Kharkov factory was evacuated to Nizhny Tagil and lots of valuable stuff was lost. In the light of changed wartime priorities, the development of this project was scrapped soon after.

The model is already apparently implemented into the game:

Official (leaked) Wargaming description of the vehicle:

The project was begun in April 1941. Development was led by I. S. Behr, lead engineer of Plant No. 183. Three different versions of the vehicle were proposed, varying in armor, armament, combat load, and speed. The estimated production date for the prototype was early 1942. However, when the German invasion forced the evacuation of the facility, development was discontinued.

Characteristics:

Weight: cca 35 tons
Crew: 5
Armament: 57mm ZiS-4 (I have no doubt that the 107mm version will appear in the game, we can expect cca 170mm penetration on that)
Frontal armor: 75-120mm (the lightly armored variant will likely be introduced)
Side armor: 60-100mm
Engine: diesel, unknown horsepower
Speed: 50-55km/h

Verdict:

It’s hard to say, how exactly will Wargaming implement this tank. It could really be anything, but since the following vehicle is a light and rear-turretted tank too, my bet would be that WG will simply opt for the lightly armored variant and make it similiar in gameplay.

Thanks to Vipez for sending me this one.

Player Pesusieni from the Eye for en Eye (EFE) clan managed to score 15 kills on T1 Cunningham. Pretty impressive overall!

Here’s the video:

 

And here’s the debriefing table:

What are you doing?

America!

Stahp!

Humor aside, this is the Falcon(the flying one) and the Aerie which are among the strangest vehicles proposed by the US right next to the DAPRA “humvee-copter” in my opinion. Back in 1955 the Ordnance Tank Automotive Command(OTAC) designed a new medium tank, a light airborne tank, and an aerial recon vehicle/carrier of said aerial vehicle.

The 1.5 ton Falcon was powered by a radial engine and was to have the flight characteristics of a helicopter(VTOL). It could hover or could fly at speeds near 161 km/h. The Falcon was armed with a .30 caliber MG and ten 4.5 inch rockets(basic rockets in use at the time). 25.6 mm of titanium armor was to protect the Falcon’s pilot.  A parachute feature was also developed.

The Aerie tracked vehicle was based on the Rex tank(the medium tank of the OTAC which  later helped in the T95′s development–a subject for another day) and weighed ~20 tons. The Aerie and the Falcon did not progress very far in development and there is a near certainty these won’t be in WoT ever, would be a good laugh though.

Source: Hunnicutt’s Abrams

EXTRA PSA:

The Maus had these armor values:

Maus Armor according to Panzer Tracts 6-3 (Jentz/Doyle)

I ran across a few threads recently that stated the Maus in WoT has had its armor nerfed from real life. In actuality it is the other way around.

Hello everyone,

today, I’ll just post a few links for you. Some of you might already know about them, some of you don’t – the whole thing has been around for about a month, so a lot of players had a chance to have a look at it.

Long story short: a guy (from Hungary it seems), who calls himself Greedy Goblin (apparently he plays on EU server as “Gevlon”), posted 5 articles on his blog, in which he explains at length that he discovered a “cheat” (how to make more money/XP in World of Tanks). He combines it with a conspiracy theory, basically claiming that the game is rigging random battle results in favour of low W/R players, while damaging the high W/R players to keep them close to average.

You can check his articles here:
Part 1 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-introduction-and.html
Part 2 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-lucky-and-unucky.html
Part 3 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-lemming-train.html
Part 4 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-its-economy-stupid.html
Part 5 – http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/05/world-of-tanks-cheat-exploit.html

On Russian forums, he became quite famous, to the point of people asking SerB, whether the “winrate conspiracy” is true (of course they got trolled as a result).

And my take on it?

While the argumenting is interesting at some points, I am no friend of statistical “proofs”, I leave statistics for real life. In part 5, the great exploit is explained to be…. waaaaaait for it….. playing like a retard (rushing), so the game will carry you via its secret “you shall not drop below certain winrate” mechanism (for example by putting you on better initial spots before the battle), at which point you start gaining more money by playing good, because you’ll have the upper hand (or was it simply continuing playing like that, making games more profitable? Something like that)

Personally, I don’t believe in this. Winrate conspiracy theories are old as the WoT open beta itself (maybe even older, I didn’t play closed beta to confirm that) and even if the results were not rigged by the blogger (and I am not suggesting they are), they ALL have one major flaw: they are based on statistics by one player. That’s obviously not enough. Even if it was a thousand players, it would not be enough. Ten thousand? That would probably suffice, but I think people fail to realize, how HUGE World of Tanks playerbase is. Within that playerbase, statistically anything can happen: one of a million players could probably have a 50 loss streak, even if he wasn’t a totally bad player. And this player will then come out and say “Okay, my results must be rigged, there is NO way I am having THIS many losses.”

Anyway, even so, the articles (and the whole blog in fact!) are interesting to read. Maybe you will come to a different conclusion than I did, who knows.

I have read lots of people complain that the KV-1S is ahistoric, and should not get any larger gun than 76 mm, citing that the only KV with such a gun was the KV-85 (when questioned on the difference between a KV-1S and a KV-85, they fall silent). To clear up any difficulties some people may have with nomenclature, here are some choice bits from the archives.

CAMD RF 38-11355-1377, page 195, fragment

“To arm new “IS” and modernized KV-1S tanks, four 85 mm “S-31″ guns were received, and one “D-5″ gun, designed and produced by factory #9.
The “S-31″ gun has a recoil length of 540 mm, and a large, non-compact mount, which makes it difficult to install in a tank.
The “D-5″ gun has a recoil length of 300 mm, and a compact mount, with a relatively low line of loading. The ballistic qualities of both guns are the same.
Aside from the specified characteristics, the “D-5″ can also be converted to a 122 mm caliber by swapping the barrel and breech.”

And, of course, here is an oldie but a goodie:

CAMD RF 38-11369-106 page 56, fragment

“Installing a 122 mm “S-41″ howitzer on the KV-1S will make a weight difference of _____ compared to the KV-1S with a 76.2 mm ZIS-5 gun (43.5 tons), and will be equivalent to _____ tons.
All specifics of installing an 85 mm gun in the KV-1S and IS tanks are applicable to the changes in the turret and fighting compartment that come with installing a 122 mm howitzer (refer to the TsAKB project “S-31″).”

Hopefully that clears up any confusion as to what KV had what kind of gun in it.

Edit: it appears that people are somehow more confused about the KV-1S and its armament now.

Here you go, a KV-1S with a 122 mm D-25T gun. If you don’t like it, there is a bigger gun Wargaming can put in.

Source: http://world-of-ru.livejournal.com/2172063.html

Just a few points, regarding the upcoming 8.7 changes. You’ll like them :)

- T-50 will NOT apparently lead to MT-25, it will lead to T-34
- MT-25 will be unlockable from KV-1S
- current accumulated T-50 XP will be somehow transferred to KV-1S
- Panther tanks (apparently both Panther I and II) will be rebalanced, they will lose their top engines, but will recieve a rate of fire buff (amongst other things)