Hello everyone,

in part 1, we had a look at the birth of the LTL tank. Now, let’s continue on with the story. When we left off, the LTL prototype was actually built on 14.4.1938 and was ready to be presented to the Lithuanian forces.

But now, it’s April 1938 and dark clouds gather over Europe. Czechoslovakia too senses this – set upon by German terrorists backed by their nazi masters, a general consensus is reached to upgrade the Czechoslovak armored forces. A new program is created, a category designated IIa, that is to include the “light cavalry tanks” (fast, lightly armored vehicles, able to keep up with cavalry forces). Both Praga and Škoda are asked to present their suitable prototypes. Praga responds with three vehicles:

- an upgraded LT Vz.34, designated as P-IIR (R means “reconstructed”)
- TNH-S prototype for Swedish army (which would later become the famous LT Vz.38)
- the LTL

At that point however, the LTL prototype was not completely ready yet and while it was theoretically mentioned as a contestant, it did not actively participate in the tests – in the end, the committee declared the TNH-S to be the winner. In the meanwhile, an evaluation committee from Lithuania (Gen.Popeliučkis, Lt.Col.Masiulis and Lt.Tumosa) arrived in Prague to witness the LTL trials, which took place in mid May, 1938. The trial results went out on 28.5.1938. Possibly the most important element of these results was that the committee rejected the fact that the LTL was too heavy. The Lithuanians demanded strictly no more than 6 tons, while the vehicle was 7,2 tons heavy. The engine was also judged as underpowered, but apart from those things, the Lithuanians were relatively satisfied by the design. They even accepted the fact that the maximum speed was to be reduced from 54 to 45 km/h, but they demanded improvements to the powerplant and the drivetrain of the vehicle. Further trials were to continue when the prototype was upgraded according to Lithuanian demands.

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

WG ASIA released a “social mod“, which allows you to share your battle results and player statistics over Facebook.

I haven’t seen this posted for EU portal and I have no idea whether the ASIA mod works for the EU or US client, but feel free to try it out. I am really not that keen on sharing FB details with Wargaming (I suspect this is the reason behind this mod, some sort of social network survey) – the last part of the article actually made me somewhat chuckle.

Note: The WG Social mod was commissioned by Wargaming and conforms to generally accepted safety standards. Wargaming ensures that the WG Social mod does not store user data and only sends them to the social network authenticated by the user. The company cannot guarantee that other modifications that are not certified by Wargaming are safe. All data and processes of the mod will not be used illegally.

Damn, I sure am glad to read that! Because telling us that nothing will be used illegally will TOTALLY prevent anyone from using it illegally.

Hello everyone,

it is common knowledge, that there are no cheats for World of Tanks. Well, at least that’s what they would lead us to believe – and, for the most part, it’s actually true. The key element of the absence of cheats such as a wallhack is the fact that the game (thanks to its spotting system) does not transfer all the data to your client. Your client only knows the position of the tanks based on what the server calculates, so you can’t create a cheat for your client telling you where everyone is, simply because the server does not tell you the data you need for such a program.

There is another cheat however, plaguing especially the online shooters, that works in World of tanks – an aimbot.

What is an aimbot?

As the name suggests, an aimbot is a cheating program, that allows you – even without any knowledge of the tanks – to target tank weakspots. It works essentially as a normal auto-aim, only using different reference points for each tank. Basically, you can select to target specifical armor weakspots, such as commander’s cupola, or for example the driver’s hatch on frontal armor. Alternatively, you can make the aimbot target specific modules, such as ammo rack, engine, fuel tanks and such. This selection happens (or can happen) using a single button, that “cycles” the target modules/areas.

Continue reading →

Source: http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/world-of-warships/artikel/world_of_warships,47221,3059429.html

Hello everyone,

around the time of Gamescom and E3, where World of Warships was presented to public for the first time, you might have seen a lot of praising articles about the game. What does that mean for the yet to be released game now that the entire gaming journalism is put on trial (see “Gamergate”) is yet to be seen, but one thing is for sure. Not all the reviews are entirely positive, such as the one by Gamestar.de, one of the most important German gaming portals.

The review is not a complete hatchet job, but it’s definitely critical (the title itself is ironic: “Racing boat armor on high seas”). It came out on 31.8.2014 based on the Gamescom experience. The review (written by Christian Weigel), apart from the general overview of the game play (WoT-style with ships, different classes, the “garage” etc.) notes following things about the game:

- the caliber of the guns cannot be increased, it is tied to the ship class according to developers
- the spotting system: the smaller the ship, the later it is “spotted”
- ships have onboard recon aircraft to spot the enemy
- the performance (mobility) of all ships was increased unrealistically to a speedboat level in order not to make the battles too long
- developers promised 100x100km maps, but the test map is just 30x30km, which means that you are constantly within the reach of enemy guns and all pre-battle positioning is pointless.
- the gameplay is reduced to sailing quickly in zig-zag pattern not to be hit while trying to get as many shots as shots possible off in enemy direction
- ships exchanging fire is a “terrifying experience” – the shell guns look visually great, but are unrealistic (they leave a white smoke trace). Counterfire works well and is easy to pull off.
- the fire targetting works like in WoT (automatic elevation), but you can select the elevation manually to a limited degree in order to decide, whether you want to fire into the hull or below the waterline
- the shells are either of HE type (against unarmored targets such as destroyers) or AP (against battleships)
- AP penetrates the armor and damages the modules of the ship, but it doesn’t cause spectacular explosions (these can be caused by aiming at “ammo rack” (powder hold) below the turrets)
- apparently, submarines are still completely not out of question

As stated above, the article is not written in the cheerful and positive tone we usually expect, when it comes to articles about Wargaming products. I guess that’s good. We’ll just have to see, whether the game will satisfy the masses as World of Tanks did. Personally, I have serious doubts about that (especially seeing the politics behind the branch selection), but who knows? After all, the preview and leaked footage looked great. But then, so did World of Warplanes – in the beginning.

Hello everyone,

on some Russian portals (FTA, Wotleaks), an information came up, that Wargaming is preparing two new lowtier Soviet tank destroyers – the SU-76BM and the IT-45. The names might sound familiar to you? Yup, that’s very, very old stuff. The information about IT-45 and SU-76BM came out first in May 2013 – they were supposed to be a part of a Soviet lowtier alternative tank destroyer minibranch.

The whole line was effectively scrapped ages ago, but the vehicles themselves remained on the supertest server (within the client) along with other various relics. WG doesn’t simply throw these tanks out, but there is no need to make any conclusion about their occasional appearance in WG videos.

Hello everyone,

today, we are going to talk about a topic that I intentionally avoided for a very long time, because to say it’s a mess would be an understatement. The history and designation of Praga export tanks is very confusing and… well, you’ll see. In order to start, we have to return back to early 30′s and Praga’s TNH design.

It was a good time to be a Czechoslovak arms producers. Military production of Czechoslovakia was always of top notch quality (especially the Škoda artillery), but this all culminated between 1934-1935. In those years, Czechoslovakia was the biggest arms exporter in the world. While most of the production was sold to European countries, we exported armor to some quite exotic destinations, such as Iran and Peru.

The tanks, exported by Praga, are generally referred to as “Praga export tanks” and in this article series, we are going to have a look at them in detail. Or, rather, we will continue to be looking at them, since I actually already covered three of them in my previous articles. Those were:

TNH – export light tank, sold to Iran
LTH – export light tank, sold to Switzerland
LTP – export light tank, sold to Peru

The export light tanks were all based on the original TNH design, but the vehicles differed in a number of aspects. For one, they were generally smaller than the other TNH designs (specifically the TNH-S, accepted into service as LT Vz.38). They can be easily told apart from the LT Vz.38-based designs by the suspension: the roadwheels are smaller and there is an extra return roller.

The main difference of course was that the export tanks were made specifically according to the wishes of the customer. Most of the time, that included the engine and the main gun (plus the armor specifications), the suspension was always of the Praga type. Today, we’ll have a look at what Praga developed for Lithuania.

Lithuanian LTL

Continue reading →

Hello everyone,

thanks to LegendarySpecies from ASIA forums for noticing this :) Basically, in your player profile, you have two new medals, both for a feature, that is not yet in the game: attacks on enemy clan strongholds (in Stronghold mode).

First medal – Retaliation

Second medal – Fortress Crusher

You can check these medals on your player profile as well, amongst the unfinished achievements. Someone got probably too fast with putting these on the portal when the Stronghold attack mode was delayed.

…British!

through the history, Great Britain was perhaps the most influential navy in the world. From their island country, the British forged an unparalelled empire through the might of their navy and therefore, it’s only fitting that the British line would be the third one (since the first two were American and IJN).

Like that? Logical, no? Looking forward to sail with the HMS Hood? Well, fuck you then, because the third line will be Russian.

Yep, instead of possibly the mightiest navy in human history, we’ll have the Russians, whose naval achievements include losing to the Japanese at Tsushima and that’s pretty much it. The reason for this decision is purely economic one, since there are simply many, many Russian players and they have a “sense of national pride”, as one developer puts it. Don’t believe me? Check this out, here’s the original post:

The Stalin dev butthurt made me chuckle. But seriously though, this part is important:

Russian and British ship models are being developed in parallel and while we originally planned to release the Royal Navy first, we’ve since changed that decisions for business reasons. We are currently planning to bring in the Russian Navy as the first nation after release, followed by the Royal Navy.

To be honest, I believe that if we manage to create an immersive and fun game, fans of British ships will play it anyway. If they don’t like it and, as a result, don’t stay in the game then introducing those (or any other) ships won’t change that. The oldest Alpha Testers are painfully aware that I am quite passionate about the ‘gameplay vs. history’ line of argumentation. However, we do have a very large Russian community, who have a very strong sense of national pride, which in essence means that they like to play Russian tanks, planes or ships. Therefore, we see no compelling business reason why the Royal Navy must be the third nation.

Continue reading →