yesterday, I provided you with a summary from a video, where Storm answered some questions about World of Tanks. The summary can be found here. The video was however removed from Russian portal unfortunately – the reason was, there were some mistakes and there were also profanities in the chat.
It should return soon (even today), but you can watch it right now, because someone from the Wotleaks community managed to actually capture it.
It’s all in Russian and most of it is a footage of someone playing World of Tanks (wasn’t Storm himself, some community guy it was I think). But there are two interesting segments. First, there is a footage of Havok destruction (at cca 0:25) and secondly, a small preview of the new motion system (at cca 1:56). Looks interesting.
one of the first lines to be introduced to the European tree, coming in 2015, will be the Italian medium line. You might think it’s old news, but the line was put together (even roughly) only not so long time ago and everything is still in flux. What is practically decided is the tier 1 and tiers 7-10, even though those are not set in stone. Tiers 2-6 aren’t so problematic and there are multiple candidates especially for the low tier slots, but who knows? In any case, this line was discussed on multiple Russian sources, so I don’t think I’ll be betraying any secrets if I tell you how the line will basically look.
The main reason why the developers want the Italian medium branch is simply because the lowtier (2-4) vehicles are historical and actually fought the British (and Americans, well, partially) in the war. That of course is one of very few advantages of this setup and the developers are well aware of the issues, that come with it. As for the top tiers, well… you’ll see.
Tier 1 – Fiat 3000B
According to the Russian sources, this tank is – as one of the few – pretty much set in stone. It was heavily inspired by the FT-17 (basically an Italian version of that tank). The version in the game will be the one with a 37mm gun (“Model 30″). According to Yuri Pasholok (or, at least allegedly), this tank will be slow, but it will have very decent firepower in the 37mm gun – there was even an upgrade of the 37mm and that might be its top gun. Here’s a wiki entry, if you are interested, or you can read an article by Vollketten about it.
One interesting thing is, apparently, this vehicle might serve as a tier 1 for ALL the European branches (despite no other line having anything to do with it). I guess I don’t have to tell you how stupid that idea is – we’ll just have to see if WG drops it.
Tier 2 – M11/39
One of the “classic” Italian tanks, that actually fought the British in the desert (with mixed results). 11 tons, 37mm hull gun, 30mm armor tops and a 105hp engine – this thing will probably not be the best vehicle ever to hit World of Tanks, but for its tier, it’s solid. Think of it as a tier 2 “Lee” – a tall(ish) tank with casemate gun and limited traverse. The engine is too weak to be serving even as a medium tank, so I think they’ll upgrade it. You can read an article about it by Vollketten if you are interested.
player Sunny sent me a screenie from the World of Tanks assistant, where the LTTB is designated as R107 LTB.
Now, you might think, it’s an obvious typo, right? Plus, that R107 (which appears on KV-85 as well as R106) is some kind of internal WG designation, showing the nation (R) and the internal number of the tank (106-107). Well, it’s not that simple. You see, for some reason, at one point, before it was introduced, LTTB was actually really called “LTB” in the game files (it was around the time the project was first mentioned as Russian light tank candidate, back then it was still intended as tier 8 LT). There’s no real reason for it – the project in real life really was called “LTTB” (literally it means “light tank with heavy armor”), so I guess somebody made a typo before the tank was even modelledand the old “LTB” designation stayed in the files.
Yea, it’s a small thing, but an interesting one I think.
as you already probably know, the Sixth Sense perk (the famous “lightbulb”) is getting an overhaul. It will be tied to a radioman. If you listened to the entire stream itself, what he actually said is this:
- it will be tied to a radioman or to a crewman fulfilling radioman’s role
- it will be activated only after the main skill of the crewmember reaches 100 percent.
So, what does it mean for us, players? Well… for older players with more battles, who already have crew with perks, very little. The entire perk/skill rework (don’t expect it anytime soon) will come with a crew perk/skill reset (due to numerous overhauls), so they will just switch the perk to another one.
For newer players or those with many tanks and not-100-percent crews, it will be easier to obtain the skill, all they will have to do will be to buy 100 percent skill training (for gold) for the radioman character. Now, identifying the radioman character, that’s going to be a bit tougher, because on tanks that do not have him, you’ll have to look at crew available skills/perks or on wiki, which guy is it (unless you want to just upgrade the entire crew). Or, you can have a look at the small role icons on that respective crewmember’s panel in the garage (thanks to Viktor E. for reminding me of this one):
I also guess that due to earlier access to Sixth Sense, Wargaming will have to make a special tutorial or something for everyone to know, why the hell is there an orange lightbulb lighting up above their tanks (I can full well imagine there are players, who wouldn’t have a clue the first time they see it).
- Veider confirms that the new top French mediums (AMX-30 Prototype and AMX-30) will be unlocked from AMX-13/90
- it’s possible that the RU251 view range will be changed, full analysis is needed in order to make a decision
- T-54 Light would be really boring as a premium tier 8 medium tank, that’s why another tank will be picked for that slot instead. Veider likes it as a top tier LT8, it’s possible there will be some characteristics fixes
- Object 906 is an interesting tank, but without swimming, it’s very unlikely it will appear in the game
the faster of you noticed that there was a video published, containing some information about the upcoming game changes. Then it was taken down and apparently, it will appear tomorrow. It’s nothing really new, it’s just a summary of the stream with Storm, which I already covered before. Just to sum up what was said in this video then:
- a definition of Havok: it will be used to model client-side beautiful destruction
- Havok will use a separate core thread, which will satisfy multicore PC owners, it will be optional
- the technology is ready, but now maps and objects have to be reworked for it, it’s a lot of work and it will take some time
- multicore support: right now, developers are working on transferring some client and graphic calculations to separate threads. It takes a lot of work, devs are working on it for quite some time and the work will not be finished anytime soon.
- multicore support will not be a magical solution to all performance problems, even though it might increase the performance by dozens of percent
- FV4202 will be made premium, it is not yet decided whether players will get it for free
- new motion physics will bring realistic tank movement, tanks will be able to perform “controlled drift”, it will be possible either to turn like now, or to make an U turn, but by doing that, you will lose speed
- tank “swinging” (when stopping or starting) was moved serverside and now it will be possible to shoot below or above your depression/elevation by sharply braking or accelerating (the gun will “jerk” upwards above the elevation for example)
- tanks will lose much less speed when going over small obstacles such as stones
- no ETA (when it’s done it’s done), but much of the work was finished already, currently the developers are actively testing, fixing bugs and polishing the model
- there will be a SD and HD texture split in the future the way it was made in 9.3 – SD textures have half the resolution and will be supplied as “standard” for everyone, while HD textures will be available for optional download. This was decided because there is very little difference between the ways HD and SD textures look.
- in the future, not only tanks, but maps as well will be reworked to HD model, for them, the HD textures will also be optional like for tanks
- crew skills/perks will be reworked in order to make all of them attractive, so players don’t have such an easy choice
- sixth sense will be removed as a perk and everyone will get it automatically, it will be tied to the radioman (or crewman with radioman’s role)
- it will be possible to retrain crewmen from one role to another
Nothing much today, developers are slowly getting ready for 9.4, which will bring just some small things.
- Q: “Why did you decide to reward damage blocked by armor (“tanking”) with XP and not credits, how will for example Maus benefit from this?” A: “Crew levelling”
